Designing Interactive Products

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Love this video. We design products assuming a certain minimum amount of knowledge and skill in using a computer (or any piece of technology). The truth is that there are lots of people out there that don't have that. How should that change how we design?

(via Boing Boing)

A blogging resolution

I've always found it difficult to blog consistently. I go through stretches where I have lots of energy and ideas but then I slowly lose focus and go long periods without posting at all.

The first post on this blog was more than three years ago, but I've only written a total of 57 posts. That comes out to less than two per month.

I realize now that part of the reason for this is that I'm always disappointed with the lack of response or traffic when I am posting often. Getting feedback on your ideas is exciting, but expecting feedback and then not receiving it can be really discouraging.

So I've decided to make a New Year's resolution regarding blogging. I'm going to post consistently and I'm not going to care if anyone ever sees it.

I'm going to have only one goal: learn to express my views on design intelligently and succinctly.

I'll measure success by looking back at my posts every few months to see if they still seem to have value. If they do, I'll be on the way to accomplishing the goal. If not, I'll try to examine what I don't like about them and work toward fixing it.

I'm not going to discourage or avoid feedback -- if you're reading this, feel free to comment, retweet, etc -- but I'm not going to measure the success or failure of the endeavor based on the number of pageviews I get.

Is this a law of the universe or a problem waiting for a solution?

"Yet social media is itself as temporary as any social gathering, nightclub or party. It's the people that matter, not the venue. So when the trend leaders of one social niche or another decide the place everyone is socializing has lost its luster or, more important, its exclusivity, they move on to the next one, taking their followers with them."
- Douglas Rushkoff, CNN Opinion

Rushkoff's point, that all social network sites seem to be doomed to eventually fail, is an interesting one and a difficult point to argue. These sites tend to follow the same path as any pop culture fad: the cool kids discover it, the masses follow, the media creates a ton of hype, the cool kids leave for the next thing and then the hype fades in favor of the next trend.

So here's my question: will this happen forever or will some smart social networking company eventually figure out how to avoid the fad cycle?

One answer would be that the internet itself is the only social network that will remain in some form forever. The gathering may move from site to site, but people will always want to gather online somewhere.

And it seems like there's nothing wrong with that.

Thanks to @sippey for the initial link.

Einstein, simplicity and the design of products

“It can scarcely be denied that the supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience.”
— Albert Einstein in “On the Method of Theoretical Physics" The Herbert Spencer Lecture, delivered at Oxford (June 10, 1933). »

This quote is often paraphrased as "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler."

This should be the guiding principle of product design. When you are designing something that helps others solve a complicated problem a certain amount of complexity becomes a requirement. However, the designer should be vigilant that unnecessary complexity not be introduced into the system.

Being able to distinguish necessary complexity from unnecessary complexity might be the greatest test of a designer.

Learning from the failure of others

The New York Times had an interesting article yesterday about six companies that went out of business in 2010. Two of those companies were web products: Wesabe and iParents.com.

The interesting thing is what the founders of those companies pointed to as the major factors in their demise.

Wesabe:

Ten months after Wesabe’s introduction, a competitor, Mint.com, appeared. As Mr. Hedlund acknowledges, Mint had a better name and better design and was easier to use...

LOOKING BACK Mr. Hedlund wishes he had simplified the consumer’s experience. “We wanted to help people,” he said, “but it was too much work to get that help.”

They didn't put enough focus on user experience.

iParents.com:

Too much time and money were spent on enhanced functionality, like text-alert reminders about appointments and the ability to turn family photos into refrigerator magnets. “All the bells and whistles diluted our premise — to be a community for parents and families,” Mr. Milley said.

In other words, feature creep. They weren't able to see which features were important and which were not.

Both of these cases are failures of product design. It's possible these companies would have failed anyway -- they were both facing stiff competition -- but what the founders saw in retrospect was that the design of their product was one of the key causes of the company going out of business.

Google, Groupon and local newspapers

When I read about Google offering $6 billion for Groupon a few weeks ago, I was a little confused. Where's the value? Not in the software. Google could knock out an app like that in no time. Not in the brand. The company's only been around for 18 months and hardly has any recognition with the general public.

After talking with some coworkers and reading a bit online, it seems like the value is in Groupon's knowledge of local markets and their team of salespeople with relationships with small businesses.

Here what the New York Times' DealBook column had to say:

Google had set its sights on the hyperlocal market for neighborhood mom-and-pop shops, where it sees a largely untapped group of business customers and advertisers. Groupon, which offers discount coupons, could provide Google with specific insight into consumer spending habits as well as provide access to a large fleet of salespeople with intimate knowledge of local markets.

Are you telling me that "a large fleet of salespeople with intimate knowledge of local markets" is a major factor in company being valued at $6 billion? In the early part of my career I worked for several small newspapers and I can tell you that most of them have exactly this asset. Every local newspaper publisher in the country has to be slapping their forehead at this point.

I'm not suggesting that Google go out and start buying up the Clovis Independent and the Foster City Islander. However, if they want sales people with knowledge of local markets they might want to think about recruiting them from local papers like this.