Connected Devices Weekly Update/2016-09-01

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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)	On Target	An always-on voice-enabled smart screen device to keep track of the activities, events, and to-do lists of family members. 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) Study 2 for MVP1 Continued working on improvements in the past week, including wake word for the device, voice activity detector. Engineering team is back up to full strength following PTO. Working on setting up Google Analytics to capture usage data during study. Preparing architecture document for security review on Sept. 2nd.
Project Smart Display	Josh	On Target	Bulleted list item Bulleted list item
Project Haiku	Maria/Liz	On Target	We met the Innovation Board yesterday. Based on the feedback we our re-evaluating the plan to accelerate and learn from users as soon as we can. An update will be provided next week.
Project Sensor Web	Cindy/Wesley	On Target	Bulleted list item Bulleted list item
Project SmartKitchen	Tamara/Nicole	On Target	Experiment #2 - Concept Video [DONE] This past weekend we deployed a Project SmartKitchen concept video SurveyGizmo 219 paid viewers, US, 25-45 year olds, primary or share meal planning, household >1 Overall very positive feedback Experiment #6 - Upstream Concierge - [IN PROGRESS] Launched on Friday Receipts are being uploaded by Tamara and users can request meal suggestions Current feedback is that many are not using the suggested recipes because the ones we are suggesting are time consuming In the coming week, we plan to investigate the best way to give recipe suggestions to users. Some are not getting meal suggestions based off of receipt items. Experiment #7 - Second Vendor Image Recognition [IN PROGRESS] Team is uploading each image taken by the camera and saying which vendor recognizes the item in the image Finding that second vendor is by far more accurate than first vendor (ex. fruit vs. banana) Collecting back Project SmartKitchen prototypes from trial participants in Experiment #1 to update software that utilizes vendor 2 and will give the prototypes back out to participants to test vendor 2 in the wild.
Project Magnet	Maria/Francisco	On Target	Hypothesis 1: If we broadcast schedule content, then spur-of-the-moment attendees can quickly and confidently choose how to spend their time Experiment#1: Use beacons at an event to broadcast room status. Using the aforementioned survey, use targeted interviews for floaters post View Source to see if Magnet helped them make decisions in the moment and if it was easier and faster than their usual methods. Project Magnet application has already been uploaded to the Apple store and Google Play! Blog post to announce View Source in CD blog Metrics in Google analytic also ready Communication has already been agreed with Viewsource team and it's ready. Working in the View Source Handbook that include all the logistics, surveys and steps to validate the hypothesis and get the most incomes as we can. Hypothesis 2: If attendees broadcast their social profiles, then social interaction will increase Experiment 2 - Beacon give-away: We'll provide beacons to the first people that go to our booth showing that they have installed the app, help them to configure it and follow up with the them if that increased the number of interactions that they had during the conference and other possible uses. Working in the details in the View Source Handbook
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		Lowe's, a US home improvement retailer, integrated Amazon's Alexa with its series of smart home devices, called Iris. The first devices are thermostats, fans and light switches, with other Iris devices coming on board at a later time. Lowe’s also announced it is selling Iris products on Amazon for the first time. Deloitte released IoT adoption figures for the UK that show adoption of smart home gadgets flatlining in 2016 compared to 2015. The adoption of monitoring systems and thermostats is flat at 3% of the market, as well as that of smart lightning and appliances, at 2% of the UK market. Most popular IoT devices are smart TVs with 28% adoption, followed by wireless speakers (10%), fitness bands (9%) and smart watches (4%). Xiaomi is entering the smart home market with a value proposition of low cost and speed. Su Jun, the head of the company's appliances team: "Many of our products can be made in the factory, loaded onto trucks, shipped to warehouses, and delivered to customers all in one day." Jin Di, research manager with the Boston-based consulting firm IDC: "The low-price strategy may have gained it lots of fans early on. But it's not a long-term development strategy." The Economist wrote a feature on the cloud computing market. Amazon has the largest share, with over 30% of cloud services sales in Q2. It has ten times as much computing capacity as the next 14 cloud providers combined, according to Gartner. AWS’s sales in the past quarter were about three times the size of its closest competitor, Microsoft’s Azure. This business is the reason why its parent company was able to report its third consecutive record quarterly profit in July, after years of patchy results. IBM (7% market share) and Google (5%) follow Amazon and Microsoft.
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