The Elusive Smart Home

Each year as the annual Consumer Electronics Show approaches, the news media is filled with marketing hype about the elusive Smart Home market. Artificial intelligence and speech recognition are starting to make an impact, but this market seems just as misdirected today as it was in 1957.

Whirlpool was optimistic 67 years ago when it introduced its Miracle Kitchen and Smart Home vision, but that outlook never crossed the chasm to mass-market adoption. The problem wasn’t a lack of sensors, actuators, electronics, or network standards, but marketing and the inability to understand consumer needs and wants, or the ability to show a value proposition and deliver a solution with ease of use and affordability.

I still have seen no company that truly “gets it” or knows how to deliver the smart home vision — not Whirlpool and not Apple or Microsoft or Google or Philips or BestBuy. A lot of innovation has occurred in the last 60-some years that is getting us closer to the Smart Home vision, including smartphones, the Internet of Things, speech recognition, and artificial intelligence. But there are still many marketing barriers that these companies don’t seem to understand. One of the best explanations of what it will take to overcome the barriers to the smart home is in the Beacon Agency video at the end of this article. But first…

Whirlpool’s Vision Update from CES 2016

I find it interesting to contrast the 1957 Whirlpool vision above with what’s shown each year at CES. At least Whirlpool was “trying” to innovate, but they still don’t get the fallacy of integrating so much digital technology into appliances that otherwise would last 10-20 years, causing them to become obsolete much faster than they should. If that’s by design, just know that what seems good for profits is not always good for consumers.

My Smart Home perspective & bias

Toward the end of my 30-year IBM career (in the early 1990s), I introduced the company to the Smart Home market, represented its interests in several industry standards initiatives, and later retired to start CAZITech, a connected home consulting firm. Several years ago I wrote with skepticism about the Smart Refrigerator, and the latest CES videos remind me of that. The problem with smart appliances is that rapid advancements in computer, networking and storage technology enable new features at lower cost each year, making slightly older products obsolete more quickly than ever before. But do you really need the latest features when appliances work fine for a decade or more? Do you really need to replace your perfectly good refrigerator with a new $9,000 model because it features a built-in, color touch-screen and wireless Internet access? What does it do differently or better to justify that cost? And wouldn’t you rather use a touch screen at the kitchen table than standing at the fridge? In my article I describe how to make an even smarter fridge with your existing iPad and less than $40 in parts. The lessons presented apply to medical devices, cars, and other smart home products too.

LG & Samsung continue to add unnecessary electronics

Also added to this article from CES 2016 is this video of tricked-out refrigerators from LG and Samsung.

So what will it take?

BestBuy has the “potential” to become a big player in connected home products, but there’s still more work to do. On the plus side, having a large inventory and a website to help people choose is an advantage, as is having a dedicated section of the store. But still, appliances are in a different section, and consumer electronics are somewhere else, so it’s hard for consumers to experience the whole value proposition in one place. I doubt that store sales staff will know much about home control systems, meaning consumers will be mostly left to explore on their own, so self-service point-of-sale education is key. I do like that their website has buyer ratings and could be improved with instructional videos to show what automation can do with little effort, or a lot. Those videos could even be made available in store kiosks.

A bigger problem for BestBuy or anyone else trying to fulfill the Smart Home promise will come when if-then-else automation evolves into smart agents with artificial intelligence that learn, because it will then be even harder to show the value of learned behavior that evolves with time.

Smart Homes versus Automated Homes

Consumers like the benefits of home automation but not the cost and effort to automate. No wonder this industry remains stalled, even after 60 years. It just takes too much effort to program the automation. There are too many different types of things to automate. And we rely too much on rules-based programs (e.g. “If this happens, then do that” or “Do this at this time”). Even the most skilled technicians can’t anticipate future needs. So adding new devices or making minor lifestyle changes can mean adding or changing the rules. While that ensures continued employment for technicians, it limits market expansion. Maybe the Smart Home industry should consider a service model rather than a product model (see video at end).

A truly “SMART” home would learn on its own, discover new devices, notice changes in activity, and adjust without programming. That would require a sense of what’s going on with human-like sensors that listen, see, feel, and smell. A “smart” home may also need the ability to question occupants and carry on a conversation.

“I notice that you regularly do this,” the home may ask. “Do you want me to do that for you automatically?” Or, “I heard a strange noise [like a crash or glass break]. Are you OK? Do you want me to call 911?”

This was exactly the vision of Merasoft, a small Utah-based company that ended up going out of business before completing its system. I was on their advisory board before retiring from IBM in 1999, and I saw their system in action. It worked well, but they had to invent technologies that were outside of their core competency. They needed help from big companies to fulfill their dream, which was based on neural networks and learning agents.

To listen, Merasoft also invented room sensors with microphone arrays and digital signal processing code to distinguish between different sounds, such as door bell or glass break, and to better understand human speech — close up, far away, or around the corner. They also modified IBM’s ViaVoice speech recognition technology to be multi-user, so people in different rooms could interact simultaneously.

To see, the company developed room nodes with CMOS image sensors that could recognize light or darkness, faces and even gestures. The house, for example, could notice that the husband seemed to sit on the sofa when he got home from work and turn on the TV to CNN. It could then ask if he wanted that task automated when he sat there at that time of day.

Merasoft also believed smart home sensors should include the ability to feel (temperature & humidity) and smell (smoke & CO₂). And with the ability to sense surroundings and learn, there was no need to program new rules. The Merasoft project was 20 years ago, and I’ve seen nothing since that even comes close.

Merasoft’s competency was in neural networks and learning agents, and most of their engineering talent was from Brigham Young University. IBM liked their use of CMOS image sensors for surveillance apps, gesture recognition, and facial recognition and had already done a lot of work in those areas. IBM also liked their DSP-based microphone array, which could distinguish between different voices or various sounds and eliminate noise, echo and reverb to improve speech recognition. That way, voice commands could be clearly understood from a distance or when others in the same room having a party. Other sounds the microphone could recognize included glass break [a burglary?] and fall detection. And by knowing who else was at home, the system could act autonomously if the occupant didn’t answer voice prompts. There was no longer a need to say, “Help. I’ve fallen and can’t get up.”

Merasoft became an IBM business partner and made extensive changes to IBM’s ViaVoice software to support multiple simultaneous conversations and to improve the text-to-speech voice quality so it didn’t sound like a robot. With just 30-minutes of capturing a specific voice pattern, the system could be made to sound like anyone, including me, and I’ve still not heard anything as good since.

At first glance, the voice conversations sound like what Alexa can do today, look further. At 3:49, for example, the microphone hears the sound of a fall and asks the little girl if she’s OK or if she wants to call 911. Now remember, this video was from over 20 years ago.

The Challenge of Marketing Smart Homes

Think of the challenge of selling smart home technology, where potential customers need to “experience” the value proposition in order to understand the benefits. That can’t be done in retail stores like BestBuy. Consumers need to see it in a real home.

Merasoft had a brilliant marketing plan and choice of marketing channels, but I won’t discuss more here. Just think, however, about what it will take to move the Home Automation industry across the chasm separating early adopters and early majority customers and then toward the vision of a truly Smart Home. Who (what companies) might lead such a move? What partnerships would they need? How could they build a “camp” of partners supporting their technology? How could they make sure that their technology became standardized?

Understanding Market Requirements

Rather than develop products and then find markets for them, isn’t it better to first understand market needs? Now that doesn’t mean asking consumers what they want, because they may not even know. They almost certainly won’t know what’s technically possible or feasible. Instead, marketers should study what they do, enjoy doing, would like to do, hate doing, and wish they didn’t have to do.

A reason I joined the HomeRF Working Group as their marketing chairman back in the mid-1990s (before Wi-Fi) was because I was so impressed with Intel’s Ethnographic Market Research. They would send a team of (1) psychologist, (2) anthropologist, and (3) sociologist into homes to study their activities and values. They did NOT send technicians! And their research fed into a Market Requirements document that then fed into a Technical Requirements document and guided standards development and the HomeRF specification.

Another example of where NOT to get market requirements comes from IBM’s PC business. IBM had little success in consumer markets because it would ask retailers what features should be included in the next PCs, as if they knew. This meant that IBM got the same answers as all other PC manufacturers, from retailers that didn’t really know either.

So why did IBM have such great success with its ThinkPad line of laptop PCs? The ThinkPad team looked to IBM Research for product ideas (e.g. TrackPoint mouse replacement, Butterfly keyboard, and a hard disk with accelerometer to detect a fall and retract R/W heads before hitting the ground). ThinkPad market research all started with understanding user behavior and needs, followed by testing prototypes with customers to see if those needs were met.

Home Control in the Year 2020?

In the following video (from CES 2017?), Mitchell Klein, Executive Director of the Z-Wave Alliance, speaks to members of the Custom Electronic Design & Installation Association (CEDIA) about trends affecting their industry. He makes a compelling case that embedded smarts in the Internet of Things (IoT) is changing the landscape and industry leadership.

My issue with Klein’s presentation, like so many others I’ve seen, is that what’s trending and technically possible often is not yet a “must have” desire, and that’s what it will take to cross the chasm from market niche to mainstream adoption. Klein gives insight into what will be possible in 2020, but predicting market adoption still seems elusive.

I hope you were able to watch this with a bit of skepticism, and maybe you noticed that he cited market research from several different companies, cherry-picking the most positive projections. He did, however, touch on many of the drivers of market adoption, but he failed to address the inhibitors. That can be critical, I learned, after writing a major market research report on Home Controls in 2004 for Parks Associates. The chart below shows what I saw as the opportunity if only the Home Control market could Cross the Chasm separating market niche in high-end new homes (just 68K in 2002) and mainstream adoption in the 100+ million occupied U.S. households. Needless to say, we still have not crossed that chasm to mass market Smart Home adoption, and I’m not holding my breath.

I very much like Beacon Agency’s view of this market, looking at the service model instead a collection of partially connected but rather dumb products that quickly go obsolete as tech innovation evolves exponentially.

Above is a look at some of the many smart home gadgets on display at CES 2019. But that’s the point: they’re still just gadgets. Where’s the integration between devices, platforms, and voice interfaces? And as with placing new tech in refrigerators and other appliances designed to last decades, that obsolescence problem is amplified in homes designed even longer.

Still Looking for a Brilliant Solution

Smart Home market adoption would accelerate if homebuilders took the same approach as car manufacturers, meaning they’d do all the tech research for the buyer and integrate solutions seamlessly into the end product (car or home). Thankfully, Brilliant is working with builders to do that. Their challenge is contending with different voice interfaces (Alexa, Google Home, and Apple HomeKit with Siri) and different network standards and automation platforms for lighting, security, HVAC, and all the other subsystems. At least someone is finally looking at that, but I still have two main issues with their system.

OBSOLESCENCE – Rapid advancements in computer, networking, display, and storage technologies enable new features at lower cost each year, making slightly older products obsolete more quickly than ever before. That’s why I’ve been critical of the smart refrigerator with touch screen display on the door, when an iPad could do even more and with the flexibility of being portable. You really don’t need to replace your perfectly good fridge so you can add a touch screen. Adding technology to homes has the same challenge. While appliances are designed to last a decade or more, homes are built to last much longer, at least through their 30-year mortgage. What technology will you want in 2030, 2040, or 2050? Will you have to change out wall controls again each time?

VALUE ADD – From past experience, I’m skeptical that smart home technologies will increase the perceived value of new and resale homes, and I think it may even detract. I introduced IBM to the Smart Home market in the early 1990s, but after selling my fully automated home several years later, with about $10K invested, I was surprised that the buyer hired an electrician to remove it all. They just wanted something simpler like the light switches they were used to – so much for added value. What about families committed to Apple and Siri? Will they justify paying a premium for a home based on Alexa, or Google Home?

Ideally, Brilliant’s system would work equally well with all smart home platforms and in small apartments, assisted living facilities, and multi-story million dollar homes. But the installation challenges and application usage is different in these markets. If Brilliant can get there, that would be a huge plus that would help drive market adoption. While their focus is still on automation rather than AI-based smart learning, they do seem to be addressing some of the issues I write about as a digital home consultant after retiring from IBM.

For Better or Worse?

Smart Home technologies have great potential for eldercare and others, but we must watch out that tech innovation doesn’t get in the way of our daily lives. I close this article with a funny look at what could happen if developers don’t keep the user experience in mind.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Wayne Caswell is the Founding Editor of Modern Health Talk, an altruistic website and blog with hundreds of published articles on healthcare policy, technologies, and solutions for independent living. It started in March 2011 as a nonprofit effort to share the unique perspectives of a retired IBM technologist, market strategist, digital home consultant, futurist, and consumer advocate.