Adaptive Path Blog

The folks at Nokia Design have put together an interesting project: What can you buy for five dollars?

“The global spread of low cost personal communication will have a profound impact on the world around us. It will change our perception of distance and time and affect our notions of community, authority and trust. In some communities lower costs will introduce services such as personal banking for the very first time, whilst in other communities the phone will become an object that is bought and disposed of on a whim. These changes challenge ideas for the future as to what and how we manufacture, and place a greater emphasis on sustainability.

Fivedollarcomparison.org is a small step to broaden the discussion and explore how the impact might vary across cultures and contexts by asking a simple question:
What can you buy for five dollars?”

Here’s how you can participate.

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Today marks day 30 of my 90 Mobiles in 90 Days project. I’m one-third done, and I’ve spent today reflecting on what I’ve learned so far.

Post-Project Blues = loss of a creative outlet
The purpose of 90 Mobiles in 90 Days was to help exorcise some bad vu from a project and to better understand why I got so blue after projects end. One of the learnings over the last 30 days has been this: the post-projects blues isn’t about mourning the end of a project — it’s caused by the loss of a creative outlet.

The benefit of my job is that it provides me with a creative outlet, but there is a natural ebb and flow to project work that is inherently inconsistent. It’s easy for me to get stuck in the “project hole”. I’ve realized that I need additional and consistent creative outlets in my life to remain happy and manage the natural flux of being a consultant.

The law of averages
This project reminded me of a college painting assignment. The instructor assigned the class the task of painting 30 paintings in a week. Seven days and a demoralizing critique later, she told us the point of the exercise was not to produce brilliant work, but to give us a template for a process. She believed in the law of averages — the more you paint, the better chance you will have at creating something great. She encouraged us to be prolific and success would follow.

Some of the ideas from the last 30 days are good, some of the ideas stink — but the point isn’t as much about the quality of the ideas, but to just put something down — make something, do something. Ideas in my head are just that… in my head - stuck, unexplored, undocumented, unborn. Writing ideas down and giving them form gives them somewhere to go - it gives them a sense of life and vibrancy; of movement and velocity.

Renewed engagement with the world
I’ve realized that ideas and inspiration can come from anywhere - in fact, most ideas come from the world around me. Since I’ve been documenting an idea a day, I’ve felt a lot more engaged with the world because I rely on it as a source of inspiration. This process has opened me up to people and conversation. I’ve become more engaged with my neighborhood, the city, with nature. This project has made me more observant and patient.

Most importantly, I feel deep sense of gratitude to friends, family and folks out there who have commented, emailed me, and referenced my work. Thank you.

Who knows what the next 60 days will bring….

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My latest essay, Mobile Carriers, Will You Be Our Heroes? was inspired by a conversation with one of my favorite thought leaders, Bruce Sterling, who will be speaking at this year’s UX Week in San Francisco. I asked Bruce his thoughts on the future of mobile carriers and his response was surprising. He expressed empathy for them. He cited their brutal history as the cause of their brutish reputation. After digging up some research on the history of telephony here in the U.S., I realized how very right Bruce was. Few realize that US mobile phone carriers were forged in a crucible of business brutality, and their gruff, brutish behavior towards customers is an artifact of that historic legacy. But why should they change? I have some ideas…

Read more: Mobile Carriers, Will You Be Our Heroes?

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I recently sat down to talk with Raphael Grignani who leads the Nokia Service and UI Design team here in San Francisco. I spoke with Raphael about his involvement in Homegrown, an umbrella project whose goal was to create sustainable, ethical, and desirable communication solutions for Nokia. Raphael shares the journey of this grassroots project that started out as ten inspired individuals within Nokia looking at the topic of sustainability evolved into product and service concepts and eventually found it’s way to Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, the CEO of Nokia, and the Mobile World Congress 2008 in Barcelona.

Read more…

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Who hasn’t felt the post-project blues? The emotional journey of any creative assignment is eerily similar:
• the initial thrill of beginning a new and interesting project
• the excitement of digging into the process and subject matter
• inevitably becoming consumed by the design problem
• losing one’s self and sanity in pursuit of excellence
• the fatigue and disillusionment of the death march to the end
• the joy of the finish
• the hollow sense of emotional loss once it’s all over

Regardless of the role of consultant or in-house creative, I’m convinced any designer worth their salt has been through this emotional cycle countless times.

I’m currently suffering through a bought of the post-project blues. I recently rolled off an exciting, 8-month mobile project that focused on envisioning the future of mobile interfaces. The project was thrilling. Far and away the most interesting work I’ve done. But it came at a cost. I lost myself in the project; it consumed my thoughts and held me hostage for months. Now that it’s over, I feel that sense of sadness and loss. The project still haunts me.

A friend shared with me that he believes all good designers must be obsessed – addicted to that feeling of mental and creative engagement. He claims obsession is the hallmark of a real designer.

I wonder if that is true?

Are designers just junkies to the thrill of creative engagement? Are the feelings of loss at the end of a project the price we must pay for the thrill of being mentally and emotionally connected to our work? Is the cure to be more disciplined and strive to achieve some semblance of work/life balance or are we doomed to this emotional cycle of obsession and loss?

Last week I shared my dilemma with some friends who are in recovery from alcohol addiction. They said the acknowledgment of being consumed and obsessed by something and the feelings of loss once it’s taken away are similar to how alcoholics feel during recovery. They shared it’s recommended alcoholics seeking sobriety attend 90 Alcoholics Anonymous meetings in 90 days. The theory is that through the daily ritual of the AA meetings, alcoholics learn to understand their relationship to alcohol and can then develop the skills necessary to cope and deal with their addiction.

My friends said I need a creative 90 in 90 to recover from my project.

Hence: 90 Mobiles in 90 days. For the next 90 days, I’m going to think about, sketch, draw, and prototype ideas about mobile design and post them here. Like folks recovering from any addiction, I don’t know what is at the end of these 90 days. I’m just gonna commit to thinking about it every day for 90 days and have faith that something good will be on the other side.

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A recent post by John Kullman on Mobile Crunch highlights a study that speculates by 2011, 25 million Americans will use their mobile phones as mobile wallets. The report states that the ease and convenience of mobile phone commerce is hard to resist.

While I can appreciate the value of mobile wallets, there is something about this prediction that makes me slightly sad.

In a fast-paced and stressful world, who doesn’t need ease and convenience? It’s seems perfectly natural to want to make life a little easier and more efficient. It’s that desire for efficiency that’s inspired countless products and services like automatic bankteller machines, self-serve gas pumps and the revered Octopus and Oyster cards. I’ve used all these systems and services and yes, they have saved me time and made my life easier.

But lately I have been thinking how the systems and services we design in the name of ease and convenience are actually coming at a steep price.

It’s said that people are defined by their relationships to others. Given that, it’s probably easy for most of us to make a laundry list of all the important people in our lives. If one unpacks all the moments of interaction with human beings on any given day, it’s clear a good share of our time is spent reinforcing those important, explicit relationships – a phone call to the parents, conversations with work colleagues, dinner and drinks with friends and family.

The thing is, there are tons of tiny interactions we have throughout the day with people we hardly know – a conversation about organic produce with a clerk at the grocery store, commiserating with folks standing in line at the DMV, a wink from the bus driver while fumbling for bus fare. Somehow those interactions while seemingly less important, have significance in our lives.

They’re important because they give a richness and texture to our daily experience. They add an element of unpredictability and surprise to our lives. They provide us with opportunity to practice skills like striking up a conversation, thinking on our feet, joking, and flirting. Most importantly, I believe the cumulative effect of these interactions feed into the holy grail of human needs – the need to feel connected to the world around us and be part of something bigger than ourselves.

As we clamor to create systems and services like mobile wallets that streamline our lives and make things easier, unbeknownst to us, we’re actually slowly eliminating the opportunity for these types of tacit interactions to occur.

I’m not suggesting that we abolish convenience and efficiency as design principles because that seems crazy. The momentum of the modern world won’t allow it. However, if we simply approach design problems from a task/goal/efficiency perspective, we lose the opportunity to create systems that honor our need for these tacit human interactions and leave in our wake a society of people who enjoy convenience yet feel lonely and disconnected.

How do we change that trajectory? I’m not exactly sure. However, it seems like an interesting place to start would be to think about how mobile technology can “grease the skids” of social interactions. Instead of placing a premium on the accomplishment of a task or a goal, privilege mobile systems that enable the subtlety, elegance and grace of tacit human interaction.

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I have been thinking a lot recently about the first point of the MEX Manifesto, “Content itself will be the interface of the future” as it relates to Internet content on mobile devices. The point reminded me of a portion of Edward Tufte’s video review of the iPhone interface where he describes the experience of accessing the New York Times on the (then new) device:

“Here, visiting the New York Times on the Internet, notice how the URL and the title bar go away as the user moves into the newspaper. The idea is that the content is the interface, the information is the interface – not computer administrative debris.”

Tufte’s statement fuels my continued amazement at the degree to which our expectations around the Internet have been shaped by the PC legacy. Certainly the iPhone has greatly improved the mobile Internet experience, but it nearly mirrors the interactions and metaphors from the PC. Despite being able to touch links with one’s finger, content is not the interface – browsers, web sites, web pages, URLs and links are.

When I think about how we might start creating experiences where the content is truly the interface, two things come to mind: Information Architecture and mix tapes.

The blue print of the Internet we experience today has been created and shaped strongly by the discipline of information architecture. Don’t get me wrong – I love me my information architects – but I do believe the legacy of that discipline is part of what makes it difficult to deliver Internet content on mobile devices.

Information architecture is a discipline born out of information and library science. In light of this history, it’s not surprising that much of how we interact with content on the web today is based on a search and retrieve interaction model. Like the pages of library books, Internet content is trapped in the organizing principle of the web page.

Who can forget the angst and labor of creating mix tapes. They’re a brilliant, Rube Goldberg-style example of a workaround for an organizing principle. The music industry used the concept of albums as the organizing principle for music – but the model began to break down as new technologies were introduced and the the ways that people wanted to use music changed. We wanted to do more than buy and consume music. We wanted to create our own soundtracks so we cobbled the technology together to create our own albums. Most importantly, we broke the organizing principle from album to song. While the legacy of the album organizing principle still exists, I suspect digital music will make it obsolete within the next ten years.

Similarly, I think that delivering great Internet experiences on mobile devices will be less about “mobilizing” web sites and web pages and more about dismantling the page-based organizing principle into a more flexible one. It will be about breaking apart boulder-like web-pages into pebbles of content that can be configured and combined in ways that make sense in mobile contexts. It will be about privileging XML over HTML and focusing on lightweight applications and presentation layers like widgets. Most importantly, it will have to be based on a deep understanding of how people want to use Internet content in mobile contexts.

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Last weekend while waiting for a flight in Chicago O’Hare airport, I caught a BBC news segment on the devastating earthquake that struck Sichuan province in China on May 12th. The segment relayed the story of people across China using microblogging services to broadcast the tremor, update friends and family about their well-being and report stories of life on the ground. I found similar articles online and the report echoed much of how people used Twitter during the San Diego fires in October 2007.

What I find particularly inspiring about these microblogging examples is their insight into how I think we should be approaching mobile services - by focusing on human needs.

I’ve seen a fair share of mobile services – and quite honestly many make about as much sense to me as putting beans up your nose. Most are either awkward attempts at forcing PC-based services into a tiny device or so obviously designed from a market-segment perspective they completely miss the boat on serving convincing human needs. To be fair, not all mobile services fit these descriptions, but many do. Few seem to be getting it right and enjoying widespread adoption.

Traditionally, products and services designed for emergency situations have proven boons for innovation because they approach the problem from a non-market-centric mindset. Designing for emergency contexts frees us from typical drivers such as market segmentation and economics and forces a focus on human needs. Many technologies we use today such as walkie-talkies, the Internet, even the original landline telephone started out as products designed for emergency situations and found their way to the consumer space and widespread adoption.

At some point, any of us could receive a reverse 911 call and become a refugee. Natural disasters, political upheaval, or even war could force us to leave our homes, our possessions… everything we know behind. The only piece of technology we will probably be able to take with us is a mobile device. How might we want to use a mobile device to begin rebuilding our lives? What services will we need?

Photo courtesy of Qian Wang

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Last Christmas, Adaptive Path participated in the OLPC program. Today, fifteen OLPC laptops sit in a storage room here in San Francisco and with the recent panning in the press, I’m not all together sure what we are gonna do with those little computers.

While I agree with a lot of what is being written about OLPC’s shortcomings, I can’t help but feel it’s going to the easy “pot-shot” place. Sure, OLPC’s goal of providing technology access to impoverished children was lofty and probably unattainable. Yes, it was a product designed from a cultural perspective misaligned to the culture and context of the people it was designed for and ultimately failed to meet it’s own creative brief. Yes, it’s difficult to avoid getting a little irritated by the arrogance of the perspective from which this product was made, especially when it won so many design awards.

OLPC was a failure - but don’t products fail all the time?

In light of all the discourse on the shortcomings of the product, there seems to be little said on the things that OLPC accomplished that were interesting. It’s not often that one sees a product that reframes the conceptual model of the operating system. If anything, Sugar was gutsy and interesting in that regard. OLPC also made it out into the world into people’s hands – it wasn’t a pet project cooked up in a research lab, whose only outputs were a couple academic papers and patent filings. Most of all, I believe OLPC at heart had a virtuous Buddha nature. It was created on the belief that people can improve their lives with technology and the desire to increase access to technology throughout the world.

Failure is part of the creative process and yet when we scathe each other on our individual failings, we make it difficult for people in our industry to take the creative risks necessary to push design and technology forward. By focusing so firmly on failure, we aren’t able to see the beautiful by-product failure brings – learning. OLPC was a failure, but there were some cool things about it… and most importantly, it succeeded in giving us something concrete to learn from.

If we head for the ash heap of history, there are countless examples of failures that were necessary in order to realize a dream in the areas of science, transportation and technology. We wouldn’t get on airplanes today if Orville and Wilbur wouldn’t have had the courage to continually fail at Kitty Hawk. Without Apple Newton’s failure, we probably wouldn’t have had the Palm Pilot or the iPhone. Perhaps like the Apple Newton and the Wright Brother’s early flyers, OLPC will be remembered as one of the colossal failures necessary to bridge the digital divide.

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It’s a sad but common sight in modern society – a person walking around in the world, utterly disengaged, head buried in a mobile device – a victim of the visually greedy mobile interface.

Sure, one might argue there’s more to blame than the interface, like our growing Pavlovian response to phone calls and messages and the “always on” expectation, or our strange and ravenous human need to consume more and more information and media.

But as designers, how much control do we really have over those issues?

What we do have some semblance of control over are interfaces and it is curious that we rely so heavily on the sense of sight to guide users through technology experiences. Ask anybody with a vision impairment who uses a computer or a mobile phone, visually-driven interfaces dominate the technology landscape.

On the PC, we can get away with it. But the dominance of visually-driven interfaces become especially problematic in the mobile context. Design principles and conventions like WYSIWYG and GUI become brittle and broken on small devices. The screens are simply too small and the requirements of the mobile context too great to support interfaces that are visually demanding. Even the lauded and successful iPhone demands we disengage with the world and worship it’s visual luster during use.

The thing is, humans are actually pretty good at knowing where things are even when we can’t see them. The sound of the fire truck, the smell of the garbage, the vibration of an earthquake… our senses are tuned to innately tell us about the world around us. Unfortunately, these instincts haven’t been finely tuned with regard to our behaviors around information and technology. We rely heavily on sight.

How do we break this pattern?

Swing for the fences when thinking about senses. Leverage context, gesture, haptics and sound to convey information.

Admittedly, thinking about interfaces that engage our sense of touch, smell, and hearing can feel wonky, weird … preposterous even. It’s largely unchartered territory without the guideposts and maps of the typical, visually-driven approach to interface design.

However, it feels like letting ourselves explore the land of the senses is the only way to start to break the dominance of the greedy, visually-driven interfaces and deliver mobile experiences and interactions that - as Adam Greenfield says - dissolve into behavior.

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