Download What is “Bonjour”? “Bonjour” is a smart alarm clock founded by the

What is “Bonjour”?
“Bonjour” is a smart alarm clock founded by the Holi and capable of having Artificial Intelligence
(Holi, 2016). Over the past decade, technology has advanced at an alarming rate. Nowadays, most
technological products are being converted into “smart” products- i.e., smart phones, smart
watches, smart tv and the list goes on- research on the number of population owning a smartphone
in Europe have the top 3 countries with over a 100% of population (meaning people owning more
than one smartphone), which were Sweden (150%), Netherlands (136%) followed by UK (130%)
(Firminger, 2016).
Not just smartphones but other smart devices like tablets have seen an overwhelming increase in
sales compared to laptop and PCs- the number of tablets globally shipped in 2010 was 19 million,
which has risen to a staggering 256 million in 2016 (beating the sales of PC and laptops combined),
and its expected rise further into the future (Statista, 2016).
Design Principles
And along comes the smart alarm clock, Bonjour. One of the main design concepts applied to this
product is the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to create a “personal assistant” - using a voice
recognition system, the product is able to carry out tasks given by the user. Use of AI in smart
devices has already been implanted in the past years, for example Siri for Apple and Cortana for
Windows. These personal assistants are able to perform jobs themselves such as sending messages,
setting reminders/meetings or even telling a joke. Being able to perform these task by simply saying
it, makes life a little easier for the users. But what makes Bonjour better than these simple AIs is the
level of complexity in the AI. By integrating with the user’s apps such as Google calendar and Google
maps, the device learns the user’s routine, anticipating their needs and responding to them.
Example, if it’s a work day, then Bonjour will check to see if there is a traffic along the route and if
there is then the alarm will go off earlier than its set time, allowing user to wake up earlier and not
be late- which according to study from CareerBuild 25% of employees are late to work once a week
with traffic being the most common reason (Brooks, 2015).
Another important design is the use of IFTTT. “The killer feature of Bonjour is that it can act based
upon conditionals. For example, you can tell it to wake you up at a certain time if the weather is
good, otherwise it will let you sleep in.” (Hughes, 2016). Using this feature, the device allows you to
connect to other smart devices (i.e. smart lights, smart thermostats, stereo) using just your voice,
avoiding the need to search for remotes to turn them on. Some useful tasks being- if night time,
then check doors are locked, or if not enough exercise completed today, then suggest to go for a jog.
Being able to carry out these functions make the device feel much more like an actual personal
assistant compared to AIs like Siri which is known as the ‘intelligent personal assistant’ (Siri, 2016).
Functional analysis:
Beddi is a smart alarm clock created by Alfred Wong (Wong, 2015), with retail value of $99,
therefore $150 cheaper than Bonjour. Beddi is able to perform similar tasks to Bonjour- play music,
control lights, call Uber and give traffic updates to users in mornings. Unlike Bonjour, the device
requires a smartphone to be placed onto the device and an app to control most of its functions. This
subtle difference does give Bonjour an advantage because most people would prefer to simply speak
the commands compared to finding phone, opening app then giving command. Since the price
difference is quite big, we can see that the Beddi is a lot less ‘smart’ compared to Bonjour- Beddi is
mostly functional for the user’s “waking up” part of the day whereas Bonjour can be useful
throughout the day.
Vinci is a product on kickstarter and is being labelled as the ‘First smart headphones with Artificial
Intelligence’ (Inspero, 2016). With a retail value of $199, it’s $50 cheaper than the Bonjour. Similar to
Bonjour, the headphones do the generic job of playing music as well as complex tasks using the
user’s voice.
I have used this product to compare the capability of the Artificial Intelligence of the Bonjour with
other products.
The AI is around the level of smartphone AI such as Siri- the user can tell the device to play a specific
song, ask for weather update, search up things, and tell jokes. However, it’s also capable of tasks
such as using user’s song history to give recommendations on new songs, or give alternative routes
while jogging- this shows a more advanced AI but compared to Bonjour’s AI, I believe Vinci still
operates on a lower complexity.
Bonjour does have some disadvantages. The device can only understand English and French at the
moment, also as most of us have seen while using smartphones, the voice recognition isn’t perfect
and for people who may have speech impediment the device may be useless. Also, it’s still in
development phase so the final product may not be as perfect as it has been described.
Conclusion:
Bonjour is a solid product capable of many helpful tasks. In the IoT, I have yet to see another AI
product with the same level of intelligence as this one. And for the price of $249, I believe it’s
reasonable for the functions it has been said to implement.
References:
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Holi, Kickstarter. 2016. Retrieved from:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1450781303/bonjour-smart-alarm-clock-withartificial-intellig/description
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Richard Firminger. January 4, 2016. More devices than people! Snapshot of smartphone and
tablet use in UK. Retrieved from: http://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/devices-peoplesnapshot-smartphone-tablet-use-uk/1409788
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Statista. 2016. Shipment forecast of laptops, desktops PCs and tablets worldwide from 2010
to 2020. Retrieved from: https://www.statista.com/statistics/272595/global-shipmentsforecast-for-tablets-laptops-and-desktop-pcs/ :
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Chad Brooks. The real reason employees are late for work. February 2, 2015. Retrieved from:
http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/7725-employees-late-for-work.html
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Siri. Wikipedia. 2016. Retrieved from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siri
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Mathew Hughes. 2016. Bonjour is a smart alarm clock powered by AI. Retrieved from:
http://thenextweb.com/gadgets/2016/10/25/bonjour-smart-alarm-clock-powered-artificialintelligence/
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Alfred Wong. 2015. Beddi smart alarm clock. Retrieved from:
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/beddi-smart-alarm-clock-best-wakeup-experiencesleep#/
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Inspero Inc. 2016. Vinci – first smart headphones with Artificial Intelligence. Retrieved from:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inspero/vinci-first-smart-3d-headphones-thatunderstand-yo?ref=category_popular