After a nearly blemish-free record that culminated in a $3 billion acquisition by Google, Nest today issued a surprising halt to sales of Protect, its gesture-controlled smoke alarm. One of the device’s key features was that you could wave at it to turn it off. Turns out, sometimes people wave their arms around when there’s a fire in the house, too. Thus, as CEO Tony Fadell put it, “This could delay the alarm going off if there was a real fire.” Oops.
Nest halts sales of Protect
Doing the right thing though.. and they’re really out in front of it.. Only helps their credibility.
One of the main points of “good design” is predicting how something will be used and how users will be able to intuitively do the right thing (or, if somehow possible, require no intervention at all).
A MagSafe connector will disconnect “automatically” before your laptop gets thrown to the floor. No intervention required. Good design.
My car will never close and lock all doors and windows while the key is in close proximity to the steering wheel, but does exactly that when the key is outside the car for a few minutes. Good design.
Now, is waving arms around as a mean to turn a smoke detector off good design? Well, if there is a fire and people are waving arms because of it, they are obviously aware of the fire already and the detector is no longer needed. So, that is not the / a design problem. The problem comes in when to decide how long turning a detector off should last, because a disabled detector is a paperweight. And there is absolutely no technical mean to detect that. You could be cooking or having a cigar for 5 minutes or 2 hours… so when is the alarm supposed to arm itself again?
The answer is simple. You need the right detectors in the right place, and no detector should ever be disengaged. Smoke in a kitchen or a smoking room is normal, you can still use detectors for carbon monoxide or heat, but a smoke detector is nonsense. You want to scan for everything in aisles and staircases, bedrooms and areas which are normally vacant (like cellars) or strictly smoke free. Once you choose the proper detectors for the respective areas, there will be no need to turn them off at any time.
The problem is having a “one size fits all” detector.
This sounds like an excuse. If someone’s waving their arms, they know there’s a fire and the alarm has done its job.
Perhaps a sound component could be added that detects whether people who are waving their arms are also making Jerry Lewis screaming sounds.
From their letter, if you dig in: During recent laboratory testing of the Nest Protect smoke alarm, we observed a unique combination of circumstances that caused us to question whether the Nest Wave (a feature that enables you to turn off your alarm with a wave of the hand) could be unintentionally activated. This could delay an alarm going off if there was a real fire.
They’re worried about pre-human-awareness-of-fire hand-motions unrelated to the actual fire maybe making it not go off fast enough.
In theory. In some very specific case.
I can’t find any data on their site about how long deactivations last, but their FAQs on the feature make it seems like it’s prettty short term.
I read this reaction as “pre-emptive ass-covering”, just on principle.
heheh.