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>> We built it to match the reliability standards of European upright vacuums, something of which we were very proud. Of course, we didn’t anticipate that our c
by umeshunni 7y ago
>> We built it to match the reliability standards of European upright vacuums, something of which we were very proud. Of course, we didn’t anticipate that our customers would run their Roomba once per day, rather than the once per week average the European standard set – and as the first generation of Roomba robots broke down two years ahead of schedule
This is a super interesting insight for when you're building consumer products. When you make something super-easy to do, expect usage to 10x or even 100x. I've seen high-unit economics consumer products build with cost estimates that assume an average user doing task X once a month. If we make it possible to do the task with a free app, even though it costs us $Y to do this, our total monthly cost per user is $Y. These estimates then get blown out the water when users start doing the task 10 times a month.
- aidenn0 7y agoI've been beating this drum about self-driving cars for a while. All these rosy predictions of traffic being better neglect the fact that usage will go way up.
- ctdonath 7y agoRather than paying for parking, herds of cars will slowly cruise local streets, awaiting summons.
- kumarvvr 7y agoAll this innovation and we have come to the point where cars cruising waiting for summons is a better solution than just parking.
- xvedejas 7y agoThis sounds like quite the opposite of the future I (optimistically) think we're moving towards: reclaiming our streets for pedestrians and cyclists.
- numpad0 7y agoSo tax unoccupied driving.
- mayniac 7y agoHow do you do this without uncomfortable levels of government surveillance?
- thomasahle 7y agoThe car could have a "unoccupied miles driven counter" that you reported manually or automatically once in a while. Much like how you report your electricity usage to the power company.
- numpad0 7y agoIn 2045: “What do you mean you are going to DMV? You work there? WAIT. Are you still hand-steering that 2025 Prius!? And you still haven’t fixed that yanked off telematics!?”
- spacehunt 7y agoThis happens in Hong Kong already, where renting a parking spot is more expensive than hiring a part-time driver.
- stevenkkim 7y agoThis may just be my personal experience, but my Roomba does a pretty mediocre job vacuuming my house. As a result, I have to run Roomba 3-4x per week the get the equivalent cleanliness of using a traditional vacuum cleaner once per week.
- woriuweflksdncn 7y agoIn my opinion, that's the point of them. One Roomba run is not equivalent to manually vacuuming your house, but they don't mind cleaning every single day.
- madaxe_again 7y agoMediocre doesn’t cover it - mine just spreads dirt around, and then inevitably gets stuck on something super-challenging and unexpected in a home, like a chair leg. I just use a broom these days.
- nogridbag 7y agoA long time ago I gifted my parents one of the early mid-tier Roombas that had beacons that you can place to avoid certain areas. I bought the Roomba plus several sets of beacons. They were really excited to use it. We put beacons all around the house and then activated the Roomba on the hardwood floor near an obvious pile of dust in the middle of the living room. I figured that would be the Hello World test. After about 10 minutes of watching it randomly bump into walls, get jammed under the couch, we started to get disappointed. But then it made a direct path towards the dust. We all got excited and then watched it simply go right over the dust without picking up anything. At that point I picked up the unit and kept restarting it over and over until it would pick up the dust. We tried it on maybe two other occasions and it would just continuously get stuck within a few minutes (usually either between piano legs or under furniture that was raised about the same height as the vacuum). They re-gifted it back to me where it sat unused until I finally gave it away for free. That was well over a decade ago and I now realize that I had unrealistic expectations and possibly didn't give it a fair chance. Have they improved much since then? My home has lots of hardwood floors throughout and I vacuum daily. Even though there's central vac access everywhere I prefer to use a Miele canister vacuum.
- throwaway_pdp09 7y agoEasier vaccuming -> more often vacuuming - a form of Jevons' Paradox perhaps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox (Separately I'm a bit surprised that they consider once a week vacuuming to be expected. I personally prefer once every 3 days. Wonder if I'm a bit OCD).
- 2rsf 7y agoOnce every 3 days won't work in my house, it's too big and cluttered with kids stuff to be feasible. But I wish I could vacuum even daily, especially now with all of this pollen in the air.