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Insights from Mobile World Congress - The Only List You Need!

2012-05-02T11:49:00.000-04:00

As you know, I attended Mobile World Congress 2012 back in February. Here are some insights I took away from the conference!

The smartphone experience is continuity and engagement
The mobile pervasiveness is marching on. From keynotes to demonstrations, the pattern emerging for brands and winning products is becoming clearer and clearer. The mobile is with you all the time and it's a great weapon to connect the dots of what is going on in your life - it's a continuity engine. The next thing it does very well is engage the user in context where no engagement was possible before - get ready to experience the world like no man has experienced it before!

The ecosystems battle royale
Is there really a battle there between iOS, Android, Windows Phone and soon BB10. At the show, Android was the big gorilla and iOS was the big elephant nowhere to be seen. The contenders, Microsoft and RIM, need to cook something special up to make themselves contenders again. Carriers have been neglected by Apple and Google. We can expect to see Microsoft and RIM play that card strongly. By showing more love to the carriers and helping them become relevant again, they provide the carriers with a huge incentive to move RIM and MS products in front of customers.

Cars + Connectivity is the new mobile
The car a 100 years ago was the first mobility play. Ford believes the combination of car + telecom is the new mobile. For a car company to be one of the keynote they must really believe that story. The middle class in emerging countries wants their own car and the freedom that comes with it. To Ford this has huge repercussions on the environment and city traffic, parking etc. that only the connected cars can address. We saw the RIM Porsche, the MS Sync Ford car, and the connected home concept integrating the car into the overall picture. Today is about entertainment, but already cars on our roads have more than 1million lines of code embedded in them so we will be getting a lot more than entertainment soon.

Healthcare is a two headed beast depending on where you live

The problems we have to address in the developed world are very different from those we have to address in the emerging world. The developed world is about efficiencies to reduce the costs. The emerging world is about access to the services for the population. During the talks it became clear that it's not the same innovation that is required to save people's lives depending on where you live. The realities of the emerging world are just very different than ours. As a vendor of solutions in the health space, insight based solutions design is essential for success.

It's a world of BigData more than ever

It's the voluntary data we provide the applications on our phone, it's the phone collecting information for us, it's all the sensors that are also collecting data about us and it's the machine to machine data we're starting to see. The opportunity is making sense of the data in the moment. It's building the intelligence to factor in the context and combining it with past data to make predictions, and then presenting the information so that decisions can be made in the moment.

1b smartphones, 7b people on the planet - it's only getting started

This is a quote from Eric Schmidt during his keynote. I highly encourage you to view it ( Eric Schmidt's MWC keynote on YouTube ). It puts things in perspective as far as how far along the mobile revolution really is. Lots of people during the conference, including Eric Schmidt, called for cheap smartphones. The word on the street is we're about 18months away from a $120 smartphone. Carriers in emerging markets are calling for $70 smartphones in order to gain serious penetration. Huge challenges remain for accessibility, and one huge opportunity.

Mobile Applications Creation – What To Care About?

2012-04-20T10:43:00.000-04:00

I was at Mobile World Congress 2012 back in February and it triggered quite a few thoughts. While there were many that I had, some are more appropriate for this blog than others. So what is it that matters in the mobile space and where is it that innovation needs to take place?

Marketers are taking over – I know it’s tough to swallow. We’re collecting data, we're following our users like never before, we’re always with them either with a pocket mobile or with a smart wristband as examples. This is a dream come true for marketers - they can now create a much stronger link with their brand and with social use the social connections to influence a whole slew of people I know for FREE through my social network. Marketing budgets will explode!

Here are the places that scream opportunity to me.

Experience: It transcends all layers and goes beyond (see my post Mobile – Reframing My Model ). No one really owns all the pieces and it’s a big challenge. The experience equation is: Hardware + Software + Services + Applications. As Peter Chou, CEO of HTC puts it, "the experience has to be Simple, Human and Crafted". In other words, easy to use, compelling through an emotional connection ie. working for people and lastly stylish and sophisticated. All of the above has to be with the mindset that continuity matters to users.

As an application designer and creator, the big picture is critical to me. I need to get out there to observe and engage my users. I need to get out there to engage the service providers and integrate them seamlessly in the continuum of the experience of my application. I have to understand the context where I take over from the current task and where I hand off, and do it seamlessly.

Ecosystem: Competition is good and it always pays off in the end for the users. At the same time, I’m afraid of the barriers the platform vendors are putting up across ecosystems. There is room for a #3 and maybe a #4. For Nokia, as per Elop, they want to build a platform that answers the ‘where’ question ALL the time (see my post Nokia’s Mobile Strategy @ Mobile World Congress ). I like the odds of Windows Phone, and for RIM there are still a few tricks they can play that could change the trend.

Ultimately though how many of us will have a full blown Apple house and work, or Windows, or Google. I really like the odds of dropbox like services that are going to help me cross the chasm between all the players. I see opportunity in more services like dropbox to glue the ecosystems together.

Big Data: The monetization model has changed forever even if a few apps companies are making a killing. The money is in data and leveraging users' involvement and participation in some ways. Dennis Crowley of Foursquare opened with "everywhere you see a map there should be a foursquare dot on it".

This is how to build the barriers of entry - the more data I have and the smarter I can be about it, the better the experience I deliver will be. The power in analytics is the ability it gives me to get good at putting a context around what is going on in the user universe and deliver that second to none experience.

Mobile – Reframing My Model

2012-04-16T10:16:00.000-04:00

As you know, I attended Mobile World Congress 2012 back in February. While there I was fortunate to be able to sit in on a few keynotes. One of them was about mobile platforms and mobile apps. We were treated to a talk by three great guys - Dennis Crowley, CEO of Foursquare, Peter Chou, CEO of HTC and Stephen Elop, CEO of Nokia. The talk forced a reflection for me as after listening I realized I now understood the landscape better. The epiphany came when Peter Chou said: "Experience is HW+SW+SRV+APPS". To have a truly well designed product, the experience has to be top notch with all components working on their own AS WELL AS working well together.

Here is my new model:

layer 0 - hardware is relevant again - no more only beige boxes with a different brand sticker. The innovation on phone hardware is very real and happening with hardware and sensors integration.
layer 1 - this is the platform - one heck of a battle is brewing at that level and competition is going to get more fierce.
layer 2 – the services – caught in between layer 1 and layer 2 because some will be coming from the platform, and others will be from the outside, independent services. This is the new kid on the block for me, I didn’t realize it could play such a big role as to have its own layer.
layer 3 - the app layer – lots of innovation happening making everyone’s head spin already, and it’s only starting. Connectivity and BigData working hand in hand is bound to yield a lot more to make our lives better.

From where I sit – here is what I see –
No ones owns the full stack and it’s really a good thing. Competition is good. I think the battle for the platforms and ecosystems is only starting with MS entry and to some extent RIM’s unclear way forward. It’s going to get ugly. The platforms are after my data; they want to lock me down. The applications are after my data too - do they want to know me to ultimately sell me more stuff. Owning the data and collecting analytics about me rhymes with loads of cash for those guys. An independent service layer is a really good thing, as long as there are many providers of services.

Think dropbox getting bigger and offering more than file sharing, like they are tipping their toe in with the mobile photo upload sync released recently. I hope this will force the hands of Google, MS, and Apple, just like apps developers to integrate dropbox like they would integrate Flickr.
It’s a source of innovation; more services can be created that will collect specific data from the ever growing list of sensors we are using.
It also had the drawback that it’s now one more place where data is going to be collected about us.

Overall, the independent services layer is good because it creates alternatives at a critical point in the stack. It gives power to the mobile user, me, to choose where my data should go. It also makes it more difficult for one vendor to own the whole stack, and have way too much power over what advertising and suggestions I’m being pushed to through my mobile behaviors.

Nokia’s Mobile Strategy @ Mobile World Congress

2012-04-02T09:03:00.000-04:00

I was fortunate to be able sit in on a few keynotes at Mobile World Congress 2012. One of them was Nokia’s Stephen Elop. From where he stands, Nokia has a great opportunity in front of them and they are certainly going to latch onto it. They truly see themselves as differentiated from the rest of the pack with their assets and strategies.

First things first - can Nokia even execute on a strategy. He went at it several times and in all the reading I’m doing the message is consistent: Nokia has increased it’s cadence and plans to release more often and faster than ever before.

So where is Nokia’s opportunity?

It’s a battle of ecosystem: Apple, Android and Microsoft. For Nokia, Android is the competition so this is where they are aiming. With this line of thinking, Microsoft is a strong number three or number two. Those three companies have the depth to pick the ecosystem battle. Kids, stay home it’s going to get ugly.

One tidbit he did share that I really clued in on is that Nokia is operator friendly. This is a really good card to have up an underdog’s sleeve.

What is going to be the differentiator about this ecosystem?

Apps – Today’s apps are good. Tomorrow’s apps are different. The bulk of the uptake in apps is in emerging countries. The apps of tomorrow will have to be locally relevant. The life we enjoy here is not the life that mobile users of emerging countries have. This is something Nokia understands better than all players out there. Apps are to be shared socially, stimulate viral app exchange and sustain apps economy.
Horizontal platform – Nokia is gunning for location based services platform. A search engine is the what, the social network is the who, and Nokia’s LBS platform is the where. So for Nokia, life is truly a journey and they intend to be there every step of the way!
$$$ – What else payment systems. Nokia is the champion of operator billing; they have the setup with 150 operators in 40 countries. Compared to credit card purchase, operator billing is 5x better for app monetization. We have to remember emerging economies and the young mobile users - they don’t have a credit card but they do have a bill from their operator.

Nokia is making the right moves. The new phones are getting great reviews. Lumia 900 winning best of show at CES is a first for Nokia. Windows Phone has great net promoter scores and positive reviews. Nokia understands well the emerging markets. They are a huge player there and this is where the next chapter will be played. They are already coming up with cheaper hardware that will run Windows Phone 7 with the Lumia 610, and even cheaper is coming. They see the Lumia 610 as the upgrade from a feature phone which more and more people are doing and accelerating in developed countries. All in all - I like Nokia’s odds.

Connected Consumers

2012-03-23T08:52:00.000-04:00

Recently I attended Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. I know, tough life! One of the sessions I attended was on the connected consumer with panelists:

Brian Dunn, CEO of Best Buy
John Donahoe, CEO of eBay
Michael Roth, CEO of IPG

Their perspective of a connected consumer was nothing really new, but the implications of mobility were interesting. Mainly the connected consumer these days as seen through the lens of a mobile device is:

always on
portable
multi-device equipped (i.e. camera)
locally aware

From Michael Roth, the ad-man, this speaks to a new type of advertising. Advertisers are confused about mobile because it’s still very small compared to TV, and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. Roth’s perspective is that mobile technology is a way to engage an advertising audience in ways not possible with other mediums. So connectedness through mobile devices is a nice fit and supports well integrated marketing campaigns. It’s advertising to engage the audience right now. For this reason alone, I think there’s HUGE potential even if the numbers aren’t yet adding up relative to TV advertising.

John Donahoe, the web commerce and payment guy, was pretty adamant that we haven’t seen anything yet. He believes the landscape will change over the next 3-5 years even more than it has in the last 5. While he shared few details on his thinking, John did reveal some pretty impressive numbers about the eBay mobile app, downloaded 70 million times already. Last year alone this app helped move $5B in merchandise and the forecast is $8B this year. That’s still small compared to the trillions of dollars in regular offline commerce, yet it’s a fraction of what it will certainly be in just a few years.

From Brian Dunn, the bricks and mortar guy, the physical retail competitiveness bar has been raised significantly by mobile technology. What it takes for traditional retailers to compete with online alternatives is very different from what it takes to compete with other traditional retailers. Best Buy is at huge risk these days, with Amazon using their stores as a showroom for its products, and Apple being the single most successful retailer these days. So Best Buy, in the context of the mobile business, wants to help the consumer:

manage the complexity of all the competing platforms and services
enjoy freedom of choice with fewer locked devices so they get the best solutions possible
sort out mobile plans so they get what will benefit them, as opposed to the carriers

Best Buy is hinging a lot of its success on providing an experience that helps and advises its customers in their shopping decisions. Starbucks made a whack of money by creating the ‘other place’ away from home and work. Could Best Buy become the technology place that makes it all work for consumers digitally-speaking with their retail locations and Geek Squad services?

Mobility is Continuity in the Connected Consumer Paradigm

The one common theme among the three speakers is that mobile technology brings greater continuity. Every step of the way the mobile device is now part of the customer experience for companies. It's the way to engage the target market, it’s the way customers choose products among many alternatives, and it’s the way they ultimately buy. Mobile technology has raised the bar in so many ways – and now it makes me the connected customer!

Part III - Staging the RIM Comeback Step # 3 - Innovate like mad in car+mobile combo

2012-03-19T09:07:00.000-04:00

RIM's challenges are tall - no question about it. But there is still so much opportunity and the mobile pie is going to grow so much more. Earlier I talked about Step 1 in Part I - Staging the RIM Comeback and Step 2 in Part II - Staging the RIM Comeback Step #2 - Show the Love to the Carriers, Baby in staging RIM's comeback. Here I explore the last leg.

I believe RIM has huge potential that is still vastly untapped. It has an ace up its sleeve. It’s the QNX platform that is already embedded in so many cars and continues to win more manufacturers every day. The competition is just not there: Apple is looking at TV and Google is looking everywhere. Microsoft, with Sync, is the only other game in town. Unlike RIM, MS’s Sync platform doesn’t have a common underlying core with its mobile devices, like the one that QNX shares between BB10 and what they embed in the cars. I believe this is an opportunity for RIM to move faster - there is leverage in the integration of car and mobile that they can really go to town with.

Let’s hope RIM doesn’t repeat the mistake of the past by working only with manufacturers for innovations like they once did by innovating strictly for enterprise customers. Now is the time to observe USERS/DRIVERS to see how painful life is when transitioning between mobile use and driving. Now is the time to experiment A LOT with creating continuity. Throw lots of spaghetti on the wall (and the windshield) to see what sticks. Don’t fall into the trap that automotive innovation is about consumers only. Sure it’s one big and highly attractive market. However, a huge part of our economy involves transportation and it’s highly inefficient and ripe for an overhaul.

Keep in mind that the number of cars on the road globally is going to go through a hockey stick growth with the rise of emerging economies. The model of automobile ownership may change too. In ten years are we each going to own a car or will we purchase a membership that gives us access to a car? It’s time for the think tank automotive group at QNX to grow big and work hard at laying down the strategy. I’d like to see them showing huge thought leadership that goes well beyond the car stereo. It’s time to think BIG and experiment.

RIM can again win HUGELY in this area. How can cars, delivery trucks, long haul trucks, emergency vehicles, personal vehicle fleets, and so many more, benefit from a QNX/BB10 one-two punch?

I can’t wait to see the RIM platform enabling the next generation of smart transportation systems!

Part II - Staging the RIM Comeback Step #2 - Show the Love to the Carriers, Baby

2012-03-14T10:20:00.000-04:00

Last week I talked about step 1 in Part I - Staging the RIM Comeback. In this post I push the carrier angle because RIM has got some real golden nuggets to leverage with the carriers to help them win market share.

What’s a mobile device company to do these days to shine again? How about getting the carriers on board with your product? If RIM does whatever they have to do to get those carriers to push their products like there is no tomorrow, the new devices will be a godsend for users and RIM shareholders.

These days, the carriers really need some love. They have been battered around by Apple and Google. They want control; they want to be more than dumb pipes. RIM can make them feel smart again. RIM (and Nokia) can play a serious role in the revival of the carriers’ businesses and along the way give a serious run at the other two mobile platforms (see techcrunch article). From the network operating center, to the in-store push – RIM must make a play that will turn the carriers into advocates for the BlackBerry platform.

RIM has always been smarter about its usage of bandwidth and the carriers’ operating reality. It’s time to turn this into a competitive advantage that will deliver value to the customers. Not all devices are created equal. The same should hold for data plans. A device that is wiser about the network should also translate into something good for users.

Assuming BB10 is on par with other platforms from an end user experience standpoint, RIM needs to find ways to have carriers deliver data plans for RIM devices that are more attractive, because the carriers gain by having more RIM devices on their networks.

RIM’s backend and engineering-savvy platform is equivalent to Japanese cars before the oil crisis in the '70s. We know the wireless infrastructure has some serious challenges ahead. In a world where the future is all about data-throttling, RIM’s users are going to be the winners! There is clearly a giant opportunity for RIM and the carriers to align their interests more closely and win big together.

I can’t wait to see the new offers they’ll be cooking up to get customers to snap up those devices.

Part I - Staging the RIM Comeback

2012-03-08T15:25:00.000-05:00

There are lots of RIM doubters out there these days. The company has become an easy target for the press due to product and sales misfires and outright PR fiascos, so they are all piling it on. No one can deny that RIM has a huge challenge ahead as it has fallen from being the darling of mobile workers to the media’s favorite target.

I know the press always needs a black sheep. The US press in particular has the attitude that if a company is not successful in the US it just can’t be successful period. But let’s keep in mind the mobile game in the world is still very much in early innings. Sure, the US market is one big market, but the rest of the world is one bigger market and it’s a whole other story. Whatever happens in the US will happen, but the rest of the game is being played out around the world (see my post Eric Schmidt at Mobile World Congress 2012 ).

So what’s a company to do? Because you can never have too many three-step programs, here is another one and the only one RIM really needs.

Step #1 - Get BB10 right - let's swipe!
Step #2 - Show the love to the Carriers, Baby
Step #3 - Innovate like mad with the car+mobile combo

Let’s look at Step #1 for BB10 first. I will talk about Steps 2 and 3 in upcoming posts.

Step #1 - Get BB10 right – let’s swipe!

Let’s burn the boats – BB10 is it. From a user’s perspective, RIM has to deliver the full experience with BB10. This includes a platform that has the feel and power of a tier-1 platform. Simplify, Simplify, Simplify. RIM’s products have always been great marvels of engineering; they now need to be examples of great design.

There is a lot of cosmetic stuff on the surface that needs changing so that I don’t feel like I’m using a terminal anymore. Under the surface RIM also needs to get rid of 90% of the options- they just clutter the user experience with little benefit.

Finally, swipe is it! The first thing I miss when I move from my PlayBook to another tablet is the swiping. I'd like to see swiping taken to a whole new level to enable the user to do everything quickly and naturally. It could be a real user experience differentiator.

I can’t wait to see the BB10 preview!

The Rumor has it… Mobile World Congress

2012-03-05T08:25:00.000-05:00

It’s mind boggling sometimes what you hear at a conference. At MWC this year it’s two companies that are clearly the top players: Huawei and Ericsson. Each has palatial installations and pavilions for themselves in addition to booths scattered around the conference.

To tell you the truth, I have no idea if the numbers I heard are true - but based on what I saw it’s not far off the mark. Huawei’s presence at the show this year has been said to be an investment of $25m and that is just for one conference!! To speak to the experience they want to give their VIP – they rented over 150 Mercedes for the week for their VIPs, where the VIP is assigned to a car with a chauffeur and an admin. This is high class customer wooing!

There are two players in the infrastructure; they are Ericsson and Huawei. It’s clear from the show. It’s also clear that Huawei has huge ambitions. Their latest foray into the mobile device category is nothing less than amazing. The Huawei Ascend D is a great device with aesthetic appeal and hardware that rivals the best out there. They are coming from behind and they are coming fast!

Eric Schmidt at Mobile World Congress 2012

2012-02-29T08:39:00.000-05:00

I made it a point to attend the keynote yesterday given by Eric Schmidt of Google. I expected it to be good and I’m really happy I went because it was excellent! He didn’t spend much time on Google products but rather he used most of his time to speak about the grand scheme of things and that made a huge difference for me.

Example of Google’s thinking: there are 1B smartphones in the world, there are 2B people online, yet we’re 7B so the digital revolution hasn’t arrived. We are still very much the elite.

His challenge to us – “imagine how much better the web would be with an additional 5B people”. I can imagine how this kind of thinking animates discussions in meetings at Google; I would love to be a fly on the wall!

From there he focused his talk on two points:

The elite – us, and what the next 20 years will be like,
The rest of the people – and what we need to be thinking about.

The elite – what to have on our radar 20 yrs out

Fiber to home will be a reality; something along the lines of 300mb/s to 500mb/s with the technology of today as a steady stream right into my home. The cloud and its little sister big data will become more important than ever since access and computing power will no longer be an issue. Bandwidth like this breaks barriers imposed by the speed we get today. For example, at those rates the distinction between live TV, radio, or HDTV is no longer relevant - this is all just bits. It will make technology just be there so we won’t notice it anymore.

The rest of the people

To get more people online two things are to be worked on:

Access costs – People in emerging countries are paying huge premiums to get online. It’s difficult to understand countries where the buying power of the citizens is roughly 10-30x less than in Canada but they pay significantly more to have access to the internet. It doesn’t compute.
Smartphones – This is the new computer. It’s expensive now but it will get much cheaper. By Moore’s law we can expect to have $70 android smartphones on the market within 18 to 24 months.

Those two factors combined are set to make a world of difference for those regions of the world not as lucky as us. Those communities are set to get a different level of services because of this access. I can attest that while sitting in sessions about mobile health, emerging countries are really truly creative in their ways to enabling access to health care. By supporting affordable connectivity and smartphones (their equivalent of our computers) they will get a lot of mileage out of this.

More importantly

Creativity, Imagination and Passion are in every human being wherever they are. We must work at getting everyone the opportunity to get connected and participate - it will be good for all of us.

So for Google anything driving more connected, more people online is good. It’s good even if it’s Facebook coming up with their mobile web initiative which flies in the face of android apps. They compete with Facebook and ultimately they win if Facebook wins because the pie just gets bigger.

Android: I’m frustrated!

2012-01-13T08:51:00.000-05:00

I have been using Android phones for just about three years now. In that span of time I have had the opportunity to use and play with many phones. Macadamian is a google apps shop and as such Android is a really productive platform for me when on the go. I write more emails on my mobile than I do on my desktop, so this integration is really useful to me.

I’ve now come to a point where I’m disgruntled with the whole Android phone and tablet ecosystem. The carriers and manufacturers are out to get the consumers; it’s a smash and grab job.

Carriers have little interest in undifferentiated phones

The Motorola CEO was just talking about this yesterday. Carriers want to move their data plans; the bait is the choice of phones. The more phones there are to pick from, the better.

I would even add that the more platforms and phones out there, the better the control the carrier has over the vendors. This carrier control over the vendors translates directly into more control over the consumers. For a carrier it’s get any phone and sign up for 24 months and do as I say with your data usage otherwise… and pay on time.

Manufacturers just want to sell more phones

Any manufacturer’s first goal out there is to sell more phones. Any way they can entice a consumer to buy a phone is good. One way is being very slow at updating the older hardware to the newest platform. So aside from Apple, and until recently HP (one could argue Nokia and Symbian), no vendors out there really want me, the consumer, to hold on to my phone. They want me to buy a new one the minute my contract is up. If I could get the latest version of Android on my phone, maybe I would not buy a new one - so goes their thinking.

In the end it’s the consumers who are getting the shaft!

As a consumer, if I want to upgrade my phone because my carrier has decided to not push the latest update, and my phone manufacturer has decided to skin the experience, I’m in for a lot of pain. It’s back to Unix days - load the rom and then re-partition; Oh Joy I’m now a sys admin! I don’t have the time nor the desire for this. I want things to be simple and easy.

Google - man up, or else

Who’s to blame – Google. Google has to man up. Google has to seriously put the screws to the carriers to push the updates immediately on their terms and that’s the end of it. Google also has to get the manufacturers to guarantee they will support new releases moving forward in a timely manner, within 1 month of release of latest version, otherwise the user gets the option to go the stock version of Android.

Tides in consumer interest go sideways quickly. People will grow frustrated with this situation. The growth in Android is going to grind to a halt unless Google does change things and starts imposing ground rules in the playground so that their users get the experience they deserve.

Integrated Design to Create Great Software!

2011-12-14T16:19:00.001-05:00

I was at a client site earlier this week. It's amazing to see how much people believe design can help their future successes. The level of awareness of design in software products these days is very high. At the same time, how to go about rigorous design is still quite a nebulous endeavor for most. So because design is not only about pretty screens and icons, what more do I need to consider then?

To start, and well worth the read, check out this great article from fastcodesign on what businesses should be striving for -”What Good Does Design Do For Business?”. In short, businesses need to strive for a design mix in their activities made up of the following elements: collaboration, innovation, differentiation, simplification, and customer experience.

To achieve the design mix, what does one have to do?

It starts with the users. The most common thing I hear is "we know what our users want". This is rarely true. While we may know what our users are asking for (their want), we rarely understand what it means in the context of usage and if it’s valid in the context of usage. A want is something a user will ask for; a need is something a user may or may not consciously be aware of. To understand the needs behind the want is where user research becomes handy.

User research has two main aspects: identification of the various user populations or personas and rigorous observation. Segmenting the user population into personas allows for focus in the design mix. It keeps your team from designing for everyone and anyone and focuses them on a few categories. Rigorous observation is framing user interviews in a way that they will be experiential. Observing the user in the environment of usage, however light the prototype is, brings solid data forward so that we can understand the user needs better.

You also need an iterative mindset and mixed team. In software, this is both the design crew and the software crew working together to address the user needs. They work iteratively together because the process has a constant influx of user feedback. It’s difficult to get collaboration between these two groups. The main idea to overcome is that engineers don’t think like designers and designers don't think like engineers AND this is the strength of the team. Engineers think from the code out to the user. Designers think from the user standpoint irrelevant of the technology difficulties. What this team strives for is:

Design informed by technology
Technology informed by design

Achieving the design mix is great for business. It leads to greater results earlier on because it's about asking the right questions early in the process and it's about constantly validating the progress against the business goals AND the user models. It provides an opportunity to get the things that matter for the market in this version not the next one. Ultimately though it's all about the user and this is why it's good for business to put users at the centre!

Customer Experience and Your Core Business

2011-12-04T16:11:00.001-05:00

Some time ago, I wrote about a haircut experience I had a few years back where I was truly impressed great customer experience . Recently, I tried a hair salon where the customer experience had been thought through to the extreme - or so I thought.

So stop laughing. Even if I’m hair challenged I still need to cut my hair or get the clippers going regularly. I was getting ready for an important meeting and I needed a good beard and head clipping. I was traveling so I couldn’t go to my usual place. I found this hip place - bloody pricy but it was hip and I like to think I’m a hip guy!

The salon décor was just fantastic and the place looked great. It’s a happening place - kind of a club with a DJ spinning techno music with a good beat. While you wait there is an espresso bar and Lindt chocolate for all guests. It makes the wait easy on people; the chocolate puts you in a happy place. When your turn comes up, someone comes up and introduces himself/herself and is very professional and casual at the same time. Off you go on the chair. Then after they are done, it’s rinse time and sublime head massage. Last but not least you’re escorted to the door and waved goodbye!

As you can see they have thought of everything and they went all out to create a memorable experience. So where is the beef you think? For those who know me, messing up my hair cut is impossible. It’s clipper at 0 and head and beard. I see the tiny whiny clipper coming out and I think this is going to be interesting. Well you see, that clipper was not the right tool and I ended up with a beard that wasn’t clipped equally all around. It was not enough to look bad, but just enough for me to notice too late after I was gone.

The side show going on in this hair salon made a promise that I was in a place where they had the whole process and activity buttoned up. In the end though, the very first thing that made them was not up to par. An experience is total and satisfying if the core service and product are working as promised. You can serve me the best espresso in the world but I’m in a hair salon and all I want really is a good hair cut. My take away – I can put as much money and effort in putting on a great show to create a great experience but if the basic product I sell is not top quality itself it doesn’t matter. It’s something to remember every day in my activities.

RIM getting into agnostic mobile device management

2011-11-29T08:33:00.001-05:00

Agnostic device management in the enterprise is a move (see Managing the mobile devices in the enterprise and three steps program to fix RIM) I have been talking about for a long time on this blog and with whoever wants to listen. I think this is a great step in the right direction to further enterprise relationships.

With BlackBerry Mobile Fusion, RIM Wants To Help Enterprises Manage Android, iOS Devices. With this type of move I believe RIM is playing to their strengths. RIM has great relationships with the IT departments of the fortune 500 and the people running those infrastructure are still fond of the control and security the RIM platform provides them. This is a step in the right direction on RIM's journey to make things happen even if the American consumers have other big shinny objects to look at now.

Culturally Yours!

2011-11-22T10:05:00.001-05:00

After several weeks without giving an update on our culture evolution, today is the day ladies and gentlemen! To sum it up, we’ve been progressing, well actually more like limping along, the last few weeks. It’s far from a happy go lucky journey but there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Our progress is difficult; we’re in a transition phase. We’re going from information gathering to implementation - or as I see from the la-la land of concepts to the day-to-day of reality … living, where the rubber hits the road. The initial energy and enthusiasm that fueled our initial progress has vanished. It makes for meetings that I find are more difficult to get through and I wish were more energizing.

You know WHAT? I believe it’s part of the process and it’s integral to the success of the culture evolution journey.

We’re in the phase where we get to test our metal. It’s this time when everyone has an opinion and they are all different. It’s this time when the clarity of the past feels so much better than the uncertainty of the unknown future. We want to move on, but we’re not sure about what is ahead. Letting go is hard and trusting ourselves that we’re doing the right thing is hard.

We have some really good nuggets that are really getting me fired up. As we say in our new values – It starts with you. It's time I shift - we all shift - our attention to working at living the values and helping and encouraging our teammates to living the values. This will help us all along the path to internalizing our new values.

Twitter the dot connector

2011-11-17T10:29:00.001-05:00

Twitter is about what is going on in the moment; it’s about the discussions happening now. Events big and small are happening in the world all the time and Twitter is becoming a bigger part of the conversations going on with every day that goes by. The big challenge for me with Twitter is that the stream of information feels like drinking from a fire hose. The interesting challenge to me is to try to leverage those conversations into more than 140 charactes messages going back and forth.

Sentiment analysis of the Twitter stream seems to have great potential. After all if you look at Deb Roy’s presentation at Web 2.0 Summit, you can quickly make sense of major trends if you zoom out of the Twitter stream to look more at the whole flow of conversations.

So Deb is explaining there is great opportunity for companies in filtering the Twitter stream against a structured data layer. So in case above, the structured layer is the TV grid and parsing the Twitter stream through it leads to some very interesting and new information.

From where I sit I compare Twitter messages to tcp/ip packets. They don’t make much sense on their own, but when all assembled they mean something. It’s just way too much information to process at the packet level. The business opportunity with Twitter is in connecting the dots between the packets.

Embrace your data fumes, Design the experience

2011-11-12T16:53:00.001-05:00

I was web 2.0 summit a few weeks back. One of the solid take aways for me was how data is key moving forward. It's no longer the realm of the Googles and Facebook only. David Hornik from August Capital discusses the investments he made in data in the following 5minutes video. David talks of this startup among many they funded that builds software to collect data fumes from IT systems in enterprises. They then figure interesting things about problems and issues with the enterprise itself, which has a lot of value to the said enterprise.

Then a truly eye opening high order bit is done by Brad Rencher at Adobe. Brad goes on to talk about Vail resorts , a ski resort, and how it found a clear line of sight to the business impact of data. The lift tickets come with an RFID chip embedded. This allows for the uploading of ski data as a skier is doing runs and it has gamification to share performance and award badges. It changes how the skiers engage with Vail and how Vail engages with its customers.

In both presentations we clearly get that data is very important for good business. The power of data is in making more decisions faster, it's in more insight and in better decision making. The data power is also how it allows customers to engage with a brand and how a brand engages with customers to drive business impact to the bottom line.

Embrace your data fumes means:
If someone says "customer engagement" I equate this to the requirement to have great experience throughout the services I provide or products I sell. My point is you can't have engagement without intentional design of the experience itself. So if you are thinking about embracing your data fumes to drive more business impact, first and foremost carefully design the experience so that it is authentic for your users because, as Brad says 'You can't buy friends'

Does data kill beauty and emotions in a design?

2011-11-02T16:08:00.001-04:00

At Web 2.0 Summit a couple of weeks back, Mike McCue, the CEO of Flipboard , gave a very interesting presentation about how data kills beauty in a product. I strongly encourage anyone who is interested in understanding what is behind Fliboard design and operating principles to view his presentation.

Mike makes a very good case for putting emotions in front of analytics .. how when it's time to create a true breakthrough product you have to be ready to back away from data. Great products are a work of art, art is emotions and emotions defy data! After all would you as a consumer want to drive a beautiful Jaguar XK SS 1957 or a Toyota Prius?

At some point in the presentation though I got off the bandwagon. He was making product pitch for Flipboard in a not so subtle way. When I realized I was being pitched I was a little disappointed.

Still, through the product pitch, what he says makes a lot of sense. White space is important and over optimization of space to get better click through, or maximum commercialisation for any product, is a recipe to lose the emotional connection with the users.

White space in Flipboard's business is content. Applied to what we do, white space in my business is to hone in on what the user needs to do and make the experience truly simple, flawless and enjoyable. Mike's principle of building simplicity and putting the task to be performed at the centre of a design is a driver of success. However, I disagree with his argument that this can be achieved 'just' through emotions. Using the car analogy is a nice trick but incorrect, because one (Jaguar) optimizes one thing - beauty; the other (Toyota) optimizes fuel consumption. It's like comparing apples to oranges and saying one is tastier than the other based on their vitamin content; he is mixing up two different business goals. I strongly believe in emotions in design myself, but great products are not just emotions. It's not data versus emotions, it's data AND emotions. Internals of 'insanely great' products in my view are the make up of data gathered through user research science AND emotions AND tamed technology challenges.

User observations is fuel to build the right emotions and usefulness into the product experience. I believe that user observations is data and it's one of the vectors of inspiration to use in my design activities to create the emotions that will connect with users and build breakthrough products.

You need a command line on the mac too!

2011-11-01T16:27:00.003-04:00

Ever since I have updated to Lion, my experience on the mac has gone down. There are stability issues with this version of the OS. I already really feel like a fish out of water on the mac, so when the 'shan hits the fit', those issues are time consuming for me.

The last of those issues was with the appstore. I had two applications that needed an update and every time I would try to update them I would get the following: "The product distribution file could not be verified. It may be damaged or was not signed."

So for those who are looking for an answer to this problem, bring up the good old command line and cd to '/var/folders/' from there your experience may vary! In the sub directories in that folder, you will need to find one that multiple levels down will have 'com.apple.appstore' as a directory. Once you have found it, delete it i.e. 'rm -rf comp.apple.appstore'. That fixed it for me I was able to update my apps again!

Man terminal window and command line stuff I feel so powerful again.

My Web 2.0 Summit Take Aways

2011-10-27T12:31:00.000-04:00

So I'm back home now from Web 2.0 Summit but my head is still full of thoughts from attending the conference. This year, like last year, the conference has been a great exposure to an amazing number of different opinions and thoughts from various leaders in the industry.

Mobile is Still Only Getting Started

Mary Meeker did her presentation and again it was mind blowing. The biggest take away is how still in its infancy the smartphone mobile space is. The size of the market is huge; there are over 5.6 B devices out in the world and there are around 835 M smartphones out there now. Another big data point is that it is projected that by 2015 1 B devices will be shipped that year, up from 450 M this year. Mobile usage is ramping up fast. The big sites (Pandora, Twitter, Facebook) are showing increases in traffic from 33% to 60% and climbing.

Mobile is not a website, it's a mindset. Mobile is transforming commerce; it's transforming how people buy. Mobile is the what and the when available as it happens. It's all real time information and it's how an organisation can successfully leverage that real time information that will make a difference to it being the player of tomorrow. It's engaging users through gamification. It's allowing people to share and discover information in new ways. With tongue in cheek she revisited the hierarchy of needs from Maslow. The point to make is that she really thinks and believes from the data she looks at that Mobile is a game changer. Our smartphone might just be the brain extension we have all been looking for!

Design is So on the Radar of Everyone

Last but not least regarding Mary's presentation were the slides on Design, or the importance of Design. It's amazing how mainstream and how much Design is on the radar of people these days. This is the influence Steve Jobs will leave us. He has helped transform a whole industry from being technology centered to being design aware. There is a famous saying that states 'Design is going to be to the next 25 years what the last 25 were to technology'. I think we're starting this recognition phase that Design matters ... a lot!

Data and Analytics

Data in now synonymous with big opportunities. Lots of companies are created on top of Data Science and Data Science teams. Google I would say started the ball rolling by hinting several years ago that the information it had about what is being searched and how many times is just as big of an opportunity as the search results themselves. Companies are collecting data from their business activities and now they are turning to exploiting this data by offering new and better services or creating separate revenue streams. It's quite interesting to see for example what the people at bit.ly and go here for Hilary Mason's presentation, and linkedin can infer from their data and in return help their business.

Our social graph, what we share and what we do is worth gold nowadays. From there it's easy to see why so much data crunching is necessary and so potentially lucrative.

Twitter the Dot Connector

Twitter on its own is a huge source of data. It's the conversation going at any time about anything worldwide. In this respect Twitter might just be the dot connector. There are many ways to look at the Twitter information that can be useful for numerous businesses out there. I invite you to look at Bluefin Labs for some very interesting connections of Twitter and TV watching habits and preferences of the audience. In this case Twitter is the conduit between impressions (ads on TV and shows) and expressions about them. Here is the project that started it all.

Mapping a layer of meta data on the Twitter stream can unlock some real valuable information to correlate what is going on in your world!

Privacy

There was a very interesting presentation by Ann Cavoukian, the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario. She drove the point that baking privacy in our products is actually providing more freedom. She calls this privacy by Design. While we all talk about the importance of privacy, I agree with her - I really don't think we have it high on our priority list when creating products. It's like security; it's an afterthought in the process. The economics of putting user privacy over sexy use cases is a difficult one to make from a business goal standpoint.

What is going to take for us to take this seriously?

Wrapping It Up

As people creating software experiences and products we have to really dig the importance of mobile and combine it with data to create the experiences of tomorrow. We have to become immersed in the mobile mindset and become really good at observing our users to infer new ways to access the information they need. A strong data understanding is required. A strong culture of mining the data to always offer better information is the way Google does it, and now many others.

Mobile is the medium and an unstoppable train. Data is the new R (for research) in R&D departments of product companies. And both mobile and data are at the service of a great user experience.

Design Spirit of Google Ice Cream Sandwich aka Android 4.0

2011-10-19T15:46:00.001-04:00

Image via WikipediaReading the reviews this morning things are very favorable towards Ice Cream Sandwich, aka ICS aka Android 4.0. The next generation Nexus device looks pretty snappy and nice.

If you want to get the skinny on the new features and bells and whistles, there are many sources out there; here are a couple:

The article I really want to talk about is the interview with Matias Duarte, the head designer of ICS. The post is Matias Duarte on the philosophy of Ice Cream Sandwich. In there you will find some really good gems. If you are strapped for time here are the nuggets that stuck with me about design philosophy at a high level.

Legacy

"Coming in and being put in charge of the design and UX for this enormously successful platform that now has years of legacy behind it. It’s completely unlike getting behind the steering wheel of a zippy, agile little car. It’s more like driving an aircraft carrier." He gestures as if he’s pushing a button, “Okay guys, turning left! Are we turning left yet?"

Although Android is now at version 4.0 it has a huge legacy to deal with. From a design standpoint this is a big challenge because decisions must be backward compatible to re-use a well known expression of the software world. It's also a big deal because of innovators dilemma, i.e. your current users will push you to improve what works for them and the non users voice still needs to be integrated.

"What is the soul of the new machine?"

"This isn’t a design or product question. It’s a philosophical question. What is this thing? What is itsupposed to do? How will it do it? How do we get there? I ask him if it was the first time anyone at Google had ever asked that question."

What I love about this questioning in the product design as a whole is that an experience needs to be authentic. In order to be authentic, soul searching is required. It's key to understand what the essence of the experience is to be in order to design for it.

Emotional Connection is Critical

"Matias says that the studies showed that users felt empowered by their devices, but often found Android phones overly complex. That they needed to invest more time in learning the phones, more time in becoming an expert. The phones also made users feel more aware of their limitations — they knew there was more they could do with the device, but couldn’t figure out how to unlock that power."

It's very interesting to see how a design can have unintended consequence in the mind and heart of users. In this case by wanting to give power to users Google made some of them feel dumb. Who wants to feel like they need to be a rocket scientist to use a product? In the design language and interactions, how do we find a way to say "this is simple", "this is how it's done". This language the product uses to interact at every step of the way is there to make the emotional connection stronger and make the technology vanish!

Social Platforms Will Make Enterprise Software More Useful

2011-10-18T15:07:00.001-04:00

Listening to Marc Benioff at Web 2.0, I latched onto three things he shared with us:

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Facebook is becoming a vision of what the consumer operating system is,
Social media is an acceleration,
Internet of things concept.

I think as a product designer and creator there is something to be said about the points Marc Benioff is making. To create the enterprise software of tomorrow, the biggest trend these days to be aware of is the 'consumerization' of the enterprise. This is driving the need for better design back into the enterprise. Through better design, a better user experience will encompass what works from the consumer side of things and the new interaction metaphors the consumer is driving.

Image via CrunchBase"Facebook is becoming a vision of what the consumer operating system is"

Not to put words in his mouth, but he really is saying Facebook is the model of interaction and use cases that our customers' customer expects to see now. The users of our enterprise software now are growing up in an FB world - not a Frederic Boulanger world, but a Facebook one! Facebook for all its good and bad is setting the bar on how things get done. Whether it's how information is discovered and shared, or how we interact with it, Facebook is the only game in town.

To create the interactions of tomorrow in our business software, we have to be taking into account the new expectations of the users regarding the interactions and the experience they unknowingly have. They are the Facebook models of interactions.

"Social media is an acceleration"

Image by Laughing Squid via FlickrEnterprise software is about enabling quicker decisions for an organization. Information discovery is a big part of social media. The information architecture of the products of tomorrow are set to use some of the social networks concepts because they accelerate propagation of information that is likely to matter with you. There is a perfect match in principle for social and enterprise through 'acceleration of decisions'.

"Mobile, Social and cloud'" vs "Internet of things"

I'm mashing two things I heard yesterday here. Arab Spring was supported by 'Mobile, Social and cloud', this is why we saw Thank you Facebook and Thank you Twitter all over the place in Cairo and other cities in the Middle East. Additionally, in the not so distant future there are going to be many more devices than we can think of right now.

The model to have in our heads is - if 'it' consumes energy it will be connected to the internet. This means all sorts of things will be helping us make decisions on data received from the cloud wherever we are and with the ability to share those experiences and engage.

Example: I'm driving my car and it slips on a patch of ice; my car will then push that information up into the cloud and all cars following me will be notified of that patch of ice and will help their driver not get into an accident.

The Mobile, Social and cloud and the internet of things, will further accelerate the enterprise. Adapting more quickly, avoiding obstacles and making more decisions are a direct benefit for those who embrace it. It's only starting - buckle up.

Wrapping Up

Our new software products in the enterprise have much to gain to internalize the models of social networks. The models are there and well understood by the users, so less training and more engagement are highly likely. The impact is already seen and known in the consumer space; information propagation through social network is fast and no enterprise out there wants to go slow. Decision making and adapting to an ever changing landscape are optimal with social network.

So a couple of questions for your next release to embark on the enterprise social software:

How can the social software like Facebook and Twitter interaction metaphors be applied to your software?
How can the social network platform help your users accelerate decision making and become more agile?

Great Customer Experience = Empowered People

2011-10-17T23:59:00.002-04:00

Image via WikipediaSo I have been on the road for the last couple of weeks. My trips took me to Buenos Aires and Mendoza, Argentina, then Santiago, Chile. During our stay in Argentina and Chile, Manon and I discussed how good the service was in our hotels. We stayed in some pretty nice places and the staff was very much on the ball and going the extra mile.

An example: We get to this hotel in Buenos Aires and the first thing I do after a long flight is run for the shower. I get in the shower and the water is only lukewarm. It's somewhat unpleasant, but not so much that I want to call about it and I'm thinking that tomorrow it's going to be fixed magically. The next day it still is the same. I decide to call. I kid you not, less than 2 minutes later someone is knocking on the door to explain they have turned up the water tank temperature and it should be fine in 5 minutes. Indeed the water is then really warm and all is good again in my universe. We get downstairs at the front desk and then the person there tells us they are happy to have fixed the issue, "but please next time don't wait, let us know right away, we want you to enjoy your stay!"

Another example: We're in Santiago and our flight is at 7 pm, so really we have a day to spend in Santiago and we're not looking forward to carrying our luggage with us all day. So we ask the front desk about it, and the response is"Yes, how about you keep the room until you leave, so you can take a shower before you go for your redeye flight". I don't know about you but I think this is another great attention. Try to get this from a hotel here in North America and let me know how that conversation goes.

These two examples are from South America. They are not from world renowned brands either. They are boutique hotels, 20 room max places. South America is not a culture of commerce by any means, but they do know and understand that going one step above what their customers' expectations are makes a HUGE difference. This special attention makes customers talk and refer business and ultimately bring business. So without any further ado the two boutique hotels are

Customer Service Experience Design

Well the people we spoke or interacted with were not the owners of the hotel nor were they the managers. They were the staff. Yet they pay attention AND they want the customers to enjoy their stay. What is missing in our big hotel chains here, if you ask me, is that employees on the front line here don't own the customer's experience. I should say they don't believe they own the customer's experience - and this is a big difference. The managers of employees in big hotel chains unfortunately rely on and believe a customer experience is all about processes and forms and a completely deterministic model.

The big challenge when designing a customer service experience is to think more than strictly in terms of objectives it should deliver against. Objectives are important but it's only one aspect that needs work. Statements like our customer experience is one of pro-activeness, caring etc. are very common. Objectives are not the whole thing; we need to look at a bigger picture.

An aspect that will trump all objectives is empowered people. Customer facing people and owners of customer facing artifacts must believe and be fully engaged in owning the customer experience. The hotels I stayed at in South American all understood that its people were all about making me happy with my requirements.

Great experience starts with the people hired. Then it's the time the organization spends helping those employees understand how that same organization paying their salaries empowers them to deliver a unique and great customer experience. Then and only then can we start talking about objectives.

The difference in a great customer experience service delivery and a so-so one is the people on the team and their understanding of their central role in the experience the customer perceives. My opinion is that the company culture is at the centre of everything we do. Evaluating how the company culture is enabling our people taking ownership is vital.

Argentina innovation: Frozen Beef!

2011-10-13T20:45:00.001-04:00

Image via WikipediaI'm just back from Argentina, a vacation my spouse and I were very keen on. It was a blast and in the cloud 9 experience category. We got to visit parts of a great country with great people. I will talk to it some more in a later post with pictures. What I want to talk about though is what I discovered there when doing the tourist stuff.

Pre 1867:
As we were traveling we were reading about Argentina and the places we were visiting, the buildings etc. Then Manon stumbled on a very interesting piece of information. Argentina's rendez-vous with fame and glory: Frozen beef! It speaks to the power of innovation; it transformed people's lives and a country's future. For Argentina there was pre 1867 and after 1867. See Argentina has always had a great reputation for producing high quality beef. The problem they had was they could not sell it to anyone outside of their internal market. They had no way to ship the meat without it going bad before it made it to its destination.

Post 1867:
Well this date to Canadians is significant for different reasons, but for Argentinians it's the date when they figured out something very important. In 1867 they discovered a way to ship their beef frozen and keep it frozen long enough for the beef to make it to Europe and still be good to eat.

This innovation for Argentina was transformative. They figured how to freeze beef so they could export it and make huge money from that great resource they had. Thus was born the expression 'rich like an Argentinian'.

Where is my 'frozen beef' in my industry?
It is so simple when you think about it. I have a supply and there is a market for it but I just can't get it there. Then one guy puts two and two together and a country is transformed. Back in the day, frozen beef existed. Still the process needed to improve significantly so that significant breakthrough could be achieved with the beef supply.

Back in the day, the big innovation was what now looks like a fairly simple thing and we all know it wasn't. And still the point I want to make is how incremental this whole innovation was - frozen goods existed, boats transporting industry existed, beef existed ... still how very significant keeping beef frozen for a little longer turned out to be.

The take away for me is this incremental innovation is all around us in our businesses. It starts with a hitch, it starts with a gap, it starts with a pain, and next thing you know you might just have an Aspirin like impact.

The ingredients are here. We need to experiment. We need to continuously mix and remix! So where is the frozen beef moment in your business?

What Brad Pitt and Moneyball Can Teach Me About Product Design

2011-10-07T12:04:00.000-04:00

Saw Moneyball, movie and book, this past weekend. It's a great movie. It's a great story about baseball and yet not at all only about baseball. It's about this baseball team GM who has to rebuild a baseball club because he lost three of his best players to higher paying teams. His budget is a huge constraint; he has roughly one third the payroll of the Yankees. Yet he goes about it and he successfully delivers more wins than his previous season at a fraction of the investment that other teams are making and beats an all time record for the most consecutive wins while at it.

How did he do that?

He plainly had to throw a lot of the knowledge of running a baseball club out the window. He did this because what works for rich teams doesn't work with his limited budget. It's a totally unfair game if he continues playing by the same rules he used to play by and that other teams are using as their bible. The GM, played by Brad Pitt, decides to do things differently. He zooms in on one thing - getting on base. That simplified view of the game allows him to look at players in a different way and acquire talent undervalued by all the other teams. How you get on base and with whom doesn't matter, as long as you get on base.

Building software products and building baseball teams has more things in common than I thought. There are two phases in the movie; to me it speaks to plan the dive and dive the plan. The take aways are many but I will specifically talk to those two major phases of product creation - planning and execution.

Plan the Dive

How I define the problem space means the world to the potential solutions available. We think of great solutions all the time and solutions are always a side effect to a problem. Great solutions are the product of originally thought problem space definitions. In other words, if I want a run of the mill solution, let's just look at the problem the same way everyone else does.

What are my constraints? Constraints are good innovation drivers. My business goals should encompass my verified constraints.

I say verified constraints. I also need to say verified usage and non usage. I need to go out and observe and research through observations what my users are doing with my product now. What they are not doing can also be very telling. How are they compensating for my product's shortcomings or my lack of encompassing vision. Those limits they are running into, whether self imposed or imposed by my solution, can hold the key to a new way to look at the problem space. Are you in the tire business or the make mommy feel safe business?

Dive the Plan

It's execution time. Moneyball does a great job at this on two fronts for product design.

Do I believe in the underlying principle of what I'm putting forward? In tackling a problem space in a new way there is no middle of the road. One of two outcomes are possible; I fail or I succeed. I find that liberating. It allows me to make the bold decisions required to move the yardstick.
Don't get attached to ideas, no matter how clever they are. A great solution is one made of a few yes's and thousands of no's. I have a very limited supply of yes. It also means I need to make sure I see a lot of ideas and a no to an idea is a successful test. In Moneyball we see Brad Pitt's character getting rid of players to make his 25 player limit. In product design it means vetting ideas to only keep the few that will make the difference. Cutting players, like cutting ideas, is by no means fun or easy and it's part of the job of any successful endeavour.

In wrapping up a bonus take away - in the movie the trading deadline was a huge pressure cooker because it was the time to get the roster in place for good. The parallel I make with this is be ready to accept and embrace a good idea along the way in my product development if it's going to make a difference. That idea I decide to include should round my offering up to increase my chances of getting on base.

SpongeFred

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