“So while [techies] trump up our skills at designing “easy to use” interfaces for our applications, millions of people are still trying to figure out how to get our beautifully designed application out of its zip file or disk image. Or where in fact the Downloads folder is. Or what, exactly, a folder is. [...] I’ve watched firsthand as people who’ve struggled to do basic computer tasks as long as I’ve known them pick up an iPhone and be cruising around within hours, if not minutes. For people who do not already thoroughly understand computers, New World devices are easier to understand and easier to use.”
Posts Tagged: change
4
Feb 10
Techies don’t understand the iPad
7
Dec 09
Momentum
The other week, Aimee Mann’s Momentum song was stuck in my head. Change is hard, and the more I listen to the lyrics , the more it seems to just fit a lot of situations. Everything from the daily routine to the outdated (but we’re still using it!) software.
Anyway, I’ll let the lyrics speak for themselves. You can buy the song here.
Cheers,
Peter
Verse 1:
Oh, for the sake of momentum
I’ve allowed my fears to get larger than life
And it’s brought me to my current agendum
Whereupon I deny fulfillment has yet to arrive
Chorus:
And I know life is getting shorter
I can’t bring myself to set the scene
Even when it’s approaching torture
I’ve got my routine
Verse 2:
Oh, for the sake of momentum
Even though I agree with that stuff about seizing the day
But I hate to think of effort expended
All those minutes and days and hours
I have frittered away.
Chorus
And I know life is getting shorter
I can’t bring myself to set the scene
Even when it’s approaching torture
I’ve got my routine
Bridge 1:
But I can’t confront the doubts I have
I can’t admit that maybe the past was bad
And so, for the sake of momentum
I’m condemning the future to death
So it can match the past.
Bridge 2:
when I can’t confront the doubts I have
I can’t admit that maybe the past was bad
And so, for the sake of momentum
I’m condemning the future to death
So it can match the past.
[ Momentum Lyrics on http://www.lyricsmania.com/ ]
25
Nov 09
Taste
Dustin:
“There’s a common attribute that makes for good designers, good engineers, good employees, and good companies. For a long time, I couldn’t figure out what it was. Was it practice? Was it skill? Was it innate ability? Turns out, it’s none of those. It’s taste.“
“[Ira Glass] points out how that gap between ability and taste drives creative people to achieve great things.”
[via Dustin's post on a AA.com UX designer]
23
Nov 09
Stop using the word: innovation
Scott Berkun in the SpoolCast: Innovation Beyond the Buzzword talks about how to approach innovation in a methodical way.
He says the first step, is to stop using the word, and instead use a phrase that better represents what you mean. He typically finds that people mean one of these three when talking about “innovation”:
- Having new ideas
- Taking more risks
- Making things radically better
Other advise: “[Scott] tells us you have to be opportunistic and start small. High-priority challenges may be a temping place to start, but he suggested looking first at low-hanging fruit. You can build momentum for positive change by racking up a number of small wins that together move the project in the right direction. Having these small successes under your belt gives you more influence when attempting larger changes later on.”
30
Oct 09
Exponentially more productive
I have a core belief about technology which Rands summed up nicely on twitter:
“The correct tool is exponentially more productive.”
Whether you are talking about Netflix upending the rental business, cell phones killing the pay-phone business, new ways to detect flu outbreaks, digitization of film, or more efficient ways to build web applications, the new isn’t just better. It’s radically better.
The radically better, or “exponentially” as Rands put it is really the important bit. We are not talking about small efficiencies that bring about incremental 20-30% gains, these are the big changes that happen over night and catch many people entirely off guard.
Take YouTube for example. There was more original content uploaded in the last 2 months to YouTube than ABC, CBS, and NBC created in the last 50 years… combined! Read that last sentence again, because even I was shocked the first time I ran across the statistic. That’s a lot of video, and makes these mammoth broadcasting networks look like peanuts. Say what you will about the quality of the content getting to YouTube, but YouTube didn’t exist 4 years ago, and with that kind of volume it isn’t hard to outpace the legacy broadcast networks with just a modicum of tweaking.
The same is happening in many other industries: Phone book companies have become irrelevant due to Google. The Apple’s iTunes Music Store is now the #1 music retailer making compact discs obsolete. Amazon is rapidly making many brick-and-mortar stores irrelevant (especially with their for foray into same-day-shipping). And with the Amazon’s Kindle and B&N’s Nook eBook readers coming of age, one doesn’t need a sharp imagination to see what is going to happen to the book industry. The thing about eBooks, is that for the last half-millennia, books have been largely unchanged. Until our generation.
I know people have a hard time wrapping their head around small changes, much less big ones, but these big changes are happening everywhere. Every. Single. Day. We need to adapt, or become as irrelevant as the pay phone has become.
My takeaway? What separates you and your business from your competition is your ability to rapidly change and adapt to these new realities. And then radically do it again in 18 months. And then again, and again, and again.
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