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. 

Driverless cars are here to stay!

I have always owned a manual transmission car, until recently.  I switched to an automatic recently and have not looked back.  Once a while I do get the itch to drive a manual transmission, and that is when I switch to the manual mode in my Steptronic transmission and hit the winding mountainous roads of Pacific North West.

The Steptronic is incredibly quick and smooth in shifting (thanks to the paddle shifters) as well as forgiving on inexperienced drivers.  Even with this clutchless manual transmission experience I cannot shift at the right RPMs as does the automatic transmission.  I know the main reason to shift to manual is to rev up the engine before shifts so you can feel the power and have complete control over it.  After some fun time, I get back into the Auto mode so I don't have to think anymore. 

That is when I realized how dependent we are on the automatic transmissions.  In the early days of the auto transmission, it was still clunky in shifting and you could feel the jerk and it did not always shift at the right RPM.  But, with technological advances the awkwardness is gone and nobody ever realizes that gears are shifting underneath (unless if you keep any eye on the tachometer).  Today's auto transmissions are so smooth, quick and efficient that it is better than a human shifting gears.  Some times during my travel to Europe I rent manual transmissions for the fun of it.  Even for an experienced driver, the modern cars instruct when to up or down shift if there is a slight delay in shifting. 

Similar to the early auto transmissions, the driverless car is going through its growth period.  Soon, the time will come when we realize that they are much more efficient than us and we will accept them as the better drivers.  I know the driverless cars are much more complex than a transmission, but the journey to maturity is still similar.  With technological advances and inexpensive compute power, the day will arrive sooner than later.

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. 

Alexa in the hotel room

Last year, I wrote about how Alexa should make in-roads into the Enterprise territory rather than stay in the consumer space.  It looks like this is already happening, now that Alexa is becoming mature.

I travel on work and end up spending a lot of time in hotels in various parts of the world.  Recently, I was at the Copenhagen Marriott and that got me thinking about how VUI (Voice User Interface), and specifically, Alexa, could have made my life a little better and easier.  I started thinking about use cases where Alexa and Echo can be deployed in the hospitality industry.  Today, everything is done by human agents and it is not always efficient or pleasant.

Imagine the following scenarios and see how seamless they can be, with Alexa.

1. Calling front desk:
Me: Alexa, call front desk
Alexa: Calling front desk
Front Desk: Hello, Mr. Shashidhar, how can I help you today?

The reason this is a simple but powerful use case is because of the fact that I can be anywhere in the room while I talk to Alexa.  I wanted to talk to the front desk as well as pack my bags at the same time.  The speaker phone is not very effective in far field communication, which necessitated me to be near the phone during the call.  Alexa would have made this a hands free communication, and I could have continued to pack while talking to the front desk.  A minute saved in the hotel is an additional minute enjoyed at the airport lounge!

2. Summoning your car from the valet:
Me: Alexa, get my car from the valet
Alexa: Getting car from valet.  Do you have a ticket number?
Me: 5842
Alexa: Ticket 5842.  When do you want the car?
Me: Now
Alexa: Summoning car from valet.  Your car should be at the front of the hotel in 5-10 mins
Me: Thanks
Alexa: Is there anything else I can do for you?
Me: Nope

There were instances when I had to call the valet and had to hold for them to answer my call.  Instead, the system can log my call and provide the ticker number to the valet staff on their system. 

3. Ordering room service:
Me: Alexa
Alexa: Good evening, Mr. Shashidhar.  How can I help you?
Me: Please order one margarita pizza from the room service menu
Alexa: Margarita pizza ordered from room service.  Is there anything else you would like to order?
Me: A glass of orange juice
Alexa: A margarita pizza and a glass of orange juice.  Anything else?
Me: That's it
Alexa: When would you want this delivered?
Me: As soon as possible
Alexa: <thinking for a moment> Your order has been placed.  It will be delivered in 40 mins
Alexa: Is there anything else?
Me: That's it for now

Room service orders anyways end up as a ticket in the kitchen.  Why not remove the layers between the guest and the kitchen?  This system would seamlessly take the order and print a ticket in the kitchen.  The system can determine the wait time based on the current open orders as well as the estimated prep time.

4. Ordering extra amenities:
Me: Alexa, could I get two additional bath towels?
Alexa: Two extra bath towels ordered.  Is there anything else, Mr. Shashidhar?
Me: Ah, I forgot toothpaste.  Could you please get me a toothpaste as well?
Alexa: Two extra towels and toothpaste.  They should be delivered in a few minutes
Alexa: Anything else, Mr. Shashidhar?
Me: Nothing for now
Alexa: Have a good day

Alarms, local weather, room controls, etc. are straightforward use cases.

What these use cases need is a echo device in every room with a unique address.  The devices would talk to a central server and the server is integrated to the existing enterprise hospitality systems (room service, valet, phone system, etc.).  These are hotel specific and not generic as the context for most of the use cases is just the hotel.

With the advances in robotics, the use case of delivering extra amenities could be completely autonomous.  The intent is transferred to the server which orders a robot to fetch the goods and deliver it to the room.  As seen in Eatsa, the San Francisco robotic restaurant, a time will come when robots will make food and deliver it to your room as well.  Since the hotel is a known and controlled environment, it becomes easy to deploy these technologies.  Hospitality industry can be the incubator of all this technology and then it can enter the rest of the world.

What this would do is eliminate the need for human intervention in a lot of the cases.  Initially, when automated phone systems came around for customer service, we cringed.  But, nowadays they have become more efficient and in some cases, better than their human counterparts.  The same way, automation and VUI will make a difference and as it matures, the transactions become seamless and more pleasurable.  We don't have to worry about human emotions and the mood of the person on the other end of the line.

Currently some of the hotel chains are trying to integrate Alexa for in-room controls like lighting and climate control.  But, the bigger ROI is in the other areas where hotels can cut expenses.  In-room automation is cool and sexy, but the big bang for the buck is automating the back office services that are currently manned by humans.

Image courtesy: Amazon.com

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.  

Here come the drones!

Amazon Prime Air announced this week that they successfully delivered a package to a customer in the UK.


This is exciting news for the package delivery industry.  Drones have already made a mark in other industries like agriculture, construction, oil and gas.  They are very efficient in inspecting power lines or oil and gas lines and even oil tanks.  Those are niche usecases where a drone is perfectly suited. Delivery of goods is one area where lots of companies are trying to make headway.  Drones have been used to deliver medicine, blood, etc.  Healthcare can benefit from drones immensely when it comes to delivering care packages to remote areas.

Possibilities are endless with drones due to their VTOL (Vertical Take Off and Landing) capability as well as stability.  Equipped with a HD camera and a GPS, drones are basically robots on a mission.

Some think that drones are going to replace UPS/Fedex, but that is not going to happen.  Drone delivery is one of the delivery channels for a specific niche. It will never become mainstream and replace USPS or UPS or Fedex, due to its limitations.  Payload is one of the key limitations followed closely by range.

Payload is a limitation that will continue to keep drones to their niche.  But, range limitation can be overcome by several means.

Due to the limited range, drones can only deliver within a small radius from the distribution center (DC).  One way to solve this is by having a mobile DC that moves the products close to the delivery site and uses drones to dispatch the goods.  Imagine a small truck driving into a neighborhood, parking itself and dispatching as many as a dozen drones to deliver a dozen packages in one shot.  The drones will fly line of sight, thus reducing the distance to the target and the time for delivery.  Once the delivery is complete, the drones return back to the truck (mobile DC) and get recharged while the truck moves to another location.  The traveling salesman problem is simplified by a hub and spoke design for the last mile (the truck still needs to solve the TSP).  The hub being the mobile DC and drones making up the spokes.  Large number of deliveries (albeit, small) can quickly be achieved this way.

The next stage of this mobile DC would be larger drones replacing the trucks.  Imagine a large drone (mother ship) carrying the goods as well as smaller drones flying into a neighborhood and landing atop a 'perch'.  The perch could be a flat rooftop or a light pole.  People could rent their rooftops as perches for these mother ships.  The mother ship drone would land and dispatch individual smaller drones to the end point delivery.  Once the deliveries are complete, the drones will return back to the mother ship for recharging and their next assignment.

The beauty of this model is that the mother ships can recharge while waiting for the smaller drones to complete their delivery.  Imagine a rooftop drone perch with a power outlet.  If the perch is on a light pole, a power outlet can be created atop the pole.  This extends the range of the mother ship as well as the drones on board.  The only reason for the mother ship to return to a DC is to gather the next shipment of goods.  Remember, this DC that the mother ship returns to, could be a mobile DC itself!

The research that companies like Amazon are doing in the area of drone delivery can benefit other areas like healthcare, agriculture, power, oil & gas as well.  

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

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

Amazon IOT

Amazon has finally done it.  They have created a generic IOT Dash button.  Last year I wrote about how the Dash button was super specific to not only actions but also products, and they needed to make a generic programmable button.

Last year, the Dash button was first hacked to order pizza from Dominos.  Later, people started hacking the button and using it as an IOT device to perform various tasks.  This was the right direction for the button.  Amazon realized the potential and has taken a step in the right direction  The AWS IOT button is a generic device that can be programmed to do anything one wishes to accomplish.  The price point ($20) seems steep for the device.  The original Dash price point of $5 was perfect.

Amazon how has a IOT button (touch).  The next step would be for Amazon to create MEMS sensors to sense sight, sound, pressure, acceleration, etc..  This will give developers all the needed sensor capability for IOT.  Amazon could then expand their IOT ecosystem.  

Amazon Dash Button - departure from corporate principles?

Amazon seems to be going away from its basic principles with the latest Amazon Dash button.  Amazon has always been for empowering the customer, providing all the information (choice, prices, reviews, etc.) to the customer so that the customer has all the freedom to make intelligent decisions.  But, with Amazon Dash, all this is going out of the window.  Well, almost all.

Amazon Dash is a new service (and device) that Amazon has recently released.  Amazon supplies stick-on buttons to Prime customers so they can stick these buttons to relevant things in their home/office to seamlessly order supplies before they run out.  The following video from Amazon illustrates it.

The biggest gripe I have with this service is that it is too specific.  It locks customers to specific brands. 

With Dash buttons, Amazon has just driven all new comers out of the playing field.  If Amazon ships me a Tide button, I am voluntarily signing up to buy Tide for the foreseeable future.  Any new competitor to enter the field of washing soap will have a tough time to sell their wares.  The principle of 'Choice to the customer' goes right out of the window.  What if I wanted to try other brands?  Do I have to go to Amazon and get another button for that? 

Amazon is slowly entering our homes and introducing the concept of 'Internet of Things' (IOT) with this device.  All this device is an IOT. albeit not a very smart one.  A smart IOT would have figured out when I am getting low on my supplies and would have automatically placed an order for me.  Well, we will have to wait a bit longer for that. 

What Amazon should have done is create a generic button and sent a dozen of them to each Prime customer.  The customer would then affix the buttons wherever appropriate (like fridge, washing machine, coffee machine, etc) and program them to a particular category.  Note I am saying 'Category', not a specific product.  So, the customer would affix a button on a washing machine and program it to the category of 'Laundry Detergent'.  This is a one time activity.  Once programmed, the device has a specific job.  Its job is to order a laundry detergent. 

This is where Amazon can still empower the customer.  When the user presses the laundry button, the system automatically adds a few choice detergents into the shopping cart as options.  User would then preview the options and choose the one that made the most sense based on brand, quality, reviews, price, etc.  Of course, we could go further and mark one of the choices as a default choice for the next 6 months so that Amazon picks that choice automatically without prodding (at least for the next 6 months).  This way Amazon can still provide the power of choice to the customer.  The customer can always choose the same product and set it as default. 

By not sending brand specific buttons, the customer is free to choose the brand she wants (at that point in time).  Also, the buttons can be made re-programmable so that they can be moved around and assigned different categories as the user sees fit.

New devices and ideas should always be aligned to the corporate vision and should never waver from it.  Otherwise, the company loses its vision and will soon become irrelevant. 

Of course, with the present design, Amazon can flex its muscle and charge brands to position themselves on the Dash button.  This is similar to the retail shelf space they compete for, in a brick and mortar store.

Amazon should use this opportunity to innovate and slowly position themselves within every home.  As long as they stick to their original vision of empowering the customer, this will be a grand success.

CES 2015

Steven Sinofsky has published a nice recap of what he saw at this year's CES.  It is nice to note that batteries are improving in performance and how companies are trying to figure out ways to incorporate sensors into everyday products.  

Hotel Check-In Process

Many a times during my business travel, I have waited in line to check-in to my hotel room.  I have always thought that this is an area that needs improvement.  With mobile apps and today's technology, this whole operation can be automated, especially for regular registered guests.  This is a great opportunity waiting to be realized.

Several hotels have already started on this journey and trying to catch up with other industries.  Starwood properties has  already installed smart locks that can be unlocked using their mobile app.  That is one step forward.  Hilton is following suite.  Meanwhile, Marriott has an app for check-In, but you still have to get a physical key card from the front desk.

There are many aspects of travel that can be frustrating.  Especially for road warriors who travel often.  Time is of essence and we want to get what we want fast and move on.

Here are a few things (selective) that a road warrior would need online:
- Ability to check-In
- Ability to use cellphone as a key
- Ability to view available rooms (within the class of room booked)
- Ability to see pictures of the room
- Ability to choose a room from the available rooms
- Ability to be notified when the room is ready (for first occupancy or subsequent, after house keeping)
- Ability to order room service or other services
- Ability to contact concierge to get local information or a virtual concierge

These are a few things that come to my mind.  Of course, you may be thinking that I am anti-social and do not want to talk to people.  That is one of the main reasons I said these were selective.  I could choose to chat with the front desk while checking in (if they are free), or dash straight to my chosen room after a long red-eye flight.  I have been in many situations where I didn't get the information I was looking for or I had to wait in line to get serviced. 

Choice to the consumer is the future.  Given the available rooms, why can't I choose which room I want based on the information presented to me?  I have been in too many situations where I was assigned a room next to the elevator or the ice machine even though I had asked not to.  Empowering the consumer removes all these issues and gives the power to choose.

Hotels can not only reduce their operating costs, but can also make the experienced consumers really happy by implementing these optional services. 

Image courtesy: elitetraveler.com, Marriott

Drone's eye view

I recently watched a tourism advertisement for Pisa and the short video featured a beautiful leaning tower of Pisa shot from the air.  The Piazza Del Duomo, Cattedrale di Pisa and the well manicured grounds looked fantastic.  The aerial video was also shot on a beautiful sunny day which enhanced the beauty of the location.  I was bowled over by the visuals, and wondered how I was not enamored by the sights when I actually visited Pisa this summer.  I went over my pictures and videos and they were all different because they were either shot at eye level or below.  Whereas, the promo video and photos were all shot from an airborne camera.

The same can be said of any tourist attraction.  They all look fabulous from the air or any vantage that we cannot easily achieve as tourists.  Look at the picture of the Status of Liberty from the air.  Compare that to the eye level shot that we all take.  Imagine capturing yourself peering through the crown of the Liberty from this angle.  Wouldn't that be wonderful?

With the advent of drones, this is all possible.  Camera equipped drones allow us this new perspective when shooting still or video images.

Imagine shooting selfies and shooting yourself in Hollywood style aerial videos while you roam and sight see your favorite tourist spots or while you enjoy your favorite adventure sport.  It can be made possible with the latest generation of camera equipped drones.

Today, you can walk into a city like New York, San Francisco or Paris and rent yourself a bike or a Segway.  Likewise, what if you could rent a drone and shoot aerial imagery or shoot yourself from a different perspective.  In the past this would have meant that you needed to fly an aircraft (either a plane or a chopper) to capture these unique perspectives.  Even if you did that, you wouldn't be in the frame since you are flying.  So, renting and piloting a drone would make this possible.

But, there are problems with this approach.  What if several tourists want to rent drones at the same time?  What if they don't know how to fly a drone?  What if the drones get lost?  What if the drones slam into obstacles or other people?

So, renting drones to drone-illiterate people is not feasible.  There needs to be technology improvements in drones to make this possible.  The drones should be auto-pilot capable.  Given a flight path, the drones should just fly in those predefined paths.  In order to make it interesting, the drones should also be capable of tracking the camera towards a target, be it the sight (like Statue of Liberty) or a person (tourist renter or adventurer).  It will be cool if a drone can fly around in a predefined path and whenever it points the camera at you, it pings you through a buzz of your cellphone.  The phone can tell the drone where you are, as well as double as an indicator to you that the drone camera is looking at you.  This will give you an opportunity to wave at the camera or do something deliberate.

For this idea to be feasible, drones also need the ability to detect as well as avoid each other.  They could create a field around themselves and sense each other and make sure they don't collide.   The other big problem is the battery life.  Most of the small drones have a short battery life of less than 10 - 15 minutes.  This would mean that the drones should also be capable of docking and recharging themselves or even better, swapping their battery automatically.  Once we have these technical capabilities, it will be much easier to build a business case around them.

Now, with the FAA looking into the usage of drones and putting restrictions on commercial usage, there needs to be an exception for pre-programmed drones since they are no longer operator controlled. 

Image courtesy: commons.wikimedia.org

Dynamic real-time maps

I-5 bridge over Skagit river collapsed last night.  I read about it today morning.

Since lot of people will be driving over to Vancouver from Seattle for the long weekend, I wanted to check out the damage and how it is going to affect the travel.  I go to Google maps and voila, Google has already done the work for us.  Check out the image below to see how Google has already updated the map so that the break in the freeway is shown.  It would have been cooler if they indicated the breakage of the bridge, rather than a missing segment on the map.   

Now, look at Bing maps and see what it says.  As per Bing, you can still drive over the (broken) bridge, and nothing is wrong!

Now, I went back to Google maps and asked for directions from Seattle, Wa to Vancouver, BC, expecting to see something cool.  Here is what it returned:

Hah.  Google messed up.  So, now I am wondering if the I-5 breakage (shown in Google maps) is a bug in Google maps or whether it was updated based on today's news.  If the map WAS updated based on the news, kudos to Google.  But, they need to take it one step further and feed this information to the routing engine too.  Why stop half way?

Wouldn't it be interesting to create dynamic maps that are hooked into the news and update based on the current conditions, like breakage, bridge/road closures, etc?  There are lots of avenues to get this information and feed it into the maps.

I am looking forward to such innovation.  We do live in interesting times.

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.