11:09 02 June 2007
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When connecting together people across the network so that they can work on a design together it is worth weighing up the bandwidth consequences of whatever task they are doing together. It is often sufficient to have a video-link to your partner that you to observe gross body movements; it is sufficient for you to know that when you are talking about something at the top right of screen to see that they are looking at bottom to know they are not fully understanding your story. In this case we need to spend time getting the other person to connect with the right position- in the story and on the screen - low resolution video-links are sufficient and can be introduced much earlier; but this can lead to an interesting paradox:
Adam Richardson wrote about the Tyranny of Choice in the context of the iPhone, but it has resonances here.
"Just one more thought on this topic of the iPhone price drop (for which Apple is now offering to give a credit of $100 to early buyers). It occurs to me that the complaints over this may have something to do with what Barry Schwartz refers to “the tyranny of choice” (or the “paradox of choice” if you read the book version).
The iPhone price drop is an example of an opportunity cost. Schwartz talks about “maximizers” (people who constantly seek out the best possible choice, and even after making a purchase continue researching options) and “satisficers” (people who seek out a “good enough” choice and then, once made, stop looking further). In reality everyone is a mix of both, depending on the category in question, but when it comes to technology, early adopters are almost by definition maximizers. Maximizers are particularly vulnerable to the tyranny of choice, which actually tends to make them less happy overall. He says:
Several factors explain why more choice is not always better than less, especially for maximizers. High among these are “opportunity costs.” The quality of any given option cannot be assessed in isolation from its alternatives. One of the “costs” of making a selection is losing the opportunities that a different option would have afforded. Thus, an opportunity cost of vacationing on the beach in Cape Cod might be missing the fabulous restaurants in the Napa Valley. If we assume that opportunity costs reduce the overall desirability of the most preferred choice, then the more alternatives there are, the deeper our sense of loss will be and the less satisfaction we will derive from our ultimate decision.
For early adopters of the iPhone who have paid the “early adopter tax”, their thoughts immediately turn to all the other things they could have spent that $200 on, all those other opportunities that got passed up."
In an organisational context we need to have people who are happy to be paid for being discontented. For many years I happily lived with/in that paradox.
It was my job to pull technology "rabbits out of the hat per year!" The requirement for these design technologies was to demonstrate definite benefits in the cultural context of the innovation activity. As, in reality, we might be delivering benefits on all 5 imperatives per annum there it is necessary to chart out the future directions of the five strategic design technology imperatives.
Picture uploaded by Lincoln Imp. Used with thanks under CC.
The social consequences of uncoordinated introduction of technologies can be extremely traumatic if they are not planned out and communicated to all the stakeholders.
Picture Uploaded by Magic ]=). Used with thanks under CC.
So, it is a question of estimating how a technology will evolve within your strategic time horizon,
Picture Uploaded by littleblackcamera. Used with thanks under CC.
working back to today; then asking the question "What can we do in the next 2-3 month's? Why would we do it? What application is available that starts us along the path to the ultimate? How do we introduce, use and exploit it in the short, medium or long term? Where do we introduce it? Who will help us experiment and learn?
Picture uploaded by Clearly Ambiguous. Used with thanks under CC.
In our case we have 5 Red Arrows to manage.
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