Scott Jensen of Google Reflects on the Proper Focus of IoT Strategy at the IoT Evolution Expo

IoT Evolution Expo 2020 is coming up fast, and we interviewed several of our speakers to get a bit of a preview of what to expect from their sessions.

Here, we spoke to Keynoter Scott Jenson, Product Strategy at Google. He has been doing user interface design and strategic planning for over 25 years. He worked at Apple on System 7, Newton, and the Apple Human Interface guidelines. He was UX director of Symbian, VP of product design for Cognima, managed mobile UX for Google and was a creative director at frog design in San Francisco. Scott returned to Google in November 2013 to lead the Physical Web project. He’s now working on future Android UX concepts.

At IoT Evolution Expo 2020, which is taking place February 11 to 14 in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, his keynote “Stone Knives and Bearskins: What’s holding back our vision of IoT?” will address how he tried to build a “magic” IoT experience and discovered some very hard technical realities. The talk is a reflection on that experience. While we are building interesting IoT products today, they are unfortunately fragile, tedious, and user hostile. We don't stop often enough to reflect on our tools. What are we missing? What do we need? We're so focused on short term product cycles that we don't stop and realize it's harder than it should be. This talk will reflect on Jensen’s “failed” project and what we as an industry could be focusing on instead.

To hear his talk, click here to register.

Here is a little preview of his thoughts:

IoT Evolution: What are some key ideas you plan to cover in your session(s)?

Scott Jensen: How we have 'backed into' our current technology stack. Our tools dictate our vision. Let's back up and uncover what we'd like to see in the next 3-5 years.

IoTE:  What insights do you hope attendees will take home?

SJ: There are a lot of exciting things we can do to improve IoT products, but it will take some patience and *slightly* longer term thinking.

IoTE:  Can you identify a few important trends influencing your sector of the IoT which will shape the path of the industry?

SJ: Phones and email addresses are driving the majority of IoT products today. We can go a bit broader than that.

IoTE:  What are the biggest challenges facing the IoT right now? What are some strategies you recommend to overcome those challenges?

SJ: Short term thinking. We are just trying to 'hackathon our way' to products, we need to think a bit bigger.

IoTE:  What sessions are you most looking forward to attending at the Expo?

SJ: Looking forward to any standards based talks on where we are going. (Editor’s note: Scott, you should check out our panels on Security and Intelligent Analytics and Data Management in Smart City for those Standards discussions.)

Register now for the IoT Evolution Expo and Get 20% off your full conference with code IoTTime and be there for all the information you need to drive your IoT strategy in 2020.