Technology

Innovative Thinking And User-Centred Design

October 10, 2019 Design

The term “innovation” has become the favourite lexicon of corporate executives for any discussion relating to building a vision for their organizations, and obviously the startups who need to raise eyebrows for getting noticed and getting funded. ‘Innovation’ has an aura that sets our imagination rolling, often conjuring up an impression of an impossible modern future replete with robots, gadgets, and automative mechanisms. In short, it’s presumed that innovation would hand out an inventive gadget, service, or product that will make our lives a lot pleasurable with delightful interactions. For instance, skillfully using technologies such as AI to track your location and provide an accurate weather forecast or respond smartly to your question, putting wireless sensors so that you’re able to park your car smoothly. As I write this article there are numerous startups engrossed in experimenting with future technologies in shaping our landscape. Although the role of the ‘customer’ is being diminished somewhere between the business, the investors’ expectations & the discussion surrounding innovative technology. It’s not just a need to involve the target audience in an end-to-end product or service development activity but critically put the ‘customer’ in the centre of every innovation conversation.

Innovation by Design

Innovation Through Customer Insights

Organizations have acknowledged the significance of customer experience in sustaining future innovations, during and after any innovative idea is launched. However, the intrinsic drive of entrepreneurs to solve problems through technology has never gained so much visibility than in recent times as companies make attempts at product development for market dominance & financial gains. At times, this drives focus away from the customer experience and onto developing features that may miss the target audience invariably putting the entire roadmap of the product in jeopardy. For some startups or companies, the issue of relentless product development without managing customer expectations seems to be emanating from their internal challenges that are dictated more or less by corporate decisions. So for instance, on a strategic level, senior stakeholders choose a platform for driving automation for customer needs either without an understanding of the user-base or taking insights from a previous product launch. Eventually, by the time the “idea” percolates down to the tactical phase, one cannot rule out the complexity of its interaction and flow regardless of whether it’s solving any problems based on the experience that it delivers (or it doesn’t). Organizations back their leadership’s decisions of shaping the vision and it’s left upon the dev & design teams to implement the final product, within a strict timeline, despite the glaring loopholes and no understanding of the evolving user base. Designers obviously take a backseat.

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YouTube Started As A Dating Site

July 25, 2019 Design Technology

When I read this for the first time I cringed. It sounded unnatural that YouTube, the world’s largest online video streaming company with over a billion users each month, was conceived as an online video dating site! So here’s some back story. In March 2016 at the SXSW festival, YouTube co-founder Steve Chen revealed the actual predicament surrounding the launch of their streaming service in 2005. He said…

“We always thought there was something with video there, but what would be the actual practical application? We thought dating would be the obvious choice.”

Source

From Video Dating To Video Sharing

YouTube - Mobile

YouTube was conceived in 2005 by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim in 2005 while working for PayPal. The entrepreneurs initially found a market in matchmaking through video, even taking out ads on Craigslist in Las Vegas and Los Angeles in which they offered to pay women $20 to upload videos of themselves to the site. No one took the offer seriously. It didn’t matter to the founders, because by then, users had begun uploading all sorts of videos from dogs to their vacations and they began pondering over a fundamental question “why not let users define what YouTube is all about?” so they completely revamped their website, making it more open and general. By 2006, YouTube was already the fastest growing website on the Internet hosting more than 65,000 videos. Then on October 9, 2006, Google dropped a bomb by announcing they were acquiring YouTube for US$1.65 billion in stock. It was the second-largest acquisition for the search giant at the time.

Co-Design And User Innovation

Although it might seem like a case of ‘serendipity’ in the first instance with YouTube going from a video dating site to a video sharing one, here’s why I believe it was really a case of oversight. The founders formerly developed a vision to devise a product or service using online video streaming tech as a platform for matchmaking, but in that their vision of connecting with the users was grossly miscalculated because users just weren’t looking at video as a dating tool. Their initial concept could have been refined if they’d involved users in the conceptual stages of design iteration. The involvement of users early on provides the creators with an advantage at mobilising resources towards a focussed area of user’s concerns prior to the launch, although their open-mindedness did save them the day. As opposed to co-design or the user-centred model, it seems like YouTube followed a Linear Innovation Model consisting of research and development of product or service, which is then marketed and sent out to the users.

Speaking of which, co-design or the user innovation process is the act of designing concepts with the users (co-design is often referred to as participatory design by the design community) involving the intermediate users or direct consumers.

In other words, it’s not enough to involve engineers, designers, managers and other project owners into the creative process rather they need to be active co-designers in channelising energies into building actionable plans and implementing prototypes. That’s the way forward to meet some of the biggest challenges we face as humankind.

The innovation process comes with ambiguity and it’s often derailed due to several reasons, notwithstanding management oversight (like in the case of YouTube), misconceived notions about product utilization by end-users and last but not the least, being blinded by or trying to resolve the problems and challenges from a single spectrum thought process. In that, YouTube was created on the basic idea of connecting people through video streaming at cheaper rates but then it ultimately led to overlooking the users’ latent needs, a basic ingredient at shaping customers’ experience.

It’s quite likely, in a participatory design method, and by involving all the stakeholders of the soon-to-be-launching service the founders could have discovered to their surprise that instead of recorded videos users preferred to date using other discreet tools wherein their identities aren’t compromised or misjudged in the first impression. It’s dating after all. Lastly, the participatory design process should not be mistaken for crowdsourcing in which groups of interested parties contribute to the creation of ideas in an open forum, such as the Internet, in achieving a cumulative result. Imagine how different our world would be if end-users were involved as co-designers in every project, end-to-end, not just as research subjects but as an important aspect with any product or service design business. That’d be the true essence of any user-centred design methodology.

Apple Products

Here’s Why Apple’s A ‘Design-First’ Company

June 23, 2019 Design Technology

It won’t come as a surprise for a generic world-class electronics company to squirm at the mere motion of discontinuing any present-day technology that is evidently in rampant use with its current user-base, including peripherals or hardware systems. Imagine the plight of several million loyal customers when they hear how their favourite features and functions have been impertinently withdrawn with immediate effect from the brand’s high-end product line. But of course, we aren’t talking about Apple.

Here’s what everybody, including most designers, gets it completely wrong about Apple whenever the discussion surrounding its deeply intricate ‘design philosophy’ happens. There will be an unequivocal and optimistic pronouncement that Apple’s success is due to its “user-first” mindset. It’s not and it never was. On the contrary, Apple’s innovation strategy is ingrained in making its products future-proof by pursuing a ‘design-first’ framework in a valiant effort to promote and invest in technologies, which in Steve Jobs’ prophetic words, are having an upwards swing. That pursuit of integrating innovative technology is partly the reason why some of their design decisions seem impractical and in complete contradiction to current technical norms. The unpopular decision behind the removal of the headphone jacks from the iPhone 7, for instance, was necessary to make the device thinner and add space for larger batteries in a world that is hankering for more juice. That single design change has virtually turned the tide towards wireless Bluetooth headset manufacturers and prompted iPhone buyers to shop for them (read, ‘AirPods’) and has sparked a wave of innovation in the industry.

[…]Apple is a company that doesn’t have the resources that everyone else has. We choose what tech horses to ride, we look for tech that has a future and is headed up. Different pieces of tech go in cycles… they have their springs, and summers and autumns, and…then they go to their graveyard of technology. And..so we try to pick things that are in their ‘springs’ and if you choose wisely you can save yourself enormous amount of work versus trying to do everything, and you can really put energy into making those new emerging technologies be great on your platform rather than just ‘ok’ because you’re spreading yourself too thin. […] So we have got rid of things..we were one of the first to get rid of the optical drives with the MacBook Air, and I think things are moving in that direction as well. And sometimes when we get rid of things like the floppy disk drive on the original iMac people call us crazy. But sometimes you just have to pick the things that look like they’re gonna be the right horses to ride going forward.

Steve Jobs – D8 conference, 2010.

So, where modern PC brands were feverishly banking on the ubiquitous USB Type-A on the basis of its adoption rate and the competition Apple boldly moved forward to replace them with USB type-Cs on their Mac devices. It’s a debate for another day that Apple’s ‘design-first’ decision on the 2015 MacBook also prompted an extravagant usage of physical adapters to attach almost any 3rd-party Type-A peripheral on almost every major device launch.

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Starbucks Reserve @ Toronto

April 5, 2019 Happenings
Starbucks Reserve Logo
The ‘Star’ is discomforting!

Starbucks has transformed from serving caffeine into leveraging technology to deliver a delicious cup of coffee. It’s innovating the experience of coffee consumption by combining its products with an imaginative menu of beverages and using a well-integrated service design strategy with retail design in designing stores and more. For instance, not so long ago, they ventured with an innovative concept of giving coffee connoisseurs a peek into some of the finest javas on the planet in a relaxed, informal ambience, and they rightly named this experience ‘Reserve’ for the peculiar seating arrangement that resembles…you guessed it, a local bar! The first outlet opened in Seattle in 2017 and here’s what Starbucks has to say on its exclusive ‘Reserve’ experience:

Starbucks Reserve is a selection of the rarest, most extraordinary coffees Starbucks has to offer. It’s where we push our own boundaries of craft, developing a unique roast for each individual lot before experimenting with coffee as an art form—brewing, aging [sic], infusing and blending it into imaginative and often surprising creations. Through our Roasteries and bars, we share our discoveries and the enjoyment of exceptional coffee with the world.

As I said, it’s targetted at the coffee connoisseurs, so despite the excitement, I waited and finally got the opportunity today to visit the first Starbucks Reserve in Toronto. I had passed by this area at ‘Shops at Don Mills’ a couple of times, having read that there are only a handful of these premium Starbucks coffee locations around the world, I am lucky to experience the aura personally. There’s another retail concept on the same lines which is called the ‘Reserve Roastery’ that provides an immersive coffee experience to the consumers complete with freshly roasted coffee beans and a rare set of coffees from beans that are aged in whisky barrels (whoa!). I am longing to be there sometime in the future to wallow in the aroma of roasting java. (Tokyo, perhaps?)

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When Google Announced Its Email Service

April 3, 2019 Happenings
Gmail Email

Everyone’s beloved email service turned 15 years old, and I have so little recollection of the launch of a new email service on April 1, 2004, except in that fledgeling Web 2.0 era, I was very excited about owning a piece of this Google innovation with an unimaginative name ‘Gmail’ (a portmanteau of ‘Google’ and ‘Email’). It also caught my fancy because of the staggering revelation that it offered, to my astonishment, an astounding 1GB inbox space!

Email Wars

Just imagine, in times of the domineering Hotmail and Yahoo defining the email experience in the market — by the way, you ought to have owned at least one email account with either of the two to keep up with the Joneses, the norms of those times provided the free user with a humble 100-200 MB mailbox which was considered good enough in the absence of any big market player, until Google broke the ground with Gmail they would delete the emails to free up space if you can believe me. In fact, so magnificent was the announcement of its 1GB space the tag line literally said, “never delete another email”. Yeah, that set the tongues wagging, the news spread soon, and there was a palpable rush on the Internet forums to get hold of a free invite to the beta version. Once you got an invite and the account subsequently you joined an exclusive club of honchos decisively controlling the distribution of invites to the hoi polloi. If I am not mistaken, you got about 15 free invites to hand out to friends and family. That Gmail ID is today worth its weight in gold and is your access code to the vibrant Google ecosystem.

But that invite-only element to secure a free Gmail account put a dampener on my enthusiasm, to be honest, least of all because, I had to wait until June of 2004 before I got a Gmail ID which really felt like ages when everybody else was trumpeting their prized catch. It was a friend’s generosity on a once lively designer’s forum called SurfUnion, (of which I was a proud co-founder and admin) who got me an invite and I entered the party as well. I also sent him a ‘thank you’ note, that was my first email from the fresh account. Oh, and back in the day, a free Gmail account offered a generous 1GB of space with a humongous attachment option to send. It was just mind-blowing, if you considered that one could only dream of that kind of luxury on a subscription account. Besides the point but Gmail usurped the competition in one swift blow, gaining millions of users within a matter of months after its launch. Amongst other things, it also featured better spam fighting capabilities, a clean user-interface (there were ‘Labels’ like tags and not ‘Folders’!), Gmail Labs to extend its functions (it was awesome), aside from Google’s iconic search engine potentiality to find your emails from the heap quickly. Albeit, all this did not come “free”, as it were since there were targetted ads in the mailbox raising concerns about email privacy shortly. In a series of improvements later Gmail introduced tabs in a bid to improve the email experience and I promptly posted my thoughts in a design case on tha feature.

The Next 15 Years

So that so-called “generous” 1GB space has now become 15GB and shared with Google Drive and the other apps but the Gen Zs have jumped on messaging apps. Email is passé for some nowadays, but Gmail made emailing a quiet and cool revolution for a generation that was struggling with a lack of good email platforms. Picture this, will ya? No matter what, you had no choice but to delete emails as soon as filled up the mailbox, you could not send large attachments or chat with your contacts while in the mailbox. Gmail freed my generation from that tyranny and, in fact, made emailing an informal yet refreshing activity for the pre-Facebook/WhatsApp era. Today, one might check Microsoft Office documents or PDF files without leaving the mailbox on Gmail, no need to own the software anymore.

Gosh! It’s been a magical journey the last 15 years, they just zoomed by, and I am eagerly looking forward to the next 15. Who knows, maybe we could have a Gmail with an invisible UI, with voice capabilities reading text aloud with help from a smart speaker with a human-like expression. Or maybe email would just vanish by 2034 and be replaced by VR so you’re talking to one another from across the globe. Whatever the case, and wherever technology takes us next, fasten your seat-belts for it’s going to be an exciting ride no questions!