CHI 2007 Perspectives: Opening Plenary

In his talk “Why Intuitive Design?” Bill Moggridge talked us through how people adopt technology.

Technology Adoption

Every innovative product or tool goes through a typical adoption lifecycle,

* A small but critical mass of early adopters start using it. * Some of these adopters will come up with very practical ways of applying the product to their work context to improve productivity or to be more effective. * As volumes rise over time, prices start going down. There comes a time when the price points are just right for the consumer market.

Business users are asking, “How does it improve my productivity?” Consumers on the other hand ask, “How does it fit my lifestyle?” Any product that answers this question well will make a successful transition to a mass-market consumer market.

A Case Study

Bill spoke about the divergence in the evolution of SMS/ text messaging in Japan & US as an example of this transition. Japan has always been considered the forerunner in the usage of SMS services (iMode), the reason for adoption and popularity of this technology had very specific cultural and environmental contexts,

* In Japan it is considered impolite to talk on the phone in public places like the train. * Long train commutes as most people have in Japan, gave them enough time to learn & use SMS/text services

In the US the car being the primary mode of commuting provides a private space where people feel free to talk and hence the preference for voice communications.

Demystifying Innovation

Another major focus of his keynote was to look beyond the myth surrounding the creation of several iconic “digital technology products”. Bill Moggridge referred extensively to “interviews”:http://www.designinginteractions.com/interviews he had conducted with several Silicon Valley pioneers to try and de-mystify the process of creation as not just the ‘eureka moment’ but the hard work and sweat (research?) preceding it.

In retelling these stories, Bill Moggridge puts these seminal moments within the context of a design process, # Frame or reframe the problem or objective # Create & envision alternatives # Select from those alternatives, knowing intuitively how to choose the best approach
- Intuition based on rigorous work can lead to productive solutions. Research or in other words immersion in a topic at some point could help you see the connections (synthesize a solution) without conscious thought # To visualize & prototype # Synthesize a solution from all the relevant constraints, understanding everything that will make a difference to the result.
Reference – “Designing Interactions”:http://www.designinginteractions.com/book

Food for thought

This part of the talk left me wondering about the differences between the lives of these inventors (while they were inventing these products) and our everyday work contexts. A common thread was the passion of the inventors, their belief that a solution to the problem they were addressing could fundamentally alter the way people accessed and used computers & technology.

So what is the mystery of the missing passion in the context of our everyday work?

* Is it the lack of an inspiring problem to solve or is it the lack of information about the problem domain? Do we see the pain that users & customers experience as a bullet point on a PPT or as a living person or group? * Is it too much immersion in the nitty-gritties of work that you fail to see the big picture? Have we gotten into a habit of looking at the world with a narrow vision and judge what is useful & what is not? * Do we expose ourselves to the ideas and discussions on the periphery of our domains? At some point all main stream technologies like the Internet, SaaS, etc. were on the periphery. Perhaps it is time to look at the social networking phenomenon seriously for enterprise applications and not dismiss it as something relevant only for college kids?

So how do you make “work” as enriching as the “life” of these inventors?
Does anyone want to take a shot at finding the solution to the mystery of work? :-)