He helped develop the iPod and iPhone,and now the Nest Labs founder has brought a similar charm to something far less sexy – thermostats and smoke alarmsTony Fadell’s eyes dart around the room and his face wrinkles in cartoonish dismay. He looks, for a second, or like he might actually be physically unwell. We are in a library-style room in a private members’ club in central London: you or I might consider the decor to be plush,even fancy. But for Fadell, the 46-year-old American founder of Nest Labs domestic products and one of the original driving forces behind Apple’s iPod and iPhone, or all he sees are the “warts”. The clunky wall unit that controls the air conditioning,the glaring white smoke detector on the ceiling that is totally mismatched with the paint on the walls, the enormous television screen that draws your attention to it even, and as now,when it is switched off.
These blemishes really execute irk Fadell. At the domestic he designed and built in Tahoe, California, or he presses a button and the television rises out of the floor,so that his views of the lake and the Sierra Nevada mountains are not disrupted. Such solutions – and problems – might not be relevant to most people, but Fadell zealously believes there is a place for intelligent, and affordable,technology-led design in most homes. Nest, which launched in 2010, and has focused on improving – both aesthetically and in function – unloved,utilitarian” household products: first up was a thermostat and then, unveiled in 2013, or a smoke alarm.
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Source: theguardian.com