Is Matter the Glue or the Mess of IoT?

"NOPE!" She shouted...

👋 Hi, Jay here! Welcome to my newsletter on Substack, exclusively for Product Coalition members.

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Here’s what I’m covering this week

1. 🗒️ STUDY WITH JAY: Matter and IoT (and learnings for SaaS)

2. 🎧 PODCAST: Challenging the status quo in CRO

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STUDY WITH JAY: Is Matter the Glue or the Mess of IoT?

“My window sensors still aren't on speaking terms!” - Me

🗒️ Each week I share what I’m studying, with the world. This week I’m studying Matter and IoT. Paid subscribers can DM me for access to my notebook here.

Matter logo. If all goes wrong they can reuse it for a thumbtack product.

Hey there! 👋

I've been neck-deep in smart home devices lately, and let me tell you - it's both exciting and frustrating. Last week, I spent hours trying to get my smart lights to talk to my thermostat (spoiler: they still aren't on speaking terms). This got me thinking about the bigger picture of IoT and where we're headed.

So, this week’s newsletter is packed with information about the smart home and IoT landscapes which continue to expand making interoperable solutions becoming critical.

And I won’t lie, this took me down memory lane. You see back in 2015, I was contracting for Telstra (AT&T for Australia), and I was dedicated to their smart home product offering. It was the honeymoon period of IoT, and as a product manager with a software background, it exposed me to an incredible world of hardware, firmware and industrial design principles that have stuck with. 

Industrial design and unboxing lessons from my time at Telstra

One of my most memorable moments was, during a contextual inquiry, seeing how a household's tech decisions are made. The husband, who’d just spent $300 on a bookshelf based camera that he was so excited to unbox, was so excited. He unboxed like he’d birthed it. He placed it on the shelf like a proud father. Within 0.002 seconds of it landing and disturbing the dust, a massive “NOPE! NOT HAVING IT!” belted from across the room.

You see wifey had just spent $10k redecorating the lounge, and the industrial design of this futuristic curvy black plastic tech with it’s dangling black twisted plastic coated cord, just didn’t match the Hampton’s inspired decor. That day I was strongly reminded that industrial design research and testing needs to be with all the persona’s whose lives it will intrude!

Anyway, this week I’ll explore Matter—the emerging standard for device interoperability—and how smart product management can make or break your IoT strategy. 

I’ll also touch on:

• Security

• Intermittent device challenges

• Lessons for SaaS

• Unresolved issues that product leaders need to keep in mind

If you’re a CPO, CFO, or CTO, this could offer some valuable insights into where IoT is heading and how your teams can stay ahead of the curve. Even if you’re not in the IoT game, I’ll be connecting learning from IoT over to SaaS for you.