December, 2005

Business / Culture / Design / Technology — No Comments
29
Dec 05

Challenging Apple with Zen Vision

I just came across an article by John Biggs on the new Creative Zen Vision:M in the Circuits section of the New York Times. Creative’s new personal media player is positioned to compete with the Apple iPod, and it will undoubtedly fail.

Very often, businesses and people identify the best practices of the current time and employ them to better their position. In many occasions this is a prudent course of action. In Creative’s case it ensures that the Zen Vision:M will never be remarkable. Creative’s new offering looks like a copy cat with its rounded corners, large display and minimal controls. It is priced in the same range as an iPod. It plays various bits of media – more variety than an iPod. It offers a touch sensitive scroll bar as its primary navigation interface. Creative’s brightest minds can only hope that consumers are looking for an iPod alternative – maybe they can take some of Apple’s potential customer base.

As the new owner of a black video iPod, I might be biased, but I doubt it. I just finished up Donald Norman’s Emotional Design. Apple is all about their emotional brand and their emotional designs. A purchase with Apple grants access to the identity and mystique of what Apple and, in this case, the iPod have become to the modern world. What do white ear buds mean to you? What do you see when someone draws a rectangle with a circle in the lower half? Those who are not members wish they were or, at the very least, are curious as to what it might be like. For all we know, the Zen Vision:M and the iPod are manufactured by the same company and in the same factory in China, but no matter what Creative does, the emotional component of the personal music player remains with Apple.

Design / Innovation — 1 Comment
25
Dec 05

Thoughtless acts for inspiration

About two years ago I was recommended a book, The Art of Innovation, by Tom Kelley. It was my first introduction to IDEO, one of America’s foremost design firms.

Recently, while looking for follow-on IDEO work, I stumbled upon Thoughtless Acts? and I wanted it for the experience it might impart – it is not your average book.

At a street price of ~20 USD, there is probably no other like it. At first, it appears to be a hard cover book and then you notice how comfortable it is to open and hold – the spine is similar to tape binding, this one reminiscent of duct tape. It is hard to miss the die cut semi-circle in the cover. Regardless of which side of the book opened the reader is greeted with text in the right orientation. The book does away with all the extra pages (extra blanks, lengthy copyright, oversized ISBN barcodes etc.) – everything is designed.

The content of the book is presented in a series of photographs followed by some text explaining the intention of the book and an index with some concise descriptions of the images. There are seven sections organizing the photos: reacting, responding, co-opting, exploiting, adapting, conforming and signaling.

The intention of the images are to help the reader get out of their box and see everyday behavior as an opportunity for innovation. Every photo offers a social landscape for critical review of things we often discard as noise. The number of inspired questions and ideas that follow seem endless.

Images of the book, Thoughtless Acts?

Design / Technology — No Comments
24
Dec 05

Emotional by design

Talk to any software development shop and you will hear the terms “iterative development.” While there are many formal methods supporting iterative development processes, the commonality and rough translation is that software is prototyped, reviewed, revised, developed, reviewed, and revised and so on until declared “ready.”

Reading Norman’s Emotional Design reminded me of his earlier work proposing the value in iterative design. Most technology is built by technologists, hence the over-abundance of technological widgets and considerable lack of remarkable technology. Often, iterative development has nothing to do with iterative design. Iterative design should begin before iterative development. It can then overlap as the iterative development realizes the evolving design points. Finally, as the application nears completion, iterative design continues to influence resulting in both a technological and design winning outcome. There is no shortage of excuses for why most products never benefit from such design/development intertwining.

If you want a successful product, test and revise. If you want a great product, one that can change the world, let it be driven by someone with a clear vision. The latter presents more financial risk, but is the only path to greatness.

Donald Norman, Emotional Design, page 98

Iterative design is “design by committee” and while apt to please more people, often produces less than dazzling results. Norman suggests that visceral (universally appealing, pre-wired/pre-programmed) and reflective (more sophisticated, fashion and cultural trend sensitive) design is best lead by an individual with a clear vision. By logical conclusion, greatness is not derived through behavioral design. Assuming that the product delivers behaviorally (i.e. performs its intended function), game changing experiences employ design appealing to both the visceral and reflective sides of the end-user’s psyche.

Business / Culture / Design / Innovation / Technology — No Comments
22
Dec 05

Keeping early adopters engaged after crossing the chasm

The minimum rate of change required to nurture and fuel adoption is relative to the percentage of people adopting. Geoffrey Moore is well known for adding on to Everett Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovations theory the idea that a chasm exists between early adopters and the early majority, where the early adopters often appreciate the benefits of new innovation regardless of its early faults and where the early majority often appreciate innovations that have demonstrated benefits and stability. The chasm is the biggest hurdle to overcome, but yields what is often thought of as the bandwagon effect, where adoption proliferates rapidly. Donald Norman discusses how things can be in vogue for a period of time (See Chapter 2, section: The Personality of Products in Emotional Design). More importantly, the leaders of society are not interested in acting like the majority – it is the differences that distinguish them.

The Technology Adoption Life Cycle

Both Norman and Moore use the idea that the general population can be subdivided and that design or innovation needs to be directed to those different audiences. Early adopters are leaders in the adoption of innovation. When an innovation crosses the chasm and is adopted by the early majority, continued innovation re-engages the early adopters fueling the innovation’s brand within the community, easing the future transition of add-on innovation, solidifying continued adoption.

Rate of innovation and adoption, showing an increase in innovation is required to keep early adopters engaged

Culture / Design — No Comments
20
Dec 05

Emotional Design

Front cover of Emotional Design, by Donald Norman

I started reading Donald Norman‘s Emotional Design today. I have not read anything from him since college, so I thought this 2004 publication might give me a good refresher.

Norman is well known from his book, The Design of Everyday Things. I remember being intrigued by his thoughts on why we love or hate the objects in our lives. But, as Norman points out in his forward, if you made him your only master you had “functional but ugly” objects. The good news is that most people do not seem to adopt the mindset of a single individual, but instead remix the work of many others with personal experiences to construct a set of truths all their own.

More good news is that Norman has gone ahead and integrated a critical component of how people understand the world – emotion. As a side note, this reminds me about a different book I keep seeing at the local Barnes and Noble, Beyond Reason: Using emotions as you negotiate. People have an emotional filter, but often fail to acknowledge its presence – rationalizing facts hopefully justifying feelings. It will be interesting to see if Norman’s recent work offers me more than the obvious.

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