Are you asking the right question?

"Why is it that when we want to call and talk to a person, we have to call a place?"  This was the question that led to the invention of a mobile phone.  When everyone wanted to build a better landline telephone, the right question led us to this innovation.

When every retailer was working on making the checkout process seamless or empowering shoppers to checkout in self-service terminals, someone at Amazon asked "Why don't we just get rid of the checkout process itself?" and it led to Amazon Go!

The right question can be a disruptive agent.  Another example of innovation and disruption is in cooking.  A pressure cooker works on the principle of building high pressure and cooking food at a high temperature.  High pressure allows cooking with water at temperatures higher than 100 °C. The first generation pressure cooker came around 1960 and the design had not changed until recently.  A weighed pressure regulator is used to cover the steam vent.  Based on the weight, the regulator releases steam when the pressure cooker reaches a particular pressure (and temperature).  The instructions guide the cook to wait for the regulator to start releasing the steam indicating the reaching of the correct pressure.  From there, the user counts the number of times steam is released before stopping the cooking.

Everyone was asking the question "How do we automate the process of counting the whistles and inform the user?".  That lead to solutions like the Cookoo or the Pressure Cooker Whistle Counter.

Whereas, Robert Wang asked "How can I build a pressure cooker that cooks without supervision?" and he came up with the Instant Pot.  He got rid of the whistles completely and used sensors and electronics to automate the cooking process completely.  No more whistles to count!

That is the power of the right questions.  Questions are more important than answers.  Right questions have a way of leading you to the answer.  Right questions lead to big ideas.

Asking the right question is an art.  It is an art that is cultivated by being curious, being open minded, being engaged and being customer centered.

Future of drive-thru

McDonald's announced last week that it is buying the AI company Apprente to automate drive-thru ordering.  It will be interesting to see what they come up with and how they will revolutionize the drive-thru experience.

I have always been thinking of how the future would unfold in various areas including the drive-thru experience.

Imagine you are driving on the freeway around noon to meet one of your clients.  Your smart car wakes up and asks if you would like to order lunch.  The conversation goes this way:

Smart Car (SC) - Would you like to order some lunch?  It is close to your lunch hour. 
You - Sure.  Why not?  What is around here?
SC - There is a SubWay on your route.
You - Nah.  Not today.  Is there a McD?
SC - Yes, there is a McD on your route.
You - What are today's specials?
SC - There are no vegetarian specials today.  Would you like to order the usual?
You - OK.  Just add a chocolate milkshake to it.
SC - Chocolate milkshake.  Small?
You - Sure.
SC - Placing the order.  You will arrive at the McD in 8 mins and your order should be ready.  Anything else I can do for you?
You - Play the next podcast in my queue.
SC - Certainly.

What happened here?  The car is smart enough to figure out that you are on the road and it is your lunch time.  It also looks up all the restaurants nearby.  Especially the ones you frequent.  It finds a place that is on your route, not the nearest one.  It knows what you generally order at the various restaurants.  It knows you are a vegetarian.  It calculates the approximate time it takes to prepare the order (dependent on the order) and places the order at the location nearest to where you will be at that time.  Even though there was a McD a minute away, it still places the order at the McD that is 8 mins away.  It wants to reduce the wait time to almost nothing.  It automatically takes care of paying the restaurant with the credit card attached to your application.  It now knows that on certain days you prefer McD over SubWay.  It also learned that you like to have chocolate shake with your veggie burger.  The Smart Car keeps getting smarter everyday. 

How did the customer engagement and experience improve? 

You don't have to stand in line at the drive-thru.  You don't have to speak to anybody to place your order.  You don't have to wait for the order to be ready in order to pick it up.  You are saving time and reducing pollution.  The traditional drive-thru experience changes dramatically and the only thing needed is the pickup window. 

As far as technology is concerned, everything is available.  You just have to expose your geo-location to the app as well as the restaurants.  The app tracks where you are, maps your location and route and determines the restaurants en-route.  It places the order at the restaurant and notifies the arrival time.  It also allows the restaurant to track your geo-location so they can be ready to deliver your order in time.  Similar to how you track your Uber ride as it arrives to you.  The technology is readily available.  We just need to work with the restaurants that are ready to jump on the platform. 

Waiting to see how the drive-thru experience will transform. 

Simple Design Innovations

Shopping cart is one design that has not evolved since its introduction in 1937.  The major development came in 1946 with the nesting carts.  After that, the only advances have been in minor tweaks like steerable rear wheels, adjustable height/volume, etc.

Of late, with the advent of digital technology, the cart is getting a fresh look.  IDEO is a design firm that looked at reinventing the shopping cart and came up with this design:

Several other companies are incorporating a digital display into the shopping cart to enhance the user experience.  Some of these displays show the store planogram whereas some display coupons or both.

These are slow evolutions of the shopping cart and taking it over the digital hump.  For all we know, the innovations will halt abruptly because online shopping and home deliveries are taking over all over the world.

Here is a minor design change I noticed.  I was at a shopping mall in Copenhagen recently and saw that it had sloped flat escalators taking visitors from the underground parking garages into the mall upstairs.  They were pretty steep.  I noticed several shoppers taking their shopping cart (the usual big ones) filled with goods down the escalator.  The carts were standing on the inclined escalator without slipping.  My first thought was that there must be a brake that the user applies to hold it in place.  Then, it would be a bad and dangerous design: what if the user forgot to apply the brakes?  what is the brakes failed?  What if the user accidentally released the brakes?  All of this would lead to serious repercussions.  Imagine a fully loaded shopping cart racing towards you on an inclined escalator.  You wouldn't be a happy customer.

Upon closer scrutiny, I noticed the clever design that held the carts in place and stopped them from rolling.  The design of the shopping cart used the escalator design to its advantage.  It was a very simple design change to the wheels that accomplished the task automatically and without failure.

Below is a drawing depicting the wheel design.  Instead of a flat wheel, these wheels had a straight groove tread.  Beside the wheels were pads that were affixed to the shopping cart frame.  Whenever the cart was rolled on a flat floor, the wheels would be in contact of the floor and hence they would roll.  But, whenever the cart was rolled onto an escalator, the wheel treads would fall into the escalator grooves and the pads would grab hold of the 'floor' (escalator floor) thereby arresting the cart since the pads were flat and non-rotating.  Clever way to solve the problem.

The beauty of the design was the simplicity.  This design requires no moving parts and it is fail safe and idiot proof..  Based on the design, irrespective of how you place the cart on the escalator, at least three of the wheels would lock.  Note that the carts were wide enough that you could not turn them sideways on the narrow escalators.

Reminds me that great designs are always simple designs.  

Design Inconsistency

Consistency makes life easy.  Consistency makes sense.  Consistency in design reduces learning curve and eliminates confusion.  We subconsciously expect consistency and harmony around us.

Consistency has always been important in design of everyday things.  It is especially important when it comes to human machine interfaces.  Consistency makes everything seem normal and we feel at ease as we can operate in auto-pilot.  Imagine if the location of the accelerator and brake pedals were switched based on the brand of the car.  Every time you rent a car, you need to retrain your brain to this new interface.  This inconsistency is not only frustrating but can also be dangerous.  I remember a friend getting into a serious accident while riding another friend's bike in which the brake and gear levers were reversed (non-standard).  It was part of the design of the bike but in critical situations, the brain goes into auto mode and just does what it has always been doing.  He ended up frantically pressing the gear lever instead of hitting the brakes.

Another example is the riser of a staircase.  The designer can pick any height for the riser, BUT, it has to be consistent across the whole staircase.  Once a user starts climbing the stairs, the human mind programs itself to the height of the riser and we go into autopilot.  The user no longer has to look at the steps in order to continue.  The moment a riser is different (either shorter or higher), the user is guaranteed to trip.  Inconsistency is dangerous here.

We take notice when things are inconsistent.  Because inconsistency confuses us and throws us off.  It also frustrates us.  Here is an example I noticed recently at a Sheraton hotel in Vancouver.

During all my travel, I have always noticed that the elevator design is very consistent (but for some special cases like this) so as to provide the user with a familiar feel.  The 'door close' button is always on the right hand side and the 'door open' button is on the left hand side (Whether the door close button is a placebo button or if it actually works is a topic for another blog.  Let's stick to the design topic for now).  Once you hit the floor button, you subconsciously reach for the button on the right side to close the door.  I did exactly that and the door kept reopening.  I was distracted by my phone and did not notice why this was happening until, out of frustration, I 'looked' at the button to discover that it was reversed and I was hitting the 'door open' button.  Duh.

This case was not a 'designed inconsistency'.  It was an 'inconsistent inconsistency' because the other three elevators were all consistent and standard.

Inconsistency can be refreshing in some cases and can be an advantage.  An example is a web site (or a mobile app) design that is not consistent and does not follow the norms of design will always stand apart and draw the user's attention.  And, user attention is what everyone is craving for.  Again, the inconsistency should be subtle and not all over the place.  If it is extensive, it tends to drive the user away.

It is OK to be inconsistent when you want to draw attention, when you want to surprise (pleasantly) the user or when it is dictated by the design.  Designers have to make a conscious choice when to apply inconsistency to their design and what it would mean.  A thorough analysis should be undertaken before introducing inconsistency.  

Driverless pizza ovens

You order a pizza from your local pizzeria and a half hour later, a driverless car pulls up in front of your door and pings you to come out and pick up your pizza.  You go to the car, scan a code from your phone and a small door opens revealing your pizza box.  We all know this is bound to happen, or already happening in certain cities.

On a busy day, it can take up to a half hour for a pizza to be prepared and then transportation time is added on top of that.  This could easily add up to almost an hour, depending on how far you live from a pizzeria.  In general, a pizza takes about 3-4 minutes to prepare and 8-10 mins to bake.  Once baked, it tastes its best if consumed immediately.  Depending on the contents of the pizza, it starts to age and get soggy by the minute.

This is where the driverless oven comes into picture.

A pizzeria gets its order.  The order contains not only the products purchased, but also the address to be delivered to.  Software can easily categorize orders based on the product as well as distance to be transported.  For those orders within closer reaches, the pizza can be baked in the store and loaded for delivery.  For those orders which have a larger travel time, the chef can prepare the pizza and load it into the delivery vehicle.  The pizza is baked in the vehicle's oven, and packaged once fully baked and readied for delivery automatically.  This would need an automated vehicle with an automated pizza oven inside it.  The oven could be designed to handle several pizzas which will be baked based on the distance to the destination.  Material handling robots would package the pizzas as they are cooked.  The vehicle decides when to start baking depending on the distance as well as traffic conditions.

This optimizes the baking and delivery of the pizza.  Delivering fresh baked pizzas would become a reality.  This can also free up the store over to service in-store customers.

PC: Dominos Pizza

Amazon IOT

Amazon has finally done it.  They have created a generic IOT Dash button.  Last year I wrote about how the Dash button was super specific to not only actions but also products, and they needed to make a generic programmable button.

Last year, the Dash button was first hacked to order pizza from Dominos.  Later, people started hacking the button and using it as an IOT device to perform various tasks.  This was the right direction for the button.  Amazon realized the potential and has taken a step in the right direction  The AWS IOT button is a generic device that can be programmed to do anything one wishes to accomplish.  The price point ($20) seems steep for the device.  The original Dash price point of $5 was perfect.

Amazon how has a IOT button (touch).  The next step would be for Amazon to create MEMS sensors to sense sight, sound, pressure, acceleration, etc..  This will give developers all the needed sensor capability for IOT.  Amazon could then expand their IOT ecosystem.  

Devil is in the details

We all love products that are designed well.  A well designed pair of shoes don't even seem to be there.  A well designed corkscrew works exactly how you think it will work.  A well designed user interface is intuitive and feels second nature. 

Some designs are so bad that you immediately notice the flaw.  Like a video camera lens that whines as you zoom in and out.  Some are not so obvious.  It is when the design misses the mark to deliver on the promise that you notice the flaw. 

This is where good usecases come into picture.  The set of usecases for a product should be mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive (MECE).  If any usecase is missed, usability suffers and the customer fails to be delighted.

BMWs are well designed cars, inside and out.  They are beautiful to look at; they are fun to drive; they are comfortable.  There is a lot of room for improvement on the user interface on the inside, though.  That is another blog post.  Today, we are looking at the exterior body design. 

As you can notice in the photo above, there is a lot of dust and dirt on the top of the rear bumper (arrow) whereas the entire car is clean and shiny.  All the surfaces of the car are slanting downwards at some angle, whereas the bumper top is not.  Because of this, dirt and rain water collect on top of the bumper rather than being washed away.  Angling the bumper slightly down (0.5 - 1 deg) could have easily done the job.  But, they missed it.  Maybe, the designer thought that a flat bumper top would let the user keep things on it while opening the trunk or when the trunk is open.  You can still do it with a slight angle.

This is an example of missing one of the key usecases.  It is important to list out all possible usecases for a product and test for it.  That is when you make a delightful product.
   

Lytro's saving grace

What is Lytro?  I pondered a few years ago when Lytro came into existence.  They had amazing technology albeit it was not very useful or competitive against the current still cameras.  I wondered where Lytro would end up.

Yesterday, Lytro announced Immerge, its latest creation. With Immerge, Lytro seems to have found its sweet spot and saving grace. 

Immerge is a professional grade cinematic virtual reality video camera.  It offers 6 degrees of freedom which suits it very well for VR.  It also allows one to mix CG into the footage.  This is where Lytro's light field technology can truly shine.  It can capture light volumes and play back based on where the viewer is looking.  Imagine wearing a VR headgear and viewing a scene shot on Immerge.  As you glance around using its 6 DoF, and as you look at objects, the scene could refocus based on the light field technology.  It could simulate a human eye looking around in a scene bringing the scene eerily close to reality.

With Immerge, Lytro is also moving away from consumer market and into the professional market.  Lytro is not just selling this camera, they are selling an end-to-end solution with a server, post-processing tools, a player as well as a streaming server.  This will allow them to own and control the entire ecosystem.  They have also mentioned support for all available and future VR headsets and players. 

This is an amazing opportunity for Lytro to make a mark in the VR world as it matures. 

Photo credit: Lytro.com

Apple Watch is not Sexy!

Those were the words of Jean-Claude Biver, the head of LVMH's watch division.

Image courtesy: Apple Inc.

He opines that the Apple Watch is condemned to become obsolete.  Even though Apple is making a Gold watch, it is just going to become a useless piece of Gold jewelry (if you can call it jewelry) after Apple releases the next version of the watch in their self cannibalization effort. 

He also aptly said “The smartwatch is an information device that tells you that you’ve got mail or a message, whereas a high-quality Swiss mechanical watch is a communication device that communicates to others who you are.”

A Swiss mechanical watch is a man's jewelry.  People do not wear it to tell time, they wear it to show who they are.

As I mentioned here, Apple should not be aiming at the watch market at all.  Apple should have thought outside the box and created a wearable computer.   A wearable computer that could be worn anywhere on the body.  Unfortunately, they chose the wrist and unfortunately, they named it Watch.

Here is a beautiful design where a watch is paired with the wearable computer.  There are many ways to pair a wearable with other accessories that people already wear: clothes, accessories like belts, necklaces, bracelets, finger rings, ear rings, underwear, etc. 

Companies should think outside the box and come up with wearables that just serve their purpose and not try to replace another device.  Stick to the minimalistic design.

Wonder what happened to Apple's inspiration from Dieter Rams' minimalistic design principles.

Wearables and Classics Fusion

2015 seems to be the year when wearables will be finally embraced by the mass consumers.  Montblanc kicked off the new year with the announcement of its eStrap wearable.  Coupled with the automatic, this is the perfect marriage of a wearable technology with the classic timepiece.  This will surely get the watch aficionados who are also into technology drooling. 

Image courtesy: Montblanc

Here is some press coverage of the watch.  Love to see more fusion of wearables with classic consumer goods in order to spur broad interest.

Design Innovation (or not)

I wanted to talk about design innovation, thinking out of the box, and pushing the envelope.  This is what every company (at least, consumer goods companies) is striving to become good at.  You can innovate like crazy, but still not solve the problem if you lose sight of your primary goals.  I think that is what is happening to the Tesla Model X.

As you can see in the Model X Reveal video, Elon Musk talks about the problems addressed by the new design:

• More stylish than a minivan
• More spacious than a SUV
• Ease of getting a child car seat into the car
• Ability to stand inside the car
• Ability to easily get into the third row without folding the second row

The design is super sexy because we don't see it often on the streets.  We have only seen gull wing doors on sports cars and super cars.  Now, you can have it on an SUV that most people can afford!  BTW, Tesla calls this design 'Falcon Wing' since it flexes in the middle in order to minimize overhang.  A cool bit of engineering and innovation. 

Really cool design. 

What is not that cool is the fact that the design only solves a few problems and creates a lot more issues.  It does solve the virtues that Elon mentions.  But, it does create other issues:

• Letting rain water into the cabin.  Remember, rain rarely comes perfectly down.  It is always blown by wind and comes down at an angle
• Letting snow fall into the cabin.  If you ever lived in snow country, you know what I am talking about
• Forget snow falling into the cabin.  Anyone who has shoveled snow knows how heavy snow is.  A few inches of snow on the roof would mean that the hydraulic/pneumatic mechanism on the door would fail to even raise the door.  In fact, it could even break the mechanism
• Inability to mount a roof rack.  An SUV without a roof rack.  C'mon.  I know Tesla packs a ton of cargo space (including the 'frunk'), but I can't carry 3 bikes or a canoe inside the cargo space
• What about older homes with low ceiling garages?  You cannot even open the doors while inside the garage
• How safe is this feature?  Most car roofs are designed to support the weight of the car body (when it is upside down) with the doors shut (Now you know why it is important to remember to lock the doors).  With the buckling Falcon Wing doors, are they strong enough to hold the weight of the base?  Maybe, they are, considering the fact that the Model X is pretty light compared to its gas counterparts
• Opening area when the door is open is huge.  Of course, it allows one to stand inside the car, but who would want to do that?  With this large opening, your hard working A/C will have to work extra hard to cool/heat the cabin every time you open and shut the door

One of the main reasons minivans have sliding doors is to solve a lot of these issues.  If the main purpose was to solve the issue of loading car seats, and loading passengers into the rear seats, Tesla could have come up with a better and cooler sliding door.  Falcon Wing doesn't seem to cut it.  It is a cool fashion statement, but not practical in a lot of geographies.  Fashion statements work in niche products (like super cars).  But, if Tesla is aiming this at the mass market, Falcon Wings are not the answer. 

If the main problem to solve was the passenger loading, there are a ton of other ways to do it.  By innovating on the seating.  Maybe, by swiveling the middle row seats so that the seat faces you when the door opens.  This will aid in easily attaching a car seat.  It will also get the backrest out of the way and provide more space to get into the third row.  There are a lot of other ways to solve the problem at hand, AND not create additional problems.

Talking about out of the box thinking, here is a company that has created one of the lightest EVs around.  Check them out:

Image courtesy: Tesla Motor Co.

iWear

There has been a lot of speculation on the iWatch that Apple is working on.  Analysts are comparing it to the other watches available and are peering deep into the watch industry for insights on the market, revenues and margins.  What everyone should realize is that the iWatch (or whatever Apple chooses to call it.  In fact, I would call it iWear) is just another wearable computing device.  I don’t consider it to be a watch.  I hope it is much more than a watch.

Let me talk a little bit about watches.

A watch, per Wikipedia, is a device that tells time.  It is a timepiece.  It is generally worn around the wrist or attached to a chain and carried in the pocket.  Traditionally, watches have been either manual or automatic (driven by kinetic movement).  These watches have slowly progressed from just telling the time to being a calendar and then being a stopwatch.  These additional behaviors are called 'complications'.  There are a few automatic watches that perform the function of an alarm clock too!   There are smart watches (not in the computer smart terms), which understand the variation of days in a month (yearly calendar watches) and there are those which can even compensate for the leap year (perpetual calendar watches).  There are watches for the blind.The video below shows a Patek Philippe watch with a chime!

These are mechanical marvels driven by just a flywheel that charges one or more springs either based on manual winding or the kinetic movement of the wearer’s hand (or the winding machine).

Then came the era of electronic quartz watches.  These were powered by small batteries and were completely electronic.  Quartz crystals, by their nature are very accurate leading to extremely accurate watches.  Additionally, the electronics afforded designers to add additional functionality into the watches.  These watches had lights to see at night, multiple time zones, stop clock, alarm, and other features.  And, there are the techy watches which need a degree in computer science to tell the time.  The quartz electronic watches were also fashionable since they were tiny and could be fashioned into any shape and size.

There have been several watchmakers who are trying to reinvent the timepiece.  Urwerk is a classic example making high end watches that beat the conventional wisdom.

The watch market is a thriving market.  There are people who buy one watch to tell time.  There is a segment of the market where watches are akin to jewelry.  They buy several; one for the office, one for sports, one for the evening party, one for the black tie event, etc.  There is another segment that just buys watches just to collect them.  I belong to this segment.  I guess we haven’t heard the Confucius saying ‘Man with one watch always knows what time it is.  Man with two, never sure.’  The watch market is huge.

I have always wondered about one thing.  Whenever I walk into a meeting, I look around to notice what watch everyone is wearing.  I am sure anyone who is interested in watches would do the same.  I have never, let me say it again, never been in a room (full of people) where I saw two people wearing the same brand/model of watch.  There have been some rare occasions where two people were wearing the same brand, but never the same model.  That itself shows you the market for the variety of watches.  The global watch market is about $60 billion a year with a margin of around 60%.  Everyone is looking into the watch market and wondering how Apple will disrupt it. 

If Apple is targeting the watch market, it is looking in the wrong direction.  Apple should be looking at something that is much more than the watch market.  In fact, when Apple releases their iWear, people should buy it, and still be buying/wearing watches. 

The point I am trying to make is that Apple should not be getting into the watch business.  The watch industry will thrive by itself, and there are many disruptors around.  All phones have a timepiece functionality built into them.  The phone industry has had incredible penetration in the past decade.  Did it affect the watch industry?  Nope.  People still wear watches.  Quartz watches came and kicked the traditional mechanical watch’s butt.  But, I still buy mechanical (manual winding as well as automatic) watches!  My computer has a very accurate clock.  My cell phone has an incredible clock which automatically adjusts to the timezone I am in.  Still, I wear my automatic wristwatch which loses about a few secs a week (which, by the way, is pretty bad).  Why do I still wear it?  It is a part of my attire.  One reason may be that I love the mechanical marvels (automatic watches) and want one ticking away on my wrist.  I have not seen people ditch watches in droves since they are carrying their cellphones with them. 

Apple should be getting into the wearable computer industry.  We do ‘wear’ our cellphones, but there is a huge difference between carrying a device and wearing one close to your body, close to millions if not billions of interface points (skin cells, veins, etc.) to a human body.  This affords incredible opportunities in various areas of which telling time is the least important one. 

With a computer strapped onto my wrist, the device can be:

• a health monitor (heart rate, temperature, etc.)
• a pedometer
• an alarm
• a safety monitor
• a tracker
• a phone
• a camera
• a music player
• a video player
• a device to inject medicine based on a schedule
• a GPS
• an internet browser
• a calendar
• a timepiece

You get the drift.  It can be anything.  As long as you are wearing a computer on your body, there is no limit to what it can do.  That is where Apple should be heading.  Apple should build an ecosystem around this wearable computing device in the same way it built an ecosystem around iPod with its iTunes store.  This will afford incredible opportunities for smart entrepreneurs to innovate and bring great applications to life.

I am excited for Apple and am ready to pounce on this opportunity.

Designed to Annoy

After writing about Design for Assembly, Design for Usability, Design for Accessibility, I thought of writing about a design that I found very annoying.  

I recently rented a Toyota Yaris.  It is a sub-compact car and hence has a small windshield.  What struck me was the design of the windshield wiper.  The Toyota designers used a single 4-bar mechanism to incorporate the windshield wiper.  The design is so bad and the wiper arms are so huge that it obstructs the view of the driver more than the passenger.  Not that anything should obstruct the view of the passenger riding along with the driver.  This is what the driver sees while driving in the rain.

For a tiny windshield, there was no need to use such high gauge sheet to create the arms.  At the very least, the pivot could have been on the passenger side so that the driver saw just the swing of the arm.  Or, have a single arm pivoted in the center and not use a 4-bar mechanism at all.  There are so many ways to make this design unobtrusive and much more streamlined so that it doesn't distract the driver.  Sure, at high speed, it is barely visible, but at lower speeds, it is glaringly visible.  A few moments after I started driving the car, this was the first thing that I noticed.  It is so annoying that I had to take a pic and write about it!

This got me thinking about what constitutes good design.  Here is what I came up with, in no particular order:

• A good design should be innovative
• A good design should be intuitive
• A good design should be simple
• A good design should be aesthetically pleasing (especially consumer products)
• A good design should be unobtrusive.  The user shouldn't even know it exists, unless one of its purpose is to make itself known
• A good design should be minimalistic
• A good design should be functional and useful
• A good design should be green (environmentally friendly)
• A good design should be durable

Designs that live by these principles will always be classic and admirable designs.  And this wiper design barely follows any of these principles.

Customer feedback - how not to do it

I recently received an interesting package from American Airlines.  It was a bunch of certificates for recognizing employees for their outstanding service excellence.  I achieved Gold status with them and I assume that is the reason for this package.  I was pleasantly surprised to see that frequent flyers were given the opportunity to recognize outstanding service.  I am all for recognizing great work.  But, what surprised me was the medium chosen for gathering feedback. 

A couple weeks ago was in a situation where I wanted to commend an American Airlines employee who went above and beyond her call of duty to find me something vegetarian to eat.  I passed my appreciation to her and it made her day.  But, I now have this card and am wondering how I could use this.  Based on the instructions on the card, here is what I have to do:

Chances of me following this procedure and commending someone: 0
Chances that someone will follow this procedure: 0 (unless they are related to the AA employee)

Imagine, I have to run to a post office, get an envelope and stick a stamp on it and mail the envelope.  I can't think of the last time I went to the post office.  All for what?  To send feedback!

I don’t know who devised this plan, but in this day and age of technology and connectivity, it is a no brainer to use technology to achieve better results.  Look at the following process, and tell me how many people wouldn't gladly use it to provide feedback (assuming that frequent flyers like myself will have the App and will always be logged into it):

Here is a mockup of what it would look like on an iPhone:

If this process was implemented, I would have gladly utilized it on my plane journey on American Airlines (albeit, I would have had to wait until the plane landed).

I have used the example of QR codes here, but that could be replaced by any other technology (like NFC, for instance).  

In another incident, I was at a local Home Depot and all of us know they suck in customer service.  You go to an aisle looking for the things you want, and if you don’t find it, you look around for a HD rep and cannot find any!  After walking around for some time you find a rep who tells you that he does not work in the area!  Duh.  After all these frustrating visits, I finally met one salesperson who was extremely enthusiastic to help everyone.  He would be in plumbing, but if you asked a question about electric switches, he would gladly walk over to that department and help you.  On the way, he would talk to any customer who seemed lost.  He was proactively helping out every customer with a smiling face.  That was quite a change and I passed my appreciation to him and told him how helpful (and different from everyone else) he was.  He immediately whipped out his business card, wrote the email ID of the HD CEO and passed it to me with a simple request: "Could you please send an email to my boss with the exact words you told me?  I would really appreciate that".  I was glad to do that, and hopefully, his boss recognized his outstanding service.  It was as simple as that.  An email.

But, if HD had an app that I could use, it would have been even better.  

Simple systems and simple processes guarantee results.  When you design a system, make it as simple and brain dead as possible.

Clay modeling on the computer

There has been tremendous advance in computing power and computer technology but not a lot has changed with the way we interact with the computing devices.  Lots of companies have created Natural User Interfaces and tried to make our interactions with the computer seamless.  I have played with 3D mice and haptic devices like Phantom.  But, none of them have really replaced the mouse. 

Recently, LEAP Motion introduced a new device called Leap.  Leap is like Kinect but in a much smaller scale.  Microsoft has plans of bringing Kinect interface to the laptop, but LEAP Motion beat them to it.  This is very exciting technology and based on the claims Leap is going to be very sensitive and able to capture minute gestures.  This is a breakthrough in natural user interfaces in many areas. 

I have used 3D mice in the past and they are good for controlling a cursor in 3D (duh), but can be clumsy.  They are great for traversing 3D spaces and for CAD modeling, but do not provide any haptic feedback.  What I like about the Phantom is the haptic feedback, which is invaluable when you are modeling art in 3D or when you are simulating a surgery.  Phantom simulates a pen in a 3D space.  The only dis-advantage of the Phantom is that it just simulates one point in space.  This is where Kinetc/Leap comes in.  It can detect multiple input points and hence can detect your whole hand and all its fingers.  What is lacking, though is the haptic feedback.

Imagine building a clay sculpture on your computer.  You can do it with Leap using your hands just the way you would in real life.  I have done it with Phantom, but it is not natural.  You don't use a pen to sculpt in clay.  You do use some tools, but most of the modeling is done with bare hands.  But, Phantom does offer awesome feedback. 

Wii controllers provided some tactile feedback (vibration) whereas Kinect [controller] provides none.  I have played with both the controllers and since the feedback from Wii is not realistic, I don't miss it in the Kinect at all.  So, we will get used to natural user interfaces which provide no tactile feedback and Kinect/Leap may become second nature.

Leap is exciting technology with unlimited uses in a variety of areas.  I have already pre-ordered (at $60, it is a no brainer) the Leap and cannot wait to get my hands on it.

User Interface

This is what I call beautiful, simple and intuitive user interface design.

Urwerk UR-110 Torpedo

I love timepieces with spectacular satellite complications and Urwerk makes some of the best watches in this category. UR-110 Torpedo is another such device and this stunning video demonstrates it. Did I mention they are also great at creating awesome fly-throughs of their complications?

Check this one out:

Lessons from Angry Birds

I am flying back home from San Jose and have a ton of catchup work to finish on the plane ride. I board the plane and get buckled in. While waiting for the doors to close, I take out my cellphone and start flinging birds. I am excited that I am kicking a$$ and jumping into new levels. The door closes, plane takes off, and finally lands in Seattle. I have completed multitudes of levels by this time. Yay!!

And, then I remember all the work that I had planned on accomplishing on the ride...

Not to mention that it ended up being a long night.

Ever wonder why Angry Birds is so addictive? Here is an interesting infographic trying to explain it.

There are a lot of takeaways from this analysis. It helps us list the key qualities of a winning and addictive app:
1. Simple with no learning curve
2. Rewarding. Users get primitive pleasure blowing things up
3. Realistic. Great physics
4. Funny. Creatures' sound, laughter and backflips
5. Anticipation of the reward of progressing to the next level

These form the fundamentals of a great game design.

Light Field Photography

Lytro, a Bay area startup announced their product to the world today. It is great to see innovation in the area of photography. Yes, we did go from film to digital, but what changed was the medium of capture of the data and nothing else. What Lytro promises is a new way to capture image data, one which captures light fields from multiple angles and lets the user manipulate the data after the fact. Check out their gallery for some stunning examples. This is really cool technology and I am waiting to get my hands on the camera.

The marketing message for this camera seems to be centered around 'shoot first, focus later'. Before auto-focus was invented, people focused cameras manually. But, once auto focus was introduced, how many of us focus cameras manually, especially, consumers. Auto focus was a boon to the camera world and paved the way to make photography an enjoyable experience, and we saw an exponential increase in consumer adoption. Digital photography (immediate gratification) took it to the next level. Now, Lytro wants the consumer (viewer of the end result) to 'focus' the picture in order to enjoy the 'living picture'. I don't think my friends and family would want to 'focus' my pictures and discover the hidden details.

The beauty and art of photography was that it allowed the artist to tell a story in the way they want to tell it. This new technology is akin to the 'create your own adventure' books where you decide how the story turns out. How popular are those books? Not very..

The light field technology and camera does have its uses. Imagine a traffic/surveillance camera equipped with this technology, and the CSI computer geeks will be out of jobs.

The success of this company will depend on how they productize the technology and market it to the consumers. The current story is not compelling enough to tilt the scales.

Off with the gears

TAG Heuer has gone where no watchmaker has gone before.

They have tried to replace gears with belts in a watch. Some of the reasons gears are used in a watch is for accuracy, longevity and compactness. Research in new materials has paved way to belts that can last a lifetime. So, TAG Heuer has taken the bold step to incorporate toothed belts in their Monaco V4 concept watch. Check out the impressive details at the TAG Heuer web page.