Are you asking the right question?

"Why is it that when we want to call and talk to a person, we have to call a place?"  This was the question that led to the invention of a mobile phone.  When everyone wanted to build a better landline telephone, the right question led us to this innovation.

When every retailer was working on making the checkout process seamless or empowering shoppers to checkout in self-service terminals, someone at Amazon asked "Why don't we just get rid of the checkout process itself?" and it led to Amazon Go!

The right question can be a disruptive agent.  Another example of innovation and disruption is in cooking.  A pressure cooker works on the principle of building high pressure and cooking food at a high temperature.  High pressure allows cooking with water at temperatures higher than 100 °C. The first generation pressure cooker came around 1960 and the design had not changed until recently.  A weighed pressure regulator is used to cover the steam vent.  Based on the weight, the regulator releases steam when the pressure cooker reaches a particular pressure (and temperature).  The instructions guide the cook to wait for the regulator to start releasing the steam indicating the reaching of the correct pressure.  From there, the user counts the number of times steam is released before stopping the cooking.

Everyone was asking the question "How do we automate the process of counting the whistles and inform the user?".  That lead to solutions like the Cookoo or the Pressure Cooker Whistle Counter.

Whereas, Robert Wang asked "How can I build a pressure cooker that cooks without supervision?" and he came up with the Instant Pot.  He got rid of the whistles completely and used sensors and electronics to automate the cooking process completely.  No more whistles to count!

That is the power of the right questions.  Questions are more important than answers.  Right questions have a way of leading you to the answer.  Right questions lead to big ideas.

Asking the right question is an art.  It is an art that is cultivated by being curious, being open minded, being engaged and being customer centered.

Future of drive-thru

McDonald's announced last week that it is buying the AI company Apprente to automate drive-thru ordering.  It will be interesting to see what they come up with and how they will revolutionize the drive-thru experience.

I have always been thinking of how the future would unfold in various areas including the drive-thru experience.

Imagine you are driving on the freeway around noon to meet one of your clients.  Your smart car wakes up and asks if you would like to order lunch.  The conversation goes this way:

Smart Car (SC) - Would you like to order some lunch?  It is close to your lunch hour. 
You - Sure.  Why not?  What is around here?
SC - There is a SubWay on your route.
You - Nah.  Not today.  Is there a McD?
SC - Yes, there is a McD on your route.
You - What are today's specials?
SC - There are no vegetarian specials today.  Would you like to order the usual?
You - OK.  Just add a chocolate milkshake to it.
SC - Chocolate milkshake.  Small?
You - Sure.
SC - Placing the order.  You will arrive at the McD in 8 mins and your order should be ready.  Anything else I can do for you?
You - Play the next podcast in my queue.
SC - Certainly.

What happened here?  The car is smart enough to figure out that you are on the road and it is your lunch time.  It also looks up all the restaurants nearby.  Especially the ones you frequent.  It finds a place that is on your route, not the nearest one.  It knows what you generally order at the various restaurants.  It knows you are a vegetarian.  It calculates the approximate time it takes to prepare the order (dependent on the order) and places the order at the location nearest to where you will be at that time.  Even though there was a McD a minute away, it still places the order at the McD that is 8 mins away.  It wants to reduce the wait time to almost nothing.  It automatically takes care of paying the restaurant with the credit card attached to your application.  It now knows that on certain days you prefer McD over SubWay.  It also learned that you like to have chocolate shake with your veggie burger.  The Smart Car keeps getting smarter everyday. 

How did the customer engagement and experience improve? 

You don't have to stand in line at the drive-thru.  You don't have to speak to anybody to place your order.  You don't have to wait for the order to be ready in order to pick it up.  You are saving time and reducing pollution.  The traditional drive-thru experience changes dramatically and the only thing needed is the pickup window. 

As far as technology is concerned, everything is available.  You just have to expose your geo-location to the app as well as the restaurants.  The app tracks where you are, maps your location and route and determines the restaurants en-route.  It places the order at the restaurant and notifies the arrival time.  It also allows the restaurant to track your geo-location so they can be ready to deliver your order in time.  Similar to how you track your Uber ride as it arrives to you.  The technology is readily available.  We just need to work with the restaurants that are ready to jump on the platform. 

Waiting to see how the drive-thru experience will transform. 

Amazon Go Store experience

Living in Seattle, I had to go and experience the Amazon Go store.  It is an awesome concept.  When everyone was thinking of self scanning shopping carts and RFID tags and such, Amazon went for the moonshot of completely getting rid of the checkout process and they have nailed it.

You enter through the turnstile by scanning your QR code in the Amazon Go app.  This code identifies you and the store lets you in.

Once inside, you can freely pick up anything and stuff it in your shopping bag.  Cameras in the ceiling (there are a ton of them.  Look at the picture below) are used to recognize you and your activity.

Every item had a large bar code that is read by the camera (I assume) when the item is picked up by the user.  The system is smart enough to recognize if you put something back.  I tried to take a few items and put some back, and take them out again, and it worked flawlessly.

Once you are done with your shopping, you just walk out of the store through the turnstile you entered through.  It is as simple as that.

On a subsequent visit I noticed another nuance that is purely Seattle.  I had enthusiastically bought a lot of stuff in my previous visit and wanted to return a few items.  I walked into the store and asked the employee at the front door.  BTW, this employee is positioned at the front door to help new comers use the app to get into the store, or allow visitors (without the app) into the store.  To my surprise, he said that the Amazon Go store does not accept returns.

What?  I was flabbergasted.

Then, he corrected himself and told me that I could "return" anything on the app and I get money back instantaneously, BUT, the store does not take back any items.  He told me that if I didn't want the items, I could give it away to a friend or someone.  The store is completely trust based.  This seemed weird since the items I was returning were fully sealed packages.  Still, I left the store with a good feeling, looking for a homeless person to give the packages to.  All in all, a great experience.

The store is small and carries a few categories of groceries, lots of packaged meals and drinks.  They have an onsite kitchen to make the packaged meals.  But, the same concept could be extended to all kinds of stores.

The future of grocery shopping has arrived!

Mobile Room Key

Technology is making inroads into the hospitality industry.  Last week I was at a Marriott resort in Mexico and got a change to experience the mobile room key.  It was a good experience since I didn't have to carry my key card everywhere. 

The next experience I am waiting for is the ability to choose my own room.  Empower your guests, and they will reward you with loyalty.

Every hotel has a Rooms Controller whose job is to allocate rooms to guests.  The front desk has a little leeway to change the allocation depending on the situation.  There are several factors affecting room allocation.  Some of which are:
- Availability of rooms (inclusion list)
- Rooms scheduled for maintenance/remodeling (exclusion list)
- Number of guests per room
- Total number of guests (determines allocation of adjoining rooms)
- Age of guests (determines noise level)
- Guest status (VIP or Elite status gets preference)
- Length of stay (determines ability to upgrade)
- Pre-paid advance reservation or not
- Rooms not occupied for long time (need to allocate rooms on a regular basis to avoid dust collection)
- Group reservations (multiple rooms, adjoining rooms, etc.)

The above list is a small list of things a room controller thinks of, and still they make mistakes pissing off valued customers.  So, it makes sense for a computer algorithm to determine and allocate rooms than a human being.  Of course, the front desk manager should have the ability to override the allocation and assign a different room, if deemed fit.  The algorithm can dynamically reallocate and shuffle rooms around whenever a guest arrives.  This is the beauty of algorithms. 

In today's day and age of computers and AI, the computer can make a better allocation of the room than a human room controller.  Computers can crunch a large amount of customer data (personal, profile, preferences, past stays, etc) as well as hotel information and make better decisions for a better outcome. 

Simple Design Innovations

Shopping cart is one design that has not evolved since its introduction in 1937.  The major development came in 1946 with the nesting carts.  After that, the only advances have been in minor tweaks like steerable rear wheels, adjustable height/volume, etc.

Of late, with the advent of digital technology, the cart is getting a fresh look.  IDEO is a design firm that looked at reinventing the shopping cart and came up with this design:

Several other companies are incorporating a digital display into the shopping cart to enhance the user experience.  Some of these displays show the store planogram whereas some display coupons or both.

These are slow evolutions of the shopping cart and taking it over the digital hump.  For all we know, the innovations will halt abruptly because online shopping and home deliveries are taking over all over the world.

Here is a minor design change I noticed.  I was at a shopping mall in Copenhagen recently and saw that it had sloped flat escalators taking visitors from the underground parking garages into the mall upstairs.  They were pretty steep.  I noticed several shoppers taking their shopping cart (the usual big ones) filled with goods down the escalator.  The carts were standing on the inclined escalator without slipping.  My first thought was that there must be a brake that the user applies to hold it in place.  Then, it would be a bad and dangerous design: what if the user forgot to apply the brakes?  what is the brakes failed?  What if the user accidentally released the brakes?  All of this would lead to serious repercussions.  Imagine a fully loaded shopping cart racing towards you on an inclined escalator.  You wouldn't be a happy customer.

Upon closer scrutiny, I noticed the clever design that held the carts in place and stopped them from rolling.  The design of the shopping cart used the escalator design to its advantage.  It was a very simple design change to the wheels that accomplished the task automatically and without failure.

Below is a drawing depicting the wheel design.  Instead of a flat wheel, these wheels had a straight groove tread.  Beside the wheels were pads that were affixed to the shopping cart frame.  Whenever the cart was rolled on a flat floor, the wheels would be in contact of the floor and hence they would roll.  But, whenever the cart was rolled onto an escalator, the wheel treads would fall into the escalator grooves and the pads would grab hold of the 'floor' (escalator floor) thereby arresting the cart since the pads were flat and non-rotating.  Clever way to solve the problem.

The beauty of the design was the simplicity.  This design requires no moving parts and it is fail safe and idiot proof..  Based on the design, irrespective of how you place the cart on the escalator, at least three of the wheels would lock.  Note that the carts were wide enough that you could not turn them sideways on the narrow escalators.

Reminds me that great designs are always simple designs.  

The driverless World is here (almost)!

I recently visited a city with completely autonomous vehicles and no drivers at all and it was a delight to see the way the automobiles (including trains and planes) moved about without an adverse incident.  All vehicles moved around within the limits of the law and were aware of each other (as long as they were in close proximity).  It was a wonderful sight to behold.  Vehicles of all sizes varying from a small car all the way to a 18-wheeler moved around the city and in between cities, with ease.  Trains were, of course, on a schedule and followed it like clockwork as they moved in and out of stations.  The airport was the icing on the cake.  All the vehicles, including planes and ground support vehicles, were autonomous and they all went about their job effortlessly.

Now, you are wondering where this futuristic city is.

It is the Miniature Wunderland in Hamburg, Germany.  Everything I explained was in place but what was missing was the variability and chaos caused by humans.  This was an autonomous world with no people.  Hence the clockwork precision in its operation.  The only humans in sight were the spectators visiting the Wunderland.

I do think there is a lesson to learn here.  One of the biggest challenges facing the technologists is to blend self-driving vehicles with human drivers.  This interaction is complex and can lead to confusion and unnecessary traffic congestion.  As long as we have everything automated, there is a high probability that things will work well.  The key information that is needed is about the surroundings (static as well as dynamic) and the road rules that govern the vehicles.  The roads can be made smarter so they can transmit information about their conditions to a central location and it could be made available to anyone interested.  The vehicles could also be made smarter and they can identify, collect and transmit information to a central location for consumption.  We are partly there already with roads transmitting traffic as well as condition information and vehicles transmitting their location information to start with.

The autonomous technology has matured and costs have come down drastically,  Even with a completely autonomous world there will still be challenges to overcome.  From hacking of the system/vehicles, economic impact, regulatory hurdles and liability are a few issues that need to be still sorted out.  The good news is that a lot of heavy weight companies are after these issues and we are sure to see them resolved in the very near future.

Anyone interested in model vehicles would love this museum.  It uses state-of-art technology in each of its displays.  It even simulates 24 hours of the day every 15 minutes.

For the road vehicles, they use the Faller Car System and have customized it to their needs.  They have created their own custom software to operate the airport.  For light control, they developed their own system called MiWuLight.

They have even partnered with Google to create street views of the Wunderland.  Check it out on Google Maps here.

Robot meets Trolley Problem in an Autonomous Car

Isaac Asimov's Laws of Robotics states that:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.  
2. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders conflict with the First law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second law.

What is an autonomous vehicle but a robot programmed to ferry passengers and cargo around.

The famous Trolley problem is a thought experiment in ethics.  The general form of the problem is:
There is a runaway trolley barreling down the railway tracks.  Ahead, on the tracks, there are five people tied up and unable to move.  The trolley is headed straight for them. You are standing some distance off in the train yard, next to a lever.  If you pull this lever, the trolley will switch to a different set of tracks.  However, you notice that there is one person tied to this track and is unable to move.

What do you do?
Do nothing and kill five people or pull the lever and kill one person.
Which is the most ethical choice?

Ever since Artificial Intelligence (AI) and autonomous vehicles started getting closer to reality, this question of ethics is haunting the designers of autonomous vehicles and the algorithms governing them.  Imagine an autonomous car speeding along when it suddenly encounters a bunch of unexpected pedestrians on the road.  If it continues forward, it will kill the pedestrians.  If it swerves to avoid the pedestrians, it will fall off a bridge killing all its passengers.

Autonomous car meets trolley problem.
Robot meets a situation violating its laws.

How do we program a car to behave in a situation like this?
Eject all the passengers to safety and drive off the bridge.  Wish it was that easy.

There has been a lot of research into this area and MIT has even set up a web site to crowd source the opinion of the masses.  [side note: It will be interesting to go through the judging process as: a) a passenger, b) a pedestrian and c) as a third party onlooker.  I am sure that will skew your answers..]

One way to look at this problem is to equate the autonomous car to a chauffeured car.  In this case, the decisions are driven by the chauffeur.  As a human being, the driver's main motive is to stay alive and this skews the decision making.

The outcome of solving this problem may be that people will hesitate to buy or board a driverless car because of the fact that protecting its passengers may not be in the best interest of the vehicle.  What a dilemma!

Again, these are extreme end cases we are talking about.  Maybe, we should use a crowd sourced decision tree and apply it to all autonomous vehicles.  Today, the driver takes responsibility to the actions of the vehicle.  Tomorrow, we should not be blaming the manufacturer for the actions.  The actions should be governed by a set of rules appointed by a global body.

The reality is that millions of people are killed by vehicles manned by people.  This would dramatically reduce with autonomous vehicles and that fact will pivot people into accepting this new transport.  Similar to how horses made the decisions for us while we rode buggies, and when cars came around, no one wanted to trust a human being to make these decisions.  And, look where we are now.  One thing you have to give to the horses, though, is that they don't drink and pull carriages.

All along, designers of vehicles had been concentrating on protecting the passengers by installing seat belts, airbags and other safety equipment in vehicles.  Because of this new ethical dilemma, the designers of autonomous vehicles will have to start thinking of not only protecting the inhabitants of the vehicle, but also those in its vicinity in case an unfortunate event was to occur.  Designers are currently concentrating on the algorithm that powers these vehicles and assists in decision making.  That is all fine and good, but we need to start thinking outside the box to find the solution.

Thinking outside the box could lead into external airbags for vehicles which deploy when they detect an apparent (planned) collision with a living being.  It could also lead to apparel manufacturers designing safety wearables like jackets with airbags.  These could be for people who have high exposure to autonomous vehicle traffic, like construction workers.

But again, these are extreme edge cases we are talking about. 

Driverless pizza ovens

You order a pizza from your local pizzeria and a half hour later, a driverless car pulls up in front of your door and pings you to come out and pick up your pizza.  You go to the car, scan a code from your phone and a small door opens revealing your pizza box.  We all know this is bound to happen, or already happening in certain cities.

On a busy day, it can take up to a half hour for a pizza to be prepared and then transportation time is added on top of that.  This could easily add up to almost an hour, depending on how far you live from a pizzeria.  In general, a pizza takes about 3-4 minutes to prepare and 8-10 mins to bake.  Once baked, it tastes its best if consumed immediately.  Depending on the contents of the pizza, it starts to age and get soggy by the minute.

This is where the driverless oven comes into picture.

A pizzeria gets its order.  The order contains not only the products purchased, but also the address to be delivered to.  Software can easily categorize orders based on the product as well as distance to be transported.  For those orders within closer reaches, the pizza can be baked in the store and loaded for delivery.  For those orders which have a larger travel time, the chef can prepare the pizza and load it into the delivery vehicle.  The pizza is baked in the vehicle's oven, and packaged once fully baked and readied for delivery automatically.  This would need an automated vehicle with an automated pizza oven inside it.  The oven could be designed to handle several pizzas which will be baked based on the distance to the destination.  Material handling robots would package the pizzas as they are cooked.  The vehicle decides when to start baking depending on the distance as well as traffic conditions.

This optimizes the baking and delivery of the pizza.  Delivering fresh baked pizzas would become a reality.  This can also free up the store over to service in-store customers.

PC: Dominos Pizza

Maximizing store productivity

The other day I was at the mall and visited a clothing store.  Walking inside I noticed a line formed in front of the dressing rooms.  Here we had a bunch of customers who were wasting their time waiting to get into the dressing room rather than perusing the clothes and accessories being sold by the retailer.  What a great wasted opportunity.

What if they had an app that customers could download and use it to reserve the dressing room.  If no room was available, they would be put on a waiting list and pinged when one came available.  This would allow the customer to roam around and shop for more things.  Once the retailer's app is installed on the customer's mobile device, and once the customer logs into the app, the retailer will have all the customer's information so the app can provide tips or sales information to the customer based on her/his taste.

This would not only provide a pleasant experience to the shopper but also help the retailer maximize the customer's time in the store.  Which retailer would want a shopper standing in line rather than browsing the aisles and picking up products to purchase?  

Alexa in the Enterprise

Amazon Echo has been the face of Alexa all these days and it is a hands-free speaker that you control with your voice.  It also acts as a virtual voice-controlled assistant with limited capabilities.

 

Amazon released Alexa API to developers for free and developers are flocking to it.  This is a great move by Amazon and this will herald a new wave of applications that make use of Alexa.  And the Alexa Champions Program was put in place to recognize creative and outstanding contributions to the ecosystem.

Alexa has been seen as a way to enter into everyone's living room and as an assistant for the home.  Even the Alexa Home Kit is geared towards helping create home based custom skills.  This is all good.  But, the next generation of skills are going to empower the enterprise.

Imagine walking into a sporting goods store and wondering where to find running shoes.  You walk up to a virtual assistant installed strategically on every pillar/corner and speak to it and ask your question.  It can then reply with the exact location of the running shoes.  A custom skill could be created to go into the store database and check the location of the product in question, verify its location on the store planogram and return the location for the virtual assistant to voice.  The database and its information should be store specific.

Taking it to the next level, imagine a virtual assistant answering questions about a product.  All the information about the product, its reviews, etc. are available and can be piped into the assistant without any human intervention.  Custom skills can be built to work with the store database.  In cases where the answer is not found or the question is not understood, the virtual assistant can page for a human assistant.

The next generation of Human Computer Interaction is already here: It is voice based.  We still have a long way to go before computers can read our minds (think, Firefox, the movie).  We do live in interesting times.

Update: With Echo Show, the enterprise use case is strengthened.  In the above sports store scenario, Echo Show can display the store planogram/plan and show the user how to reach the product of interest.  It can also display additional information (choices, etc.) on the product as well. 

Image Courtesy: Amazon.com

Lytro's saving grace

What is Lytro?  I pondered a few years ago when Lytro came into existence.  They had amazing technology albeit it was not very useful or competitive against the current still cameras.  I wondered where Lytro would end up.

Yesterday, Lytro announced Immerge, its latest creation. With Immerge, Lytro seems to have found its sweet spot and saving grace. 

Immerge is a professional grade cinematic virtual reality video camera.  It offers 6 degrees of freedom which suits it very well for VR.  It also allows one to mix CG into the footage.  This is where Lytro's light field technology can truly shine.  It can capture light volumes and play back based on where the viewer is looking.  Imagine wearing a VR headgear and viewing a scene shot on Immerge.  As you glance around using its 6 DoF, and as you look at objects, the scene could refocus based on the light field technology.  It could simulate a human eye looking around in a scene bringing the scene eerily close to reality.

With Immerge, Lytro is also moving away from consumer market and into the professional market.  Lytro is not just selling this camera, they are selling an end-to-end solution with a server, post-processing tools, a player as well as a streaming server.  This will allow them to own and control the entire ecosystem.  They have also mentioned support for all available and future VR headsets and players. 

This is an amazing opportunity for Lytro to make a mark in the VR world as it matures. 

Photo credit: Lytro.com

Drone attack!

Recently I was in Ireland and I visited the Blarney's castle.  Here is an aerial view of the castle from a magazine ad.

Here is another picture I took from the ground.

Not very flattering, huh?

One of the reasons aerial photography (short range) is going to become popular is due to this discrepancy.  It allows for one to be creative.  It is not as simple as just whipping out your camera or phone and clicking a button.  It is much more than that.  It is commanding a small camera fitted on a drone and piloting it (or instructing it) to shoot pics from a different vantage point.  It is exciting and the opportunities to be creative are boundless.  I was cursing myself for not bringing my drone along. 

That is when I saw this sign on the Blarney Castle grounds.

Bummer.

There are many reasons to ban drones from historical sites:
- Protect the monument or the historical artifact from being damaged by crashing aerial vehicles
- Protect the unobstructed visual beauty.  This does not really hold ground, since people walking around the site are already obstructing the visual beauty
- Protect the monument from the trash of dead aerial cameras perched on inaccessible locations such as the ledge in the picture below (which I shot from the top of the tower and not a drone).  We have all seen trash strewn on historical or natural monuments that is hard to clear
- Copyrighting the aerial view of the site.  This may not hold much ground when photography in general is allowed

It looks like this is going to become the norm in all the tourist locations from now on.  That is until the aerial cameras become smart enough to avoid obstructions and not get lost.  There are several manufacturers already on this path.  We will shortly start seeing aerial cameras that are capable of following a pre-set path, capable of avoiding stationary as well as moving objects, capable of returning home before losing complete control and being small enough to be carried by a photography enthusiast.

Design Innovation (or not)

I wanted to talk about design innovation, thinking out of the box, and pushing the envelope.  This is what every company (at least, consumer goods companies) is striving to become good at.  You can innovate like crazy, but still not solve the problem if you lose sight of your primary goals.  I think that is what is happening to the Tesla Model X.

As you can see in the Model X Reveal video, Elon Musk talks about the problems addressed by the new design:

• More stylish than a minivan
• More spacious than a SUV
• Ease of getting a child car seat into the car
• Ability to stand inside the car
• Ability to easily get into the third row without folding the second row

The design is super sexy because we don't see it often on the streets.  We have only seen gull wing doors on sports cars and super cars.  Now, you can have it on an SUV that most people can afford!  BTW, Tesla calls this design 'Falcon Wing' since it flexes in the middle in order to minimize overhang.  A cool bit of engineering and innovation. 

Really cool design. 

What is not that cool is the fact that the design only solves a few problems and creates a lot more issues.  It does solve the virtues that Elon mentions.  But, it does create other issues:

• Letting rain water into the cabin.  Remember, rain rarely comes perfectly down.  It is always blown by wind and comes down at an angle
• Letting snow fall into the cabin.  If you ever lived in snow country, you know what I am talking about
• Forget snow falling into the cabin.  Anyone who has shoveled snow knows how heavy snow is.  A few inches of snow on the roof would mean that the hydraulic/pneumatic mechanism on the door would fail to even raise the door.  In fact, it could even break the mechanism
• Inability to mount a roof rack.  An SUV without a roof rack.  C'mon.  I know Tesla packs a ton of cargo space (including the 'frunk'), but I can't carry 3 bikes or a canoe inside the cargo space
• What about older homes with low ceiling garages?  You cannot even open the doors while inside the garage
• How safe is this feature?  Most car roofs are designed to support the weight of the car body (when it is upside down) with the doors shut (Now you know why it is important to remember to lock the doors).  With the buckling Falcon Wing doors, are they strong enough to hold the weight of the base?  Maybe, they are, considering the fact that the Model X is pretty light compared to its gas counterparts
• Opening area when the door is open is huge.  Of course, it allows one to stand inside the car, but who would want to do that?  With this large opening, your hard working A/C will have to work extra hard to cool/heat the cabin every time you open and shut the door

One of the main reasons minivans have sliding doors is to solve a lot of these issues.  If the main purpose was to solve the issue of loading car seats, and loading passengers into the rear seats, Tesla could have come up with a better and cooler sliding door.  Falcon Wing doesn't seem to cut it.  It is a cool fashion statement, but not practical in a lot of geographies.  Fashion statements work in niche products (like super cars).  But, if Tesla is aiming this at the mass market, Falcon Wings are not the answer. 

If the main problem to solve was the passenger loading, there are a ton of other ways to do it.  By innovating on the seating.  Maybe, by swiveling the middle row seats so that the seat faces you when the door opens.  This will aid in easily attaching a car seat.  It will also get the backrest out of the way and provide more space to get into the third row.  There are a lot of other ways to solve the problem at hand, AND not create additional problems.

Talking about out of the box thinking, here is a company that has created one of the lightest EVs around.  Check them out:

Image courtesy: Tesla Motor Co.

Memoto use-case

Ever since I read about the Memoto lifelogging camera, I was wondering where it can be effectively used without intruding on privacy of others.  Google glass is already facing scrutiny even before its launch.  Same holds true for Memoto.  How would the world react if you walked around with a video camera in hand recording everything in view?  The difference now is that you are wearing a tiny camera masquerading as a pair of glasses or a necklace or a clip.

Today, we were visiting one of our friends and their month old baby.  We started talking about how they should capture every fleeting moment of the baby's childhood and how precious it is.  That is when it struck me that this is a perfect use-case for Memoto.  Clip a Memoto to the mother's dress and it takes a snap every 30 seconds.  With the mother spending a majority of her time with the newborn baby, chances are she will capture some really candid fleeting moments.  No more running for a camera when the baby smiles, no more running to get your smartphone when the baby takes the first step.  Memoto does it for you.  In fact, you could even hang a Memoto onto the crib to record everything that the baby does.

This use-case is perfect since it is private and you are not recording anyone else without their permission.  Once you have the images, you can determine what to do with them and how to use them.

Oh, just make sure you remember to take Memoto off when you to to the bathroom :)

iWear

There has been a lot of speculation on the iWatch that Apple is working on.  Analysts are comparing it to the other watches available and are peering deep into the watch industry for insights on the market, revenues and margins.  What everyone should realize is that the iWatch (or whatever Apple chooses to call it.  In fact, I would call it iWear) is just another wearable computing device.  I don’t consider it to be a watch.  I hope it is much more than a watch.

Let me talk a little bit about watches.

A watch, per Wikipedia, is a device that tells time.  It is a timepiece.  It is generally worn around the wrist or attached to a chain and carried in the pocket.  Traditionally, watches have been either manual or automatic (driven by kinetic movement).  These watches have slowly progressed from just telling the time to being a calendar and then being a stopwatch.  These additional behaviors are called 'complications'.  There are a few automatic watches that perform the function of an alarm clock too!   There are smart watches (not in the computer smart terms), which understand the variation of days in a month (yearly calendar watches) and there are those which can even compensate for the leap year (perpetual calendar watches).  There are watches for the blind.The video below shows a Patek Philippe watch with a chime!

These are mechanical marvels driven by just a flywheel that charges one or more springs either based on manual winding or the kinetic movement of the wearer’s hand (or the winding machine).

Then came the era of electronic quartz watches.  These were powered by small batteries and were completely electronic.  Quartz crystals, by their nature are very accurate leading to extremely accurate watches.  Additionally, the electronics afforded designers to add additional functionality into the watches.  These watches had lights to see at night, multiple time zones, stop clock, alarm, and other features.  And, there are the techy watches which need a degree in computer science to tell the time.  The quartz electronic watches were also fashionable since they were tiny and could be fashioned into any shape and size.

There have been several watchmakers who are trying to reinvent the timepiece.  Urwerk is a classic example making high end watches that beat the conventional wisdom.

The watch market is a thriving market.  There are people who buy one watch to tell time.  There is a segment of the market where watches are akin to jewelry.  They buy several; one for the office, one for sports, one for the evening party, one for the black tie event, etc.  There is another segment that just buys watches just to collect them.  I belong to this segment.  I guess we haven’t heard the Confucius saying ‘Man with one watch always knows what time it is.  Man with two, never sure.’  The watch market is huge.

I have always wondered about one thing.  Whenever I walk into a meeting, I look around to notice what watch everyone is wearing.  I am sure anyone who is interested in watches would do the same.  I have never, let me say it again, never been in a room (full of people) where I saw two people wearing the same brand/model of watch.  There have been some rare occasions where two people were wearing the same brand, but never the same model.  That itself shows you the market for the variety of watches.  The global watch market is about $60 billion a year with a margin of around 60%.  Everyone is looking into the watch market and wondering how Apple will disrupt it. 

If Apple is targeting the watch market, it is looking in the wrong direction.  Apple should be looking at something that is much more than the watch market.  In fact, when Apple releases their iWear, people should buy it, and still be buying/wearing watches. 

The point I am trying to make is that Apple should not be getting into the watch business.  The watch industry will thrive by itself, and there are many disruptors around.  All phones have a timepiece functionality built into them.  The phone industry has had incredible penetration in the past decade.  Did it affect the watch industry?  Nope.  People still wear watches.  Quartz watches came and kicked the traditional mechanical watch’s butt.  But, I still buy mechanical (manual winding as well as automatic) watches!  My computer has a very accurate clock.  My cell phone has an incredible clock which automatically adjusts to the timezone I am in.  Still, I wear my automatic wristwatch which loses about a few secs a week (which, by the way, is pretty bad).  Why do I still wear it?  It is a part of my attire.  One reason may be that I love the mechanical marvels (automatic watches) and want one ticking away on my wrist.  I have not seen people ditch watches in droves since they are carrying their cellphones with them. 

Apple should be getting into the wearable computer industry.  We do ‘wear’ our cellphones, but there is a huge difference between carrying a device and wearing one close to your body, close to millions if not billions of interface points (skin cells, veins, etc.) to a human body.  This affords incredible opportunities in various areas of which telling time is the least important one. 

With a computer strapped onto my wrist, the device can be:

• a health monitor (heart rate, temperature, etc.)
• a pedometer
• an alarm
• a safety monitor
• a tracker
• a phone
• a camera
• a music player
• a video player
• a device to inject medicine based on a schedule
• a GPS
• an internet browser
• a calendar
• a timepiece

You get the drift.  It can be anything.  As long as you are wearing a computer on your body, there is no limit to what it can do.  That is where Apple should be heading.  Apple should build an ecosystem around this wearable computing device in the same way it built an ecosystem around iPod with its iTunes store.  This will afford incredible opportunities for smart entrepreneurs to innovate and bring great applications to life.

I am excited for Apple and am ready to pounce on this opportunity.

RIP Rosetta Stone?

Microsoft Research has done it again.  Check out this video on how their research software recognizes spoken English and transcribes it.  And then, translates it into Mandarin text arranged in the correct order.  In the end, the software translates his spoken English into spoken Mandarin in his own voice and tone! 

All in real time!  Amazing.


Incorporate this into your cell phones and all you need to know is one language to be a global citizen!

Gamification in life

Amazing talk by Carnegie Mellon University professor of Entertainment and Technology, Jesse Schell.

Customer feedback - how not to do it

I recently received an interesting package from American Airlines.  It was a bunch of certificates for recognizing employees for their outstanding service excellence.  I achieved Gold status with them and I assume that is the reason for this package.  I was pleasantly surprised to see that frequent flyers were given the opportunity to recognize outstanding service.  I am all for recognizing great work.  But, what surprised me was the medium chosen for gathering feedback. 

A couple weeks ago was in a situation where I wanted to commend an American Airlines employee who went above and beyond her call of duty to find me something vegetarian to eat.  I passed my appreciation to her and it made her day.  But, I now have this card and am wondering how I could use this.  Based on the instructions on the card, here is what I have to do:

Chances of me following this procedure and commending someone: 0
Chances that someone will follow this procedure: 0 (unless they are related to the AA employee)

Imagine, I have to run to a post office, get an envelope and stick a stamp on it and mail the envelope.  I can't think of the last time I went to the post office.  All for what?  To send feedback!

I don’t know who devised this plan, but in this day and age of technology and connectivity, it is a no brainer to use technology to achieve better results.  Look at the following process, and tell me how many people wouldn't gladly use it to provide feedback (assuming that frequent flyers like myself will have the App and will always be logged into it):

Here is a mockup of what it would look like on an iPhone:

If this process was implemented, I would have gladly utilized it on my plane journey on American Airlines (albeit, I would have had to wait until the plane landed).

I have used the example of QR codes here, but that could be replaced by any other technology (like NFC, for instance).  

In another incident, I was at a local Home Depot and all of us know they suck in customer service.  You go to an aisle looking for the things you want, and if you don’t find it, you look around for a HD rep and cannot find any!  After walking around for some time you find a rep who tells you that he does not work in the area!  Duh.  After all these frustrating visits, I finally met one salesperson who was extremely enthusiastic to help everyone.  He would be in plumbing, but if you asked a question about electric switches, he would gladly walk over to that department and help you.  On the way, he would talk to any customer who seemed lost.  He was proactively helping out every customer with a smiling face.  That was quite a change and I passed my appreciation to him and told him how helpful (and different from everyone else) he was.  He immediately whipped out his business card, wrote the email ID of the HD CEO and passed it to me with a simple request: "Could you please send an email to my boss with the exact words you told me?  I would really appreciate that".  I was glad to do that, and hopefully, his boss recognized his outstanding service.  It was as simple as that.  An email.

But, if HD had an app that I could use, it would have been even better.  

Simple systems and simple processes guarantee results.  When you design a system, make it as simple and brain dead as possible.

Steve Jobs speech from 1983

Here is an amazing speech by Steve Jobs from 1983 (before Macintosh).  It is great to listen how well he articulates his ideas and drives his point home.  A must listen.

Lytro

What is Lytro? How is it differentiated from the competition? What is its competition? What is the current market? What is its message to the market?

The photography market can be roughly divided into professionals, prosumers and consumers.

Professionals care about the kinds of pictures they take and are looking for control, accuracy, dependence and ruggedness in a camera.

Consumers are not very particular about the picture quality and accuracy. Consumers care about how quickly they can capture the picture and upload it onto their favorite social network. Consumers also want the ability to capture video using the same camera.

Prosumers care a bit about the control and picture quality but are not very concerned about dependence and ruggedness.

Professionals and prosumers tend to gravitate towards SLRs and consumers move towards P&S cameras. Of late, consumers are moving towards cell phone cameras in droves. Especially after the introduction of smart phones with high pixel count and featureful cameras. Consumers are more interested in snapping a picture or shooting a video and uploading it onto the Internet instantaneously.

So, where does Lytro fit in this picture? Lytro is currently marketed as a consumer camera. The main differentiation of Lytro is that it lets you capture an image without first worrying about focusing it. This is something unique and no other camera can accomplish. Of course, there are several single focus cameras in the market. But, what Lytro promises is the ability to focus after taking the shot. Due to the nature of the lens structure, it is hard to pack it into a cell phone. At least, not right now. The current form factor is completely different than anything in the market. It is neither pocket nor palm friendly. Based on the current design, it is a hard sell to consumers.

Prosumers would be interested in the camera because of its novelty. Prosumers and technology geeks will buy it for the sake of technology so they can play with it and hack it.

Professionals could immensely benefit from the creative opportunities offered. But, professionals need control, accuracy, ruggedness and dependence. Lytro does not offer control over aperture and shutter speed. It only offers the ability to change focus, after the fact. It has a fixed aperture (f2.0?) and no way to control the shutter speed.

Until the Lytro technology can be put into a tablet or a smart phone, it is hard to sell it to the average consumer.

So, what features can we add to the Lytro to make it attractive to prosumers as well as professionals? Control is the biggest factor for this group.

The ability to control the image composition via variable focal lengths, aperture and shutter speed. The ability to convert the image into a standard 2D format after manipulation. This gives the user additional parameters (focus) to tweak after the shot is taken. This is tremendous value for professionals, as long as they can convert the final product into another standard 2D format and print high quality images.

Right now, the camera is taking away a lot of the controls from the user and giving one back. The value add from the new feature is not sufficient to replace the lost ones. That is where it is hard to differentiate and sell the camera to users.

As I mentioned earlier, law enforcement, security monitoring, etc. are areas where this technology can be very effectively used as it is.

(Update) Based on this article, Steve Jobs was interested in this technology. Maybe, Apple is waiting for the technology to become mature enough so they can acquire it and have Jony do some magic with it.

Apart from these exits, Lytro could end up being another Segway.
(Photo credit: Lytro.com)