Design_at_the_edge

Underarm balling

Flaming Pits
Originally uploaded by nickehret

About ten years ago the roller ball underarm deodorant underwent a revolution with the introduction of the "big ball". Which turned out to be a step forward in ease of use for the consumer (better fit to armpit). In order to get the last dregs out of the container we consumers needed to balance the container on its cap.. which is pretty challenging when there is a domed top. As the pack design evolved to improve usability the asymmetrical design made it impossible to balance the domed cap.... a flat on the top of the cap enabled this to be done more easily. As the cost of oil-based plastics  has escalated the challenge of a brand innovation team is to contain that packaging cost as well as meeting or exceeding consumer wants. The new design has made the pack usable from start to finish. Also the cap weight has reduced from approx 13 gm to 7 gm... and the pack has a lower weight too. So the What has remained the same or improved (think Design Pyramid and Design Experience)... and the How has enabled the improvement for stakeholders (think Design Space). Are there moments of doubt? well yes. The unscrewing of the cap takes half a turn versus the original 1.5 turns... there is an affective difference in the feel and kinaesthetics which may have a negative appeal.. or it may not matter as it is in the so-what category.
And the development story... could be true but is my interpretation!

3 generations of deodorant pack design.

Asymmetry creeps in!

Flat cap to the rescue!

Well rounded caps don't work when you invert the pack.

Total design thinking addresses many aspects of the pack along the value chain.

Reducing pack size by eliminating the threaded collar and moving it to the roller ball housing.

The pack height reduces due to elimination of a duplicate ring of plastic....

and also by reducing diameter we get two wins for plastic use.. which helps reduce environmental burden as well as cost reduction.

What pack designs have you weighed up today?

The consumer connection

  The Consumer 
  Originally uploaded by Tub Gurnard

I spent 15 years having fun with packaging design and packaging design processes so when I read about B_E_E - a cool green household cleaning products company in New Zealand I was intrigued. The world is dominated by 3 or 4 global players- Unilever, Proctor and Gamble, Colgate Palmolive or Reckitt Benckiser who have exerted enormous influence on the consumer for generations delivering tried and tested brands to generations of families.
After having some interesting stints in various organisations, Brigid Hardy wanted to find some sort  

of union between her hard-earned business savvy and her idealism. “I knew that I wanted to work in an area that had a bit of purpose and soul,” she says. “Business has all this efficiency, all these systems. I thought if you brought that together with passion and beliefs and goodwill you’d really have something…”  Perhaps not surprisingly the eco-friendly cleaning products idea was not Hardy’s. It came from Stephen Tindall, who she’d met through her work at McKinsey. But once Hardy had given it some thought and managed to spark up her imagination, cleaning products had their most principled and passionate advocator in history. Brigid Hardy doesn’t puddle around. “It’s businesses that change the world and we really want to change the world with this,” she says.

Research confirmed that, despite their growing concerns for the environment, consumers would ultimately choose cleaning products from Unilever, Colgate Palmolive or Reckitt Benckiser – trusted household names with pocket-friendly prices. To succeed, B_E_E’s new products had to achieve real stand-out, with hardcore performance, eco-ethics and enormous shelf-appeal. The strategy was to sex-up the products, making them an irresistible purchase, despite their premium pricing. Design was crucial to the success of the strategy and Designworks Enterprise IG was appointed as partners right at the beginning of the process, involved in every stage. Design had to be at the very core of the range, which launched with three products: a washing-up liquid, a surface cleaner and a wash for delicate fabrics.

To cut a long story short....

You have to cut through the dull fog that descends on the soul of the average shopper as they wheel their trolley down the supermarket’s least inspiring isle. Not only do your labels have to be wittier and your bottles more easily recycled, but your products must be more bio-degradable, they must work better, smell nicer, leave your hands softer…

The product range is very different from the big players's offerings and in Design Space the B_E_E team resolved Design Space issues in a way that did not compromise their green credentials... but could not be solved in more conventional, industy standard ways.

We can see other initiatives in Europe (Ecover- launched 1980) and the USA (Method-launched 2001)which attempt the same to be more environmentally responsible in their own markets:

 

Looking at each company my feeling is that Ecover is a conventional cleaning products company but with strong environmental goals; Method is attempting to improve the American way and makes compromises (e.g. refill packs that are not necessarily as environmentally friendly as we imagine). Also the aesthetics of packaging are not necessarily what I believe are the right balance between aesthetics, geometry and structur . B_E_E (launched in 2005) is a without compromise company with strong ethics to drive its environmental point-of-view.. and is fun too! Not handled their packaging but looks acceptable....?
I connect emotionally with its story and products. Like I do with Innocent Smoothies...


Picture uploaded by Daniel Morris. Used with thanks under CC- link.

To be capable of moving into areas like this means taking a holistic, collaborative approach which I call Design@The_Edge.
 

 

After party... but whose party?

  After party 
  Originally uploaded by Fimb

Following on from this post... One of the cheap-quick-dirty tests that Marty Neumeier refers to in Brand Gap is the HAND TEST which is a proof for a distinctive voice
"If you can’t tell who’s talking when the trademark is covered, then the brand’s voice is not distinctive."
I guess Innocent are guilty for this piece of quirky communication!

Before changing things-think consumer experience

  7264_image(4110) 
  Originally uploaded by IC Pod

Recently the owner of my favourite coffee place told me that she was raising the price of coffee and scones by 10p! That means £3.15 for a coffee and scone... and we get a top-up too. At Starbucks, round the corner an equivalent coffee is £4.50 and there is no equivalent to the home made scone! The owner had told me that they had considered buying cheaper coffee, but decided that would ruin the experience, especially for the regulars. The Courtyard Café has a Unique Buying Tribe.. the core of which are regulars and the rest are attracted by the lunches, cakes and scones, all prepared and cooked on the premises from real ingredients. It is the needs and wants of the UBT that determines what the owners do not what the suppliers are doing.

One way of avoiding the Starbucks slide to 'commoditisation' that Howard Schultz wrote about in his famous memo is to concentrate on understanding your 'tribe' and working to satisfy their needs, especially unmet needs. The use of Kano thinking and the Design Pyramid to define a 'perfect' experience and discover gaps between that ideal and the actual. This will focus the Design Journey and Design Space activities on meeting consumer needs rather than fascinating 'stuff'; and our consumers? They are members of our Unique Buying Tribe... the people who may or do experience our products or services. They determine how successful we will be, as the power moves to them and thinking product-centric and Unique Selling Proposition becomes a dying art.

So what is your story, and who is telling it? You (USP-thinking)? Your consumers (UBT)?

The innovation imperative

  little springs design inc. 
  Originally uploaded by aNantaB

This picture sums up the innovation imperative very nicely...
They are stating that If you really know your customers; create products and services that meet their needs, delighting their senses then you are well on the way to making sure that they will keep coming back to you.
Little Springs describe themselves as:
"Specializing in the practice of user-centered design for the mobile industry, Little Springs Design understands the needs of your business and customers. We bring our knowledge of the user, their needs in design, and the potentials of technology to you."
Chapter 1 of Electric Dreams: designing for the digital age, written by David Redhead in 2004, opens with a quote from Tim Brown of IDEO:
"Once design was about designing objects. Now it's about anticipating behaviours. Designers need to be film directors rather than sculptors."
Designing Interactions by Bill Moggridge, founder of IDEO, was published late  2006 with an introduction by Gillian Crampton Smith. She says, in a section called Designing for Everyday Life:

"Twenty years ago, when personal computers were first becoming popular, they were mostly used as professional tools, or games machines for teenagers........
We've come to a stage when computer technology needs to be designed as part of everyday culture, so that it's beautiful and intriguing, so that it has emotive as well as functional qualities.....
It [the book] describes the challenges designers face in making this powerful technology fit easily into people's everyday lives , rather than forcing their lives to fit the dictates of technology."

which just reinforces what the headline picture describes... but how to do it for everyday objects and activities?

The good news is technology enables us to collect and share information; to interact around it and derive more interesting insights that can drive our innovation endeavours.

The other bit of good news is we can probably make a start with what we know and design activities to uncover what we need to know, and don't already know, thus planning activities that close that gap.

An interesting development last night was a radio discussion on the Chris Evans Drivetime show of the arrangement between the BBC and Nintendo to ensure availability of the iPlayer on the Wii box.  In the blog

Wii becomes home of online video  there is an explanation of why the Nintendo box came first when conventional logic might favour the Xbox or Playstation. Read the blog for a fuller explanation that starts

"According to the Beeb's Erik Huggers it's because Sony and Microsoft wanted to "control"  the iPlayer.

He said: 'If you want to get on the PlayStation or Xbox, they want control of the look, the feel and the experience; they want it done within their shop, and their shop only.' ......

What's more interesting is that the BBC's work with Nintendo has gone a step closer to achieving what many companies are working at - namely, bridging the gap between the web and the TV."

On the programme Erik Huggers explained that there are 2.5m Wii consoles in UK many belonging to people that are not hard core gamers, spreading across the ages from young to old, so it was a profile more likely to  be interested in the  iPlayer's benefits. Nintendo will make a small one off charge for the iPlayer channel subscription.

The iPlayer is also available on the  iPhone Touch and iPhone, discussed here, which is intriguing given the claims and counter-claims about closed and open systems.. maybe there is another layer called closed and open thinking? Or even closed and open behaviour?

In other words really knowing your customers; creating products and services that meet their needs, delighting their senses so you are well on the way to making sure that they will keep coming back to you.

Picture uploaded  by emsef. Used with thanks under CC.

 

Sinclair C5 and Innovation Nation

  Sinclair C5 
  Originally uploaded by adactio

“The biggest single failing in British innovation businesses is identifying true market need and specifying a product or service which meets that need. That is the biggest glaring gap.”

Martin Rigby, MD ET Capital.

John Denham, Secretary for Innovation, Universities and Skills launched his White Paper Innovation Nation yesterday, whilst his colleague Alistair Darling increased the tax burden on entrepreneurial companies! As reported in the Independent, He is planning an Innovation initiative for government departments.  Under the plan, all 21 government departments will be required to draw up an "innovation procurement plan" on how they will incorporate new technologies from smaller businesses..... "Some of it won't work. That's the nature of innovation," said Mr Denham. The potential of revolutionary technology far outweighed the certain failures that will also occur. He said: "You can't have the iPod without the Sinclair C5."

Worryingly we always refer to the Sinclair as an example of failure of British Innovation and iPod as a success... but hang on.... isn't the iPod an example of US success?
I also remember this quote from a presentation by Sir George Cox, “If Bill Gates had started in the UK he would now be the biggest software distributor in Guildford.”
I have been lazily keeping an eye on British innovators to replace the iPod bit of the above statement and my heart beat faster as I read about the sale of Bebo in the Independent over breakfast.... they are Brits and making a fortune.. well done.. no hang on, they live in California.

The biggest and best transforming ventures have been simple ideas with simple strategies.
-- John Doerr, Venture Capitalist

Their story is in the Guardian here and Ihave abstracted pieces below: yet again the Insight that drove their creativity was personal  Blog Early, Blog Often was created because, in the words of Michael Birch  "'I wanted it to be a place where I could exchange photos and keep in touch with my family in England,' Michael Birch's original internet plans were aimed at an older age group - thirty-somethings - but he soon learnt that social networking on-line depends on finding a focus based on more than age - a classroom, for instance, or a particular hobby.
'But you can't control who finds websites popular. Teenagers are always the early adopters online because they have more time on their hands and less money - and social networks are free.'

And so Bebo spread entirely by word of mouth in schools and colleges, to the point where his site now has 100 million page views every day. Bebo is just a refinement of Ringo, Birch's previous attempt at a social networking site that he built in 2003 and sold not long after it reached 400,000 members. And that grew out of BirthdayAlarm.com, a successful birthday reminder service using eCards that currently has 40m users. Birch bought the name Bebo from someone else. 'When we planned the site, all the cool, short names were taken,' he says. ' But after we bought it we invented an acronym for it: blog early blog often.'

It could be that Bebo and co have nothing much to do with social networking in the established sense. Duncan Watts, a sociologist at Columbia University in New York, recently told the New Yorker that it had more to do with 'voyeurism and exhibitionism. People like to express themselves, and they are curious about other people.' That is to say, it's just a basic human instinct.

On a practical level, the real reason Bebo has taken off so fast is because it can be mastered by a 12-year-old. There is no tricky programming to learn, no software to load. You click on a template and receive instant gratification."

Now what was that killer UK innovation?... and by the way Jonathan Ive is British... does that count?

Picture uploaded  by exfordy. Used with thanks under CC.

Perhaps we should actually be saying :

"Is the iPod the new JCB of the music world. After all the JCB is beautifully designed, available world-wide, changes the lives of people around it; uses the best components from around the world; is iconic and people do great things to music with it."

Picture uploaded  by Indigo Goat  . Used with thanks under CC.

So we need to start with a consumer insight and drive the ideas, concepts, prototypes and implementations from that POV- validity... viability enters the conversation later as we figure out how to make enough money from it to do it again, and again, and... we need to remember that products don't stand alone and may be part of of the armoury of a systems thinker. after all JCB's diesel record breaker is part of their effort of ensuring they have an excellent source of diesel engines... JCB, because Caterpillar, their great rivals, bought out Perkins, the diesel manufacturer to both. So they decided to bring some engine manufacture in-house... which meant developing a diesel of their own. So doing an Apple they looked for partners to enhance their expertise - Construction equipment manufacturer JCB announced plans to develop and manufacture its own 4 and 6 L diesel engines specifically for use in its line of off-highway equipment. The engines, which will comply with future worldwide emissions requirements, are to be developed in close partnership with (link) Ricardo, AVL, Cosworth and Krause.

So maybe we don't need or Sinclair C5's but will make do with JCB... and Ricardo, Cosworth, etc.

City Walls may be great for elites to exert control

Chester 2006: Chester Wall
Originally uploaded by orangeacid

Bruce Nassbaum has written here

"Look around and you see people putting up silos around social media. Invitation-only social networks like doostang.com and customized corporate vitual worlds are blossoming. FaceBook folks are putting digital "doors" on their pages, controlling who can enter and for what purpose.

Is the golden age of truly open social networking in decline, as the young race to hide their youthful digital discretions and the rest of us tire of communicating with the masses and return to our own social/economic/political circles?

Yes, I know Twitter is very hot and runs counter to this trend. Yet, something is happening at the same time. Walls are going up. Something is cooking."

I remember working in a company division that was going from a local, country-based organisation to a European-based one. It involved all departments along the value-chain from development through manufacturing and marketing to logistics and suppliers. One of the technology enablers for this change project was the first version of Lotus Notes, enabling groups to set up their own communication and database for each project and interest group. At the same time we were trying to rein in costs so the travel budget was cut.

Picture uploaded by DMBFreakNo41. Used with thanks under CC.

In a matter of months we went from a set of local innovation projects that involved interested countries who would meet regularly in centres around Europe to swap information on progress and discuss how they could contribute or lead part of the action to a city state mentality where if you were on the periphery of a project and it was not obvious you should be in the list of people who could access the particularly Notes Conference as we called them.. you were out. Whereas I would meet people from, say, Italy in my local (British) canteen and be able to join in the lunchtime discussion and offer the services of my group to help with their current problem, I now found out by accident when visiting a supplier who might mention the Italian job they were involved in. I would come back to base, phone around the italian company and eventually convince someone to put me on the authorisation for the Notes Conference. Eventually people gave up and projects increasingly went wrong which encouraged people to be less open but feel more in control; totally opposite to the intention of the technology, reorganisation and common sense.

It is almost as if the elite club of those who are in start looking in and exclude those on the outside. Also the perceived uncertainties of being open to (almost) anyone can be very great and without facilitation and moderation the reason for wanting to be in can be seen to be of less value than staying out, and avoiding the possibilty of conversations that might be less than useful. It reminds me of the model that Matt Taylor created for the knowledge management process here

and which helped me reframe my thinking about how Notes applications should be redesigned, which meant thinking about the overall innovation ecosystem.

Perhaps we should think of physical analogies to FaceBook, etc. Why do we go to social spaces like this?

Picture Uploaded by wonderferret. Used with thanks under CC.

We arrive at a pub or club hoping to have a drink, nibbles, company, enjoy some good conversation, learn something interesting, share something. If its not working out we can slide into another conversation or even go elsewhere. We might even find people come with us to hopefully discover something more interesting somewhere else......or they might choose not to take up the invite as they can't see the point

Does the system we use on the web help hinder or enhance this, what are the downsides? My gut feel is the systems are not complete enough to serve as a platform. A good pub is likely to have something or someone who is larger than life to act as a Strange Attractor - 'something unique that is also compelling'.

There is also a bit of bio chemistry of space that is necessary ..what Rich Gold called Wet Space (hopefully in his book 'Plenitude' just published,my copy not arrived yet; just arrived..no its not!).. In Rich's words:

"What is a “wet space”? Well this room ( in which Gold was delivering lecture) is a wet space. You can smell, touch, feel each other; Pheromones and hormones are swirling; Very “mammal” - pack formations, leaders; Lots of gossip."

Social applications are not Wet Spaces but are what Rich called Damp Spaces..and maybe  occasionally Dry Space.... in his words:

"Dampness is new, only since the telegraph (though I get arguments). You are alone in your room; But you are connected via mediating technologies to one or more other people. Hence it has both wet and dry properties......

Damp spaces are “prophylactic” in that they don’t allow everything through. This makes them MORE and not less valuable than wet spaces. The communicative act itself becomes more designed and can actually become art. "

So where does this leave us with respect to social networks? Like being in a pub, the users want to be in control of themselves and who they socialise with. They don't expect the pub owner to tell people at one end of the bar who they have heard about at the other end. When the social space owner decides to broadcast everything heard to anyone they run the risk of everybody uprooting and moving to another pub where descretion is the norm. Webbed social applications need to remember how damp they need to be to attract and retain customers- its the total experience that counts.

The interesting thing is "Do we have two or more personas, say one for work projects and one for private activities? Or do we just decide to be 'me'"

Martin Varsavsky has some thoughts on social networks here and his site is an example of openness?

The Timesonline article Lecturers intrude in MySpace includes:

".... prospective undergraduates feel underwhelmed by efforts to communicate with them via online technology such as MySpace and YouTube, according to a survey of sixth-formers by Ipsos MORI. Students regard the virtual world as a place for entertainment, socialising and information-gathering. “[Young people] seem to take the view: ‘This is our space - don’t invade it’,” says Charles Hutchings, market research manager for the Joint Information Systems Committee that commissioned the survey. Students have an “inability to see how things like online social networking can tie in with learning”, he says."

At the end of the day it seems that context is important -same as it ever was...same as it ever was.

I guess my context is I am interested in how we design more innovative innovation networks;  but hang on Rich Gold stated

"Design is the most successful social science ever created."

[since writing this Bramble this interesting blog from Dave Pollard has appeared]

The asymptotic bridge of satisfaction

millau bridge
Originally uploaded by sunny-drunk

Here are some thoughts about the difference between the pursuit of excellence and the search for perfection in discovering artefacts, both as developers of new offers and as customers.
I wrote recently about Geoffrey Wilde, Rolls-Royce engineer responsible for far-reaching innovations in the design of aero-engines, who influenced my personal career development. I remember, after he had proposed the brilliant concept of the three-shaft engine, he showed me something like 13 other 3-shaft layouts that the configuration that became the RB211 in the Lockheed Tristar was chosen from. The calculations showed that many of the concepts were, on paper, much superior to the one chosen. But, when the technological uncertaintities were factored in the likelihood of getting the engine to work in a reasonable timescale and cost far exceeded the potential benefits. In fact it is only now, 40 years later, that some of the principles are being seriously suggested for the Taranis programme extension into greener technologies, known as EFE- environmentally friendly engine.

So why the asymptotic bridge? Well all those years ago in the Stress Office was a poster of a suspension bridge that swept across a bay and almost touched down on the other bank; it was an analogy to the calculation methodologies, we were using that enabled us to calculate stress distributions, were accurate enough mathematical models to approach the correct values of stress at given points within the structure being analysed, but not on the surface. By massively increasing calculation time we could get closer to the surface but never to it! So we always had to extrapolate. We therefore checked our assumptions using physical photoelastic models that we also model mathematically, but as the plastic material exhibited different physical properties to metal we introduced other assumptions. The pursuit of the right answer (=perfection) could become a never ending game of chasing one's tail as we might introduce unknown pertubations from the "truth" that ensured we would get the wrong answer (according to Middleton's Law); the timescale becomes protracted and people get fed up of waiting and make their own arrangements.. such as buying elsewhere! Not a very satisfactory conclusion, in fact it can be extremely de-motivating for the team of developers.

Looking at it from the customer's point of view Barry Schwartz has also talked of the frustration of the pursuit of the perfect choice, enabled by the incredible range of "stuff" we have to choose from. For instance there are an average of 17,000 goods on offer in the average British supermarket.

Infinite choice is paralyzing, Schwartz argues, and exhausting to the human psyche. It leads us to set unreasonably high expectations, question our choices before we even make them and blame our failures entirely on ourselves. His relatable examples, from consumer products (jeans, TVs, salad dressings) to lifestyle choices (where to live, what job to take, who and when to marry), underscore this central point: Too much choice undermines happiness. Here is video of his TEDtalk.

A key slide is the plot of subjective state versus number of choices

picture uploaded by Jesper Rønn-Jensen. Used with thanks under CC.

Schwartz talks of two basic types of potential consumer:

The Maximisers: People whose aim in life is to get the best. How do you know if you got the best? You actually need to look at every possibility by making an exhaustive search. There is virtually no area where maximizing makes sense. And if they keep looking after they have chosen they can really make themselves feel uncertain!

The Satisficers: Who believe that selecting a “good enough” option (instead of maximizing) helps cut through the problem of choice. o they do a good sweep through what is on offer, go through the options and when they get to one that from their point of view "does the job" they stop searching.

The key for innovators and developers is to focus on what their target consumer is trying to get done and then make sure they provide the simplest feature set that provides the requisite affordance(s).

Reading the article "Apple's iPhone comes with a ring of overconfidence" in today's Sunday Times, especially the rivals section shows that none of them deliver perfectly on everything they could do but the iPhone seems to deliver "the simple life. It ends with the author, Tony Dunmore writing

"Nine months after first playing with the iPhone, I’m still entirely smitten. I’m willing to forgive its failings and I’m not alone – Apple claims the iPhone customer satisfaction rating is higher than with any previous product.

But there is a serious threat, and it doesn’t come from Nokia, Samsung or Sony Ericsson – it’s from Apple itself. By launching the iPod Touch MP3 player with wi-fi, which although not a mobile does feature the same magical user interface and web browsing functions as the iPhone and does not require you to switch to a hefty phone contract, Apple may have unwittingly cannibalised its own market."

which may not necessarily be true because it might be that some of us want a swiss army knife whilst others of us want a set of simple tools so the market may segment and Apple pick up a fair share in both. So when we develop new products we need to really understand our potential users and provide what they are looking for in the simplest package for each bundle of "jobs to be done"

So its this

[link]

or simply this

[link]

Doing a consumer experience face of the Design Pyramid might help us a great deal, asymptotically, to analyse our gaps.

(For more on the challenges of designing the Millau Bridge read page 6 onward of this.

iThinking with Kano

04_large20070905
Originally uploaded by IC Pod

Professor Kano's model may have been developed for Japanese shipyards ( and we know how well they did!) but it is very useful as a scaffold for discussing people's behaviour around ideas, concepts, prototypes and products. John Maeda's BusinessWeek article on Apple's newly released products can be read through this scaffold- and we can understand differentiating affordances of the competing offers- from the point of view of the customer- and their contributions to brand building.

Picture uploaded by tallkev . Used with thanks under CC.

So here is my quick thought on Kano and Maeda's notes on the visit to AppleStore

So we have an exciter in the form of the look and feel of the new iPod nano; something we want to share with others. Performance needs are not so dominant as all rivals have access to similar technologies, but if Apple had access to faster, bigger, thinner, disks, say, then they could highlight  a cluster of differentiating performance attributes.... or they could just decide to design an even "sexier" next generation nano... "mine is so 2007!". But if we offer a very sleek model (iPhone) at a high price and then reduce that price dramatically a month or two later we get really annoyed. (enrager). And why do we keep introducing new versions? Well over time exciters get adopted more widely and become performance comparators and lack of a feature can be very annoying. Newspapers in Britain have commented negatively that when the iPhone is released here it will not have 3G.. does it matter? Only if you expected it as one of your main needs (read also my experiences in a Kano scaffold),

otherwise you might decide "cool" is great, and you can make telephone calls as per usual but on a "sexy" interface.

As my experience with a new Nokia Phone illustrates enragers are not articulated.. the first a marketer will know about it is when the abuse starts to fly after its hit the 'fan'. No Apple marketeer thought to stand outside an Apple Store and ask people "I see you have bought an iPhone.... how would you feel if we knock 200 dollars off the price next month?"

The other challenge is that we do not articulate the exciters... imagine the focus group's reply when the moderator asks if they would like 10,000 songs in their pocket or would you like a little pad of paper squares with glue along one side?... by the way its not very good glue.

And performance attributes? Well we can get tables of those in most magazines; you can log onto the Apple site and find out which iPod are you? So we can easily home in on performance attributes that are very similar and eliminate them from our decision table leaving only the differentiating cluster for each item we are comparing. In fact as producers we need to be thinking hard about that cluster and be looking for differentiating attributes to offer that takes you out of the crowd. Both Bill Buxton and John Maeda keep reminding us that Simplicity for the customer is a competitive advantage that will in-use be accepted as innovative. Trouble is adding features is simple, building simplicity is very complex! But Kano can help us walk through an experience and discuss how our affordances will offer the potential of innovation for our customers!

So let the walking begin!

Title picture from Apple iPod nano gallery

What has Rudyard Lake got to do with iTV?

picture link

My family took a picnic to Rudyard Lake last Friday. Today (Sunday) I took coffee in Costa in the next village to home and read the Sunday Times article Battle for Internet TV hots up. It occurred to me that even though I am on broadband it takes a long time to download big files such as any of Steve Jobs's Keynotes that might take 45 minutes (ok I am at the limit of copper from exchange). So why Rudyard?

The story of Rudyard really began in 1797 when an Act of Parliament authorised the construction of a two and a half mile long reservoir just north of Leek in the Staffordshire Moorlands. Its purpose was to feed the ever growing system of canals that were vital arteries of the Industrial Revolution in the Midlands.

Then, in 1829, the North Staffordshire Railway Company laid a track skirting the lake, part of a line linking Manchester with Uttoxeter, and built two stations at each end of the lake. Before long it became a weekend mecca for day trippers, with a constant stream of excursion trains from Manchester and the Potteries disgorging thousands attracted by the beautiful surroundings and the many activities laid on for their pleasure. Awaiting them was a fleet of rowing boats, a funfair, brass band concerts and dozens of tearooms.

Among the numerous courting couples who walked the tranquil banks of the lake in 1863 were a certain John Lockwood Kipling and Alice Macdonald. Their love blossomed, they married, and their first-born was named after the lake. He became one of Britain's greatest writers.

Rudyard Lake's peak of popularity was towards the end of the 1800s, when in one day as many as 20,000 excursionists would buy cheap train tickets. There were plenty of celebrities to entertain them too. The world's greatest trapeze artist, Blondin, fresh from his feat of crossing Niagara Falls on the high wire, came to Rudyard to repeat his achievement. And Captain Webb, the first man to swim the English Channel, delighted the crowds lining the line with a demonstration of his prowess.

[ link to original photo]

So, Even though the lake was there it was not until the communications infrastructure was built that the content could be shared with so many people. Eventually the car took over as the communication medium, people went to other sites and the railway died. It was turned into a path to stroll by the lake for the (comparatively) few that come today. There is also a local narrow gauge railway- see top of blog- to remind us of the excitment people felt as they arrived from the Potteries, Manchester, etc. to have a day out.

So, if we turn our attention to the status of internet TV we get two sorts of headlines:

BBC iPlayer wreaking havoc on ISPs

Posted Aug 15th 2007 6:30PM by Chris Gilmer

Nevermind all that DRM stuff that we talked to the FSF about, the iPlayer is causing all sorts of other trouble for ISPs. The player, built for viewing and downloading popular television shows onto computers through the special application is taking a toll on the ISPs bandwidth. So much so that they are looking for compensation from the BBC, threatening to initiate traffic shaping that would slow down service and render the player unusable if they don't pay up.

The BBC iPlayer is supposedly seen as 30 times as bandwidth heavy compared to other video players like YouTube. These ISPs might not realize what's in store for the internet as even more services and larger content moves online, they might have to buckle sooner rather than later and spend the $2 billion necessary to upgrade networks before things really get out of control.

and....

From The Sunday Times

September 9, 2007

BBC courted for Xbox link

Dominic Rushe

MICROSOFT is courting the BBC as it plans to launch its digital television and video service in Europe.

The software giant is intent on turning its Xbox 360 video-games machine into a digital entertainment hub offering films, TV shows and high-definition programmes. It already offers video content in America via its Xbox 360 video-games console.

Launched last November, Xbox’s video service has content deals with big Hollywood studios and television networks that include CBS, Disney, Fox, MTV, Paramount and Warner.

The service allows users to download video content from the internet onto their machines. The Xbox can also play high-definition video when linked to a HDTV set.

Last year the BBC signed an agreement with Microsoft to explore ways of developing its digital services.

Ross Honey, senior director for media at Microsoft’s content and partner strategy group, confirmed the company had spoken to the BBC and several other European media companies.

Microsoft was attracted to the BBC’s library of content and to high-definition programmes such as the award-winning series Planet Earth, Honey said.

“We are working diligently on multiple fronts to make it happen,” he said. “The BBC is a great content provider.”

The news comes as Sony beefs up its plans to offer video downloads via its Playstation 3 games console. This has been a disappointment to the Japanese group with sales lagging behind Xbox and Nintendo’s Wii system.

It seems we are neglecting to address the issue that North Staffs Railway Company took on board when they wished to exploit their new asset.... connectivity and capacity.

It is no good if I decide we fancy watching an old movie or TV programme if we have to wait an hour before we can.. yes I know it will stream and we can start earlier but I find that I still have to wait for the download to catch up with Steve Jobs pace of delivery...... I get the equivalent of random commercial breaks ... in the end I usually let it all download then save and watch.. Ok, if somewhat frustrating for my work but really dodgy for entertainment, especially with friends when you have promised them......it is a matter of managing the whole system and running up and down the line looking for the tell-tale signs of incipient slow-downs and then doing something about them... from the customer's point of view.. not the supplier's!