AI+Hardware_Internet thinking compared to holistic thinking

Over the years, these concepts have been hot, fearful, and gradually penetrated into the blood of every Internet person.

Are these thinking outdated? not at all.

Just... In this round of AI, it doesn't apply.

After the mobile Internet, it is an era in which AI technology empowers everything. It is an era of combining software and hardware.

The wave of hardware and software integration began in 2014 when Amazon released Echo and gradually spread to China.

Google acquired the HTC mobile phone business in 2017, and held a hardware product conference in the same year to participate in the CES exhibition;

In 2017, Ali and Xiaomi successively released speakers to set off a domestic speaker battle;

In 2018, Baidu’s strategic investment in small fish was at home, and it was released at home in March;

In 2018, the cheetah held a robot night and launched five robots...

AI + hardware, for a while, no fun. I just thought about it after I passed it.

The Internet thinking that was once proud of it is about to become a shackle in the AI ​​era?

how do I say this? Don't be alarmist!

The truth is more and more clarified. Let's start with two noisy hardware conferences in China in 2017 and 2018.

I. Status: Two Internet-based hardware conferences

It is no secret that AI technology requires hardware as a carrier. It’s just this process that Internet companies are not going well.

1, 2017 Baidu World Congress: design first, who pays for instinct?

In November 2017, the Raven released three innovative products at the Baidu World Congress.

The Raven emphasizes that these three products are made by relying on 'intuitive design'.

In the Internet field, there are indeed a lot of exquisitely designed products, such as the note application Bear, the graffiti application Lake and so on. But in the hardware field, even if it is a well-designed Apple, I dare not take a one-sided extreme. From Apple Watch, Airpods to iPhone X, design is an important element, but it is an art of outward exploration and inward trade-offs.

In the Internet field, the difficult design of the product means the development time and labor cost. In the hardware field, the difficult design of the product is followed by a series of problems such as engineering feasibility, performance stability, and product cost. A successful hardware product does not subject self-intuitive intuition to the highest level of product elements.

Whether it is a speaker, an emotional robot or a home robot, there are actually smart products. If we compare the Raven series with the same kind, the skill is high and low.

2, 2018 Cheetah Light Show: When the dream meets pseudo-demand

This phenomenon was again staged in 2018. The well-funded, dreamy cheetah has released five robotic products. It is the same as the Raven release, and it is a 'strategic' product that cannot be landed. Let's avoid the dream and talk about the opposite of these products.

The main sound quality of the Leopard speaker, the opposite is the sound of the HomePod; PPT sound quality, and the sound quality of the user's mouth is good, is two concepts; in order to do a good sound quality, Apple is an acoustic laboratory as early as six years ago, Started research and development. Good sound quality requires engineering polishing.

The 9999 yuan companion robot Leopard Xiaolong, the opposite is the sales-type product How are you. How are you selling more than 2,000, is one of the few survivors of the four-year consumer robot wave. The product founding team has been deeply involved in the education industry for many years and is well versed in the design and selection of children's products. Mobility is cool, but the extra cost is far less valuable than strengthening children's content.

Since the world's first 'five-star service' robot leopard secret, the opposite is the hotel robot of the cloud. At present, most of the service robots are not strong, and the hotel robots with cloud tracks are a small case of practical application. If the guest needs a towel in the room, the cloud robot can automatically go up the elevator and send it in, which reduces the number of times the waiter runs the leg. It is the design principle of service robots that really improves efficiency and brings value.

As for the mobile sales robot leopard hawkers and robotic arms, the concept is nothing new and not far from marketization.

Some people may say that since they have chosen a distant place, they will only care about the wind and rain. Why care about outsiders?

For the spectators, you can think so. But if you are an investor and you are a company employee, you have invested money or youth. Do you still think so?

Hardware products are making decisions. The direction is wrong, a small change will involve cost and hardware selection. It’s half a year to reinvigorate. Where do you take a step by step? Where is the small step run, agile iteration?

Ignoring the cautiousness of the hardware direction, designing robots with the idea of ​​Internet fast-running is perhaps the root of the cheetah-style machine farce. Or maybe, take it as an out-and-out dream show, why bother.

Whether it is Baidu or Cheetah, in the Internet era, there are excellent products, why have they planted on the AI ​​hardware. Do you not work hard, is it not enough resources, is it not intentional? neither. These are not the essence of the problem.

The essence of the problem lies in the deep-rooted Internet thinking.

From the Internet to the mobile Internet, software products have shifted from computers to mobile phones, and the business landscape has been violently fluctuating.

From the mobile Internet to AI hardware, from the Internet ecology to the integration of software and hardware, the changes behind it must be more dramatic!

Behind this change, product design needs to switch from the original Internet thinking to the overall thinking.

Second, the Internet thinking VS overall thinking 1, the underlying differences in product form, created the difference in the thinking of the upper product

Once the underlying logic of the product changes, the product thinking and methodology of the upper layer will change dramatically. In this wave of AI hardwareization, hardware thinking should not be evolved from Internet thinking, but a new overall thinking should be re-introduced from the bottom of hardware products.

To thoroughly understand the difference between the two ways of thinking, we need to dissect the two. From product features, product design, product prices to development mechanisms, compare the differences between the two.

Function: The software product emphasizes to meet the demand, and the hardware product emphasizes the expectation.

Design: The design of the software product emphasizes the user experience. The design of the hardware product emphasizes the overall experience.

Price: The marginal cost of Internet products is zero. But in the hardware field, free is not feasible. For every product sold, it is the physical cost.

Development mechanism: software products are fast-paced, agile development, small-step running. Hardware products are re-decisive, and iterations need to be cycled on an annual basis.

In the above four aspects, we will make a separate explanation below.

2, function: achieve the function VS to achieve expectations

When designing Internet products, one of the main tasks of the product is to design functions to meet the needs. Most of the functions are point and one-off. For example, the comment like function and the song collection function. Once the function is online, it means that this part of the demand is met.

However, in the hardware field, the satisfaction of products often refers to the satisfaction of users.

What is called expectation. You bought a new sports earphone for 500 yuan. The sound quality is the same as your old 500 yuan earphone. The sound quality of this earphone is up to standard. If the new headphones are better than the old ones. Then you may say to others: This headset sounds great!

The sound quality mentioned here refers to its sound quality, which exceeds your expectations. Deviated from the expected reference point, talking directly about the sound quality, like the castle in the air, the mirror and the moon. From this perspective, Raven H said that the sound quality is good, compared with the Sonos 1 at the same price. Regardless of the price, the leap-forward performance is a hooligan.

Unlike the diversity of software features, there are only a handful of core attributes of hardware products. For example, smart speakers, the first attribute is price, sound quality and skills. For headphones, the first level attribute is price, sound quality, and wear. Product functions must be implemented to specific user expectations in order to be quantified and implemented.

In the hardware field, the reason why you don't talk about function implementation is to talk about user expectations. It is because the expectation itself includes not only the function implementation, but also the degree of implementation. The user not only cares about whether there is function or not, but also how much the function is concerned.

In the Internet field, we rarely mention expectations because the products are free, as long as they are, they are good.

Once the customer has lost his pocket, the product itself carries the user's expectations.

If you don't expect it, you will complain; if you expect it, you will feel nothing; if you exceed expectations, you will scream.

Paid and free, the world is different.

In recent years, smart speakers have become popular around the world. When Amazon promoted Echo speakers, it was good at understanding user expectations. At the beginning, when Echo was announced at the end of 2014, the external price was $199. To be honest, this price is very high. At that time, the flagship of the home speaker was Sonos play 1, and the price was also 199 dollars. Although Amazon's internal staff knows that Echo is a revolutionary smart speaker, it can't be compared with traditional speakers! However, consumers don't know that they will only use it as a home speaker, but this speaker will talk.

Amazon's strategy is very smart. In the first half of the year, Echo's pre-sales were for members only and were purchased at half price. In the first half of 2015, no one knew that a revolution in voice interaction was coming. But there are a lot of early adopters, attracted by Echo's low price, and first experienced Echo.

$99, just buy an ordinary speaker, and don't lose money - early Echo user evaluation

Buying a home speaker is the psychological expectation of Echo's early users.

In the second half of 2015, Echo began to sell officially, and Amazon lowered the price to $179.

In terms of sound quality, Echo is very good, but it is definitely not comparable to Sonos. A concession to the price difference of 20 dollars will be better than direct comparison with the flagship of the same price. Amazon is very smart. He doesn't want to put Echo in a position to be better than Sonos. That year, Echo made a hit and the sales reached an astonishing 2.5 million units.

In this case, whether it is early adopters or officially released, Amazon is seeking a balance between price and user expectations.

Because of the satisfaction of all hardware products, the essence is expected satisfaction.

3, design: extreme VS integrity

There are many books about writing Internet product experiences, such as the classic "User Experience Elements", which proposes a five-layer experience dimension of software products. For any product, product design pursues a good user experience, no doubt. Only when the product is transferred from the software carrier to the software and hardware, the meaning behind the good experience has changed.

Regarding the extreme functions, we will hear some of these statements:

In order to pursue the perfect icon, the product manager drives the designer crazy;

When the Raven released Raven H, it also vividly described the bitter history behind the product selection;

These animations, colors are not important, important. It's just important, it's always relative.

In the software product development and design, the main cost is the development time; therefore, at any single point, doing the ultimate in the experience is beneficial to the user.

Software products emphasize the ultimate, the essence is a process of tormenting themselves and serving users.

But from a hardware perspective, one-sided emphasis on one of the most extreme functions is problematic.

For headphones, no one dares to ignore the cost and pursue the ultimate in sound effects;

For mobile phones, no one dares to ignore the feasibility of the project and pursue the ultimate in camera performance.

This is the case, the integration of software and hardware products, should be from the perspective of macro experience, the pursuit of the overall experience; rather than the exacting of the extreme.

In the hardware field, it is very deadly to demand a single point of extreme; the overall integrity is more important to pay attention to.

Let's take the Apple wireless headset Airpods as an example. If it is judged from the ordinary function, it is not perfect and not perfect. The headset itself does not have a volume adjustment button, and there is no way to cut the song directly. This is like a 'degeneration' compared to a wired headset.

But in fact, it's not. The overall experience of Airpods is perfect. It's small and portable, it doesn't look cumbersome when it's put in any pocket; it's stable, it doesn't shake when you shake it quickly; it connects quickly and there is no delay in watching the video. Since its release at the end of 16th, it has been a well-deserved industry benchmark for true wireless headsets. Even in 2017, the wireless headsets of the same pair are still in the portability and Bluetooth stability, obviously weak after Apple. Leading, it is so lonely.

So how do you understand that Airpods doesn't have a volume button? Will Airpods 2 add this feature?

Answering this question cannot be understood simply from a functional perspective. The overall experience of the product is higher than a single function.

If you have used the same kind of 'competition', such as wireless headphones to go out and ask. You can understand the good intentions of Airpods in interactive restraint. In cutting songs and adjusting the volume, ask how the wireless headset interacts by double clicking and scratching. In this way of interaction, Airpods can't do it, but has no choice but to do so. On the narrow earphones, whether it is double-clicking or scratching, with a certain failure rate, the frustration behind this is very damaging to the product experience. In the actual user experience, accidentally pressing and pressing one time, the Bluetooth pairing was triggered by mistake; one time slipping the righting earphone, the song was suspended by mistake...

There aren't many such scenarios. Once they appear, you will miss the Airpods, which is simple and interactive. So why not add a function key and two volume keys like Bose Soundsport free?

Excellent hardware products are not completely functional, nor are they completely designed. Apple is simple, Bose is practical, and it’s the same, why bother?

The amount of function never means the quality of the experience. AI hardware should pay more attention to the global experience of the product, rather than hanging the function.

4, price: free thinking VS pricing strategy

In the Internet field, a lot of software has benefited from the rapid rise of free strategies and achieved great glory. Such as 360 anti-virus software, relying on free, pull Rising, Jiangmin down.

But is the hardware free and feasible? The free advocate of domestic hardware is the Jia Yueting who suffocated for his dream. Today, Jia Bo went to the United States, and the domestic hardware is free of this banner.

Is the hardware really free? If you have powerful software or service fees that can support hardware costs, bundle service sales, and achieve hardware free. In theory, it works. But this is only theory.

For the common hardware products such as mobile phones, speakers, and earphones, the hardware itself is profitable, which is the basic mode that has not been broken for decades. The hardware is free, don't think about it.

In terms of product pricing, the pricing of Baidu speakers is slightly erratic. In November 17th, the Raven speaker sold for 1699, which was so high. In March, 18, the small screen speaker at home, priced at only 599, low attractive...

After the product is designed, how should we consider the pricing strategy? Starting from cost? Start with the user?

neither. Product pricing is not determined after the product is completed, but at the beginning of the product design, it is determined!

A consumer product, the price of the product is determined at the same time when depicting the user's portrait and product requirements.

For example, the target users are first- and second-tier urban white-collar families, and they need to design a home speaker for them. From the average price of the speakers they used to buy, you can get the price range of the product. This price segment is an important reference indicator for technical function trade-offs and product design trade-offs. It is imperative to seek the ultimate in the early stage, and the performance and accounting cost are found to be high.

In general, there are several types of pricing for products.

Cost-based pricing: Calculate the external selling price based on the manufacturing cost of the product, taking into account fixed costs and profit margins. This is the pricing strategy for most products.

Competitive-based pricing: Attacking competitors at a lower price with the same quality. Amazon, Google's speaker war, domestic Ali, Xiaomi, Baidu's speaker war are all competitive pricing;

Innovation-based pricing: For front-street innovative products, there are often no competitors. At this time, there is no competition reference for pricing, and a high-profit price point can be selected within the target consumer's willingness to consume. The flagship innovation products of DJI, the initial price, are mostly such a 'willfulness'.

No matter which pricing strategy, the most aggressive price bottom line is not to make money, not to lose money.

Different from the Internet burning money grab user mode, the effect of burning money in the hardware field is not obvious. We are familiar with the Uber-subsidy subsidy war, and there is capital in the back. The purpose of the subsidy is to quickly defeat the opponent and obtain an absolute market monopoly.

However, in the hardware field, relying on subsidies to achieve rapid preemption and market monopoly is very difficult.

Why do you say that? Is it not possible to seize the market by subsidies?

First, the penetration of hardware products is gradual and there will be no explosive exponential growth. Even if the product is subsidized, it will require the user to pay for it. Spending money and not spending money is a gap in decision-making. APP downloads can be exponentially spiked after a large-scale diversion; but hardware products can't do it, and then big drainage, there is a need to buy behind. Buying requires a decision, and it's not as simple as clicking a download button.

Second, promotions are always short-term. The penetration of hardware products is achieved by several product update iterations. Once the time is lengthened, the short-term cut-off subsidy effect will be flattened. In the end, you will find that only good products and good experiences can win users.

In 2018, Baidu was determined to enter the field of speakers, and it was commendable to break the price at a low price. But the subsidy itself is difficult to last. The design of hardware products also needs to fall into the basic values ​​and experience.

5, development mechanism: fast running rabbit VS slow walking turtle

UI. This sentence is very misleading. Because it is just a concise sentence, the two key factors behind the reality are often overlooked, that is, the speed cost and speed relative.

The cheetah made 5 robots in 2 years, the speed is quite fast, but the result? There are many errors in the product direction. Such speed, value?

Apple is doing HomePod, acoustic research and development for 6 years, the product release node has been delayed from 17 years to the beginning of 18, is it really slow results? When the product is released, the user will immediately recognize the sound quality of HomePod.

We say that Internet thinking products are rapidly iterative, saying that hardware products are carefully decided; the underlying principles behind the following are consistent:

Anything is going to be the end result;

Pursue relative fast, not absolute fast;

In the Internet field, small step running is a common mode. A typical case is a drip taxi. The prototype of the original APP was purchased from an outsourcing company for 80,000 yuan, and the experience was very lame. But in the era of the rise of taxi software, the fighters turned around, it is impossible to say that the APP development is perfect, and then pushed to the market! It must meet the core needs of users, and immediately push to the market to seize users. In the subsequent evolution, the iterations are constantly updated to make the experience go up.

In the case of Didi, the speed of the price is very small, even if a button is wrong, the next version will be repaired immediately; but the speed is slow, but it is intolerable, it may lose the market, it may fail the whole disk!

In the field of hardware manufacturing, the risks and costs are very high after leaving the market with uncertainty. If the product is found to be wrong, the performance is not as expected, and the cost is too high, it is impossible to modify it. The cycle of adjustment of the entire product is not in days, but in months and years. This is also why the iteration cycle of hardware products is usually once a year or even two years.

In the polishing of the core performance, I would rather wait, and can't be anxious.

In September 2016, Gopro launched the Gopro Karma drone to prevent the growing user profile in Dajiang; in order to block Gopro, the Mavic Pro was released in the same month. The war between the two sides is on the verge. However, at the time of product launch, the two showed a completely opposite attitude. Gopro Karma is on sale on October 23rd. Unfortunately, at this point in time, Gopro's drones are not stable. Only two weeks after the sale, many users reported that the drone suddenly crashed and crashed when flying. Under the rush, Gopro immediately announced that all the products were recalled. On the contrary, although Dajiang released the Mavic pro in September, due to some design techniques and mass production problems, the entire 16-year period is basically only scheduled; product experience is not up to standard, prefer to wait, and not for sale! Mavic Pro did not achieve stable delivery until the beginning of 2017, and became the flagship of the 17-year consumer drone field.

In terms of speed pursuit and restraint, Gopro and Dajiang have shown a completely different attitude and can not help but ponder.

Speed ​​and efficiency are recognized by all companies. We cannot see the fast appearance and ignore the principles and conditions behind it.

From the Internet to AI hardware, the differences in thinking in the above four aspects need to be carefully considered. While still dreaming, you must also be down to earth. The epee has no front, and good products take time to test.

The bubble is floating and heavy; while the time has never lived up to it.

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