How to test an IOT-enabled smart-kitchen concept without building the product?
Jai Thakur
6 replies
I've been toying with an idea for sometime which allows auto reordering of kitchen essentials using IOT and a consumer app.
Spoke to few people and there seems to be many solutions possible. All expensive to prototype, all time consuming as it involves hardware and a beautiful userx.
I am trying to figure out how to proceed on this and looking for suggestions around feasible solutions and ways to do a MVP/prototype in 1-2 months.
One thing I had in mind was a digital design and render of the IOT product along with app mockups and a demo video.
What do you do guys think about this? Is it possible to test market this even without an MVP?
Jai
Replies
Philip Snyder@philipsnyder
I'm quite the cook myself. "auto reordering of kitchen essentials using IOT and a consumer app." - I'm thinking what the hell does this even mean.
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@philipsnyder Amazon Dash Buttons?
@philipsnyder @michaelflux hi,
Let me explain a bit -"auto reordering of kitchen essentials using IOT and a consumer app."
Kitchen containers with weight transducer and comms module which connects with the app on wifi/bluetooth. When container is near empty, the connected app adds stuff to cart, orders stuff to be delivered next morning.
On my question posted here..
I am thinking more like a small video or some landing page with a few product mockups/3d renders, some micro animations, app pages, and a pre-book link. Sell it like the real thing, get enough bookings to validate the idea or refund to move on.
Hope this clarifies a bit.
@philipsnyder @jaithakur
Gotcha, so you're talking exactly the 'Amazon Dash' concept.
TL;DR - Few years ago Amazon launched the concept of "Dash Buttons" which allowed the user to re-order some predetermined product (though you could customise the buttons to whatever product you wanted). e.g. you're running out of laundry detergent, you tap the 'Tide' button, and it automatically orders it for you
As an extension of that concept, to eliminate even the button pressing and automate the restocking, Amazon came out with a concept of "inventory sensors" where the various products could self report and be added to the cart - e.g. a washing machine automatically reordering detergent, or a coffee pod system automatically reordering more coffee pods.
https://web.archive.org/web/2019...
They managed to get quite a few very large companies to sign up for that service, but eventually just merged parts of it into the bigger Alexa ecosystem where I haven't seen it gain much traction while killing off the Dash Buttons entirely.
Fundamentally it's not a bad concept, but the biggest use case challenge that you have to overcome is the same one that is faced by any of the diet tracking apps such as MyFitnessPal, Lifesum, PlateJoy etc. The challenge being that for the app to be truly useful, they do require a significant amount of input from the user.
So in your case, the challenge is that of convenience vs cost - e.g.
1) these sensors/containers are bought by the user, which is then expected to transfer some product to that container, open the app, input the type of product they just placed in it, specify at what threshold they want it to be reordered etc --- more affordable but far more effort to the user which at some point gets to be more effort than it's worth
2) disposable sensors which are built directly into the products being sold - which is marginally more convenient for customers (though they still have to pair/authenticate every product) while it also adds a ton of overhead cost for the manufacturers while creating more ewaste afterwards.
I think it would be a very interesting problem to solve, but the challenge isn't the making of an MVP/demo. The challenge comes when you start breaking down the hundreds of scenarios that a user will encounter where the costs/effort required starts increasing in orders of magnitude which is why so far every company, including those who poured tens of millions of dollars into it, haven't been able to come up with a real solution to the problem.
What’s the high level concept/use case? Hard to advise on such a vague description.
I think it's important to think about practicality and repeatability. For example, what do you need most often in the morning, or when you want to cook, what household appliances or equipment do you need. In general, creating a smart kitchen is not an easy process. I already found some solutions here.