interactions that are already happening in the world, recording
them as data or interpreting them as input and taking action. For
example:
● The Fitbit activity tracker is worn on your wrist, turning
every step into data.
● The Nest Protect lets you wave away a smoke alarm
caused by a faulty detection, like when it’s accidently set
off while cooking.
● The August Smart Lock senses your approach and
automatically unlocks the door.
● The Apple Watch lets you pay for goods by simply raising
your wrist to a checkout reader.The smartphone required designers to consider the physicality of
users in terms of their fingertips. These new connected devices
require a broader consideration of a person’s full body and
presence in space.
Over the last few decades, opinions have oscillated on the
superiority of general purpose technology platforms versus self-
contained “information appliances.” Today’s “smart devices”
represent a middle ground, since these highly specialized
objects often work in conjunction with a smartphone or web
server that provides access to configuration, information display,
and remote interactions.
Open APIs allow devices to connect to and affect each other,
using output from one as the input to another. Services such as
IFTTT (IF This Then That) make automating tasks between
connected devices trivial. For example, one IFTTT recipe turns
on a Philips Hue light bulb in the morning when your Jawbone
UP wristband detects that you have woken up.
Unfortunately, seamless experiences between connected
devices are rare and too often the smartphone is treated as the