IoT Toolkit

The IoT Toolkit is a set of cards for designing ideas for connected objects, with no one needing to know electronics or network protocols. 153 cards in nine decks and a game board, all ready to print.

Wanting to have a say about connected devices rarely founders on interest. It founders on the barrier in front of it: without knowledge of electronics, network protocols or device configuration it is hard to take part. The cards remove that barrier. They make the building blocks of connected devices tangible without anyone having to read a data sheet.

The work starts from a scenario and a persona, then moves to everyday objects extended with sensors, services and responses. A connected bin with a tilt sensor that reports when it falls over is the textbook example.

Print the cards and the board and begin. Each deck contains one blank card so the group can add its own sensors, objects or personas. The card backs are made for double-sided printing.

If you would rather have the cards used with guidance, there are two formats: a workshop that ends with several worked-out concepts, and an exploration space where shared understanding is the result.

Cards and board are published under CC BY-SA 4.0. You can download them, print them and work with them without me.

It builds nothing. What you end up with is a concept on paper, not a device. If an application is to come out of it, the next step is a prototype with sensors and hardware, and that is a phase of its own.

And it replaces no expert decision. Where the expertise and the picture are already in place, generating ideas is a detour.

The method is not mine. It was developed as the Tiles IoT Toolkit at NTNU Trondheim and is published under CC BY-SA 4.0. Naming the authorship and the licence is a condition of reuse, not a courtesy: if an adapted deck is passed on, the same licence applies to the derivative.

I bring an adapted deck, in German-speaking contexts in German, and adapt the cards to the group. The standard cards work just as well.