"Seek purity of purpose." Not every device or thing needs to access your email or post to Twitter/Facebook for you. It should do what it was originally designed to do, but all the better for being connected, explained Brunner.

"Make it a better thing - not just a different thing." Yes, yes, we hear it ad nauseam every single day -- that buzz words to end all buzzwords -- "differentiation." But who cares if your connected device doesn't truly make the user's life better?

"Don't ask your audience to do too much." If it requires you to learn a new skill set, behavior, or to open your toolbox, it's too much of a pain. And ain't nobody got time for that.

"Make information actionable." It's all well and good giving people data, but if they don't really know what they're supposed to do with that data, your device is pretty lame. Sorry, not sorry.

And speaking of data, last but not least, "build a relationship between design and data: they need each other." Real-time analytics and analysis is becoming ever more important, and, well, cool.

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