Smart home market breakthrough is weak, get rid of "screen thinking" is the key

(This article was published in "Communication World All Media", the author is Yang Xuesheng;)

These issues in the smart home industry are worth pondering:

The smart home allows the set-top box to enter the home, but the networking of electrical appliances has not yet seen a practical solution;

② The meaning of "entrance" and the question of "who to enter" are worth rethinking;

The core of the development of intelligent hardware can not be separated from the "intelligent", must be accurate, predictable, to achieve benign operation.

Smart home in three years ago fire for a period of time, mainly Google's high-priced acquisition of Nest caused by the eyeball economy and Apple Home Kit development platform to the industry pointed out the direction. But since then, there have been few major breakthroughs in the field of smart home, and the subsequent performance of Nest has not surprised the industry. This field seems to have become a forgotten corner.

More than a millimeter: thinking about smart home

The fundamental reason for the weak breakthrough in the smart home market lies in the complexity of the scene, that is, the practice of relevant manufacturers trying to occupy the "whole family" with a "portal" is very difficult for users to accept in many cases. In addition, the inherent interests of traditional home appliance manufacturers and the differences in standard standards have brought very high user switching costs.

Although products such as set-top boxes or bottom boxes have made great changes in home TVs, there is still a long way to go before the comprehensive transformation of all home appliances from electrical appliances to "network appliances. The networking of appliances does not yet seem to see a tangible solution.

This situation forces us to rethink the meaning of "entrance" and the question of "who to enter. In fact, the entrance is not the size, but the richness of the interaction. Although the physical area of the TV screen entrance is very large, it still cannot compete with the small mobile phone screen at the entrance level because of the interactive richness of the mobile phone entrance.

Therefore, thinking about the entrance of smart home should get rid of screen thinking, and should work hard on the way of interaction. How to create a diversified way of interaction through home power equipment is the fundamental. Infrared, microwave, gesture, voice, image, touch, etc. may build a unique interactive scene.

No matter what kind of intelligent equipment, and no matter what kind of interaction, the development of intelligent hardware is inseparable from the "embedding-interaction-evolution" these three steps.

First of all, how to seamlessly embed the scene is the test that intelligent hardware will face in the first step. Since there are physical products, users will inevitably need psychological construction to accept them, otherwise there will be a sense of imbalance. Therefore, the promotion and embedding of intelligent hardware face a high threshold, either to provide real added value of technology, or to reduce the price to a very low level. Of course, being able to immerse the product into an existing scene is a best practice.

The second is interaction. Interaction must be two-way. There must be a channel to empower the terminal and a way to transmit data to the cloud. Only when the two phases are opened can interaction succeed.

Finally, lead the hardware evolution. You know, the ecological construction of the digital economy follows the "layer structure", which extends infinitely on the plane and is constantly superimposed on the level.

This kind of layer structure makes the basic logic of traditional market segmentation untenable in many cases. "No market segmentation, business layer by layer" is the correct posture. Each layer is superimposed, the product evolution rises once, and the data is precipitated. The result of the cycle is the formation of an ecosystem, which is somewhat similar to the working principle of a 3D printer.

Of course, the core of smart hardware is still in the word "smart. The so-called intelligence is essentially a change in the paradigm of human-computer interaction. In the past, the machine was a passive responder to human instructions. You gave an instruction and the machine output feedback.

This stimulus-response system requires that the results must be "accurate" and must be accurate and predictable so that the stimulus-response system can function well. Artificial intelligence is to turn human-computer interaction into a "feed-forward active service system". No interaction is the best interaction. You don't need to give any instructions to the machine, and the machine will take the initiative to serve. Therefore, the key behind it is no longer "precision", but "temperature". The artificial intelligence system must have temperature.

To have temperature, big data and deep learning become extremely important. The data analysis of intelligent hardware system can not be separated from three elements: computing power, algorithm and efficiency. The calculation force refers to the richness of real-time data and data energy reserve, the algorithm is responsible for converting the calculation force into the user can perceive the "temperature" of the scene, and the calculation effect is the cost-benefit index. Only with the underlying autonomous learning ability can intelligent hardware products interact and evolve better after embedding, which is a systematic project.