{"id":1256,"date":"2011-04-19T15:45:07","date_gmt":"2011-04-19T14:45:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/?p=1256"},"modified":"2011-04-19T15:45:07","modified_gmt":"2011-04-19T14:45:07","slug":"robots-at-home-the-role-of-a-more-personal-internet-of-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/2011\/04\/robots-at-home-the-role-of-a-more-personal-internet-of-things\/","title":{"rendered":"Robots at home: the role of a more personal internet of things"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" width=\"400\" height=\"300\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/8j47W2wEnEc\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been thinking about the role of product design in the upcoming flurry of domestic robot solutions that will soon be thrown at us as consumers. Some quick thoughts.<\/p>\n<p>1.  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.irobot.com\/uk\/\">Roomba<\/a> &#038; <a href=\"http:\/\/ardrone.parrot.com\/parrot-ar-drone\/usa\/\">AR Drone<\/a> are only the beginning, the latter entering the doors of our homes through the iPhone&#8217;s compatibility. There was a lot of &#8220;can I control this from my iPhone&#8221; type questions at InnoRobo. The iPhone&#8217;s role might grow to control all home tech, however small it might be. This might see the universal remote control market completely disappear in the next 10 years as a result.<\/p>\n<p>2. The objective of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.homesenseproject.com\/\">Homesense<\/a> was always to try to look at the home as a hyper-personalised space you couldn&#8217;t just stick technology in mindlessly. Assumptions about people&#8217;s behaviours and habits were kept to a minimum, if only in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/54581926@N04\/5080908590\/\">choice of technology we gave them to play with.<\/a> People made a lot of different things. Home is a highly flexible space where technology lives and dies quickly, objects get used daily or once a year. It&#8217;s very hard to operate as a designer in that space without taking this into consideration as robotic companions don&#8217;t have a single function. They are not like designing salt and pepper shakers.<\/p>\n<p>3. The politics of domestic space and chores is complex (<a href=\"http:\/\/jofish.com\/writing\/kitchenmanifesto.pdf\">nice paper by G.Bell here<\/a> also <a href=\"http:\/\/www-users.cs.york.ac.uk\/~mblythe\/Papers\/Domestic%20Technology.pdf\">this<\/a> ) I like the role of Blinky in this short film. The parental and family tensions that permeate that home is a natural part of what makes a home and not a house. It is intimately linked to why we buy some things.  A robot cannot hope to avoid being part of those decision mechanisms.<\/p>\n<div><object width=\"480\" height=\"270\" id=\"wat_5971301\"><param name=\"movie\" value=\"http:\/\/www.wat.tv\/swf2\/209550nIc0K115971301\"><\/param><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"><\/param><param name=\"allowScriptAccess\" value=\"always\"><\/param><\/object><\/div>\n<div class=\"watlinks\" style=\"width:480px;font-size:11px; background:#CCCCCC; padding:2px 0 4px 0; text-align: center;\"><a target=\"_blank\" class=\"waturl\" href=\"http:\/\/www.wat.tv\/video\/blinky-robot-mignon-3jzhh_2ey61_.html\" title=\"Vid\u00e9o Blinky, le robot mignon  sur wat.tv\"><strong>Blinky, le robot mignon <\/strong><\/a> Vid\u00e9o <a class=\"waturl altuser\" href=\"http:\/\/www.wat.tv\/noriko\" title=\"Retrouvez toutes les vid\u00e9os noriko sur wat.tv\">noriko<\/a> s\u00e9lectionn\u00e9e dans <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wat.tv\/guide\/cinema\" class=\"waturl alttheme\" title=\"Toutes les vid\u00e9os Cin\u00e9ma sont sur wat.tv\">Cin\u00e9ma<\/a> <\/div>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/www.dana-gordon.com\/images\/u1.jpg\" class=\"alignnone\" width=\"450\" height=\"383\" \/><\/p>\n<p>4. Soft Internet connected devices<br \/>\nI&#8217;m quite intrigued by the future appearance of wireless devices that don&#8217;t have screens on them at all. I&#8217;m reminded of my friend Dana Gordon&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dana-gordon.com\/blog\/undercover\/\">Undercover project<\/a>. A blanket that plays music in an ambient and personal way. That&#8217;s understanding what the power of product design is and automation in a quiet, intimate way.<\/p>\n<p>5. Non-essential goods.<br \/>\nIn all this, we have to keep in mind how we treat technology in the home. It&#8217;s not about publicly showing off, in the same way we buy phones and clothes. The tensions are different, and the expectations are different too. To close with a comment from a long-time Roomba owner:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>A Second Vacuum is a Must<br \/>\nDon&#8217;t expect to have any Roomba operate as your only vacuum. They do a great job of keeping the mess down, but we still rely on our Dyson to do it&#8217;s weekly job.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It&#8217;s gonna get interesting all this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been thinking about the role of product design in the upcoming flurry of domestic robot solutions that will soon be thrown at us as consumers. Some quick thoughts. 1. Roomba &#038; AR Drone are only the beginning, the latter entering the doors of our homes through the iPhone&#8217;s compatibility. There was a lot of&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/2011\/04\/robots-at-home-the-role-of-a-more-personal-internet-of-things\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Robots at home: the role of a more personal internet of things<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-internet-of-things","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p41XhY-kg","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1256"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1256\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}