I'm breaking in a new laptop. (Sigh) Once upon a time it was fun to get a new machine. Of course it was always a drag to transfer files, reinstall software, and set up all of the networking connections. But, the upside was huge: it was a NEW machine, and it did NEW stuff. Back in the day, even the work laptop was a toy. If I had to describe it to a teenager today, I'd have to liken it to getting a new mobile phone. Laptops used to be fun like smartphones are today.
As I go through the grind of transferring to the new machine, I wonder how this once-fun and cool toy has become just a tool. It's really an amazing bit of technology, but it's also hard to appreciate that. Oddly enough, the design breakthroughs in the past couple years have been not in making more sophisticated premium machines, but in making really cheap, really stripped-down machines (One Laptop Per Child, Wal-Mart breaking the < $300 price point, and netbooks are examples). All of the bells and whistles are being designed for mobile phones. Despite the fact that handheld design confronts the physical limitations of human hand size and vision capabilities, innovation seems to be abandoning the laptop, which is much more accommodating to us physically. The market is moving inexorably in one trajectory, guided by the maxim that smaller is better.
Some (male) colleagues today were joking about the luggage-sized dimensions of women's handbags; the women in the room chuckled too but not one would give up the function, storage, and fashion of the bag she carries to downsize to a wallet and the storage capacity of a pants pocket. Smaller and more convenient, yes. Better? Nope.
I do love my Blackberry. I enjoy the convenience of having the Internet at my fingertips wherever I go. I love our custom apps that keep me updated on the business wherever I am. But any user's needs are more complex than the distilled analysis of a marketing study. I just don't see evidence that the companies who design consumer technology envision the diversity that exists in their markets. It definitely feels like we're being herded in the direction they want us to go.
Here's a thought for those who are designing tomorrow's technology. Go to your (or your partner's) closet and pull out every handbag. Line them up. I bet it creates a diorama of the diversity that exists within a single human. Multiply that by the size of your market. Now, do you really think the next-gen iPhone clone is really all we need? It's maybe a piece, but only a piece, of what you need.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
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1 comment:
It's a tough intellectual problem, trying to cut through the blather and rumble to focus on trends that may or may not do us any 'good'. There are paradigms that take hold and then define development for some measure of time. And the smaller=better paradigm is now in the process of digging its claws into our collective intellectual flesh. I think the metaphor of purses and wallets is absolutely spot on. In fact, the last time I was in Europe, I slimmed my wallet down to bits and pieces that sort of obviated the need for a wallet in the first place. But then, too, I was always asking my beautiful wife for a tissue to blow my nose or an Advil to relive some pain or other and expecting her to produce these things from her purse. NOTE: Recently I have discovered the 'man purse', which is the suit jacket or sport coat. There's no denying that it's a purse, a wearable purse.
And so yes, we need to think about this paradigm shift as it happens and not just accept the technologies that come down the pipe at us. I do think, however, at first blush, that we're moving to a sort of Back to the Future situation in which the Netbook and a phone are all you need, even for enterprise solutions. We'll be paying Google (one way or another) to pay independent developers to give us thousands of mini-applications, some of which will be applicable to our businesses, no matter what business we're in. Statistically, this is a no-brainer. In the aggregate, we'll be able to pick and choose and knit together a platform out of disparate apps. Will we need purses or wallets, or neither or a little of both to carry these apps around and make the most of them? I suggest a sport coat. Preferably corduroy, but silk would do.
Cheers, and good, thought provoking post,
Theo
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