In 1953 legendary industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss created the T-86 Round, the iconic Honeywell thermostat that wound up in tens of millions of postwar homes. Dreyfuss, whose many projects included the Bell System’s Princess telephone and Polaroid’s SX-70 camera, knew how to create products that consumers would notice, even covet.
So does Tony Fadell, the former Apple executive who shepherded the original iPod to market in 2001 and spent years guiding its world-changing success. After stepping down as head of the iPod division in 2008, Fadell started building a green home for his family near Lake Tahoe. While working on the house, he had a new brainstorm: Why not take the thermostat, one of the most boring devices on the planet, and make it interesting? Have it keep people happily engaged while nudging them to use less energy? He gathered some fellow Apple alumni as well as veterans of Google, Twitter and other tech companies, and the result is the Nest, the first thermostat since the T-86 with a shot at capturing the world’s attention.
Resplendent in brushed-steel trim with a unique round, color LCD screen (orange means your system is heating, blue means it’s cooling), Nest is a radical departure from other modern thermostats–plasticky, utilitarian boxes that are impossible to love and easy to ignore. The circular case, reminiscent of both Dreyfuss’s T-86 and the iPod’s click wheel, doubles as a dial you spin to set the temperature and perform other functions. It also has wi-fi that enables you to tweak things from afar with a smart-phone app. Just as the iPod wasn’t the first MP3 player, Nest isn’t the first thermostat that can be controlled remotely. But the user interfaces on other smart thermostats are clunky, and none have the Nest’s ambition. Fadell says his team started “with a blank piece of paper. We were either ignorant or naive, and as we peeled the onion, we learned.”
They designed a product that learns too. The device, which launched in October, looks for patterns in the adjustments you make so it can program itself. Built-in activity sensors let it detect when the house is empty and doesn’t require as much heating or cooling. Nest also gently prods you into good habits: it may depart from your specified temperature by a degree or two to reduce energy use, and it rewards your conservation efforts by displaying a leaf icon.
For a thermostat, Nest is pricey at $249, but the company estimates that utility-bill savings can cover the cost in less than two years. The device works in most homes and is supposed to be as easy to install as a light switch. Early adopters have already made it a hit. It’s sold out through the end of 2011, and units are fetching $899 and above on eBay. Who knew that home energy management could be so sexy?
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