Google is experimenting with strange notifications for smart home

You know that: you suddenly feel a gust of wind in your neck, your hair stands on end and the thought runs through your head: ‘Was it a ghost?’ Okay, even if you never have that, then it’s a crazy thought that Google is testing to send you notifications via smarthomegadgets via a little wind. Wind and… shadows.

Notification Gadgets

It sounds like Google wants to turn every smart home into a haunted house, but it’s true. Google is experimenting with its smart home equipment and would like to inform you of notifications in other ways than just a notification on your smartphone. We are now used to receiving notifications via sound, lights or vibrations, but Google wants to see if that can be done differently.

You can read more about the experiment on Google’s experiments page: called Little Signals. Together with Map Project Office, it has developed six gadgets that all use a different way of informing you about something. One can make your plants dance by blowing air on the leaves, while another can knock on a piece of furniture to let you know there’s a notification. If that really came true, we can imagine what everyone will call it within their smart home: poltergeist.

Ghostly Gadgets

There is also another gadget that is unintentionally spooky, which is a gadget that creates a shadow. There’s also one that has some sort of stems that can go up and down, one that makes some sort of background noise, and one that has a button that expands when notifications come in. In fact, it keeps getting bigger as more notifications arrive.

It is unknown what exactly Google plans to do with these experiments. Whether it will indeed be separate gadgets or whether certain options will be integrated in, for example, a new Google Home, is still a question mark.