Two things I’m thinking about
Posted on | February 4, 2007 | 3 Comments
Adam recently wrote how “You can no longer safely assume that your product will stand alone”, and how it needs to recognize the ecosystem in which it is placed.
This accords with my “Stop Designing Products” presentation (which I’ve since updated and gave at UIE’s Web App Summit).
There are two ways that products can take advantage of systems. The more obvious way, which Kodak pioneered in the late 1800s, and which Apple has executed of late, is to control all aspects of the system, and parcel functionality where appropriate. In my talk, it looks like this:
Few of us have the ability to control a system in such a way. When Adam says that your product will not stand alone, he’s talking about the reality that so many things are going to be out of your control. Still, a systems view of the situation can help you develop a successful product. Take digital photo sharing. The success of Flickr is how it fits within an existing digital photo ecosystem, and adds value by helping coordinate these disparate elements of the ecosystem.
The challenge, which Adam’s comment suggests, is that product designers tend to focus on the stand alone. They tend to get so wrapped up in the Thing they are creating that they lose site of the environment in which it will be placed. For further reading, I suggest The Other Adam’s Why Designing Systems Is Difficult.
Now, why is this systems view important? Well, it ties into the other thing I’ve been thinking about, which is how we need to take an experiential perspective in our product development. If you want to deliver on an experience, as opposed to simply a set of features, it’s becoming clear you must take a systems view. When Eastman launched Kodak, he pledged, “You push the button, we do the rest.” When Apple launched iPod, it wanted to deliver the experience of ‘A thousand songs in your pocket.” Delivering on these promises requires going beyond any single component toward appreciating how an entire system can be orchestrated to deliver this experience.
Brandon’s post on Target’s ClearRX demonstrates this brilliantly. There as a desired experience (exemplified in the redesigned pill bottle), and that required a massive restructuring of systems in order to deliver it.
Anyway, these are among the things I’m thinking a lot about. I’d love any pointers for further reading on such topics.
Comments
3 Responses to “Two things I’m thinking about”
Leave a Reply
Linkblog
- Ravens Coach Brian Billick Tackles Super Bowl XLIV : NPR
February 6, 2010 | 10:03 amAs we approach the Super Bowl, I found this interview about what a coach really does surprisingly informative.
- Henrietta Lacks: A Donor’s Immortal Legacy
February 6, 2010 | 10:02 amThis is utterly fascinating. Henrietta Lacks’ cervical cells are the world’s first immortal cells. I had never heard of HeLa cells before this interview with author Rebecca Skloot. Now I want to read the book.
- The Incredible San Fancisco Artists’ Soapbox Derby, 1975
February 4, 2010 | 8:00 am24 minute film about a truly delightful community endeavor. I don’t think SF has this kind of artist mojo any longer, but I’d love to see something like this Oakland, careening down Joaquin Miller Road.
- Paywalls, Blogs, Comments, Editing and Magazines: A Conversation with Paul Ford, Web Editor of Harper’s Magazine | The Awl
February 4, 2010 | 7:37 amIf you’ve followed ftrain for the past 10+ years, you already know that Paul Ford is among the smartest people on the internet. This conversation with The Awl about pay models for publishing and his experience at Harpers is a little precious at times, but worth a read.
- Interview with Bloom County creator Berkeley Breathed
February 2, 2010 | 8:12 amBloom County was among those key influences informing my sense of humor, including Monty Python, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and Edward Gorey. This interview looks back to its creation.
- Axe Cop
January 31, 2010 | 9:52 pmSo awesome. And funny. The best comic ever written by a 5-year-old and drawn by his 29-year-old brother. I wanna Avocado Soldier t-shirt.
- Lost Landscapes of San Francisco 3 and 4
January 31, 2010 | 7:28 pmRick Prelinger collects archival, industrial, and found footage of San Francisco, and presents them as clips in front of live audiences. Delightful look at the city’s past.
- Roger Ebert’s best films of the decade
January 31, 2010 | 7:23 pmI’m a little late on linking to this. Historically, I’ve found Ebert to be far too forgiving a critic (he just loves movies too much and gives poor ones a pass), so I was surprised at how close his list is to mine (if I bothered to make one). Synecdoche, Me And You and Everyone We Know, even Juno.
- Taking Directions from Slime Mold
January 25, 2010 | 7:54 pmIf my colleague Kate Rutter were to have a spirit organism, it would be slime mold. Slime mold are bizarre, neither plant nor animal nor fungi, and they’ve become the poster species for self-organizing systems. Anyway, they can also design subway systems. Scroll down to listen to the piece about them.
- Where has all the popcorn gone?
January 24, 2010 | 4:20 pmThe folks on Chowhound have the same question I did the last time I went to the supermarket. Popcorn could become the next artisanal fetish.
- S.F.s Market Street changes as city evolves
January 23, 2010 | 8:07 amCarl Nolte does it again with an exploration of Market Street’s multiple personalities. The stretch between 6th and 9th is among the most depressing urban blights in the US.
- Online Dating: The 4 Big Myths of Profile Pictures
January 21, 2010 | 8:13 pmOKCupid.com is a dating site. OkTrends is where the people behind the site reveal insights discovered through statistical analysis of site behavior. It’s awesome.
- How to be a superstar bartender
January 18, 2010 | 8:39 pmExcellent set of explicit instructions for the basics of mixing drinks (measuring, shaking, stirring, twists, etc.)
- Unofficial Google Advanced Search
January 18, 2010 | 5:50 pmNifty cheat sheet for getting the most out of the magic text input box.
- The San Andreas Fault made startlingly real
January 18, 2010 | 4:41 pmRoll over for notes.
- Uh huh… Uh huh… “Beaver”
January 17, 2010 | 8:59 pmI laugh every time I think of a Canadian history magazine being named “The Beaver.”
- Radiolab: Animal Minds
January 17, 2010 | 1:33 pmYou should simply subscribe to the whole Radio Lab podcast, and if you need convincing, this latest episode on “Animal Minds” will sway you.
- The Coast of Dystopia
January 17, 2010 | 9:49 amIs The California Dream in tatters? It sure feels like it, though the state is still hard to resist.
- Mobile-phone culture: The Apparatgeist calls
January 16, 2010 | 5:52 pmHealthy reminder of how you cannot assume standard behavior when it comes to product use across cultures. I’m wary of the “Apparatgeist” – I tend to agree with Mimi Ito.
- Time Your Attack: Oracle’s Lost Revolution
January 16, 2010 | 5:45 pmTiming is everything, and 1999 was simply too soon for what proved to be many great ideas. (I worked at Epinions, which pre-saged much of “Web 2.0″.) An instructive article, though I wonder if, in part, Ellison doesn’t get the support/hype he seeks because, by all accounts, he’s such a dick.
-
Archive for Linkblog »
February 4th, 2007 @ 6:15 pm
There was a good article in HBR a couple of years back about Microsoft’s ecosystem approach (here’s a Working Knowledge extract: http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/3967.html). They’re probably a better example of success through systems thinking than Apple, though not as appealing to designers.
(Plug: my IA Summit session this year is on Rich Mapping, a technique for building conceptual models of systems… in the Jay Forrester sense of systems.)
February 4th, 2007 @ 9:05 pm
I strikes me that, if you are going to take an ECOsystems view seriously then chapters from Levins and Lewontin’s Dialectical Biologist are key. In particular, they argue that niches are as actively constructed as much by species/products as they are passively presented (or actively produced) by the environment and that — as is implied in your piece — forms of mutualism are as important to success as forms of competition are.
March 22nd, 2009 @ 1:12 am
Вы правы всё верно,спасибо!!!