CES 2021 Last Gadget Wrap Up

Here are my personal thoughts on this year’s L-G-S show:

What makes this event a unique CES experience is that the audience gets to vote after five-minute pitches, and this type of interaction adapted well into this year’s virtual platform. Twenty-one years ago, GM’s On-Star was the first technology presented at the Last Gadget Standing, and the Rumba vacuum appeared in 2020. This year’s top finalists do not appear to be in the same league as those inventions, but there are still quite innovative including a tri-folding laptop, a button-free VR controller, a reader for the visually impaired, an augmented reality contact lens and a smart ring that remotely controls mobile devices.

·         The Lenovo X1 Fold is the first laptop that folds in half. It has a 13” display and lists for $2,500.

Yes, laptops already fold, but the X1 Fold has a seam down the middle of the display, and with the detachable keyboard it’s technically a tri-fold. The engineering feet is impressive, and when you get over any concerns about fragility, the opportunities to take advantage of a thicker book-fold versus a thinner tablet seem rather limited, perhaps the convenience of fitting the device into a handbag; but with fewer people commuting to the office these days, the convenience alone was not enough to give this product highest marks on Last Gadget Standing.

·         TG0 makes touch and pressure-sensitive controls for automotive interiors and computer peripherals like the Etee, which is a finger, touch, gesture and pressure sensing controller for VR.  

What makes Etee interface noteworthy is that there are no buttons on the controller to figure out for game play. Using the device is supposed to be intuitive which could be very effective for picking up and manipulating objects in virtural worlds. 

·         Orcam, the makers of MyEye , a voice activated reader that attaches to glasses, presented their next generation of the product called the Orcam Read.

This portable version has optical character recognition that allows greater flexibility. Just point and click to read. The reader is fast, reliable and does not have to connect to the internet, and it’s convenient to pull it out and snap a picture to read anything including a prescription bottle.  The base price is  $2000, with optional features so that the tool can match to specific user requirements.

·         The Arc-X Smart Ring is intended for active sports and allows to control playlists and take split times.

Wearing the waterproof controller on your finger (even with gloves) means the phone can stay protected in pocket or backpack, so that the focus can stay on the workout.  There are other smart rings on the market, intended to capture heartrate and calorie burn, where is as this is just a controlling device.

 ·         While Mojo Vision Lens appears to be device that someone with serious visual impairment would implant over their eye, it’s actually an augmented reality/heads-up overlay in the form of a contact lens that anyone can wear. 

What makes the Mojo appealing is that there no bulky glassware involved, and it only has to cover one eye. There is lots of potential to partner with wide range of content developers to provide solutions like tracking vitals during sports but may be a challenge to get a product that you stick in your eye approved by the FDA.

·         The Last Gadget team used a real-time survey tool to gather feedback from the audience.

With 60% of the votes, the Mojo Lens was the clear winner of CES Last Gadget Standing 2021. The audience appeared to respond favorably to wearable technology that can help the human condition over tech that simply provides greater convenience. This may be a consumer trend to pay attention to over in the coming years.

Reference: Last Gadget Standing, CES 2021

How Will the Pandemic Bring Innovation into the Sports Arena?

The two key trends in sports brought on by the pandemic are fan safety and immersive experience, and in both cases the COVID response provides an opportunity to address long standing challenges. For example, the attention to sanitation and hygiene even building UVC lighting built into handrails - no one is going to be disappointed with a cleaner and safer stadium.  According to Russ Simons, Chief Listening Officer at Venue Solutions Group, the ability for staff to use mobile devices to gather analytics about how people are moving through the facility is not just addressing the pandemic. Figuring out how to better space people coming in an out stadiums has been a challenge for years, Simply put, fans don’t want to wait in lines.

Technology is now being used to more than just address the long lines and safety-first expectations. Ticket scanners at the gate also allow entrance staff to focus on welcoming instead of frisking. Stadium managers are now thinking about the future and how to improve every aspect of services provided at these large venue, and take advantage of the situation brought about because of Covid-19 to implement innovations.. Any tech that reduces “friction” and provides pathways that speedup transactions is going to be sticking around. According to Simons, assume a line at the concession stand today with a wait time of 60 seconds per transaction; the 9th person is not willing to wait and will turn away, so the addition of cashless and mobile ordering has the potential increasing sales by twenty percent.

In terms of immersive experience, organizations like NFL are looking at technology to help fans show their affinity for the league and express partnership with players. According to Natara Holloway, VP of Business Operations at the NFL, look for technology enhancements that allow fans to enjoy touch downs virtually. Also look for more ways to the league to surprise and delight, such as “home gating” with players.  

For the past 10 years, the NFL has been working on their door to door experience, from inviting fans to come to event, getting game information, buying ticket, communicating the easiest way to get to the event and home again safely. According to Holloway, things started kicking in 2020: A season ticket holder was connected with a food show so they could cook, there were mixology events too. Every time the fan is thinking of the NFL, the organization is following up including using feedback to earn trust back if there any missteps.

For the next World Cup, look for the supplemental content to be more integrated with the broadcasts. According to Ben Stoll, FIFA Director of Strategic Alliance and Technology, anticipate more digital content before, during and after the match. With an audience of 3 billion and everybody sitting at home, expect enhancements like virtual seats for co-watching, and more data from wearable tech on the field, which parallels trend in self-measurement and self-optimization used by athletes and will provide additional opportunities for immersive fan engagement, in the stadium and from the couch.

Reference: Tech-Driven Solutions for Fan Safety and Engagement, CES 2021

Photo by Ryan on Unsplash

Future Classrooms: Instructional Designers Wanted

The great pandemic experiment of educating students remotely has taught us a lot about what worked, what’s working now and what needs to happen next. Despite its short comings, even if we go back to traditional models, fully remote and hybrid learning are now the expected future paths, at least for higher education. Upgrading the class room technology is great, but not many instructors are trained in instructional design capable of transforming elements of in-person pedagogy such as  sequencing, content layout, duration, informative feedback, and methods of affirmation critical to an on-line curriculum.  

 Here’s My Take: The world of education needs to catch up, and the best approach is to increase the interaction between the instructors, the “teaching enterprise” and the technology. The problem has been costs, so we need to establish a new model. We need to build up a community of instructional designers that are accessible virtually to support teachers on ways to use technology to build out their lesson plans and engage their students. We also need to encourage platforms like Engageli integrate with existing learning management (LMS) and student information systems, and can measure the engagement of distance learners in real time to validate the return on investment in the remote learning technology.

Resource: The Classroom of the Future, CES 2021

Photo by Solen Feyissa on Unsplash

Voice Assistance in Education

Voice Assistance (VA) is forecasted to be in 8.4B devices by 2024, and because it is multi-modal, meaning that they function in the home, on mobile device and in the car we need to consider how they will  work inside the school. Can we expect greater use of voice assistance (VA) for interacting with educational content and even built inside dedicated learning devices?

 Today’s consumer expects a high degree of personalization. As VA interaction becomes more conversational and provide intent-based features like Google’s ambient assistance for proactive alerting, students will discover the value of getting school related tasks notifications and thus increase VA’s adoption in educational environments.

 Here’s My Take: In order for VA to be of value in Higher Ed, it needs to provide more than convenience, it needs to provide greater accessibility, such as channel to on-campus events, and support diversity, such different languages. With so much remote learning going on, today’s household VA devices could be used to set class schedule alerts, monitor assignments and connect with teachers. Investments in developing VA in educational environments will continue to have value when students transition from hybrid to returning to the campus full time.

Resource: New Technologies in Accelerating Education, CES 2021

Photo by Alex Knight on Unsplash

Can you Trust AI Data Use in Healthcare?

Artificial Intelligence is transforming the healthcare industry and can lead to improved outcomes such as lower costs, but we need to address the fact that data can fail in ways that biological tissues cannot.  Data is messy but it’s also fundamental to building AI engines for interpretation, such as progress overtime. We know that electronic records don’t tell the whole story. According to Pat Baird, Senior Regulatory Specialist at Philips, data brought into health ecosystems needs to be trustable, interoperable and linkable.

 Here’s My Take: All data is bias, from the way it is captured to the way the data set is represented. The bias factors need to be transparent so that alternative interpretations of the results can be considered. The quality of the data has to be challenged: is it correct, complete or relevant? Too frequently, the priority is on getting the numbers, which results in skipping over the context of the capture and the source. Analytic tools applied to data sets require that the insights are grounded in context, and to be pertinent, the data needs to be interoperable. Algorithms in one patient population may not be applicable to another.

 Reference: Trust and the Impact of AI on Health Care, CES 2021

Impact of the Pandemic on Corporate Culture

Overnight cloud computing became the lifeline for most corporations. The massive acceleration to cloud expected to take a decade, but consumers, students and employees started spending all their time on line, feeding more data to the AI server engines, which improved the on-line experience with better responses to inquiries and predicting demand based on tracking shifts to new behaviors. Companies are to adopting quickly to digital commerce because their businesses are depending on it and consumers are demanding it.

Here’s My Take:

De-Compress the Disruption. What was expected to be a series of technology advances occurred in parallel. From enterprise to healthcare, processes had to transform quickly, at the speed of digital adoption.  The businesses that have been able to capitalize are those with leadership with the courage and willingness to re-think, to pivot and partner to achieve the fastest results. We are seeing companies who were already on board the digitization train are pulling ahead: implemented a standardized Web Conferencing Platform, encouraged Flexible Work, and migrated to Cloud Services. Businesses that are not able participate in on-line commerce will soon be left behind. We need enterprises to reach out and connect these service providers to the digital freight train with the same passion that brought them on board in the first place.

Consume with a Conscious. New rules need to be written that bridge the digital divide and provide foundations of equality and change the fundamental principles of global companies, according to Michael Miebach, CEO Mastercard. Respect to social injustices like BLM have a history of being marketplace relevant, but after George Floyd in 2020 companies are taking a more significant stance and asking “what’s our role?” According to CEO Julie Sweet at Accenture, establishing equality, fighting racism and providing opportunities of advancement are important workplace considerations and companies are looking to  linking with others to achieve a scaled impact that will change the principals of the free market.

 Shrink the Digital Divide. In the United States today, one third of all black families do not have access to the internet (Simama, 2020), and it’s time to move from witness to re-writing what is needed. Advocate for opportunities for enterprises to partner with the government and non-profits in response to systemic racism. Fill the pay gaps and offer the same level of opportunities. While attention on inequality has been building, this needs to feel different. According to Daniel Roth, Editor in Chief at Linkedin, it needs to be more like a transition from commitment to action, privately and publicly. From a practical perspective, it makes good business sense to achieve a diverse consumer base, growing incomes, and for businesses to become an engaged force in improving lives and tapping into broader talent pools. Diversity and innovation should be working hand in hand to rebuild the marketplace in the coming years.

Reference: Future Reimagined, CTS 2021

Simama, J. (2020). It’s 2020. Why is the Digital Divide Still with Us? Governing.com. Retrieved from https://www.governing.com/now/Its-2020-Why-Is-the-Digital-Divide-Still-with-Us.html

Photo by Ian Schneider on Unsplash

Perfect Timing for Next Gen TVs

Consumers are leaning heavily on home entertainment during COVID, and manufacturers are rapidly rolling out Next Gen TVs ( ATSC 3.0).  The awareness campaign is big. Audience expectations are high. Pandemic delayed initial availability but 3.0 is available now. The timing is good. TVs are ready.

The  ATSC 3.0 platform was designed to evolve over time, providing broadcasters five years to transition by 2022. When HDR and wide color gamut start popping off the screen consumers get addicted. The scoring for immersive TV is high, but still many consumers are content with the televisions they have. Fortunately, the ATSC 3.0 platform designed for the ability to upscale content using today’s codecs to 4K, and the more data that you give a TV the better the display is going to look. We can expect the next advancements in ATSC to provide higher frame rate for live content, as well as the first IP-based content delivered over internet that can be seamlessly combined with over the air content.

ATSC 3.0 Roll Out (Balderston, 2020)

At a time when consumers are heavily relying on the screens in their home, improving the experience as much as possible is responsibility of the industry. We have the pipe and the technology, now we need the content. According to Madeline Noland, President of the Advanced Television Systems Committee  (ATSC), expect the unlock to occur with a growth of non-traditional content and creator communities partnering to amplify the experience. Michael Davies of Fox Sports expects betting and free to play video gaming will accelerate the next gen content development, and the way consumers view concurrent content is going to improve. Rather than jerry-rigging adjacent mobile devices, with Next Gen TVs consumers can pull in multiple sources and frame them on a single pane of glass. Next Generation audio provides Volume Balancing between sources and Voice Plus which enhances the dialog, because apparently many people without hearing impairments have been enabling captions.

Reference:

CTA (2021) Next Generation Television in Focus, CES 2021

Balderston, M. (2020). ATSC 3.0 Deployments: Where and When Will NextGen TV be Available? TVTech.