Chumby: An Experiment in Hackable Pervasive Computing

This paper, written by one of the founders of Chumby Industries - Andrew Huang, describes their hacker- friendly business model.Unlike other consumer products that are locked up from the users, Chumby's software and hardware is open. They have not only released the source code of their operating system, but also have tutorials and templates on how to create widgets.

The author says that the idea behind this is that they want Chumby to be what their users want it to be. It is impossible to please all users- companies always have to make a trade off between including excessive features that would make the device complicated, and leaving out features and thereby users to whom the device is of no use. Hence, they have made the Chumby easy to hack into, so that people can "configure" it to whatever they want it to be. For example, a user can operate home appliances through the Chumby, using its accelerometer. They essentially are providing a device that can be used for other innovations.

Huang also describres various steps involved in product design. Two of the important ones are the very first step which is vision, and the middle step which is engineering. "Vision" involves establishing a broad product concept, and "engineering" involves building the actual product. He says that at the engineering stage, there is a lens that gives an insight into the whole product design process. Closed consumer products have a one way lens at this stage, where the consumers passively see the company's vision. But, Chumby industries have made this lens two ways; this means that users can explore the product closely and give feedback. This feedback is included in the company's vision. They are essentially empowering the users to create their own vision.

Hackers do not just make the product better for themselves, but for the whole user community. For example, one user included a battery pack with the Chumby, and posted in the forums on how to do it. Another one came up with a way to connect it to wired internet via its USB port and shared the procedure. Now, the whole community can benefit from their expertise. So, the product grows and gets better by itself; the company just provided a template.

Chumby Industries, as the author says, was started to make profits; it is by no means a charitable company. They make their money from ads. They feel that good quality ads are interesting and people view them (ads during Super Bowl being the best example). They take extra care in ensuring that the ads are good.

They also make money by slightly overpricing the product, so that they can offer all the widgets and software updates for free, unlike other big companies like Microsoft that offer subsidized gaming console, but make money off of the games and services. By following this model, they can make profits, but at the same time opening up their product to give users a platform to personalize it (alas, over 90% of their targeted user base if not very tech savvy.)