Knowledge Navigator Implications

Between 1987 and 1988 Apple has created a couple of vision videos under the common research theme Knowledge Navigator. Of course, Knowledge Navigator and Future Shock are most famous; but there are about 10 others short clips which illustrate additional concepts. Note that these are created in the pre-Web and pre-tablet era.

Below is a video that features Steve Wozniak, Diane Ravich (then director of Encyclopædia Britannica <sic!>), Alan Kay and the authors Ray Bradbury and Alvin Toffler. They are dreaming about the future – our present. Although the technology today seems capable to deliver on this vision, I suppose we have some work left to do you adjust our tools in a way to really support it.

Topics: computers as simulation tools, education, agents, voice user interfaces, automated translation, hypermedia

Knowledge Navigator Implications, Apple 1988 at YouTube

Innovation durch Inklusion

Thorsten Wilhelm  hatte folgende Gäste zum Panel Innovation durch Inklusion eingeladen: Brigitte Borneman, Paul Pagel, Dr. Kirsten Bergmann, Matthias MProve und Jörg Morsbach.  Die Session kann nun im Kanal von eparo nachgeschaut werden:

à propos

Inclusion through User Experience

How many words do you understand right away? Words matter. Wording and terminology make a difference in usability and user experience. If you struggle with words then you’ll also perceive a poor usability of a product or service. Jargon includes or excludes people from certain groups. Hence, as a designer please pay attention to the terminology in your product.

Happy Chinese class in Hamburg

A class of Chinese students has fun with recursive displays.

When I teach in front of Chinese students at the Brand Academy in Hamburg – although their German is much better than my Chinese – I am always aware of the issue that some thoughts might get lost or might change their intended meaning on the way from me to them. I mean, this can always be the case and it is astounding that communication works at all. But in this setting it is pretty clear that we have in addition to all language issues also a cultural gap that runs right through the middle of the class room. We have a different background just for instance because of the different TV shows we watched while growing up. The next generation might even ask, „what is TV?“

User Experience is what happens inside the user of a system or service before, during and after she uses the product or service. If you take teaching as a service then you can apply UX design principles also to the situation in the class room. In this setting inclusion means that the lecturer’s aim is to reach each and every student regardless of any circumstances like language, gender, age, prior education, home sickness or world championships in any kind of weird sports. I see inclusion as a humanistic attitude to respect and love your audience.

Well-designed user experiences allow for the uniqueness of people’s different strengths and believe to co-exist in a place of similarity and common ground.  Tools and technologies that embrace similarities to tap into the potential of all people creates conditions that promote people to be their best selves, to cultivate and nurture people will produce better outcomes in all we do.  – worldusabilityday.org 29-Oct-2017

What? “user experiences…believe…” what? This is taken from this year’s home page of the world usability day. After pointing out my problem the authors confessed that they do not understand either. Here is my proposed update:

Well-designed systems and services offer great user experiences for all kind of people regardless of their background, their education, or their current situation. Each one has different strengths and weaknesses that should not exclude him or her from participating in professional or social life via communication technology. Tools and technologies that embrace similarities to tap into the potential of all people create conditions that promote people to be their best selves; designing usable tools to support people will produce better outcomes in all we do.

I hope this is an improvement. I hope this paragraph can be understood and you agree to the intended meaning.

Have you already scheduled your World Usability Day? We can even meet at our panel on Innovation though Inclusion. How many words do you…?

A spiffy computer mouse

A spiffy computer mouse. Sometime it can be quite hard to empathize with the user.

Sir Jonathan Ive

// Interview by Mark Prigg with Jonathan Ive, 12-Mar 2012, London Evening Standard

Sir Jonathan Ive, Jony to his friends, is arguably one of the world‘s most influential Londoners. The 45-year-old was born in Chingford — and went to the same school as David Beckham. He met his wife, Heather Pegg, while in secondary school. They married in 1987, have twin sons and now live in San Francisco. As Apple‘s Senior Vice President of Industrial Design, he is the driving force behind the firm‘s products, from the Mac computer to the iPod, iPhone and, most recently the iPad. He spoke exclusively to the Evening Standard at the firm‘s Cupertino headquarters.

Q: You recently received a Knighthood for services to design – was that a proud moment?

A: I was absolutely thrilled, and at the same time completely humbled. I am very aware that I‘m the product of growing up in England, and the tradition of designing and making, of England industrialising first. The emphasis and value on ideas and original thinking is an innate part of British culture, and in many ways, that describes the traditions of design.

Is London still an important city for design?

I left London in 1992, but I‘m there 3-4 times a year, and love visiting. It‘s a very important city, and makes a significant contribution to design, to creating something new where previously something didn‘t exist.

How does London differ from Silicon Valley?

The proximity of different creative industries and London is remarkable, and is in many ways unique. I think that has led to a very different feel to Silicon Valley.

Why did you decide to move to California?

What I enjoy about being here is there is a remarkable optimism, and an attitude to try out and explore ideas without the fear of failure. There is a very simple and practical sense that a couple of people have an idea and decide to form a company to do it. I like that very practical and straightforward approach. There‘s not a sense of looking to generate money, its about having an idea and doing it – I think that characterises this area and its focus.

What makes design different at Apple?

We struggle with the right words to describe the design process at† Apple, but it is very much about designing and prototyping and making. When you separate those, I think the final result suffers. If something is going to be better, it is new, and if it‘s new you are confronting problems and challenges you don‘t have references for. To solve and address those requires a remarkable focus. There‘s a sense of being inquisitive and optimistic, and you don‘t see those in combination very often.

How does a new product come about at Apple?

What I love about the creative process, and this may sound naive, but it is this idea that one day there is no idea, and no solution, but then the next day there is an idea. I find that incredibly exciting and conceptually actually remarkable. The nature of having ideas and creativity is incredibly inspiring. There is an idea which is solitary, fragile and tentative and doesn‘t have form. What we‘ve found here is that it then becomes a conversation, although remains very fragile. When you see the most dramatic shift is when you transition from an abstract idea to a slightly more material conversation. But when you made a 3D model, however crude, you bring form to a nebulous idea, and everything changes – the entire process shifts. It galvanises and brings focus from a broad group of people. It‘s a remarkable process.

What makes a great designer?

It is so important to be light on your feet, inquisitive and interested in being wrong. You have that† wonderful fascination with the what if questions, but you also need absolute focus and a keen insight into the context and what is important – that is really terribly important. Its about contradictions you have to navigate.

What are your goals when setting out to build a new product?

Our goals are very simple – to design and make better products. If we can‘t make something that is better, we won‘t do it.

Why has Apple‘s competition struggled to do that?

That’s quite unusual, most of our competitors are interesting in doing something different, or want to appear new – I think those are completely the wrong goals. A product has to be genuinely better. This requires real discipline, and that‘s what drives us – a sincere, genuine appetite to do something that is better. Committees just don‘t work, and it‘s not about price, schedule or a bizarre marketing goal to appear different – they are corporate goals with scant regard for people who use the product.

When did you first become aware of the importance of designers?

First time I was aware of this sense of the group of people who made something was when I first used a Mac – I‘d gone through college in the 80s using a computer and had a horrid experience. Then I discovered the mac, it was such a dramatic moment and I remember it so clearly – there was a real sense of the people who made it.

When you are coming up with product ideas such as the iPod, do you try to solve a problem?

There are different approaches – sometimes things can irritate you so you become aware of a problem, which is a very pragmatic approach and the least challenging. What is more difficult is when you are intrigued by an opportunity. That, I think, really exercises the skills of a designer. It‘s not a problem you‘re aware or, nobody has articulated a need. But you start asking questions, what if we do this, combine it with that, would that be useful? This creates opportunities that could replace entire categories of device, rather than tactically responding to an individual problem. That‘s the real challenge, and that‘s what is exciting.

Has that led to new products within Apple?

Examples are products like the iPhone, iPod and iPad. That fanatical attention to detail and coming across a problem and being determined to solve it is critically important – that defines your minute by minute, day by day experience.

How to you know consumers will want your products?

We don‘t do focus groups – that is the job of the designer. It‘s unfair to ask people who don‘t have a sense of the opportunities of tomorrow from the context of today to design.

Your team of designers is very small – is that the key to its success?

The way we work at Apple is that the complexity of these products really makes it critical to work collaboratively, with different areas of expertise. I think that‘s one of the things about my job I enjoy the most. I work with silicon designers, electronic and mechanical engineers, and I think you would struggle to determine who does what when we get together. We‘re located together, we share the same goal, have exactly the same preoccupation with making great products. One of the other things that enables this is that we‘ve been doing this together for many years – there is a collective confidence when you are facing a seemingly insurmoutable challenge, and there were multiple times on the iPhone or ipad where we have to think ëwill this work‘ we simply didn‘t have points of reference.

Is it easy to get sidetracked by tiny details on a project?

When you‘re trying to solve a problem on a new product type, you become completely focused on problems that seem a number of steps removed from the main product. That problem solving can appear a little abstract, and it is easy to lose sight of the product. I think that is where having years and years of experience gives you that confidence that if you keep pushing, you‘ll get there.

Can this obsession with detail get out of control?

It‘s incredibly time consuming, you can spent months and months and months on a tiny detail – but unless you solve that tiny problem, you can‘t solve this other, fundamental product.
You often feel there is no sense these can be solved, but you have faith. This is why these innovations are so hard – there are no points of reference.

How do you know you‘ve succeeded?

It‘s a very strange thing for a designer to say, but one of the things that really irritates me in products is when I‘m aware of designers wagging their tails in my face. Our goal is simple objects, objects that you can‘t imagine any other way. Simplicity is not the absence of clutter. Get it right, and you become closer and more focused on the object. For instance, the iPhoto app we created for the new iPad, it completely consumes you and you forget you are using an iPad.

What are the biggest challenges in constantly innovating?

For as long as we‘ve been doing this, I am still surprised how difficult it is to do this, but you know exactly when you‘re there – it can be the smallest shift, and suddenly transforms the object, without any contrivance. Some of the problem solving in the iPad is really quite remarkable, there is this danger you want to communicate this to people. I think that is a fantastic irony, how oblivious people are to the acrobatics we‘ve performed to solve a problem – but that‘s our job, and I think people know there is tremendous care behind the finished product.

Do consumers really care about good design?

One of the things we‘ve really learnt over the last 20 years is that while people would often struggle to articulate why they like something – as consumers we are incredibly discerning, we sense where has been great care in the design, and when there is cynicism and greed. It‘s one of the thing we‘ve found really encouraging.

Users have become incredibly attached, almost obsessively so, to Apple‘s products – why is this?

It sound so obvious, but I remember being shocked to use a Mac, and somehow have this sense I was having a keen awareness of the people and values of those who made it. I think that people‘s emotional connection to our products is that they sense our care, and the amount of work that has gone into creating it.

[Sir Jonathan Ive: The iMan cometh. Interview by Mark Prigg for the London Evening Standard, 12-Mar-2012]

á propos:

The Shape Of Things To Come by Ian Parker, The New Yorker, Feb 2015

SocialChat about the Next Big Thing

mproveNBTYou can ask the oracle about The Next Big Thing. Or you can listen to the tweets of a guy at Oracle thinking about The Next Big Thing at one of our weekly SocialChats. Read top-down and try to fill in the parts of the invisible guys:

  • For me it is very helpful to distinguish between invention and innovation. If you want to know what is the next big thing, you have to look for the inventions from 10yrs ago.
  • 10 years might be the time they need to gain traction in the market and turn into innovation. (innovation := inventions with market success)
  • Flying cars is a good example. They exist. They fly!
  • E.g. a smartphone similar to the iPhone was invented by IBM in 1993.
  • There is no single path through history of technology. The similarity between iPhone and IBM’s device is, that they both are based on touch.
  • I think analysts and the press are not close enough to the research labs. They have to provide good stories to entertain their audience. But in the early stages of innovation the stories are hardly existing and not very convincing — like the flying Moller car.
  • Bruce Sterling gave up. He says there is nothing left to write about that makes really interesting science fiction.
  • Minority Report was a real research project for the science consultants. No science fiction at all. See John Underkoffler’s TED talk.
  • Just a shame that we are not using hypertext in the original sense. I mean, why are we satisfied with the current state of the art? May I post another talk? 45′ Ted Nelson at ACM Hypertext 2001
  • The question “What’s the next big thing?” is too good to being answered on the spot. What is going on in the research labs now? Provides insights regarding technology. What is missing? Provides insights regarding user adoption.
  • Do we have anybody in the chat who participated in Oracle IT2020?
  • My IT2020 prediction
  • But I have one more. Bill Buxton’s closing keynote at ACM Computer Human Interaction Conference in 2008 really impressed me. There are only my notes left. Basically he draws the connection between the artist and the environment.
  • Who would have been Mozart without the forte piano and the concert halls, and a society who appreciates his music?
  • The same is true for research scientists and their customers and users.
  • And one for the road: reconstructed slides and notes from Bill Buxton’s talk On Being Human in a Digital Age – enjoy! and have a nice weekend. -Matthias

Recommended Podcast: Paul Saffo at Longnow: Embracing Uncertainty – The Secret of Effective Forecasting