Connected Home Sounds Great... As Long As Someone Else Sets It Up

from the some-assembly-required dept

Tue, Jul 12th 2005 2:42am — Mike Masnick

As gadgets and consumer electronics have become more and more popular, a growing group of people are excited about the possibilities of a more connected home that ties together many different technologies. There are just two problems. The first is obvious. It's still a bit too expensive for most people. The second, while obvious to some, hasn't quite sunk in yet for many -- especially those in the consumer electronics space. Putting all of these things together is still way too complex. The idea of setting up a perfectly networked home still remains too daunting for many. While this likely means more business for geeks who do house calls, it really should serve as incentive for the various consumer electronics firms to finally make it easier to make all of this stuff work together without feeling like you need an electrical engineering PhD.

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I'm not astroturfing... really..., 12 Jul 2005 @ 5:20am

It's _hard_ to do
I work next to MAYA Design, the company designing Home Heartbeat, a "home awareness" product that has many of the same challenges of the automated home. How do you let the user have access to all of the information of what's happening everywhere, along with the ability to control anything from anywhere, while reducing the complexity to something your grandmother can fully understand? The two principles are frequently diametrically opposed. That's why _really_ good HCI folks are in high demand amongst the companies that understand this issue. Seeing the hundreds of prototypes for Home Hearbeat makes you appreciate how much work goes into making _anything_ that is easy to use and powerful at the same time.
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