Everywhere you turn, things are becoming smart – smart pet feeders, smart rice cookers, smart scales and even Barbie has a smart home. We can’t get away from it all, but can we keep up? As the IoT era races ahead and devices we’ve happily lived with for years become smart, will our fast paced lives become more enhanced or more confused?
The idea of a smart device is that it connects to other smart devices or networks wirelessly. We set them up, connect them and away we go to live our lives. We may want to change things but that’s okay. If we decide to go out for the evening after work we can turn our home lights on from an app whist still in the office. If the weather suddenly drops we can turn on the heating using an app on our phone resulting in a nice warm house when we walk in.
Easy? Well that depends. Some people I talk to about smart homes love it but for others, it strikes fear in them and they quickly change the subject. They don’t see any benefit for themselves only confusion and hard work.
An important part of the “smart” concept is “simple”. If it’s too complicated a lot of people will turn the other way. Smart needs to be simple enough for people to give it a go. If it isn’t easy enough to use and makes our fast paced lives more difficult, we won’t accept it. All this new technology needs to be easily usable by non-technical people and presented to them in a non–tech way. Not everyone wants to know how something works, they just want it to be convenient to them by simplifying their lives.
So whilst there’s exciting times ahead, smart device manufacturers need to remember that yes we are smart enough provided their devices enhance, not hinder our lives. We want them to make us feel smarter not dumber. Then when we’re happy being smart in our homes, let’s open the front door and head out into the smart city!