Among other things

11/25/09: The technological sweet spot.

Posted by: scott

Other Categories: Innovation , Interfaces , Wireless , Design and Management , Sustainability , Business , Social Netizens , Things Fall Apart

Just heard an outstanding interview with Ethan Zuckerman. - WNYC - The Brian Lehrer Show: Bridging the Digital Gap (November 25, 2009). A feast for thought - apropos of Thanksgiving and more credence to the notion that innovation is not about what you provide, but what people do once you provide it.

Forget leaving the laptop in the office and taking your smartphone. In Africa and India - and soon in much of the world - entrepreneurs don't bother with cumbersome offices and brick-like "smart" phones. Computers?! - hah! If it can't fit in one hand and be operated with less than 10 buttons - don't bother opening a store there. As Ethan Zuckerman pointed out in his interview with Brian Lehrer, an advertisement (a sign), a mobile phone, and a toolbox is all you need to make money in Africa and along the Indian Coast. The simple and cheap mobile phone - not the computer - is the most important technological innovation to reach developing nations. Check out the blog and listen to the interview.

I agree with Zuckerman and believe that he is picking up on a discussion that has been surfacing over the past couple of years. For much of the world the mobile is the technological sweet-spot - culturally, environmentally, and economically. To my mind it marks a significant divide in the dynamic of technological adoption and application. The next phase is reinvention and then completely distinct innovation. We are already seeing the first glimpses of what's going to happen in tech-markets. Products and services will succeed only if they are developed for regions if not micro-regions - contrary to the slogan, if global operators think globally, they will fail. In the meanwhile, competitors in small markets will continue to thrive particularly in more diverse markets with greater numbers of entrepreneurs, who make on average less money. That is not the West... last week over dinner in Singapore someone who's opinion I really respect leaned over to me and said "We are ...[the past-tense of one of the 7 words you cannot say on T.V.]". If by "we" this person meant the countries with oversized, overfed, and over indulged populations - its true.

If it works in Abu-dhabi, then my bet is that it won't in Akra. If it sells in New York, don't market it in New Delhi. And if Bangalore wants it, figure out how Beijing will want to change it or don't bother. My plan? Work global / think local - and make sure that your sweet-spot is bigger than your market.

Links:
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/bl/episodes/2009/11/25/segments/144997
http://africaknows.com/
http://globalvoicesonline.org/
http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/

Ice Cream Cone Image Credit: D Sharon Pruitt

07/16/09: The Ultimate Kind of Innovation Validation!

Category: Innovation

Posted by: scott

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Other Categories: Innovation

In 2006 I worked with Invivia Inc. to redesign the desktop interface for a family. You can see the two projects by clicking clicking on 'work' and then looking at the 'calendar' and 'keeping touch' projects (grrr... flash w/out URL's!). The project ultimately became the HP Touchsmart Home Computer (the clients were, Microsoft and HP) and though it was significantly modified after we transferred our prototypes to them many of our contributions were strong enough to remain all the way through to implementation! For anyone who's worked on a 'vision' project before you know that its important to reach high and think broad, but you also learn to manage your expectations and consider the needs of others when there are a lot of stakeholders involved - something a good design manager really helps you to appreciate.

So it was really cool when I walked into a best buy® one day to see HP's final product and to actually play with it! Its rare to see your hard work manifest itself so clearly in a product, particularly one that breaks new ground and gets good reviews! As a designer, it is rare (and usually enough) just to find your hard work validated through successful use - especially when people innovate with it!

I was doing some research on classroom environments and landed on the website of the HopeTech School. The videos and links below show the best kind innovation - that helps people, shows a clear innovation lineage, and was never planned for. This is a kind of breakthrough innovation that is rare because it happens outside of the competitive market and thus without the market research and demographic focus that tends to be the thrust of many sales presentations.

More about the design process, videos documenting hopetech's work, and a description of the team after the jump...

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Follow-up Story

Read an article on the success story
See a demo of HP VoiceNotes

It seems that the touchsmart has proven itself to be uniquely valuable to children who are autistic, a cognitive difference that creates a wide range challenges for millions of people around the world. Some kinds of autism have common attributes including the particular challenge of speech disability. At hopetech the Touchsmart has been used to give these potentially amazing minds a voice AND to help them learn to use that voice. As you'll see in the videos above and behind the links, the Touchsmart offers a combination of free movement and association, touch sensitivity, voice recording, and note-based organization that actually facilitates learning in physical space! Looking back, I knew that we were doing something right and our clients knew that we had produced something innovative, but as a teacher of innovation it is just awesome to see this kind of diffusion and reinvention in perfect Rogers fashion.

The process was formative, the team was amazing, the project was exciting, and the clients were challenging. It was, by any and all accounts a dream project with a dream team. We worked hard - very hard. We spent hours developing concepts, on the whiteboard, making post-it note interaction models, and all sorts of prototypes. We ultimately came up with a pretty amazing interface that included ...

the flip-through browser (like the apple cover-flow concept but years before they created it ... ;) )

notes that could be created hand-written using a touch screen and then stored

a pretty unique organization and interaction scheme that brought the whole concept together.

high-quality renderings that included textured glass (that one, sadly, did not make it to the final product) and some amazing animation sequences

a kick-*** interactive prototype that John Snavely and I coded completely in actionscript

I know that everyone was proud of the finished product and I was personally, very proud of the functional prototype we handed over. It was one of the most complete pieces of code that I have ever worked on, lacking only a simple database to be a fully functional multi-user digital calendar - how many of those do you see today? Our prototype used the newly released (2006) bit-level capabilities of the flash 8 engine so we were able to implement a multicolor 'ink'-stroke system that had color and photorealism - living up to the standards of our awesome colleagues who set the bar very high with their amazing graphics visions. It had realistic physics motion that you can see in the movie on the Invivia website - so moving a note actually made it swing just like dragging a post it on a table, ... and it had no lag. It worked like a charm!

The team:
First it must be said that without this team, the project would not have manifested in the amazing way it did... and would have been so much less in all respects than the final product proved to be.

Allen Sayegh (Invivia Principal and Founder).

Pierre-Loic Assayeg - Project Manager extraordinaire this gentleman embodies the best of what design management aspires to

John Snavely and I - built the interactive prototypes you can see in the 'Keeping Touch Projects' on Invivia's site (all flash - almost lived at the office - so much fun!!!).

Eva Papadimitriou - worked on interactive prototypes and the high quality renderings you see

Hyejin Lee and Samuel Adrian Massey III built graphic components and developed the interaction models. (oh those sexy sexy highlights and subtle supple gradients!)

Saeed Arida - a digital modeling and rendering machine! The glass and animations that were non-interactive - all him. Still blow my mind. (I would still like to have that pen.)

Emily Guertin - helped us to build and map the interaction entity relationship models. This was not an easy task when you consider that the goal was for anyone to post anything using a combination of token placement, hand-writing, and chronological organization. I can still remember all of the notes, postits and sketches she had to work through to build these diagrams.

Edith Ackerman was heavily involved in the early visioning process. (Aside from my great respect for her she is !)

Each team meeting was an exhausting description of content, features, functions, and vision and when we finally met with engineers, designers, and reps from HP and from MS we got to actually manage a highly technical discussion between two of the largest and most groundbreaking companies in history - look back at what both have actually done... you really can't argue with the precedents that each company set.

I am so proud to have been a part of this project. Essentially it started as a cool design project, but this application and the innovation at hopetech really is the best kind of validation.

I think that it support my favorite comment to students - If you don't start in the right place, then you can't end in the right place. Perhaps an addendum to that could be - ... and if you don't end in the right place, people will their chance to start. Iterative design at its best.

Among other things

11/25/09: The technological sweet spot.

07/16/09: The Ultimate Kind of Innovation Validation!

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