Designing Multi-Device Experiences

Chapter 6. Beyond the Core Devices

This chapter expands the 3Cs framework beyond the four core devices into the realm of the Internet of Things. We’ll look at even broader user scenarios in which the 3Cs—consistent, continuous, and complementary—can be applied, across the physical and digital spheres, in an ecosystem of fully connected devices.

Up until now we’ve established the foundations of multi-device experiences by focusing on the nuclear family of devices, comprising the four core members: smartphone, tablet, PC, and TV. We explored each of the design approaches and saw that in many cases, the experiences these devices create together involve multiple approaches that intertwine to strengthen and expand the scope of use cases.

Now it’s time to look beyond those devices and at the grand scale of (the Internet of) things.

The Internet of Things

As powerful as the Internet seems today—with always-on WiFi at home, and mobile broadband connections standard in many mobile devices—the true power of the Internet is yet to be realized.

Consider this: the Internet today connects anywhere from 10 to 15 billion devices.^[46] That is six times the number of people connected to the Internet. Yet that figure still represents less than 1% of the 1.5 trillion things that have the capacity to be connected to the Internet (see Figure 6-1).

Figure 6-1. The share of connected vs. not connected things in ...