We're here to talk about
the thoughtful home, but
what is a thoughtful home
what does this mean? What is a thoughtful
home? Well, you know, a thoughtful
home is not just about the people
inside it but it's about the
products, or the way we think about
it, the products inside it. So
long and for so many years
you know, I've been living
since I was a kid with basically
the same infrastructure products
You know, we've seen things like
being the same
for decades. But I've seen so
much massive change in
you know, televisions,
in connectivity and telephony in
the home, but many of the other things
in our house haven't changed. So
what we've done, because
of the processing and
the cost reductions
that smart phones have brought
to the world in terms of connectivity
as well as compute power
we're able to then instil
these different objects inside
of our home with that power
to then make them connected
and hopefully reinvent
them in a new way. So for
us, you know, we created the Nest learning
thermostat. And now through
that, and we're in many countries
in the world now, we've been able to
help people save energy
individually and also collectively
Somewhere around 4 billion
kilowatt hours have already been
saved. That's equivalent to
over 30 minutes of the entire
US energy consumption
right? And we saved it and people
are still living comfortably. You know, when
we want to talk about energy efficiency
we don't have to go live in a cave
we can go and, you know, use products
that actually make it easy to
save energy while still keeping
us comfortable. People have been talking about the
connected home for quite a while
I've attended many conferences where
I've seen talking refrigerators
and whatnot. Yes. How do you
make the, kind of
interaction between consumers
and actual human beings
and these devices in the home
meaningful in some way? How
are you doing it at Nest? Well
you know, we were pitched, I remember
growing up where it was pitched that
Jetson's world, you know
the home of the future. It came
every decade, there was a new home
of the future and t was always
these things were going to be connected
and they were all going to talk to each other
What we did very simply
was, instead of trying to think
about reinventing every
single product in your home at
once and saying you need to adopt
this whole new way
of living. We just said let's
go product by product
Let's rethink that product
in a smart phone enabled
world, and hopefully you'll
enjoy that one. Then over time
if you buy enough of the
different products, and they don't always have
to be from us, they can start
to work together in a thoughtful
way. So in the case of our thermostat
and our smoke and CO detector
if a CO alarm goes
off in the home
it will automatically turn down
and turn off your boiler
Why, because usually the number
one case in a home for CO
leakage is the boiler. So
it's simply if you just have those
two products on the network they
talk to each other and they start
to work together in ways
that you don't have to programme. Before
it took a lot of technical
ability to make simple
things work. But why start
with a thermostat and a
smoke alarm?
Of all the things we need to solve
in the home,
why go there? I mean
you've worked on the iPod
and the iPhone and
they're judged as some of the sexiest
products ever created. Why start
with these things? Well, that's what my
wife said. She goes, what the iPod
guy making thermostats? It makes
no freaking sense.
But really, if you think about it
when I got married and we had kids, I
started thinking about the future. I
started thinking about energy efficiency
and about the environment and we
started building a home, and
heating and cooling was over
50% of our energy
bill. I said,
these products that control
them today they're horrible. They are ugly
looking, they are hard to use
and they just suck the money out
of our wallets. I was, like, why
is this? So we went back and reinvented
it just to make it better
not just more stylish
on your wall, because you're always
concerned about the things you put in your home
right? You care about the furniture
the wall coverings. Well you
should have things that you admire
and like on your wall, including
the things that control energy
right? So make it attractive
So that was the first thing. Help the
environment, and also help your pocket
at the same time. We thought it was a win
win, win, and
we won you know in terms of
you know, winning over at least the first
set of consumers for the Nest thermostat
Yes, I like the way that the thermostat
in your world tend, from
something that you hide away on a wall
to actually you can put on your mantelpiece
now and becomes a centrepiece. Exactly, you know, we
hope it's artwork. The same thing goes
for safety. Why a smoke detector
Safety.
People die every year because
of CO poisonings and
smoke alarms, because they don't
like them. They beep or they just
don't put them in at all because
they're annoying. So we decided
to make something that's beautiful and
gives you the information and
connects to other products to
help you live a safer
life and it's working. The
number of emails we get every
week by, it saved my
family or it saved our property
It's really rewarding for, not just
me, but for the team. Tony, you're
a bit of a rare creature
in these rare surroundings
that we've got in that you have
the Apple genome, you know
You've spent a lot of time at that
company, focussed on design
worked under Steve Jobs
and
tell us about how your experience
at Apple helped you build Nest
And also how that experience
is now feeding into
what you're doing with Google.
So, for me you know, I
grew up on Apple, Apple II
and all those things.
My very first job was actually
working with the team that designed
the first Macintosh. Without
Steve, but we designed a personal
mobile device. So that was
great, and I learned a lot about
how to design products. I heard
about all the stories, about how
Apple did what it did. But then
actually going to work at Apple
knowing about product design
what I really learned was experience
design and understanding every
consumer touch point, whether
it was at e-commerce
or in retail, understanding
how the message in the marketing
then communicated the values
to the individual customers
of what it did, how customer
support worked. All
of the different customer touch
points
had to be designed, not
just the product. That's the thing
that was the big take away
for me of learnings, and
something we brought to Nest, right
We managed all of those touch
points. Then again, now at Google
we're doing the same thing as
Nest, and various teams
Google actually come and talk to us
all the time. How do you do what you do
We also talk to them about what they
do as well, and learn from each
other. So there's a lot of, you
know, learning through osmosis
inside the organisation
for our skill sets as well as
their skill sets so it's been a really
nice, you know, year and
four months so far. What Google
is known for is this data
driven approach. Spend a lot
of time doing the analytics
to inform them
how to build products. You
come from a very different
world view, I mean, Steve Jobs
and yourself and people
at Apple all say that the consumer
doesn't really know what they want until they
see it.
How are you squaring that
particular circle? So when you make
something new you can't get
data on it. You can't talk
to consumers and say, you know
tell us what you want. Or make
a model and say how would it work
in your life, would you want this? But
after you actually make the first
product and you use all
of your, you know, intuition
as well as your experience
to make that product, then you can
put it in
consumer's homes or when consumers
buy it, then you can use analytics
Then you can ask questions
to that consumer and get powerful
insights, through that data
to help you design the next version
of that product. So for us there
are certain times when you have to
do intuition
and experience based design and
then there's other times to get insights
through data to help you do the next
version. So we have some
amazing and powerful tool
sets inside the company
that allow us to extract these
insights from the data to help us
make the products better so it's
been a really, really nice blend
of the two. And
what are those insights? Give us
some of the insights that you're learning
now as Nest grows and
more people are using them? So, we're
looking at affinity for
the product in terms of, you
know, usage so think about
there are different types of homes
there are different types of families
inside those homes. There could be
you know, single,
how can I say, senior citizens
you know, living in the homes or
it's
a family with young children
or empty nesters
or roommates. What
we can do is, we can get the data
that we collect from the different
products and understand
those real, interesting
differences between homes and
then we're actually able to tweak
the algorithms necessary
to make sure we have a better
learning algorithm for roommates
versus, you know, empty
nesters, versus these young
families so-, and we need
those tools to be able to extract
those insights. It's been really
really wonderful, when we hear
from Demis from DeepMind
about the things that he's doing that
we're actually applying to our stuff
as well. It sounds like
you've been at Google for an
awful long time actually but-
the first time I spoke to you
we had a fifteen
minute conversation just about
a tiny screw that you
put into the original thermostat
and why it was important that it was
this shape and size, and how much
time and focus
you had to do just to make sure that
that was right. Does this mean that you've
had to change a little
bit of your way of working
your process, to incorporate
yourself into the, kind of, Google way
of life?
No, I haven't changed. I think we
have a much larger team and we
have even more experienced designers
around or around the company
to help enable
you know, even more thoughtful
designs but still at the end of
the day, I'm still the editor
I'm still going through the details
I'm just going, why are we doing it this
way? Looking at the websites, looking
at the packaging, all of those
details. Luckily now we have a larger
team so I can spend more and more time
working on product and not worrying
about financing and not worrying
about all the legal issues and HR
issues and those things so that was the big
thing, the reason why we did it was
the fact that
just before the acquisition I was probably
spending 90% of my
time on our infrastructure
instead of product. Now it's flipped
90% of the time on
products and services and 10%
on worrying about the overall business
and the infrastructure needs so
it's been really a wonderful
combination. We've got a limited amount
of time, so I will open the floor to
questions very shortly but
just one last question, we're in Europe, you're
over here, what's exciting
to you over here? Is there anything
that you're looking at and being
particularly attracted to
Well right now, you know, bringing
Nest to all the different homes
in different countries. It's been
mind boggling how different
homes and how people live
in just different countries, just
kilometres away across borders
That's been interesting bythe other one
is just the start up cultures. There
are so many start-ups now
than ever before. I lived in
Paris, you know, five years
ago, just before starting Nest
with our family. There was a very
small, very
nascent start up scene. Now
today the incoming
of
new start-ups has just been
tremendous. Not just in
you know, in home space
but all across the minds. Algorithms
music services as we've seen
all kinds of things. So it's really
invigorating to be here and see
that. It's kind of Silicon Valley
like being created here. Alright, thanks 394 00:12:26,080 --> 00:12:26,060 very much Tony.
Thank you.