Just 3 days ago, Nest launched their latest Nest Thermostat E. It appeared to try take two bold steps: to take a refreshing new design approach, and make an expensive product more accessible. I applaud both, and so eagerly got hold of one to try out, and naturally pry open.

But before beginning this teardown, a short pre-amble on the design and how it relates to the company Birdi I cofounded is necessary, given how much our design philosophies appear to overlap with their new approach…

To skip straight to the teardown, jump the gap

Designing devices for the home — a bird and a nest

To start off, I have huge respect for the teams and talented folks at Nest. I didn’t agree with all their design choices, but they do know how to make beautiful products. And as with most things in life, the true beauty is often on the inside, and so taking apart their devices was always a joy for me. The attention to detail and often over-engineered solutions to design challenges, was a sign that these were made by a team that cared about creating the best possible product from all sides and at any cost. While these details mostly go unnoticed, it is often not noticing things that is an indicator of good design. And comparing the internals of an iPhone to Nest products, its not a leap to assume they were in large part designed by the same team. Their engineering and design chops are definitely there.

I cofounded Birdi in 2013. We set out to reinvent a smoke detector, to save lives by looking after both your health and safety, and in a few years built a product from concept to factory line. And for the most part we had a similar approach as Nest proclaimed in their marketing— take an unloved object in the home, and make it better. We set out to make it better able to do its job by virtue of connectivity, able to do more with cutting-edge sensors, and lastly make it more beautiful, a better experience and something homeowners can be proud of, and even love. And by hopefully persuading people to keep their smoke detectors installed and working, we could show how good design could actually save a few lives.

In fact, we started pitching our product as the Nest of smoke detectors, when Nest were only known for thermostats. With our first name being Canary, and then Birdi, the puns weren’t lost on us when Nest came out with their own smoke detector. But let’s get back to why this is relevant:

Designing consumer electronics for the home is hard, especially given the widely differing lifecycles of gadgets vs. home furnishings. Try look at an interface on a smart fridge from the 2000’s and compare it to today’s iPad Pro. How do you make something cutting edge that still looks good in 10 years? The answer is — it has to blend in. No screen. No “Black Mirrors”. No interface that can go out of date.

So with Birdi, we focused on a reduction to the simplest one can achieve in both form and feel to make a design that would last.

Smoke detector re-invented — Birdi: Smart Air Monitor

In the form of our product, we opted for an unbroken circle. The only detail being a circular gap, from where the indication light can glow and alarm sound can resonate out, created where the seemingly floating button meets the outer ring. Nothing more.

And for the feel: for something as fundamental to the interior and construction of every room as a smoke detector, it couldn’t be a shiny, plastic device, it had to feel like it belonged to or was sculpted from the same elements of rock and stone that most of the foundations of our built environment are made of. Hence, we described the feel as soft ceramic. How much more elemental can you get than “made of clay and hardened by heat”? We achieved this through a lot of experimentation with resins, working with an incredible plastic manufacturing partner making parts for the likes of Beats by Dre, Jawbone and Apple, and adding what resulted in practically being “sand” to the plastic (in the form of mineral and glass-fiber — with glass essentially being liquid sand) so that it would feel like part of the architecture, with a simple clean shape that could pop out of a Scandinavian design magazine.

And now, the latest Nest Thermostat. Something that looks a little less like HAL, and a little more like part of a non-dystopic future home we’d want to live in. Behold, the new design approach:

“Ceramic”. Pretty neat. It would be a leap for me to claim ownership of a two century old word, if it were not for the product looking so similar to the one we made. You may be thinking that saying our design was in any way an inspiration to Nest may be some delusion on my part, but I’d like to entertain that leap, if not just for the following personally significant reason:

It was that very first iPod, created by none other than Tony Fadell of Nest, that helped me believe that consumer electronics with design as the fundamental guiding principle, could bring joyful experiences and touch people’s lives. That iconic “Designed by Apple in California” printed on the back of that iPod seemed like an invitation to the younger me, growing up in South Africa, and sitting in a classroom rebelliously listening to one of the 1,000 songs in the palm of my hand.

What started it all…

If not directly, it undoubtfully influenced me onto a path that would result in me coming to California with the ambition to build the next generation of devices that will become part of our lives. Thanks Tony, I know we’re but a small fish, but I’d like to believe this came full-loop.

And now onto the teardown…