{"id":2535,"date":"2017-11-04T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-11-04T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/2017\/11\/what-does-it-take-to-make-better-connected-products-1275565268ff\/"},"modified":"2017-11-04T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2017-11-04T00:00:00","slug":"what-does-it-take-to-make-better-connected-products-1275565268ff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/2017\/11\/what-does-it-take-to-make-better-connected-products-1275565268ff\/","title":{"rendered":"What does it take to make better connected products?"},"content":{"rendered":"

What does it take to make better connected products?<\/h3>\n

This time last year, Usman Haque and I were reminded that it had been almost five years since our \u2018Open Internet of Things Definition\u2019 <\/a>event at Google Campus. Five years is both a long time and not a long time, but we thought it would be fun to revisit. There is however little point in asking people to revisit work already done without moving forward in some way, otherwise you risk being like the high school reunion noone wants to attend.<\/p>\n

So what had changed since 2012, well as my friend Steve Silver informed me, FUD. Fear, uncertainty and doubt currently cripples the internet of things.<\/p>\n

In London, fear that a crowdfunding campaign will never deliver, uncertainty anyone in the investment community will ever care, and doubt of the quality and security of what is being deployed in our homes, at work and in our cities.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s enough to kill an industry dead in its tracks.<\/p>\n

The internet of things was coined by Kevin Ashton in 2001, so 16 years is a little young to kill an industry.<\/p>\n

So Usman and I started talking about what the Open Internet of Things Definition\u2019s role was. It brought together people across industries, and it was aspirational but it didn\u2019t have any teeth.<\/p>\n

How could we build something that could encourage industry to overcome the FUD and help consumers trust this fledgling industry? We had a couple of meeting with my lawyer Rosie Burbidge<\/a> at Fox Williams who offered us a number of different models we could look at and we chose the certification mark.<\/p>\n

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Image from Fairtrade<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What is a certification mark?<\/h3>\n

Certification marks or labels are used to prove to your customers that you have developed something in a particular way. Fairtrade<\/a> is a mark that shows consumers that the working conditions behind food are fair. Woolmark<\/a> is a certification mark to show consumers that the garment is made out of real wool.<\/p>\n

These are marks that inform consumers and help a business differentiate themselves.<\/p>\n

Why not for the internet of things? People should know that something is being developed in an ethical, secure way and industry could probably do with having a check-list of what constitutes an ethical and secure way to do business. This is after all an industry driven by cash-strapped SMEs, so helping them make better decisions is bound to be good for everyone.<\/p>\n

So we got to work. We gathered 60 people from across UK & Europe on June 16th at the London Zoo (thanks to Alasdair Davies<\/a>). And we started working groups<\/a> around Security, Privacy, Interoperability, Provenance and others. We then carried on on Slack and in monthly calls to get to a shortlist of 30 principles<\/a> which we published a couple of weeks ago.<\/p>\n

These are some of the highlights for me:<\/p>\n