Ever since reading “The Internet of Things and Humans” by Tim O’Reilly, I’ve been thinking a lot about the role of human interaction in automation and connected devices. Ultimately, we want computers to automagically handle as much as possible without any input from us, but algorithms will never perfectly handle every possible scenario and some things are better off with just the right touch of human interaction.
For example, the Nest Thermostat has been driving my wife and I nuts. I don’t want to turn off all the smart features because the whole point of having a Nest Thermostat is for it to try and save us money, but Nest’s learning algorithm is having a hard time with our very irregular schedules (and my wife’s erratic manual overrides during pregnancy). The most frustrating failure was when Nest automatically set the temperature to 78º right in the middle of a party we were hosting.
Even if the learning algorithm were perfect (which it will never be), there are still times when as a human I want something different because of context that Nest will never be able to sense. If I spend the day kayaking and get a sun burn, I may want to sleep with the temperature at 70º. Implicitly providing that input via the Nest app or directly with the thermostat on the wall is the obvious solution for most of those cases, but I’ve also been wondering about opportunities for the Nest to proactively ask for input rather than making assumptions.
The new Nest Channel on IFTTT provides a great opportunity to start experimenting with “curated automation”.
The first obvious step is to just make it easier to control the thermostat. Nest’s app is designed to be a convenient home for anything you want to do with any Nest device you own. And that makes sense, but what I’ve really been wanting is just a 72º button. I tap it and the temperature is set to 72º. That’s now possible with a combination of this Recipe on IFTTT and this action in Launch Center Pro. Here’s a quick demo:
But things get really interesting when using Nest as a trigger on IFTTT to proactively ask for input. It takes 3 separate Recipes on IFTTT (1, 2, 3), but you can now be prompted to take action anytime the temperature goes above 75º (or the Nest is automatically set to Away, or the Nest is automatically set to Home, etc). Here’s a quick demo of how that works:
Another example of this sort of thinking is an IFTTT Recipe I set up to send Instagram posts to Day One on my iPhone. In theory, automatically sending an Instagram post to Day One without any human interaction would be perfect. However, you’d likely want to write something more personal in your journal than you would want to post publicly on Instagram. Here’s an example of adding a point of human interaction to an otherwise automated workflow:
I obviously don’t think these workflows represent the pinnacle of thoughtfully combining automation and human interaction, but I think it’s a fascinating step in the right direction and a great way to start experimenting with curated automation.