Has Sense died?

[jefflayman]

@JamesDrewAtSense

Things change around here, and we are actually quite busy. So if you wish, either send me a private message or mention some of the items/concerns here.

James, I appreciate your willingness to receive input and occasionally post to the forum. Yes, I imagine that the Sense team is busy, because life has a way of doing that. At the same time, I empathize with @dennypage because there is little progress visible to us, the forum and product users. Here I collect several explanations for the disconnect between a busy Sense team and a bored Sense audience.

1. Low hanging fruit has already been picked. During product development, it is easy to see changes at the beginning but harder at the end. The developers obviously focus on the most impactful work first, which leaves the less impactful stuff towards the end. Also, the relative impact of a given change is less when the total is big than when the total is small.

2. We had become spoiled. It was really nice having access to the creators of a product, but that is not how it usually works. I expressed this thought here on the forum 3 years ago:

@jefflayman

Two weeks ago, a staff member from Sense reached out to me directly for feedback on my experience as a Sense customer. She spent 15 minutes on the phone with me, which is yet another reason I love Sense. When was that last time that Sony, GE or Frigidaire called to ask about your user experience?

3. Sense focus has changed. Kevin alluded to this above when he wrote:

@kevin1

My belief (and it’s kind of backed up by changes in the web site, the app, and the news) is that Sense is mostly investing in the meter part of the business today, where they work with the meter makers and sell through utilities. My optimistic hope is that this means we will see continued improvement on the common features like data science / detection.

I share Kevin’s hope that the work done by the Sense team will show up eventually. We the users appreciate Sense’s work, even though we can’t always see it.