Category: Featured Tech.pinions

A Nielsen Company audience report published in 2016 revealed that American adults devoted about 10 hours and 39 minutes each day to consuming media during the first quarter of 2016. This was an increase of exactly an hour recorded over the same period of 2015. Of those 10 hours, about 4½ hours a day are spent watching shows and movies.

During the same year, the Deloitte Global Mobile Consumer Survey showed that 40% of consumers check their phones within five minutes of waking up and another 30% checks them five minutes before going to sleep. On average we check our phones about 47 times a day, the number grows to 82 times if you are in the 18-24 age bracket. In aggregate, the US consumers check their phones more than 9 billion times per day.

Any way you look at it, we are totally addicted to screens of any form, size, and shape.

While communication remains the primary reason we stare at our screens there are also tasks such as reading books or documents, playing card or board games, drawing and writing that we used to perform in an analog way that are now digital. And, of course, there is content consumption. All adding up to us spending more time interacting with some form of computing device than with our fellow human beings in real life.

I see three big technology trends in development today that could shape the future of our screen addiction in very different ways: ambient computing, Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality.

Ambient Computing: the Detox

Ambient computing is the experience born from a series of devices working together to collect inputs and deliver outputs. It is a more invisible computer interaction facilitated by the many sensors that surround us and empowered by a voice-first interface. The first steps of ambient computing are seen in connected homes where wearables devices function as authentication devices to enable experiences such as turning the lights on or off or granting access to buildings or information. The combination of sensors, artificial intelligence, and big data will allow connected and smart machines to be much more proactive in delivering what we need or want. This, in turn, will reduce our requirements to access a screen to input or visualize information. Screens will become more a complement to our computing experience rather than the core of it.

In order to have a feel for how this might impact average screen time, think about what a device such as a smartwatch does today. While a screen is still involved, it is much smaller and it shows the most important and valuable information to you without drawing you into the device. I often talk about my Apple Watch as the device that helps me manage my addiction. It allows me to be on top of things, without turning each interaction into a 20-minute screen soak. Another example is the interaction you might have with Google Home or Alexa when you inquire about something. Today, for instance, I asked for the definition of “cabana” as my daughter wanted to know. I got what I needed in less than 30 seconds: “a cabin, hut, or shelter, especially one at a beach or swimming pool.” Had she gone on Google Search to find the definition, I guarantee it would have taken a good 10 minutes between reading through the results and looking at pictures, with the effectiveness of the search not being any better because of the screen.

While not a total cure, ambient computing could provide a good detox program that will allow us to let go of some screen time without letting go of our control.

Virtual Reality: the Ultimate Screen Addiction

Virtual Reality is at the total opposite spectrum of Ambient Computing as it offers the ability to lose yourself in the ultimate screen experience. While we tend not to talk about VR as a screen the reality is that, whatever experience you are having, it is still delivered through a screen. A screen that rather than being on your desk, on your wall, or in your hand is on your face through a set of glasses of various shapes.

I don’t expect VR to be something we turn to for long period of times, but if we have ever complained about our kids or spouses having selective hearing when they are gaming or watching sports we got another thing coming!

There are talks about VR experiences that are shared with friends but if multiplayer games are something to go by, I am expecting those “share with friends moments” to be a minor part of the time you will spend in VR. With VR being so much more immersive I think the potential to be in an experience with someone you do not know like you do with traditional gaming, might be a little more involved and overwhelming. Coordinating with actual friends might require too much effort worth making if you are experiencing a music or sports event but maybe not so much if you are just playing a game.

Escapism will be the biggest drive for consumer VR which is the biggest reason for wanting to be cut off from reality.

Augmented Reality: the Key to Rediscovery

Augmented Reality is going to be big, no question about it. Now that Apple will make it available overnight to millions of iPhones and iPads as iOS 11 rolls out, consumers will be exposed and engaged with it.

What I find interesting is the opportunity that AR has to reconnect us to the world around us. If you think about the big excitement around Pokemon Go was that people went outside, walked around, exercised. Because humans do not seem to be able to do anything in moderation, that feel good factor vanished quickly as people were paying more attention to the little creatures than to where they were going culminating in incidents of trespassing, injuries, and fights!

That said, I strongly believe that there are many areas that AR can help with in our rediscovery of the world around us from education, to travel, to nature. Think about Google Translate and how it helps lower the barrier of entry to travel in countries where you do not speak the language.

The trick will be not to position the AR experience as the only experience you want to have. AR should fuel an interest to do more, discover more, experience more.

Of course, developers and ecosystem owners are driven by revenue rather than the greater good of humanity. Yet, I feel that lately the level of concerns around the impact technology is having on our social and emotional skills is growing enough to spur enough interest to drive change.

Ultimately, I believe that our addiction to screens is driven by a long list of wrong reasons. Our obsession feeds off our boredom, our feeling that idle time is unproductive time, and the false sense of safety of connecting to others through a device rather than in person. New technologies will offer the opportunity to change if we really want to.

I have been thinking about writing something on women in tech and what we have been witnessing over the past few months and I had resisted thus far. Last week, however, as I was a guest on the DownloadFM podcast I was asked my opinion about the many stories we have read in the press concerning childish CEO behavior and continued allegations of sexual harassment, starting from Uber to 500 Startups, and I could no longer shy away. After all, I am in tech, I am a woman, and I have an opinion on the topic.

We expect more from Men in Tech

Women face discrimination, chauvinism, and harassment in pretty much any business they are in. For some reason, however, I think the disbelief around some of the stories that have emerged in tech comes from assuming that men in tech would be different, evolved, better. Better than the men who run Wall Street and I better than the men on Capitol Hill. That hope is buoyed by the fact that men in tech are by and large well-educated, well-travelled, they are entrusted with building our future. Men in tech are also by and large white and entitled and often with poor social skills when it comes to women. Of course, there are exceptions, but they are, alas, exceptions.

You start to believe it is You, not Them

I have been a tech analyst for 17 years, and while I have seen more women in tech, I still get excited when there is a line for the ladies’ bathroom at a tech conference. I still pay attention to how long it takes for a woman to be on stage at those tech conferences. And while it seems that all the big corporations have increased the number of women on stage, if you pay attention, you notice, that most of those women on stage are performing demos and they are not upper management.

When I got pregnant with my daughter, female as well as male colleagues, told me that my priorities would change and I would not work as hard. I was expecting it from my male colleagues, but it was disappointing to hear from my fellow female colleagues that it was expected of me to want to do less. The implication of course, if I did not feel that way, was that I was a bad mother.

In many occasions, I was told I was emotional; I was asked if it was that time of the month; I was told to grow a pair. In meetings, I have been interrupted and talked over by endless male colleagues, mistaken for my colleague’s secretary and right out ignored after making the mistake to serve coffee to meeting guests. At the start of the smartphone market, I was handed over pink phones with a lipstick mirror. I’d love to ask Walt Mossberg if he ever reviewed one of those! On Twitter for complementing an actor’s launch of a tech product, I was told I was “throwing my knickers” at him. I have been the token woman on tech panels, and I was invited as a guest on a radio show because “the audience responds better to women talking tech.” And the list goes on.

Things like this happen all the time to many women. They happen so often that you start to think it is the norm, or that you are reading it wrong and taking it personally. Whether you think it is wrong or not becomes irrelevant though when you consider how hard you worked to get to where you are and how much further you want to go. So, you ignore it, you smile, and move on. You do what Irish reporter Caitriona Perry did in the Oval Office a few weeks ago.

Avoiding Discrimination 3.0

If things have not changed up to now why is it important that they do? Why does it matter so much that men in tech must understand enough is enough? Because what is going to happen when everybody in the room looks alike and behaves the same way? And of course, this applies to gender as well as race, religion, politics.

We are at a time when we are training machines to think like us. What a scary thought when it comes to women in business. What will happen when machines consider physical and psychological traits based on the beliefs that dominate society today? What if men, who claim they did not know it is not normal to make advances in work situations train computers to think it is normal too? Will women be negated roles a priory based on the belief that “it’s much more likely to be more talking” if too many women are part of the board? Are we really building a better society if we move from paying a woman by the hour for sexual favors to buying an AI-enabled doll that will respond to its master just the way a male engineer has designed it? What will happen if self-driving cars are taught that a woman is more dispensable than a man when it comes to life and death situations?

We can rejoice at having female emojis with more professions and we should. We should continue to foster STEM among female students but know that just because they can do the job it does not mean they will be given the opportunity to do it. Let’s lean on the strong female role models we have. Let’s be supportive. Let’s have each other’s back. A smart woman said recently that we should not just be happy to be in the room where it happens. We should be sitting at the table and make it happen. So, let’s do that, let’s stop thinking it is us, let’s stop thinking it is normal and let’s get a seat at the table.

Connected home products are grabbing floor space and early tech adopters’ attention. Sales are growing, and big brands are investing more and more. But moving from early tech adopters to the mainstream will not just be about lower prices. A better shopping experience is a must when consumers are still confused about what works with what and the overall benefits of a connected home.

Tech savvy consumers know what they want. They have researched the product category, they read tech reviews, they asked friends, and they are happy to purchase online. Tech-savvy buyers are also glad to go through any pain the set-up of a device might bring. They see the pain as part of the process of being early tech users. It’s their duty to pave the way for the masses.

Mainstream consumers, on the other hand, want a pain-free setup and most of all a worry-free purchase experience. In our research into early connected home adoption, mainstream consumers expressed the need to have someone to go to in a store and the peace of mind that if something went wrong, they can bring the device back to the store and talk to a human. In our focus groups, consumers seemed to prefer home-improvement stores to electronic stores mainly because that is how they see these connected devices. A connected bulb is still a bulb!

Sadly though, if you go to a Home Depot or Lowes you are left facing a bunch of connected products lump together on a shelf with very little information on what they do let alone of the experience they can deliver.

It’s about the Experience, not the Specs

Whenever I play mystery shopper, I am faced with a high degree of ignorance on the topic of smart accessories. Most sales assistants know about specs and what is spelled out on the box, but unless you have someone who went through their own set up at home, it is rare to talk about an experience. Yet, I find that when you can envision what a particular device can do for you the sale is much easier.

Last week I moderated a panel on ambient computing at the Target Open House in San Francisco, and I was pleased to see how it had evolved since I first visited it after its grand opening over a year ago. The space gives the ability to potential buyers to see products in a large room called the Playground as well as walk through a living room, a bedroom and a garage to experience some of these in a home context. Target has 500 stores across the country that have smart products displayed in context.

While, as you can expect, the experience is still quite show-roomie, it does attempt to deliver an experience. What I liked is how Target focused on guests’ personality and preferences rather than the products. So, for instance, if you are a sports enthusiast or a music lover they show how your living room can be optimized for your ultimate viewing or listening experience. I think this is interesting as it attempts to put the consumer first rather than the product. In other words, it is about helping you find the products that deliver what you want instead of telling you about products and let you discover how they fit into your life once you get them home.

A few months ago, I spent some time in a model home that was installed with HomeKit compatible products. Needless to say, the experience was pretty compelling as there is nothing more convincing than sitting on what could be your own sofa and open the door to a guest, lower the blinds to have the perfect light to watch TV and set the temperature in the room. Over time this will become the norm for buyers of new homes. I expect you will be able to pick a Siri, Google Assistant, Cortana and Alexa home. For now, however, not every vendor in the market can have a real life home to welcome potential buyers, so store experiences are important. Your average consumer is also not necessarily going to attend a home show where many of these solutions have been showcased this far.

Interestingly, setting up experience rooms is how large TV and projectors are displayed in electronic stores. If you walk into a BestBuy you will quickly find the room with the cinema chairs and the projector or the large screen TV that disappear behind a portrait above the fireplace in front of the couch or the speakers that are disguised as rocks for your patio. Showcasing video and audio solutions in a real-life setting has been done for years, yet showcasing a connected home is not something that retailers are rushing into and I think it is because the opportunity is more limited for them at least for now. It might all boil down to how many connected devices will I need to sell to equal the sale of a $7000 video projector?

Smart Experience Showcases Can Help Retailers and Brands

In this early stage of the connected home, it is not just consumers who need help in buying. Brands too need help in selling. Information on what message resonates with consumers, what features close the deal, what is the job to be done…Retailers can help with that information when they set up a smart environment. Target Open House, for instance, has sensors that connect information on foot traffic, product views and likes, touches on digital screens. Information is collected about sales and direct feedback shared with the team of experts who work in the house, and the information is used to decide what products should be displayed in the Playground area as well as what may make sense to sell at Target stores nationwide. Some of the insights are also shared with companies on the shelf to help them understand how guests are experiencing their products.

Big data is such a trend in tech right now that retailers should start talking more about what kind of data they are prepared to share with brands. This can be a competitive advantage in securing product exclusives, and co-marketing spend.

A Platform for Smaller Brands

The connected home space is benefitting from Amazon, Google and Microsoft, opening up Alexa, Google Assistant and Cortana respectively to be integrated into different ways into apps and devices. While Apps have an easy go to market through apps stores, most device manufacturers still need a distribution channel that is online or in store. Kickstarter and Indigogo can help startups to get to market but once there getting noticed might be harder than they thought.

Target Open House offers startups a stage through their Garage space where a dozen of products at the time are showcased before they get to market. Some of the products that guests are particularly excited about and offer a somewhat unique proposition are then moved to the Playground area and on Target’s shelves.

Other stores should follow in the steps of Target and offer a stage for startups especially if local. A community-feel always speaks to consumers, look at how popular farmers market and farm to table restaurants are!

A Connected Home is not built on One Device Alone

Connected homes in their true sense of home automation are complicated concepts that will take years to develop fully. They are also going to be quite different from one home to another. Some consumers might like to be in a single brand home; others will like to pick best of breed brands in the many areas they will decide to connect. Experiencing that home will matter to all but especially to the ones who will pick and mix. This is why experiencing the best way one can, what how technology changes your home is important. While consumers today think about it regarding home improvement I believe that home design will also play a key role in shaping the connected home. Maybe over time Pottery Barn rather than Home Depot is where consumers will turn.

Many of us immersed in the world of consumer tech become quite excited when we see something new for the first time. Our imagination immediately races ahead to try to understand how we’ll use it and what products we’ll buy.

But our imagination rarely is tempered by the actual time it can take to turn a new technology into a product. We get ahead of ourselves with predictions about the impact that the technology will have and how it will change our lives. But from all my experience, it always takes much longer than expected.

Our excitement often leads to unreasonable expectations, impatience, and disappointment once the product finally arrives. The product is often less than we expected, and it may take several iterations before it does.

The time it takes for a new technology concept to become mainstream is measured in years or decades, rarely in months. Many things need to occur. There’s the time needed for development of the product, the time it takes to create awareness in the market, and the time for people to realize they have a need. Even then, a buying decision can take years more.

The world is not composed of people like us that are early adopters and can’t wait for the next new thing.  Most can wait and usually do. Sometimes years. There are many reasons for this, from not understanding the new technology, being cautious and skeptical about its value to them, being intimidated, not being able to afford it, or just not caring.

The table below shows just how long it took with other products.  The CD player and VCR, as examples, took ten years to reach a fifty percent penetration of US homes.

We can argue that with social media, the speed of information, and a technically more proficient population, adoption might move faster today. But our expectations are now higher, we’re more skeptical, and it often takes more to impress.

That hasn’t stopped companies’ efforts to get us excited about their new tech. We’re being inundated with news every day. Examples are self-driving cars – even some that fly, artificial intelligence, and virtual and augmented reality.

Much of the news is promoted by the companies themselves to raise investments, increase their valuation, or to scare away their competitors, all while exaggerating the time to commercialization

Just last week Uber announced an investment in a company developing flying cars. It played well on the national news that quoted a company official that they roll out a network of flying cars in Dallas by 2020. Last year Uber said they were already employing self-driving cars, when, in fact, they still have one or two employees in each car. Two years ago, Amazon demonstrated drone delivery. Yet these technologies are still years away.

Today it’s hard to open Facebook or a technology blog without seeing examples of virtual and augmented reality. We’re seeing demos from scores of companies around the world, each vying for moments of fame. We see all sorts of clever uses of how this technology will help us in education, medicine, shopping, and computing as if it’s just around the corner. Yet much of this will evolve slowly and take years to be significant.

If the past is any indication, the first-generation products will not be commercially successful, but more of a proof of concept. No one will wear huge goggles outside of their home. Enabling technologies still need to be developed, including smaller components, miniaturized optics, and faster processors to enable these devices to be practical. More importantly, new tools and an infrastructure are needed for creating affordable content.

Yes, we’ll see some small examples when we point our phone at a restaurant or a product and see reviews and can buy with a click. Tim Bajarin correctly pointed out in this piece that he doesn’t expect to see VR adopted widely for at least 5-7 years.

The point here is not to be discouraging about innovation, but to realize that it’s a long and difficult road from a prototype or demo to a successful product. The idea is always the easy part.

As we prepare for a surprisingly robust summer season of new hardware technologies to be released to the consumer, both Intel and AMD have moved in a direction that both seems inevitable and wildly premature. The announcement and pending introduction of high core count processors, those with many cores that share each company’s most modern architecture and design, brings with it an interesting combination of opportunity and discussion. First and foremost, is there a legitimate need for this type of computing horsepower, in this form factor, and secondly, is this something that consumers will want to purchase?

To be clear, massive core count CPUs have existed for some time but in the server and enterprise markets. Intel’s Xeon line of products have breached the 20-core count in previous generations and if you want to dive into Xeon Phi, a chip that uses older, smaller cores, you will find options with over 70 cores. Important for applications that require a significant amount of multi-threading or virtualization, these were expensive. Very expensive – crossing into the $9000 mark.

What Intel and AMD have begun is a move to bring these high core count products to consumers at more reasonable price points. AMD announced Threadripper as part of its Ryzen brand at its financial analyst day, with core counts as high as 16 and thread counts of 32 thanks to SMT. Then at Computex in Taipei, Intel one-upped AMD with its intent to bring an 18-core/36-thread Skylake-X CPU to the new Core i9 lineup. Both are drastic increases over the current consumer landscape that previously capped out at 10-cores for Intel and 8-cores for AMD.

Let’s first address the need for such a product in the world of computing today. There are many workloads that benefit easily from multi-threading and consumers and prosumers that focus in areas of video production, 3D rendering/modeling, and virtualization will find single socket designs with 16 or 18 cores improve performance and scalability without forcing a move to a rackmount server infrastructure. Video encoding and transcoding has long become the flagship workload to demonstrate the power of many-core processors. AMD used that, along with 3D rendering workloads in applications like Blender, to demonstrate the advantages of its 8-core Ryzen 7 processors in the build up to their release.

Other workloads like general productivity applications, audio development, and even PC gaming, are impacted less by the massive core quantity increases. And in fact, any application that is heavily dependent on single threaded performance may see a decrease in overall performance on these processors as Intel and AMD adjust clock speeds down to fit these new parts into some semblance of a reasonable TDP.

The truth is that hardware and software are constantly in a circular pattern of development – one cannot be fully utilized without the other. For many years, consumer processors were stuck mostly in a quad-core rut, after an accelerated move to it from the single core architecture days. The lack of higher core count processors let software developers get lazy with code and design, letting the operating system handle the majority of threading operations. Once many-core designs are the norm, we should see software evolve to take advantage of it, much as we do in the graphics market with higher performance GPUs pushing designers forward. This will lead to better utilization of the hardware being released this year and pave the road for better optimization for all application types and workloads.

From a production standpoint Intel has the upper hand, should it chose to utilize it. With a library of Xeon parts built for enterprise markets already slated for release this year and in 2018, the company could easily bring those parts to consumers as part of the X299 platform rollout. Pre-built, pre-designed and pre-validated, the Xeon family were already being cannibalized for high-end consumer processors in previous generations, but Intel capped its migration in order to preserve the higher prices and margins of the Xeon portfolio. Even at $1700 for the 10-core 6950X processor, Intel was discounting dramatically compared to the Xeon counterpart.

Similarly, AMD is utilizing its EPYC server product line for the Threadripper processors targeting the high-end consumer market. But, AMD doesn’t have large market share of workstation or server customers to be concerned about cannibalization. To them, a sale is a sale, and any Ryzen or Threadripper or EPYC sold is an improvement to the company’s bottom line. It would surprise no one if AMD again took an aggressive stance on pricing its many-core consumer processors, allowing the workstation and consumer markets to blend at the top. Gaining market share has taken precedent over margins for AMD; it started as the initiative for the Polaris GPU architecture and I think it continues with Threadripper.

These platforms will need to prove their value in the face of dramatic platform requirements. Both processor vendors are going to ship the top performing parts with a 165-watt TDP, nearly double that of the Ryzen and Kaby Lake desktop designs in the mainstream market. This requires added complexity for cooling and power delivery on the motherboard. Intel has muddied the waters on its offering by varying the number of PCI Express lanes available and offering a particular set of processors with just four cores, half the memory channels and 16 lanes of PCIe, forcing platforms into convoluted solutions. AMD announced last week that all Threadripper processors would have the same 64 lanes of PCIe and quad-channel memory support, simplifying the infrastructure.

With that knowledge and assumption in place, is higher core count processing something that the consumer has been asking for? Is it just a solution without a problem? The truth is that desktop computers (and notebooks by association) have been stuck at 4-cores in the mainstream markets for several years, and some would argue artificially so. Intel, without provocation from competent competing hardware from AMD, has seen little reason to lower margins at the expense of added performance and capability in its Core line. Even the HEDT market, commonly referred to as the E-series (Broadwell-E, Ivy Bridge-E and now Skylake-X) was stagnant at 8-cores for longer than was likely necessary. The 10-core option Intel released last year seemed like an empty response, criticized as much for its price ($1700) then praised for its multi-threaded performance.

AMD saw the opportunity and released Ryzen 7 to the market this year, at mainstream prices, with double the core count of Intel Core parts in the sub-$400 category. The result has been a waterfall of an effect that leads to where we are today.

Yes, consumers have been asking for higher core processors at lower prices than they are currently available. Now it seems they will have them, from both Intel and AMD. But pricing and performance will have the final say on which product line garners the most attention.

Over the past few months, there has been a lot of talk about the future of transportation; from the car as a service to self-driving cars. We seem to be expecting many changes that will redefine how we get from point A to point B.

Ride-share companies Uber and Lyft have grown in popularity capturing consumer dollars and press attention, although not always for the right reasons. If making a brand a verb is a measure of success and awareness, then Uber made it as “Uber it” seats quite happily with “Google it”.

Having presenters on tech conference stages talk about how millennials will only want an Uber account, not a car or judging by how many people we know to use these services and are anxiously waiting for their driving days to be over, might not be the best way to access how realistic or inclusive this future is.

At Creative Strategies, we just conducted a study across 1,000 US consumers of their preferences when it comes to commuting as well as their expectations about the future of it. The key takeaway is brands and industry watchers might want to consider the reality of how America feels about this topic is not dissimilar to how America felt about the recent US presidential election. Urban vs. rural, millennials vs. baby-boomers, higher income vs. lower income, male vs. female. All play a role in separating reality from fantasy.

Ride Sharing Services are Growing Thanks to a Few

If you look at where most Uber and Lyft users (based on the app phone usage) are coming from, it is quite easy to spot an income gap in the userbase. 31% of Uber app usage and 24% of Lyft app usage over the last quarter of 2016 came from American consumers falling in the top 25% income bracket.

In our research, only 18% of the consumers interviewed said they use Uber. Another 4% stated they use Lyft. Interestingly, 7.5% stated they shifted from Uber to Lyft as Uber has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. As one would expect, usage grows among early tech adopters. 29% of them say they use Uber with 8% saying they use Lyft. What is also interesting, however, is this market segment seems to be even more sensitive to the news surrounding Uber. An extraordinary 25% said they switched from Uber to Lyft. Millennials who, as a group, are usually portrayed as having a high social responsibility, do not seem to be impacted by the negativity surrounding Uber as only 11% said they shifted away to use Lyft.

The majority of Americans still own a car (82% to be exact) and another 9% have access to one they share with a family member. Ownership declines slightly among millennials to 72%, while car sharing rises to 14%. When it comes to planning their commute, only 4% will consider whether to drive their car or use a ride-share service and another 2% would consider whether to use a car service or a ride-share service.

It seems safe to say the death of car ownership is highly exaggerated.

Design Trumps Safety and Environment

I have been arguing for quite some time that, while we wait for self-driving cars to get to market, there is a lot of value car manufacturers can deliver, especially around safety. Sadly, however, safety is not the primary factor that drives consumers’ purchase. Design beats safety 50% to 24%. Safety is even less of a priority among early tech adopters. 55% mention design as the key driver and only 10% mention safety.

Safety was, however, on the minds of those consumers planning to replace their car over the next 12 months. 49% indicated blind spot warning systems, 49% mentioned parking cameras and 36% said auto-braking for collision avoidance were all things they were looking at. Although those potential buyers might not see these individual features as adding to their safety, they certainly do. The fact consumers do not think of these features as safety ones is interesting, as it could pose a challenge on how to advertise them in a commercial, calling more for an individual show and tell than an overarching claim of safety.

Fully electric cars score high with early tech adopters. 52% see fully electric capability as a key feature of their next car. Only 17% of the supposed environmentally conscious millennials prioritize a fully electric car for their next purchase.

Early Tech Adopters, not Millennials, are Ready for Self-Driving Cars

Big brands like Apple, Google, Tesla and more might all be in the race to deliver self-driving cars but consumers are certainly not holding their breath.

Only 11% of the consumers we interviewed said they are looking forward to computers taking over the driving and 29% stated they would never be seen in a self-driving car. Interestingly, 21% trust the technology but believe regulations will take a long time to make self-driving cars a reality. Early tech adopters are more open to the idea, with 29% looking forward to having computers take over driving and another 26% looking forward to using the time to catch up on reading or other content.

Who consumers trust with bringing to market a reliable self-driving car is not a done deal, at least when it comes to the runner-up brands. Tesla is the winner across all segments but the number two and three spots change quite a bit, depending on the group you are looking at. Overall, 28% of consumers believe in Tesla while 24% believe it will be a traditional car manufacturer. Among early tech adopters, the support goes to more tech brands, with Apple at 30% and Google at 17% but Tesla still best encapsulating the blend between cars and tech with 34%. Millennials also see Tesla as the brand most likely to deliver a reliable self-driving car. 38% in the group mentioning the Tesla brand. The number two choice is Google at 23% followed by traditional car manufacturers at 15% and Apple at 13%. Women hold almost similar faith in traditional car manufacturers (28%) as they do Tesla (27%). With men, the split between the two is 22% to 28% for Tesla.

I am not surprised consumers don’t have it all figured out when it comes to the future of commuting. A world where we no longer own cars and rely on self-driving ones when we are a passenger is quite different from today. A challenge for all involved though, when it comes to brand trust and intent, is that consumers are certainly influenced by how vocal companies are about their plans.

Imagining the Future of Commuting is Harder than Imagining the Future of Computing

How consumers feel about cars and their commute today, coupled with the uncertainty about artificial intelligence taking over from humans, shows how imagining how different our commute will be in 10 years is more complicated than thinking we could take our phone or PC outside of our home or office. Harder not only because it questions our beliefs in technology but because it wants to change habits and practices that have been set for decades. Think about waiting to turn 16 or 18 to get your driving license and how life empowering it is getting your first car. How can getting your own Uber account make up for that? How can you trust a computer in a car not to crash as much as your PC or phone does and knowing your life and the life of others depends on it? Big questions I am not sure consumers have answers for yet.

If you ask ten different organizations what digital transformation is, you will likely get ten different answers. As is often the case, the answer depends on where each organization is in the process of integrating technology into their workflow. Many believe digital transformation means to get rid of paper, which of course is an oversimplification and not entirely the point. Others believe it is about using technology to do the same things we have always done. In other words, much of the focus is on digital and not so much on transformation.

Mobile was a Test Run

Let’s be honest, enterprise did not see mobile coming. Sure, they saw mobile phones but the impact smartphones would have on their IT department and business was never clearly understood until it was upon them. Smartphones were the start of employees’ empowerment. Carrier subsidies took away the cost barrier for the latest technology, making it accessible to the masses and those masses wanted to use that technology at work, not just at home.

“Bring Your Own Device” (BYOD) could have never been a trend when technology was so expensive only a few could afford it. We went from wanting to take home the PC we used at work to bring to work the smartphone we used at home. Smartphones were apps’ Trojan horse. Once we had our phones with us in the office, we wanted to continue to use the same applications and services we used at home. So, to BYOD we added BYOA (“Bring Your Own App”) as it was about the overall experience new mobile platforms such as iOS and Android were delivering.

Most organizations went through three phases: denial, resistance, and acceptance. Denial lasted a few years as devices came through the back door, then came a few years of resistance trying to impose mobile device management tools to limit what users could do, all in the name of security. Finally, we got acceptance with iOS now present in most Fortune 500 organizations recording a satisfaction rate of 96%.

The Rise of Millennials in the Workforce

What played to enterprise’s favor, at least a little, was the fact not everyone in their organizations, especially their C-suites, was quick to adopt these new devices and apps. That digital divide is going away faster and faster as new graduates get hired and younger managers move up the corporate ladders.

According to the U.S Census Bureau, millennials surpassed Generation X as the largest part of the American workforce back in 2015. Projections put millennials as comprising more than one of three adults in America by 2020 and 75% of the workforce by 2025.

It goes without saying millennials are very tech savvy. But the differences with baby boomers do not end there. Research has shown boomers identify their strengths as hardworking, optimistic, and used to navigating in organizations with large corporate hierarchies, rather than flat management structures and teamwork-based job roles. Millennials are quite drastically different: well educated, self-confident, multi-taskers who prefer to work in teams rather than as an individual and have a good work/life balance.

A recent study by Merrill Edge showed millennials have very different priorities in life compared to boomers. With the focus on personal achievements, millennials want to work at their dream job (42% vs. 23%) and travel the world (37% vs. 21%).

What is a Millennial’s Dream Job?

At Creative Strategies, we asked over 1,400 18 to 24 years old in the US what would make them not choose a company to work for after they were offered a job. While 35% were just happy to get a job, 46% would see not being able to work flexible hours as a dealbreaker. 21% would walk away from a job that did not let them use a smartphone for work in conjunction with their laptop or desktop, while another 17% could not tolerate an IT department that restricts what can be done with a smartphone. Finally, 14% could not be in a job that did not offer collaboration practices that fit their desired workflow, such as using apps like Google Docs or Slack, as well as video conference support.

Workflow is different for millennials. Aside from prioritizing collaboration, 65% said their preferred method to communicate is messaging apps. When it comes to collaboration, Google reigns supreme with 81% of US millennials regularly using Google Docs, 62% Google search, 59% Google Mail. Outside of Google, Apple iMessage scored the highest, with 57% of millennials saying they regularly rely on it, followed by Microsoft Word with 51%.

When it comes to devices, given a choice of laptop brands by their employer, there are only two brands that seem to matter: 62% would pick an Apple Mac and 14% would choose a Microsoft Surface Pro. Mobility is also no longer a “nice to have”. 34% of millennials say it is extremely important that the software, services and business processes they use for work are available on mobile as well as on a laptop. Finally, when coming into a job, 46% would prefer to be able to choose what laptop is given to them.

Digital Transformation to Attract and Retain

Transforming your business by embracing technology and the innovation technology empowers when it comes to business models and workflows, is necessary to attract talented employees. If that was not enough of a driver for companies, they should think about where the big spenders will come from. If 75% of the workforce by 2025 will be made up of millennials, where do you think the largest source of revenue will come from for businesses around the US? Where will the buying power be if not with millennials? Businesses will need to embrace digital transformation to deliver what their future customers will want.

On Tuesday, Amazon launched Echo Show. After weeks of speculation, and a few leaked pictures, we finally have it: Alexa has a screen. You can now see music lyrics with Amazon Music, video clips, cameras, live video calls, Prime photos, recipes from YouTube, and more. You can still navigate all of that with your voice despite the 7″ screen being touch-enabled. Priced at $229.99, Echo Show is available for preorders now and ships on June 28th. I had the opportunity to sit through an extensive demo of the device and was surprised at how much I liked the screen.

Show and Tell

When the first rumors around a possible Echo with a screen started to circulate a few months ago, I was quite vocal in my disapproval. My big concern was adding a screen might take away from the voice-first experience Alexa is supposed to deliver. I saw the screen as a big risk at a time when many consumers are easily falling back into old habits which, for most in the home, means going back to typing on our phones.

It seems as though current Echo owners might not be as worried as I was, however. In a recent study Creative Strategies ran in collaboration with Experian, consumers were asked a long list of questions about their current usage preference and satisfaction as well how they felt about some statements aimed at capturing their perception of Alexa and sentiments on possible new features. 20% of consumers strongly agreed and 32% somewhat agree with the following statement: “I wish my Amazon Echo had a screen (to display text or photos, visualize search results etc…).”

When the Amazon team shared the name Echo Show and then proceeded to walk me through the features, it was not difficult to see why they chose that name. The screen is not about watching, displaying, or viewing. It really is about showing some of the things Alexa would take too long to tell you. It is about complementing your experience and still using voice-first as your main input.

My initial concern went away because Echo Show is not trying to be many different things at once or replacing other viewing devices in your homes. It is really all about adding value to Alexa for tasks where showing you the information rather than telling you make sense. So, if you are asking Alexa what the weather in Seattle is, being able to show you the forecast for the next 5 days vs. having Alexa tell you makes more sense. Or being able to show you the trailer of a movie after you ask what is playing at the cinema. For the user, there is no change in behavior required compared to the original Echo.

Want to Say a Quick Hello to the Family? Just Drop In

One feature that has not gotten much coverage, probably because it is difficult to explain if you have not experienced it, is Drop In. With Echo Show and the Alexa app, you can just say “Alexa, drop in on X” and it will make the Echo Show connect via the camera to the home you are calling. The receiver of the call will have 10 seconds to accept or turn off the video while the person who originated the call sees a frosted glass effect. This is clearly not for all your contacts. If you would not like a person to drop by at your front door unannounced, he or she should not be able to Drop In on you either. The fact Amazon has Drop In off by default and the user needs to enable it tells you they do not think of this as central to the experience but as a nice addition for some people.

Personally, I know I will love to drop in on my family when I travel or even on my dogs and cat when we are not home. I also know I can count on one hand the people that will be able to drop in on us. Amazon has taken great care in giving you time to accept the video call as video and audio or audio only but I still think the user needs to figure out what this feature adds to their experience: an easier and more personal way of calling someone or home/pet/older relative monitoring? It is about the quality of your interaction with a few “special” people rather than the number of people you can share this with.

Although some people might compare Drop in to Google’s Knock Knock, I think the use case is quite different as Drop in is not the main way you will communicate with people through Alexa but it might be the preferred one when it comes to a select number of people. Adding communications to Alexa was not something our panel felt as strongly about as having a screen but there was certainly an interest. When asked how they felt about the statement: “I would be interested in using my Echo like a phone to communicate with others”, only 11% strongly agreed and another 24% somewhat agreed. The less clear stand on adding communication capabilities to Alexa has more to do with how much we rely on our phones for communication. As we are not planning to go without a phone anytime soon, Alexa might seem a little superfluous to some.

Priced to Sell

At $229.99 and two for $349.99, Echo Show is aggressively priced. Some might think this is Amazon just trying to get ahead of Google, Microsoft and possibly Apple’s upcoming announcements in the space. However, I believe this is Amazon continuing on its path to make sure we have as many Echo devices as possible. It is quite clear from our data Echo owners are using different devices in different rooms already. While Echo seems to reign supreme in the kitchen (35%) and the living room (23%), Echo Dot fits first and foremost in the bedroom (24%) and then in the living room and kitchen equally (18%).

The speakers in Echo Show are meant to be even better than the original Echo but positioning this device in your home might require a bit more planning simply because, while your voice might travel, you do want to make sure Echo Show is where you can best take advantage of the screen. Personally, I think the kitchen counter is the best place because there are many use cases that fit the kitchen — following along on how to prepare a dish or morning briefings that now also support video content. The kitchen, at least for now, is probably the room where Echo Show has the least competition when it comes to screens, giving it the best opportunity to show off its capabilities.

Prioritizing Engagement

The race for the control of the connected home experience is far from over but it is clear Amazon not only had a considerable head-start but it is clearly committed to this space. Nothing says it better than building a portfolio of products with different use cases and price points. Long-term engagement with these devices is critical and discovering skills plays right into that. Alexa has now more than 12,000 skills but let’s not get caught up in the same game we played with App Stores. It is really the quality of those skills, not the quantity that will make the difference to my experience as a user. I hope the screen in the new Echo does not become the star of the Show but the best actor in a supporting role for Alexa.

Last week, Amazon was awarded a patent for an on-demand manufacturing system designed to quickly produce clothing and other products — linen and curtains and such — only after they have been ordered. Amazon applied for the patent in late 2015 and, since then, they has been growing their fashion inventory as well as its own clothing brands. According to a Bloomberg report published in September 2016, Amazon was named the biggest online clothing seller. Amazon got to that position by adding items directly proportional to the confidence consumers had in buying online. Starting out with shoes (easy to size) and T-shirts (a relatively modest investment and also easy to size), Amazon grew its range, building from basic items to fashion powerhouse names such as Kate Spade, Vince, Ted Baker, and Michael Kors, just to name a few.

According to a recent report on commerce by GWI, 20% of online consumers in the US bought clothes online in the last quarter of 2016. Another 14% bought shoes. If you don’t think that’s significant, what if I told you that only 14% of consumers bought online the item that “killed” brick and mortar stores: books.

Consumers are becoming more comfortable with buying clothes, shoes, and accessories online but new ways of selling and new technologies can push this market even further by making the whole experience more personal.

Fashion as a Service

Subscription services in shopping have been growing in popularity over the past few years. What in most cases started with organic fruit and vegetables, soon developed to include razors, toothbrushes, dog treats, toys and, more recently, fashion items. Several companies deliver shirts and lingerie on a monthly or quarterly basis to happy but busy customers who like the consistency of a brand they love being delivered to them.

But the model is changing. While Uber and Lyft are getting all the publicity for revolutionizing transport and possibly drive – no pun intended – consumers away from owning cars to simply ordering a car, fashion has also been moving to a more hybrid subscription rental service. Le Tote is a good example of a successful service. They deliver a tote with items based on style and fit as well as personal preferences. You wear anything in your tote for as long as you want, then send it back when you are done, ready for a new order. If there is something you like, you can keep it and buy at a discounted price.

The ability to change your wardrobe collection often with trendy clothes that fit your lifestyle needs coupled with the convenience of delivery is certainly something busy women, or women who do not enjoy the shopping, experience can appreciate. Adding further customization to the fit of the clothes would drive more people to try this kind of service and is where new technologies such as AR and connected sensors can play a role.

Visual Computing and the Buying Experience

With Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality coming to our phones and PCs, we see the potential for shopping experiences to be redefined. For example, being able to see on your walls how a color you picked will go with your furniture, size a new sofa in your family room or try your new car on for size without having to go to a dealership, is becoming a reality thanks to VR.

The possibilities are endless and fashion can benefit from this too. Already today there are apps that allow you to try an item on, such as glasses or a hat, via a picture of you. There have also been services that will ask you questions about your size, weight, ethnicity, pants, and collar sizes then offer what they claim is the closest thing to a tailored garment. Some use a combination of the two methods and marry your inputted information with your picture to come up with a custom solution. Custom clothing company MTailor takes it a step further and offers an app that can measure you with the camera on your phone and deliver custom shirts, suits, and jeans.

These solutions have been relying on 2D pictures and inputted info which have plenty of room for error. With smart fabric and sensors being added to clothing, there are more options now to properly measure size and use that information to find the right clothing. LikeAGlove started a couple of years ago to use leggings to measure your shape and then transfer the data to an app. Aimed at people who are on a fitness program to lose weight, they claim to better measure your progress compared to a scale that would not help you measure how your body shape changes as you lose the pounds. The app also offers help in finding the jeans brands and models that best fit your shape.

If you combined sensors for shape tracking and AR, you could see how certain designs would look on you and then have them tailored to your shape then custom-made and delivered. Amazon announced today Echo Look, an Alexa-enabled camera that lets you take pictures and short videos using built-in LED lighting and a depth-sensing camera with computer vision-based background blur. Echo Look will let you see yourself from every angle and offer a second opinion, thanks to AI, on which outfit is best as well as suggest brands and items based on the images you collect in your style book.

Bots and Digital Assistants as Stylists

With so many businesses focusing on bots and big ecosystem players focusing on Digital Assistants, I would expect both will be able to serve my needs when it comes to shopping for clothes and accessories. Store-dedicated bots could help navigate through the latest collections or cross-store bots could fetch the item I want/need at the best price and delivery option. Offering a personal shopper that has information about your tastes, as well as look and size, could be a differentiation customers are either prepared to pay for or see as an added benefit in an all-included service. The focus here would be more on an actual shopping experience rather than on tailored clothing for those consumers who do enjoy shopping online and like to do so efficiently but, most importantly, they want to know they bought what best fits their needs.

For a more customized experience that shifts from a personal shopper to a “lady in waiting”, think how great it would be if my assistant could suggest my daily outfit based on weather and the appointments on my calendar. That would be the perfect solution to busy people who do not want to default to having to wear a gray t-shirt every day.

There is no question technology will continue to change the way I shop for clothes. What I want is for tech to help me find what I need, what fits, and what is best priced, all nicely wrapped up in a box, delivered to my door. Tech might still fail to make me a fashionista but it would have succeeded in making me a very happy shopper.

Schools are supposed to develop skills and capabilities while encouraging kids to “think differently” and maximize their abilities. Sadly, most schools are failing to do so today. The reasons rest within curricula that are not keeping up with the pace of change our world is undergoing, teachers set in their ways with little support to embrace change, and technology thrown in for good measure often without a clear purpose. In other words, schools continue to operate on fulfilling the needs of an Industrial Age student rather than preparing students for the Information Age.

Some look at the layout of an average classroom used today and argue that education has changed a lot. They go as far as to say the entrenched teacher-centered methods have become a hybrid one that incorporates a student-centered approach. While this is true, the change towards this hybrid approach might relate more to the need to deal with a larger number of students in one class than a real change towards fostering collaboration and critical thinking among students.

The World Economic Forum produced a report in early January called:“The Future of Jobs”. The report looks at what the employment landscape will look like in 2020. After talking to chief human resources and strategy officers from leading global employers, the authors listed the top 10 skills for 2020 and compared them to what was required in 2015:

By the time my third grader will be looking for a job, the change will be even more dramatic. She will have to be ready for what the World Economic Forum calls the “Forth Industrial Revolution that is characterized by a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital, and biological spheres”.

Technology: Friend or Foe?

One cannot talk about how education is changing without assessing the role technology should have in the classroom. Some blame technology, and often the parents in particular who act as facilitators for empowering children (especially in K-12) with knowledge. Apparently, having kids learn through apps puts teachers at a disadvantage in the classroom because they are now faced with students who show different levels of knowledge and skills. It also puts pressure on teachers to rely more on technology, not something many necessarily feel comfortable with. As you can sense from my tone, I don’t think this is a bad thing. I am sure that, to some extent, this is a similar effect TV had on my generation or libraries and newspapers with previous generations. The big difference today is it’s not just about acquiring knowledge. It is about learning in a different way which, I would argue, does put pressure on teachers. Pressure to relate to children in a different way. The same pressure many employers are facing as Millennials, and Gen Z after them, join the workforce.

The main reason why technology creates a challenge is that schools are focused on standardization, not customization. From teaching to tests, schools today are about students fitting a mold and falling within pre-determined parameters that leave little room for individuality, let alone creativity and critical thinking.

Ironically, technology could empower teachers to embrace customization by allowing for a more tailored teaching approach. Children would be able to work more at their own pace, allowing students who are underperforming to focus on improving while letting students who are more advanced to be challenged, resulting in a more engaged class overall.

Adding Devices is not the Same as Integrating Technology

Today, however, most schools use technology, not to transform teaching, but rather to fit around traditional teaching methods, and in most cases, substitute what used to be done on a piece of paper.

Good or bad, children are learning in a very different way today. Children who have access to technology and games such as Minecraft learn a new kind of creativity, one that has no physical limits. If you spend a few minutes talking to your Minecraft-obsessed child (like mine), you can see these pixelated worlds teach them about different materials, food, resource management, project planning, teamwork (if they use multiplayer), problem-solving, responsibility, and accountability for their animals. A whole host of YouTube program–like Mineflix–is also teaching kids how they can learn and express themselves through storytelling which plays a huge role in modern gaming. Children learn more about their world and their building options and try it out themselves. The virtual manipulation Minecraft allows is like Lego creativity on steroids. I am clearly not alone in believing there is something in Minecraft that benefits education. Microsoft created the Minecraft Education Edition and teachers who have used it speak of higher engagement, collaboration, experimentation and a greater sense of accomplishment.

Embracing tools like Minecraft Education Edition can pivot the learning environment from teacher-centered to student-centered, where students not only teach other students but they can help teachers learn. These new methods can help the transition from a textbook-driven method to a research-driven one, from passive learning to active learning, from a fragmented curriculum to an integrated and interdisciplinary one, much like the skills the workplace will require.

There is so much transformational tech coming that I fear schools will miss out if they do not start thinking about integrating it now. Augmented and virtual reality are at the top of the list for how impactful they could make learning science, geography or even history lessons.

Tech, of course, is not just about learning per se but about data analytics as well. Being able to analyze data in real time will have a tremendous effect on teaching methods and help with change. Think about how powerful it is to have insights about students, especially the ones that are “at risk,” so you can actively adapt your planning and teaching activities. For students, the ability to measure their progress with their personal goals would also be motivational and engaging.

Preparing Our Children for an AI-Driven World

Technology is actively transforming the world today and will continue to do so whether schools are ready for it or not. As artificial intelligence grows in importance for tech companies around the world, our education system should focus on giving our children the skills they need to have a successful career when they grow up. This starts with acknowledging the skill sets my generation were taught (and served me well) are no longer critical for my daughter. Critical thinking and problem-solving are the first steps towards coding. Learning how to communicate effectively is at the center of successful collaboration and leadership.

The reason schools are important in this process is unless education takes on the accountability to integrate technology and prepare our children for their future, the divide we see today between classes will only widen.

I am worried about the prospects my child will have in the future, and I am one of the lucky parents who can afford to provide technology to my child. I am a concerned parent in the heart of Silicon Valley with a third grader who is attending a private school. If I am concerned and I live in the bubble, what is it like for children across the country?

At nine years old, she has her own iPad, and a Windows 2-in-1 and has been fortunate enough to have tried VR and new devices such as Amazon Echo that teach her to interact with different computing devices using her voice. I am well aware I am the exception, and when you look at how technology is distributed today, it is anything but an equal opportunity. Tablet penetration is still limited for the most part to households with $100,000 incomes and up. Smartphones are, for many Hispanic and Black Americans, the only way to access the internet due to lack of broadband access in their home.

Schools must close the technology gap, and they need to do so in a meaningful way, not just using tablets and Chromebooks as an alternative to a book or as a time filler. Of course, schools are not going to be able to do that on their own. Funds are needed for acquiring the technology and maintaining it. More importantly, funds and support are needed to allow teachers to learn. A complex process I realize, but one we cannot postpone.