{"id":1649,"date":"2014-01-30T14:19:23","date_gmt":"2014-01-30T14:19:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/?p=1649"},"modified":"2016-02-17T21:46:28","modified_gmt":"2016-02-17T21:46:28","slug":"the-process-of-connecting-products","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/2014\/01\/the-process-of-connecting-products\/","title":{"rendered":"The process of Connecting Products"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a data-flickr-embed=\"true\"  href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/designswarm\/21992957954\/in\/album-72157660534341972\/\" title=\"Connected Products Studio workshop\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/farm6.staticflickr.com\/5652\/21992957954_af7d95ea04_z.jpg\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" alt=\"Connected Products Studio workshop\"><\/a><script async src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Last December, I was asked by the <a href=\"https:\/\/cde.catapult.org.uk\/\">Connected Digital Economy Catapult<\/a> to help them out scoping a possible Connected Products Studio. This is great fun for me as I have tangible experience of building connected products for <a href=\"http:\/\/tinkerlondon.com\/what-we-do-hopper-invasion.html\">installations<\/a>,<a href=\"http:\/\/tinkerlondon.com\/what-we-do-the-bridge.html\"> industrial applications<\/a> and now <a href=\"http:\/\/www.goodnightlamp.com\">the consumer market<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The first thing <a href=\"https:\/\/cde.catapult.org.uk\/meet-the-team\/-\/asset_publisher\/7Ap3aMmURx8r\/content\/dr-maurizio-pilu;jsessionid=4DE6F301D7A2430F303F2D3E4A2DC076.2\">Maurizio Pilu<\/a>, the Catapult&#8217;s Director asked me to do is put together a consultation workshop where, instead of working in isolation, we would reach out to the possible audience or contributors to such a dedicated space. We ran this workshop last week at the Royal Society of the Arts and were extremely lucky to have attendees from the entire landscape of #iot in the room. I reached out to many friends of course and so did\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.alertme.com\/about-us\/management-team\/pilgrim-beart-founder-director\/\">Pilgrim Beart<\/a> who is helping shape the feasibility report with me.<\/p>\n<p>Consultants (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.infovore.org\/\">Tom Armitage<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/love-hz.com\/\">Ben Ward<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.redninja.co.uk\/about.php\">Lee Omar<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/directionalthinking.net\/\">Graham Hitchen<\/a>, <a href=\"uk.linkedin.com\/pub\/georgina-voss\/0\/80a\/880\">Georgina Voss<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wifore.com\/\">Nick Hunn<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.virtual-techno.com\/vtl\/pages\/vt_home.php\">Paul Tanner<\/a>), startups (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.radfan.com\/\">Radfan<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.myjoulo.com\/\">MyJoulo<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.knry.co\/\">KNRY<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/bleepbleeps.com\/\">BleepBleeps<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/bergcloud.com\/\">bergcloud<\/a>), incubators (<a href=\"http:\/\/bethnalgreenventures.com\/\">Bethnal Green Ventures<\/a>), maker spaces (<a href=\"http:\/\/doesliverpool.com\/\">DoesLiverpool<\/a>), SMEs (<a href=\"http:\/\/panstudio.co.uk\/\">PAN Studio<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/codasign.com\/\">Codasign<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.soda.co.uk\/\">Soda<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bodydataspace.net\/\">body&gt;data&gt;space<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flexeye.com\/\">Flexeye<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/1248.io\">1248.io<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.alertme.com\/about-us\/management-team\/pilgrim-beart-founder-director\/\">AlertMe<\/a>, Xively) and corporations (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.intel-university-collaboration.net\/exploratory-research\/intel-collaborative-research-institute-for-sustainable-connected-computing\">Intel<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cisco.com\/cisco\/web\/UK\/index.html\">Cisco<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/rd\">BBC R&amp;D<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/innovationlab.ogilvyeurope.com\/\">Ogilvy Digital Labs<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sapient.com\/en-gb\/sapientnitro.html\">SapientNitro<\/a>)\u00a0came together and very generously spent the day with me teasing out what the key pain points were in developing a connected product. We then took those and tried to offer possible solutions with the skills in each of the teams. I&#8217;ve been to quite a lot of these workshops back in the days of the <a href=\"https:\/\/connect.innovateuk.org\/web\/experience-led-innovation\/article-view\/-\/blogs\/internet-of-things-roadmapping-workshop?p_p_auth=z4Mi9x9Z&amp;_33_redirect=https%3A%2F%2Fconnect.innovateuk.org%2Fweb%2Fexperience-led-innovation%2Farticles%3Bjsessionid%3D45A8981E43EA9C1A590BC088054DC73E.2%3Fp_p_id%3D101_INSTANCE_okNCIW6dT09i%26p_p_lifecycle%3D0%26p_p_state%3Dnormal%26p_p_mode%3Dview%26p_p_col_id%3Dcolumn-1%26p_p_col_count%3D1\">IOT Special Interest Group\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0and wanted to live up to the work Graham and\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/uk.linkedin.com\/pub\/rachel-jones\/0\/53\/a49\">Rachel Jones<\/a> had done.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Pain Points<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Maurizio, Pilgrim &amp; I worked on a shortlist of pain points that someone would encounter if they were building a connected product and we put this to the community in <a href=\"https:\/\/designswarm.typeform.com\/to\/KYi3XH\">a questionnaire<\/a> via the usual social media channels. They were:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Coming up with an idea<\/li>\n<li>knowing what hardware to use<\/li>\n<li>paying for that hardware<\/li>\n<li>knowing what software to build with<\/li>\n<li>paying for that software<\/li>\n<li>connecting the software and hardware in a scalable way<\/li>\n<li>developing a web\/mobile service for the product<\/li>\n<li>access to space<\/li>\n<li>access to prototyping facilities<\/li>\n<li>developing a proof of concept<\/li>\n<li>doing user research<\/li>\n<li>reaching out to potential customers<\/li>\n<li>finding co-founders<\/li>\n<li>finding corporate partners<\/li>\n<li>finding manufacturing partners who can help with small quantities<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Through the a morning session conversation the top 5 emerged as:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Connecting hardware &amp; software<\/li>\n<li>Developing a proof of concept (specifically access to the right expertise)<\/li>\n<li>Doing user research \/ reaching to potential customers (access to experts in user research was also part of this)<\/li>\n<li>Finding corporate partners (this related strongly to being to plan the route to market)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The crux of this landscape of pain points felt like it was a lot about meeting the right people at the right time in the process of commercialising a connected product which got me thinking about what a typical process looks like at the moment. I&#8217;ve also highlighted the opportunities that were brainstormed that day that felt like they might be totally new and not trying to replicate existing services. All these thoughts will go and feed the report I&#8217;ll be writing up for the CDEC in the next month or so. Fun times.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/designswarm_iot_process.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-1653\" alt=\"designswarm_iot_process\" src=\"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/designswarm_iot_process.png\" width=\"850\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/designswarm_iot_process.png 1024w, https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/designswarm_iot_process-136x300.png 136w, https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/designswarm_iot_process-466x1024.png 466w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Update: The full report is here. <\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.slideshare.net\/slideshow\/embed_code\/key\/1uDFZ5iNt1q5hB\" width=\"668\" height=\"714\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" style=\"border:1px solid #CCC; border-width:1px; margin-bottom:5px; max-width: 100%;\" allowfullscreen> <\/iframe> <\/p>\n<div style=\"margin-bottom:5px\"> <strong> <a href=\"\/\/www.slideshare.net\/designswarm\/connected-products-studio-report\" title=\"Connected Products Studio Report\" target=\"_blank\">Connected Products Studio Report<\/a> <\/strong> from <strong><a href=\"\/\/www.slideshare.net\/designswarm\" target=\"_blank\">Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino<\/a><\/strong> <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last December, I was asked by the Connected Digital Economy Catapult to help them out scoping a possible Connected Products Studio. This is great fun for me as I have tangible experience of building connected products for installations, industrial applications and now the consumer market. The first thing Maurizio Pilu, the Catapult&#8217;s Director asked me&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/2014\/01\/the-process-of-connecting-products\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The process of Connecting Products<\/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_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[9,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-internet-of-things","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p41XhY-qB","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1649","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=1649"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1649\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2251,"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1649\/revisions\/2251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}