“I had the realization its not the money its about what does it take to engineer a machine that becomes invisible to the to the experience and that kinda blew my mind. So when you are designing anything its like you’re designing an experience. The engineering should get the fuck out of the way.” – Reggie Watts
Tag: experience
As I think more about the economics of Attention I am struck by the silos. Everyday of my life my attention is disrupted by the constant silo switching. I spend 2 to 2.5 hours per day driving to my place of employment. Today, that time is better spent thanks to my self programmed iPod. There exists a huge problem maintaining the flow of information into and out of my commute silo. I have to spend time to deliver information into that silo and its a pain in the neck, sync, plug in, navigate, unplug, plug in navigate, and unplug every day. So here is what I think would be nice.
In the evening as I review my schedule for the next day, iTunes detects my car as a device on my wireless network. iTunes updates my car with the content I have added and allows me to program my drive to work with content. My calendar also detects my car as a device on my wireless network (or as a client via EVDO, a nod to Steve Gillmor) my temporal data gets downloaded and is used to prime my navigation system. The car then could make suggestions regarding when and where to get gas based on price, route changes based on live traffic data, and provide access to my voice mail. The opportunities are all over the place. Why can’t I sync my contacts in Google or yahoo bidirectionally with my cell phone.
Creating attention efficiencies for people in their daily lives is just obvious. Jon Udell writes about the broader value of attention efficiency and effectiveness [1]. Technology has consistently increased the productivity of the individual within the context of a specific task. How about life productivity, how about increasing the continuity of experience of my life, I would be willing to pay for that. In the end, all the players (companies, customers ect..) will have to focus on collaboration, continuity of experience and increased situational awareness.
Links:
[1] Attention economics: by Jon Udell
In the past I have listed the things that build a continuity of experience but I have not given a Formal (read Dictionary) definition. So here it goes:
con·ti·nu·i·ty of ex·pe·ri·ence
a coherent whole understanding of an object, thought, or emotion through the senses or mind.
Via American Heritage dictionary
I did some work on putting together a new interface design for an application. So, I thought I would provide my guiding principles.
- “Information becomes the interface”, Edward Tufte in Visual Explanations p.142.
- “OODA Loop” (Observation, Orientation, Decision, Action) By Col John Boyd, USAF (Ret).
- Information displays should strive to be no wider than 16 choices and 2 levels deep.
- Base change on real observed behavior. The qualitative can not eliminate the quantitative
- To some degree the interface has to be stupid simple. The antithesis to this principle is demonstrated by some large ERP software vendors.
- Do as much work beyond view of the customer as possible.
- Icons are Iconic or they are not valuable.
- Visual oriented communication occurs a faster rate and results in increased short term retention
- Make help always available and obvious
- Continuity Continuity Continuity
- Empathy
The Continuity of Experience is:
About making the experience more ubiquitous.
About making the experience more consistent.
About making the experience more understandable.
About making the experience more actionable.
About making the collection of our experiences more contiguous.
This web 2.0 thing is just one of the more visible increases in our computing Continuity of Experience. Its all about increased simplicity, integrated metaphors, greater collaboration, transparency and increased information composition. The goal is to make it easier for people to interact with the universe of computing platforms, applications, services and information. Increasing the Continuity of Experience for one user or 10,000 or 10 million (think companies) increases the capacity to transfer value during the experience. We need to think about the continuities we enjoy today and really focus on what opportunities we have to bring isolated experiences into a larger continuity of experience.
Tom The Architect 