06: Consumer IoT: Part 1

“If you’re branding consumer home security, you have great power, but you also have great responsibility.”

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Times are changing quickly with all the options we have for personal security. But what about our homes? Now more than ever is an interesting time for experimentation with smart home products. Consumers are starting to become more comfortable with smart home systems, which are becoming more available on the market in big name retail stores.

Right now, industry professionals are working towards helping consumers have a better outcome and gain more trust to use these extremely valuable products. Some are joining us today to discuss the past, present, and future of IOT security in the home market!

• Roel Peeters is the CEO and founder of Roost. Roost built a home telematics platform focused on the property insurance industry, and works with IOT devices.

• Ian Swanson is the CEO of Data Science, Inc. Data Science offers a platform as well as Data Science as a service, working with many IOT companies.

• Ohad Zeira is the Director of Product and Strategy for Verizon Smart Home

• Nate Williams is the Chief Revenue Officer and Head of Business at August Home, a market leader in home access control.

“We are now moving to a layer of ‘yes they work,’ but now we need that trust layer.”

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Highlights

• Nate: If you look at consumer IOT, the first 5-10 years of users of these products were very early adopters, self installers, or even possibly required to be engineers to use. We’re now moving to another stage, where we’re starting to see big retailers selling these products.
• Security concerns are in the top three reasons why people are reluctant to adopt smart home products.
• Roel: The responsibility lies within the product vendors to gain trust within consumers, by providing products that are secure, and have built-in security from the beginning.
• Nate: Where we’ve seen lapses in the industry is with the companies who want to take shortcuts, often by trying to bring products to market faster
• You can’t take shortcuts when building a brand, and you can’t take shortcuts when you’re trying to please consumers with great products.
• It is very difficult to design products knowing that there is a polarity between user experience and security.
• We don’t want to make people fearful of putting these products in their homes, because they (the products) drive so much value.
• Analyze the data as the device company to ensure you are delivering on the value you are promising.
• As you’re developing partnerships to build or enhance what your product can do, you need to understand “what does the consumer actually want?”
• Ask yourself, “How can we make these experiences better?” with usability.
• Security is a use case that brings a lot of people into smart homes. 22% of US households have professionally modeled security.
• The consumer has to be put first.

“Analyze the data as the device company to ensure you are delivering on the value you are promising.”

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Resources

https://www.datascience.com/company

http://august.com/

http://www.getroost.com/about-roost