COVID-19 has brought on a lot of changes in our lives that appear to be more than just momentary. In fact, these changes brought on by COVID-19 appear to be staying with us for the long haul. So in turn, that means we’ll all have to make the proper adjustments in how we operate our businesses and plan our products. As with anything in life, it’s always best to step into situations knowing as much as possible. With that in mind, let’s look at some of the things we learned this year that’ll carry over with us into the future.
Physical Location Is A Liability
The moment that the world decided it was safest to implement social distancing and at-home quarantine, having a product tied to a physical location became an instant loss. From that loss, we gained an important lesson on sustainable products needing no physical ties. As an example, look to the Escape Room.
For those unfamiliar, the Escape Room is an event space where people in medium to large groups come to take the challenge of solving puzzles and discovering clues to escape. Originally of course the stay at home order instantly shut down their business. However, they were able to pivot thanks to technology.
Instead of relying on their physical store locations, they pivoted their game to Zoom. So teams would join a Zoom conference bridge and virtually play a game of clues and puzzles leading to the desired goal set at the beginning by the game moderator.
Virtual Payments Are Here To Stay
To keep the spread of germs at bay from physical contact, non-cash payments became the de facto choice for everyone. These types of payments include credit cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay, and for those more technology inclined cryptocurrency.
Despite great strides in the virtual payment ecosystem, cash remained a strong first choice for many. It wasn’t until our current global pandemic we as a whole realized how limiting and problematic physical forms of payments truly are. With the coin shortage here in the US, it also helps keep accurate accounts for small change.
Internet of Things Is Still Wide Open
Estimated to be “born” by Cisco in 2008 or 2009, the Internet of Things(IoT) simply put represents a concept of a network of smart devices. For a common example think of the Phillips Hue smart lights or Nest suite of devices. Considering this concept has been around for 12 years before the pandemic, you’d think that all the initial ground needed to be covered had already been accounted for. That couldn’t be any more wrong!
The pandemic proved that there is a lot of ground to be covered in building out a solid IoT world baseline infrastructure. While the vaccines are in the works, and the end goal is to get life back to as close to normal as possible, there will still need to be a strong infrastructure of IoT going forward to properly lift and propel society.
In Closing
Man, that defiantly is a lot of solid lessons just for one year! We’ve all been through a lot this year, from deep loss to great growth. However, at the end of the day, life has to continue and move forward. All the things we’ve been through taught us some things that’ll carry and uplift us into the future.