I am just back from CES 2018 and found myself trying to sort through that experience of hobnobbing with 184K of my closest friends. What did I see or experience that really mattered to me? There are plenty of great recaps of what was shown and what happened at CES 2018. One of my favorites is the CNET CES 2018 hub. When we attend, I always appreciate the briefing that CNET’s Brian Cooley does for our team. He’s a great analyst and guide.
So while I could talk about the neat bits and bobs in the Smart Home category like Kohler’s Alexa-powered mirror or Vivint’s increasingly big booth; or Samsung’s 146” snap tech TV; or the autonomous Lyft ride; I am going to think ahead towards some simple wishes.
The event is exhilarating and tiring, and I prefer to surrender to optimism and look ahead to what might be.
Here are my 4 wishes coming out of CES 2018:
Big Vision Like Ford’s Living Street Gets Rewarded by Wall Street
“If you can change the street you can change the world” said Jim Hackett, CEO of Ford during the main keynote at CES 2018 (watch it here).
The vision is about restoring cities and a shared sense of belonging sacrificed by tech starting with the advent of the highway ‘operating system’ if not the automobile, itself. We need to harness tech to improve lives and restore a sense of community.
The Living Street vision combines car and infrastructure IoT. It includes the Transportation Mobility Cloud (TMC) – an open and collaborative platform; Cellular Vehicle to Everything (CV to X) – a partnership with Qualcomm to leverage the direct communications of 700K vehicles on the road; and self-driving business model(s) – establishing an API-led approach being tested with the Postmates delivery service, Dominoes and Lyft.
Jim delivered an inspiring and aspirational message at a show dominated by gadget geeks. A tech-rendered view of a new urban utopia seemed to spin off the architect’s CAD system onto a ribbon of video screens behind him that were reminiscent of the very roadways that need a re-think. (all thanks to Alex McDowell, production designer extraordinaire.)
Mr. Hackett cited physicists and ethicists as his close friends and influences. He made it clear that he thinks about some heady stuff.
I was inspired. I appreciated that he had ‘purpose’ at the heart of the thinking – craft or restore our vital cities towards vibrant and healthy communities. Ford partners with other great brands who are deeply expert in what they do. That type of brand collaboration provides a competitive edge and also telegraphs a healthy humility that Ford cannot figure this out on their own.
If Jim Hackett, CEO of Ford does not show off some commercially appetizing vehicles at the follow-on event, the North American International Auto Show, he may not have a long enough tenure at Ford to see The Living Street actually come to life.
He must sell cars and trucks today to hold onto investor confidence. I hope that the Ford stock retains value and grows. I am a customer. I hope Wall Street rewards the vision and that Mr. Hackett continues with strong vehicle sales now to fund this future vision.
The Smart Home and AI Lead to an Anticipatory Environment
Smart Home tech was everywhere. There were more sensors of every variety, cameras combined with light bulbs and robots, and applications against more and more use cases from showers to kitchens to litter boxes.
Often demos of these products began with the opening of an app on smart phone. Increasingly it began with a voice-command to either Alexa or Hey Google. The possibilities and modality in the apps was impressive. Still, after the third swipe or button-click to turn something on in the home or the awkward voice command, “Alexa, open the blah, blah, blah skill...,” I just get a little tired.
The tech hobbyists have the patience to establish “scenes” which bundle several actions together. Blurt out, “Alexa, night time,” and you could dim lights, lock the front door, turn the room temperature down and more.
But I want that to all happen automatically when I walk in the door - because I have done it before, it’s Tuesday night, and it’s what I like. We need the tech to anticipate us and drop the cognitive load to zero – or as close to zero as possible. I want control and simplicity and not necessarily in that order.
By combining artificial intelligence and the machine learning within it, smart tech can teach itself what experience to manifest based upon my behavior, not twelve button clicks in an app.
Brain Cooley (@briancooley) mentioned ViaRoom, an AI-powered hub-of-hubs meant to learn your habits. I expect Google, Apple and Amazon, at least, to offer their own versions of this intelligence going forward.
Technology that accurately anticipates needs will be a leap forward.
Marketing Becomes True Customer Experience
CES is not a marketing show. The marketing “hub” at Tech South was particularly scattered and anemic this year. Still, the event is great for brand marketers. We want to get glimpses of innovation in consumer’s lives, talk with smart people who are working to bring those innovations to market, learn from others what may be next, discover new potential channels or how consumers are or will be spending their time, and more.
Still, some marketers are just trying to understand where to put their ads on a smart fridge or a dual screen smart phone.
Interruptive advertising may really be in its last legs. Joe Marchese (@joemarchese) from Fox developed a POV that we ought to be planning marketing around a fixed asset – people’s available attention. His Attention Rate Card is a way to scale, buy and sell access to customers. He takes an old idea – the attention economy – and breathes new life through the practical lens of how we purchase media. In this model, we can buy access but we must earn the attention by delivering real value to the customer/prospect. We earn that attention by being genuinely relevant and useful to people, not finding new ways to wedge in ad messages.
I love marketing. But it’s time for it to become “customer experience” where everything we do to sell the right product or service at the right time to the right customer becomes an authentic value to that customer. Either we reminded them of a product when they were truly shopping, or the brand provides a service and becomes relevant or we help them accomplish something important.
If we accept a broad view of ‘customer experience’ as our relationship starting before we even know that customer through acquisition and loyalty and ahead to losing that customer and winning them back, then marketing needs to become that big view of customer experience.
It’s a semantic change. I get it. But the line between marketing and customer experience needs to go away. And we are more apt to see customer experience as being in service to the customer and, therefore, all about delivering value. That’s what marketing needs to be going forward.
AI-powered Virtual Agents Become the New Interface
Judging by posters and billboards around Vegas, it was easy to see that the battle is on between Hey Google and Amazon’s Alexa to become the dominant voice interface or agent inside of everything. Alexa seems to have a bit of a momentary advantage, yet most of the bets I heard were on Google to win.
But voice is only part of the story. CNET’s Brian Cooley (@briancooley ) showed a slide on virtual agent dominance beyond voice and Google owned the lion’s share of that pie chart. Next up is virtual agent plus artificial intelligence.
Whether it’s the spoken question or the typed phrase or the submitted image, the new ability to have machines learn your intent and give you the most useful answer could change how many interfaces are designed going forward.
Think about Web sites. Most are designed with three basic interfaces: navigation, browse and search. Users can try to click through a navigation hierarchy to get to something they need. They can browse pages to discover something relevant. Finally, they can use the site search to find something they need.
Site search is the closest interface to AI agents in a chat format. Most brand sites are organized around products and search results reflect that. If you are not familiar with what a product is called, your search will be frustrating. Never mind that most brands under invest in the quality of their site search.
Imagine a robust AI chat interface where you can type in the question you are trying to answer (or speak it into the microphone) and immediately get an answer and relevant link to the best content. Web sites become an AI chat window plus a beautiful way to browse. Find something specific quickly or simply browse for ideas and inspiration. That’s it.
No more big, spidery Web sites. No more product manuals. No more keyword search. Perhaps.
Here's another interesting POV on the interface topic: Why Google A.I. is the last user interface (Computerworld – Mike Elgan, @MikeElgan )
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