4 ms·

UI killer, never take your phone out of your pocket again. Compatible devices in your home are inspectable and controllable. Even dumb objects could have a UI i

by pharke 9y ago

UI killer, never take your phone out of your pocket again. Compatible devices in your home are inspectable and controllable. Even dumb objects could have a UI if they can be recognized. Your toothbrush could show usage and expiry info. Houseplants can remind you when to water them. You could have a large marker indicate where your keys are. Being able to annotate anything with dates, reminders, instructions, etc. There's a lot of information and calculations we carry around in our heads that could be offloaded or supplemented.

acorkery 9y ago
I think these are great examples of technological aids that people really do not want in their lives. Our brains evolved long ago to a point where we can do many simple things concurrently, and there is a power/meaning in interacting directly with your environment - not through some smart aid that tells you that your plant is dying.
- monk_e_boy 9y ago
  When you share your life with other people who knows when the plants were last watered, was it me 2 weeks ago or my wife yesterday? Watering plants is a silly example, meds, health, pupils in a school, patients in a hospital. All much more interesting to have meta data on.
  - acorkery 9y ago
    Yeah, sorry the plant issue is a bit of a silly point. I just meant that you can tell by looking at the plant, feeling the soil that it needs watering or not. So many of the use cases I see for smart home devices seem contrived. "What can we do with this amazing technology?". I agree voice-controlled devices are a great innovation - particularly for accessibility. But as a mass-market appeal, I've met a lot of people that love their smartphones, new technologies, but aren't sold on home automation. The big enduring technology successes in recent decades captured people's imaginations instantly. They didn't need much convincing beyond the initial idea. A separate objection is that by not using your brain for daily routines, memory and organisational skills will suffer. Purely speculative, but I think people downplay the importance of menial tasks in giving people a daily rhythm and discipline. The argument I sometimes see is that it frees you up to do higher-order tasks. I think it's unlikely.
    - TeMPOraL 9y ago
      > Yeah, sorry the plant issue is a bit of a silly point. I just meant that you can tell by looking at the plant, feeling the soil that it needs watering or not. A recent dicussion on HN about that guy who crowdsourced watering of his plant generally suggests that a) no, for many, many plants it's not that easy (especially those not in their natural climate), and b) people do routinely screw this up. I for one vote the metadata-on-plants up; that would provide me more value than 99% of things the startup economy is producing... combined. > So many of the use cases I see for smart home devices seem contrived. "What can we do with this amazing technology?". I agree. But I feel this is because we mostly see the marketed ideas, which are optimized for selling products, without any regard for whether they're useful or not. Some things I'd love technology would help me with, which are hard engineering problems, include: - tracking expiration dates of foodstuffs without requiring me to do additional manual work, and displaying them without requiring me to click much (or preferably anything) - tracking items around the house, so that I can find any misplaced thing by a simple query > A separate objection is that by not using your brain for daily routines, memory and organisational skills will suffer. Purely speculative, but I think people downplay the importance of menial tasks in giving people a daily rhythm and discipline. The argument I sometimes see is that it frees you up to do higher-order tasks. I think it's unlikely. I don't know. Myself, I can't stick to pretty much any daily routine, so that part of my brain is already broken (and always has been), and I appreciate any crutch technology can provide (the best, still, is living with a person whose "routine" part of brain is working and that will remind me about menial things to be done). And - maybe that's because of my broken routine-brain - I find "daily rhythm" to be a soul-destroying concept. If you want to put your life on autopilot, instead of outsourcing repetitive tasks somewhere, why live at all?
      - acorkery 9y ago
        Good points there. The autopilot thing - I don't see it like that at all. You can be doing a repetitive task and thinking at the same time. It can help you focus and relax. Also when you finish the menial task, you get a little smug satisfaction. "I've earned that beer". Autopilot for me is sitting on the couch asking your electronic friend if the fridge has cleaned itself yet. Many favorite hobbies are repetitive and in theory could be outsourced. Some people enjoy knitting, raking the yard, organizing their record collection, finding Waldo etc.. Hey, it's all down to personal preference and where you get your kicks. I won't labour the point as I've gone on too much. Just putting forward another perspective.
- mcherm 9y ago
  That same reasoning would probably tell you that no one would want a "box in your home that you can talk to", yet Alexa and its competitors are doing quite well.
amigoingtodie 9y ago
AR re-skinnable pets. I want my chihuahua to have horse hooves. And a dragon mask.
- dzhiurgis 9y ago
  I want my manager to be a poop emoji.
  - zardo 9y ago
    Big opportunities in the social cyber bullying space.
    - TeMPOraL 9y ago
      That's only if you add a "Share" button to the personalized entity replacements...
- suprfnk 9y ago
  Is this a thing you seriously want in your life? Because to me that feels like the definiton of "Kind of cool they can do that but will I use that more than once to try it?". It's interesting and fun the first ten minutes, after that it'd be annoying.
dplgk 9y ago
Nothing stops this stuff from happening now on a different UI e.g. A phone. So if most of that info/control is not important/wanted on a phone, then why AR?
- pharke 9y ago
  I would argue that the bad UX of current phones and apps is a big obstacle to this happening now. Having to take your phone out of your pocket, unlock it, open an app, point it at the object, wait for recognition, wait for data/processing, and only then see the result is a huge negative that demotivates most people from wanting this sort of experience on their phone. With an always on AR system with specialised hardware and software for object recognition and good depth mapping and hopefully a design that allows for multiple AR services to run and provide overlays concurrently - you should approach the level of usability that will allow this to happen.

by pharke 9y ago

acorkery 9y ago

I think these are great examples of technological aids that people really do not want in their lives. Our brains evolved long ago to a point where we can do many simple things concurrently, and there is a power/meaning in interacting directly with your environment - not through some smart aid that tells you that your plant is dying.

monk_e_boy 9y ago
When you share your life with other people who knows when the plants were last watered, was it me 2 weeks ago or my wife yesterday? Watering plants is a silly example, meds, health, pupils in a school, patients in a hospital. All much more interesting to have meta data on.
- acorkery 9y ago
  Yeah, sorry the plant issue is a bit of a silly point. I just meant that you can tell by looking at the plant, feeling the soil that it needs watering or not. So many of the use cases I see for smart home devices seem contrived. "What can we do with this amazing technology?". I agree voice-controlled devices are a great innovation - particularly for accessibility. But as a mass-market appeal, I've met a lot of people that love their smartphones, new technologies, but aren't sold on home automation. The big enduring technology successes in recent decades captured people's imaginations instantly. They didn't need much convincing beyond the initial idea. A separate objection is that by not using your brain for daily routines, memory and organisational skills will suffer. Purely speculative, but I think people downplay the importance of menial tasks in giving people a daily rhythm and discipline. The argument I sometimes see is that it frees you up to do higher-order tasks. I think it's unlikely.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    > Yeah, sorry the plant issue is a bit of a silly point. I just meant that you can tell by looking at the plant, feeling the soil that it needs watering or not. A recent dicussion on HN about that guy who crowdsourced watering of his plant generally suggests that a) no, for many, many plants it's not that easy (especially those not in their natural climate), and b) people do routinely screw this up. I for one vote the metadata-on-plants up; that would provide me more value than 99% of things the startup economy is producing... combined. > So many of the use cases I see for smart home devices seem contrived. "What can we do with this amazing technology?". I agree. But I feel this is because we mostly see the marketed ideas, which are optimized for selling products, without any regard for whether they're useful or not. Some things I'd love technology would help me with, which are hard engineering problems, include: - tracking expiration dates of foodstuffs without requiring me to do additional manual work, and displaying them without requiring me to click much (or preferably anything) - tracking items around the house, so that I can find any misplaced thing by a simple query > A separate objection is that by not using your brain for daily routines, memory and organisational skills will suffer. Purely speculative, but I think people downplay the importance of menial tasks in giving people a daily rhythm and discipline. The argument I sometimes see is that it frees you up to do higher-order tasks. I think it's unlikely. I don't know. Myself, I can't stick to pretty much any daily routine, so that part of my brain is already broken (and always has been), and I appreciate any crutch technology can provide (the best, still, is living with a person whose "routine" part of brain is working and that will remind me about menial things to be done). And - maybe that's because of my broken routine-brain - I find "daily rhythm" to be a soul-destroying concept. If you want to put your life on autopilot, instead of outsourcing repetitive tasks somewhere, why live at all?
    - acorkery 9y ago
      Good points there. The autopilot thing - I don't see it like that at all. You can be doing a repetitive task and thinking at the same time. It can help you focus and relax. Also when you finish the menial task, you get a little smug satisfaction. "I've earned that beer". Autopilot for me is sitting on the couch asking your electronic friend if the fridge has cleaned itself yet. Many favorite hobbies are repetitive and in theory could be outsourced. Some people enjoy knitting, raking the yard, organizing their record collection, finding Waldo etc.. Hey, it's all down to personal preference and where you get your kicks. I won't labour the point as I've gone on too much. Just putting forward another perspective.
mcherm 9y ago
That same reasoning would probably tell you that no one would want a "box in your home that you can talk to", yet Alexa and its competitors are doing quite well.

amigoingtodie 9y ago

AR re-skinnable pets. I want my chihuahua to have horse hooves. And a dragon mask.

dzhiurgis 9y ago
I want my manager to be a poop emoji.
- zardo 9y ago
  Big opportunities in the social cyber bullying space.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    That's only if you add a "Share" button to the personalized entity replacements...
suprfnk 9y ago
Is this a thing you seriously want in your life? Because to me that feels like the definiton of "Kind of cool they can do that but will I use that more than once to try it?". It's interesting and fun the first ten minutes, after that it'd be annoying.

dplgk 9y ago

Nothing stops this stuff from happening now on a different UI e.g. A phone. So if most of that info/control is not important/wanted on a phone, then why AR?

pharke 9y ago
I would argue that the bad UX of current phones and apps is a big obstacle to this happening now. Having to take your phone out of your pocket, unlock it, open an app, point it at the object, wait for recognition, wait for data/processing, and only then see the result is a huge negative that demotivates most people from wanting this sort of experience on their phone. With an always on AR system with specialised hardware and software for object recognition and good depth mapping and hopefully a design that allows for multiple AR services to run and provide overlays concurrently - you should approach the level of usability that will allow this to happen.