I feel like the fact that they are demos rather than products make them rather useless.
Why would you think that? Anything that shows off your skills has value. Well, it would to me anyway. I mean, if I were evaluating your candidacy for a job, I wouldn't care if your projects were demos or "actual products".
I mean, these were cute and demos were a bit "wow" but the practicality seemed reduced, especially when most of the use cases they demonstrated would be covered by a phone call.
The big industrial use case I saw was to receive teleguidance to repair equipment, the ground reality is that most of the time if you don't know how to fix it... You're not allowed to try to fix it.
These things don't demo well precisely because a demo doesn't help anyone to understand the decisions made in developing them. You can not just say "prepare to demo them anyway", that doesn't do anything useful.
He threw something together that people could get a feel for. I'll concede that it was hardly usable given the performance. But it was only a demo, enough of one to show just how usable the real thing could be.
I have developed a belief about this: people don't know what they want until you show them what they said they want. Then it's immediately obvious to them what they wanted instead.
This suggests that demos and mock-ups might be a valuable tool. The sooner you can get someone to try something, the sooner they can tell you what direction they really wanted you to go in instead, and the less time you waste.
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