Connected Devices Weekly Update/2016-08-18

• Continue to explore the 2 opportunity areas identified
• 1. Better routines and habits
  • The connected home can help us form new habits, maintain healthy habits and change existing bad habits in order to meet goals that we have set for ourselves and others. For example,
    • The connected home could help capture real time information on whether the desired behavior is being followed and then provide us with relevant information so that we can act accordingly.
    • The connected home could provide real time nudges and reminders to encourage us to engage in our desired behavior.
• 2. Enhanced communication and connection
  • The connected home can facilitate the relay of information between people in the home, or encourage conversations and moments of connection between loved ones that reside in the home or live elsewhere. For example,
    • By detecting presence, the connected home could create "scenes" that are tailored to the people who are in the room. Objects could also be tagged so the presence or absence of that object would trigger the scene.
    • The connected home could create a new paradigm for short-form communication between family members that has elements of physicality and intimacy, thereby enabling opportunities for deeper connection.
• Plan to present some initial ideas to test user feedback next week

Experiments

Exp #4 - Web-based HTML prototype. Live Fri 8/19. Team will use the prototype on their mobile phones next week. Goal is to collect feedback and refine the user experience. We're particularly interested in learning:

• If people are in an "off" status, do they want to know about the status of others?
• If people have an easy way to change their status, will they set/unset it?

Exp #5 - Instagram Sponsored Posts. Launching tomorrow. Will test a series of value propositions with target audience. Campaign will run for 4 days. We'll assess the performance, and test another one.

Exp #6 - Create physical prototype with external contractor (John Columbo, also working with SensorWeb). We just started this process. Anticipating that we will share devices with the girls week of Sep 12.

• result from experiment1 (https://trello.com/c/fdvHl50c) : between july15 and aug10,
  • subscription = 3.4% (7/206);
  • sharing = 5.34% (11/206);
  • Conclusion: Positive in terms of the conversion rate. Mozilla has an advantage in connecting with people that other commercial companies can’t. Potential TA could be Urban dwellers who are health conscious and Civic minded people are our advocates

• Ongoing experiment = #2, #3 (https://trello.com/c/st2pQBxc) online campaign with free marketing channels

• Experiment #5 (SurveyGismo Paid responses) Completed
  • 242 Paid responses
  • Results are in line with first survey, but dig deeper.
  • Coming up with ideas for what to cook with ingredients on hand was #1 challenge for making dinner
  • People generally believe they know their inventory
  • People are interested in saving time, meal suggestions, using ingredients, and meal variety. They want simple, healthy meals.
  • People are very interested in meal suggestions for ingredients they have on hand (85.7%)
  • People would be likely/very likely to use a device that suggested recipes based off ingredients on hand
• Experiment #1 (Image recognition) - Completed.
  • Only one tester so far has tried image rec.
  • Results are not promising as far as number of images recognized. We are not down to the level of detail we need.
  • Next steps: 1) Introduce a second service for comparison, 2) Investigate images (needs legal discussion), and 3) possibly incent trial participants to get a few more active participants
• Experiment #2 Video - Delayed
  • Video platform will be on Surveygizmo and will have paid responses.
    • Budget has been approved
  • Viewers will be asked questions about the concept our project after watching the video.
  • Hope to deploy survey early next week
• Experiment #6 (Upstream Concierge) - In Progress
  • Trial participants identified last week
  • Instructions sent to trial participants
  • Awaiting signed legal agreement from participants
  • The concierge is ready
• PIB Update Wednesday 8/24 -- Update on Technical Plan, resource, and Upstream request

• Most of the team on PTO
• Magnet app ready to publish in android and iOS market places (iOS has been already reviewed). PENDING: Branding.
• Lot's of legal stuff sorted (terms of use, privacy, etc.)
• View Source experiment on going: We receive the map of the venue and we are checking where we should setup the beacons. As well a lot of work around the communication from the ViewSource team to announce the apps.
• Trying to setup new experiments related to meeting rooms in Mozilla offices.
• Wikipedia support landed. Now articles from Wikipedia look stunning on magnet.

• The team is ready for User Testing!
  • Raspberry Pi 3
  • USB speaker/microphone combo (Jabra 410)
  • USB charger (at least 2.0 AMP)
  • Micro SD card (at least 4GB)
• Users are going through final interviews today and tomorrow
• For the next week our experiments will be technical on the device
  • Having non technical users test the device before we ship to users for last trouble shooting
• The team is getting the study materials as well as the user manual and video ready
  • We will be sending out user testing information in both hard and soft copies to the user
• What do we hope to validate with this?
  • A majority of participants who use the prototype prefer this device to their current solution
  • A majority of participants believe this device provides a faster and easier way of creating lists

An always-on voice-enabled smart screen device to keep track of the activities, events, and to-do lists of family members. Initial focus for the prototype is on Reminders only.

MVP1 Hypothesis that Remains to be Tested

• Offering a solution that provides an alternative way to create and manage reminders, lists & schedules using a smart display, families would be able to accomplish their tasks 20% more times than before. (Pending smart display device to test)

Preparation for Study 2 for MVP1

• Evaluating Lenovo tablet to use for testing a smart display.
• Building improvements, including ability to set up accounts for each family member and edit reminders. Need to get new front end working with new back end. Only one developer available this week and next.
• Want to have device ready for internal testing by end of August and ready for study participants by mid-September.
• Identifying additional participants to increase the number of people testing the smart display to 10.

MVP2 Hypothesis

• Creating a product that leverages voice interaction & chatbot to coordinate small gatherings will result in these families seeing
  • 50% reduction in the time required to coordinate such events using traditional methods of email, sms, phone calls
  • 25% quicker response rates from recipients

Study 1 for MVP2

• Tools being used in the Wizard of Oz style study to gain insights into how people coordinate simple events prevent the coordination "bot" from sending group chat messages. Study results show that people are suspicious when they receive a text message from an unknown source with no one else copied on the text. Many are ignoring the text, but once they start using the bot, they like what they see and feedback has been positive. Want to try email messaging by the "bot" next.

Identifying Interest

• Working on identifying potential customers who can be used in focus groups and/or for testing. Goal of signing up at least 50 users for updates.

Cue Landing Page and Video:

• Working on the targeted Facebook campaign to drive traffic to a landing page that will host a video to clearly articulate the vision for Cue. Script for the video has been developed.

• A report on voice interfaces and digital assistants reveals:
  • 7 types of jobs that voice assistants can perform: identify, inform, educate, entertain, control, purchase and help
  • The bulk of device sales with voice digital assistants in the next 5 years will be phones , Smart TVs and digital media streamers
  • US households with voice home hubs will grow from 2% penetration in 2016 to 11% penetration in 2020
• Sonos is expected to unveil voice control and more integration features with streaming services at an event on the 30th of August. It's unclear what AI system Sonos will use for voice control and whether it will aim to only control the music that is played or also interact with other Smart Home devices.
• Venture Beat in a feature on the bot market, identified 7 layers in the bot landscape:
  • The actual bots, such as personal assistants, customer service representatives, productivity helpers
  • Artificial Intelligence tools that do the natural language processing, machine learning and speech & voice recognition
  • Bot developer frameworks and tools
  • Messaging platforms through which consumers interact with bots
  • Analytics services
  • Discovery mechanisms / bot stores
  • Connectors and shared services