Connected Devices Weekly Update/2016-08-25

• Completed pre-user trial in-house testing of the Vaani proto in MV/Berlin/Portland offices with some new users this time. Generally worked well.
• In the user test, we decided to use 2 devices to better understand some intricacies: Vaani proto (based on Raspberry Pi 3, Jabra speaker) and another in-market device which has some similarities (and some differences) that we are interested in testing. (10 vs. 5)
• User participants are shortlisted & vetted through final interviews this week, consent forms sent. Diary study materials (hard/soft copies) as well as the user manual and video ready will go to users with the prototypes. Shipments of Vaani proto with final software (bugs fixed) expected next week.
• Validations planned:
  • 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 & getting it done
  • Better understanding of feature granularity with the 2 devices:
    • Near field voice vs. far field voice (pick-device-&-click vs wake-word)
    • List creation vs. get-it-ordered
    • Detail-item-listing vs. bar-code scanner
    • Dedicated app vs. user’s preferred app (e.g. Evernote that we are using in the proto)

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. Good progress made with tablet. Only one engineer available until next week.
• Setting up Google Analytics to capture usage data during study.
• Want to have device ready for internal testing by end of August and ready for study participants by mid-September. Will develop go/no go criteria.
• Have identified seven participants for smart screen study. User consent form is approved and ready to go.

• Met with UX team to request resource and inquire about availability and how to engage them

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

• Finishing up Wizard of Oz style study to gain insights into how people coordinate simple events. Study showed us that:
  • Some people don't respond to text requests
  • Need to figure out ways in which to remind people to respond, allow changes to coordination details
  • In general, people liked the idea of having a bot perform the coordination work for them

Identifying Interest to Find Study Participants

• Can proceed with development of video for the video for the Cue landing page now that video company has been approved. Script is drafted.

• Exploring the opportunity areas of Enhanced communication and connection
• Two concepts are being presented to test users. The two concepts represent divergent hypotheses for how to solve the same general problem of staying in touch with a few close loved ones that reside outside the home.
• The learnings from the research will help selecting the promising qualities from each and continue refinement, rather than selecting an “either / or.”

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.

• No change from last week's update
• 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 #6 - Upstream Concierge
  • Goal to determine if integration with a grocery partner/loyalty card provides enough information for useful recipe suggestions
  • Emails sent out to participants with survey instructions and trial instructions
  • Trial to start on 8/26 and run for 3 weeks (so we make sure everyone gets a couple chances to shop)
• Experiment #7 - Image recognition Device updates
  • Working with privacy/legal on storing images
  • Integration with second vendor completed for comparison purposes
  • Plan to look for 1-2 more participants and incentivize them.
• Experiment #8 - Hand detection Experiment
  • Working with OpenCV to determine if we can detect the direction of flow of an ingredient in/out of the refrigerator for inventory control purposes.
  • Two potential methods under investigation
• Experiment #2 - Video
  • Video finished and survey completed

• Cooperation with SourceView conf.
• Drive some investigations towards beacon formats and OS new features for Project Walnut.
• Apps ready to publish on the marketplaces!
• We got 100 magnet beacons + 100 for the DevRel team:

• 1 event this month in India
  • CD Workshops Sylhet
  • See Mijanur's Twitter for more pictures
• 3 event coming in September
  • Jordanian leadership workshop
  • IoT Days India
  • Web of Things Indore
• Innovation Toolkit is now live!
  • 21 Volunteers and 4 staff helped QA/give feedback (THANK YOU!!)
• Next week is Participation Work Week in Paris

• 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.