Connected Devices Weekly Update/2016-08-25

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Program		Status	Notes
Project Vaani	Validation (Lindsay/Sandip)	On Target	Bulleted list item Bulleted list item
Project Cue	Validation Stage (Julie/Preeti)	Challenged	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.
Project Smart Display	Joe	On Target	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
Project Haiku	Maria/Liz	On Target	Experiments UR #4 - We've got an HTML prototype set up on Heroku. We're testing the interactions and will make refinements next week (3 team members are in training this week). The prototype includes only the minimum set of features for the bracelet (on/off and "get attention" message). We'll share a link to it after this meeting. UR #5 - We ran a Sponsored Post on Instagram to set a baseline for future tests of our value propositions. We ran the post without a CTA over the weekend. We got 61 Likes and 4 new followers. This will be our baseline going forward. You can find more here. UR #6 - Getting started with John Columbo to make physical prototypes. Our goal is to give them to a small group of girls (maybe 6) the week of Sep 12.
Project Sensor Web	Cindy/Wesley	On Target	Bulleted list item Bulleted list item
Project Smart Kitchen	Tamara/Nicole	On Target	Bulleted list item Bulleted list item
Project Magnet	Maria/Francisco	On Target	Bulleted list item Bulleted list item
Research Team	Lindsay	On Target	Bulleted list item Bulleted list item
Participation Update	Michael/Brian	On Target	Bulleted list item Bulleted list item
Market Developments Update	Irina		The Amazon Alexa Fund invested in Ecobee, a smart thermostat company. Earlier this year, Ecobee became the first thermostat maker to tie itself to the Amazon Echo, enabling Alexa’s control over the device. Time Magazine wrote a feature on the new Home app coming in the iOS 10 release this fall. It has 3 tabs: Home, Rooms, and Automation. The Home tab provides an overview of the HomeKit setup: the most frequently used accessories and “scenes,” a collection of settings you can pre-program for specific events. Rooms sorts smart appliances by where they’re located in the house. The Automation tab lets the user build automatic triggers for certain events. For example, when driving home, the software “talks” to the iPhone’s GPS, it knows you’re nearing your home, and it opens the garage door automatically. Google's Thread joined Open Connectivty Foundation, an IoT standards body. The groups' technologies do not overlap – Thread is a networking protocol, and the OCF produces application-level software – so the alliance is not going to remove one of the multiple clashes in the IoT market. Intel made a series of announcements: Intel Joule - a platform for developers - Project Alloy - a VR headset aimed at developers - a partnership with Microsoft to work on VR and an acquisition of Nervana, an Artificial Intelligence company specialized in deep learning.
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