Hanging pictures or measuring for simple home decorating tasks can be arduous. Not only is it time consuming to get things exactly right using that pencil and old school tape measure, it’s also hard to visualize how things will look until you have that picture hanging on the wall, which often means there’s a hole or two to patch up when the job is done.
But what if you could pull your room into an app and see how things look in digital format before you actually starting pounding nails?
That’s the idea behind Cubit. The product, which won the best of innovations award in the smart home category for CES 2017, comes from product design entrepreneur David Xing and his company Plott. Xing and his team normally design products for companies such as Black and Decker through his other company NWi, but they knew with the technology in Cubit they had a winner that they could bring to market under their own brand.
Xing describes the Plott Cubit as a mixed reality platform. “We can take the real, put it into the virtual, so you can design with context and scale. Once you’re done with your design, you can take it and put it out into the real world.”
In other words, Cubit makes home design a drag and drop, app-centric experience.
I think the ability to convert simple home remodeling from a painful exercise in trial and error to one in which my measurement tools are integrated with a digital design application is appealing. I can see significant advantages and time savings by being able to visualize how things look in digital, especially if there’s an easy conversion of the design back into physical measurements for when I’m ready to pound nails.
Of course, there are plenty of laser-powered tape measures on the market, but this is the first I’ve seen that integrates seamlessly with a digital design application. I’m interested to try Cubit to see how accurately it translates measurements back to physical dimensions once I do the in-app design. The good news is I won’t have to wait very long. Xing told me they are talking to numerous retailers and they expect the Cubit to ship this September.
You can watch my interview with Xing above.
Want to meet the leaders defining the future of food, cooking and the kitchen? Get your tickets for the Smart Kitchen Summit today.
You can get the Spoon in your inbox once a week by subscribing to our newsletter.
Leave a Reply