Start Things

I came across this video of Steve Jobs yesterday, its a sort of tribute to his most used phrases in his keynotes. What I found most fascinating was the second to last one, “Wouldn’t it be great…” Apple has embraced this to great success. How can your business make people’s “wouldn’t it be great if…” happen?

I read Made to Stick last week, an excellent new book by Chip and Dan Heath about why some ideas stick and others do not. There were a lot of great takeaways on a practical level of how to make ideas stickier but one larger concept really stuck out. It is a recurring theme they call “The Curse of Knowledge”, the idea that once you have become an expert on something you lose the ability to objectively express that idea to others. There are many reasons for this, ranging from the loss of ability to communicate clearly without using domain specific language to the complete misunderstanding of what actually is important to communicate. In marketing the curse manifests itself as jumbled messages that make sense internally but have little or no meaning to the external world because everyone else lacks the domain specific knowledge available within the organization.

I have noticed the same thing happening with startups in a different way. Many startups are the lives of those who create them, these founders eat, breathe, and sleep their companies. While this passion is inspiring it also puts them at risk to succumb to “The Curse of Knowledge.” Peter Drucker alluded to a similar situation in his famous book, The Effective Executive. Drucker states four major realities over which the executive has no control, the fourth being that “the executive is within an organization. Every executive…sees the inside - the organization - as close and immediate reality. He sees the outside only through thick and distorting lenses, if at all.” Startups must actively maintain an understanding of the external reality surrounding their business and use this information along with a firm understanding of their core values to understand their place in the ecosystem in which they exist. This information is necessary so that they may base decisions on how they can best add value in this environment. If the focus drifts too far the benefits the organization is generating may become too internally focused, a myopia which often seems to be an early step on the path to failure.

Keeping Drucker’s words in mind, “the organization is an abstraction…Even the largest organization is unreal compared to the reality of the environment in which it exists…there are no results within the organization. All the results are on the outside.”

“Nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion” ~Hegel

Go after what you want with everything you have and you will be more likely to achieve it. Don’t be ashamed about wanting to be the best. This is not the same as being arrogant. Arrogant people think they are the best but don’t put in the effort. Focus your enthusiasm, success is rarely an accident.

Every so often (or perhaps all the time if you happen to be more attuned to your surroundings than I am) there are little nuances of real world design that can call your attention to previously unnoticed applications on the digital side of design as well. I noticed one of these today. This is the entrance of one of the coffee shops I like to work at…

I sat there and watched people go in and out for a few minutes, and most everyone (myself included) initially tried to pull the door open even though it clearly says “please push.” The big handles threw people off.

It became clear to me that often design speaks much louder than words. When making design decisions, you must be cognizant of this. No matter what help text you put next to a box or a form, users will likely ignore that and go with their instincts, they will follow what the design tells them.

Instead of relying on words, let good design guide your users. They should be able to figure out how to use your site without having to read the instructions.

My company recently posted an ad on craigslist looking for a designer for a product we are planning to release mid-year. I have some ideas for who I would like to do the site, but I figured I would check out the local talent first.
My ad was simple….

Skills Desired:
-Strong knowledge of CSS and Web Standards
-Clean/Simple Design Style (37Signals and Stikkit like style)
-Ability to work with the Ruby on Rails web framework (no programming required)

What We Would Like to See/Know:
-A link to the coolest looking site you’ve designed
-A few links to designs that inspire you
-Your hourly rate and general availability

I’ve received over twenty responses in the last day, and only two have mentioned Rails or provided links to designs that inspire. Almost all these people failed to listen. Their misunderstanding was that they decided to tell me what they could do (cool complex flash start pages, MySQL, ASP.net, photography, etc.) even if it was completely irrelevant. They would have likely been a lot more successful if they had related what they could do to what I am looking to accomplish.

Lesson: Align your interests with those of others you are trying to impress.

I’d just like to share a few awesome books/sites/publications that I enjoyed in 2006. There are many others, but these are my top picks…

Books:

Never Eat Alone - A great book about networking (or check out Keith Ferazzi’s presentation)

The Long Tail - I posted about this before

Decoding the Universe - A really interesting book about information theory, and a crash course lite in quantum physics.

Edward Tufte Books - Great overview of solid design principles using examples, I got hooked on these at his course which I also wrote about earlier

Blogs:

Signal vs. Noise - 37 Signal’s Blog on entrepreneurship, design, simplicity, etc.

How to Change the World (formerly Signum sine tinnitu) - A blog by secular evangelist and VC Guy Kawasaki

Seth’s Blog - A blog by Seth Godin, self proclaimed “author, entrepreneur and agent of change”

Creating Passionate Users - A blog about, well, creating passionate users by Kathy Sierra

Print:

The Economist - Content rich and extremely well written
Wired Magazine - Lots of good things seem to come out of this magazine (The Long Tail for one)

What did you find was great reading in 2006?

I attended the Edward Tufte conference last Friday in San Francisco and found it to be not merely entertaining, but an excellent learning experience as well. All conference attendees received his books (Student Conference Rate = $180, Cost of Book Set = $150, Actual Conference Cost $30!) which his talk was structured around. He managed to touch all the main points of each book, and largely talked around examples, while expanding on the text in the book. If you are at all interested in learning more about good design or presentations I would highly recommend attending one of his talks if you get a chance.

I’ve posted my notes on the talk here as well, enjoy! (these notes only cover the second half of the seminar)

I’ve already talked about the film and music industry doing this, but now it seems that phone companies want to jump on the bandwagon too. TracPhone has claimed that by unlocking your cell phone for use on any compatible carrier you are a criminal who is hurting the poor and subsidizing terrorism. They claim that under the DCMA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) such actions should be considered reverse engineering and therefore be illegal. What they failed to recognize is that the software sold with phones is never licensed, so they technically do not own it, and have no control over its use once the phone is sold. Fortunately, the US Copyright office viewed this problem similarly and recently exempted it from the DCMA. Now TracPhone is suing again, to get this order reversed. (Jennifer Granick talks about this in more detail)
Many companies are now seeing the protections they previously had fall as technology advances. At their own peril they view these protections as their fundamental rights or something special to which they are entitled. By using the law as a crutch to set prices that a fair market will not bear, they are ultimately setting themselves up for failure. Instead of reacting to these changing market pressures we constantly see companies trying to legislate themselves back to success (Cough…RIAA & MPAA!) This is not the solution. If your business model involves spending lots of money to hold back progress, because in the future there are too many unknowns and not enough barriers to entry, you are bound to fail.

You can spend lots of money on expensive lawyers and lobbyists and try to delay the inevitable, but the companies that win in the end are the ones that innovate and that is money much better spent.

I have been paying a lot more attention to design lately, and its interesting to see how the small things seem to make the biggest difference. Edward Tufte has a theory called “smallest effective difference” which talks about making visual distinctions small yet effective. I noticed a great example of this today in OS X.

This is what it looks like when a document has been saved.

This is what it looks like after you make a change and it is not saved.

Its really interesting how you can make a small change that conveys a great amount of information.

Another example to check out: Design Decisions - Basecamp Help

The MPAA and RIAA seem to be on the frontpage of Digg at least every week, lawsuits in hand. Most recently for the RIAA it has been suing sites where users post guitar tablature, and now the MPAA is suing a small company that sells iPods pre-loaded with DVD movies (Of course you should have to buy one copy of a movie on DVD and a separate copy for your iPod, what were you thinking?!).

In their ruthless search for money, they are exploiting the law, and stifling innovation. What I am failing to see is the upside. How much money does the music industry stand to make from sheet music sales to those who would otherwise visit tablature sites? How many people is the RIAA going to keep from buying their music by making it DRM’ed so badly it is almost unusable? Why would the MPAA want to put a company out of business that is purchasing its product and contributing to its bottom line?

Big media is not a free market economy, the oligopolistic actions of these few companies are determining where progress will be made in technology in their sector, but they want to keep us in the past. In the past profits are high, music is less ubiquitous, and it is much harder to copy in a way that sounds good. In the past you can’t share clips of their content without paying (e.g. YouTube, Embedded MySpace music players, etc.)

The music industry survived people copying tapes and vcr movies, they thrived, but somehow in their eyes the digital age is different. By making their content harder to use they are making it harder to purchase, they are then turning around and calling their customers pirates. This is extremely misguided.

We are seeing the same thing with the telecommunications giants and Net Neutrality, or even with phone operators in the mobile space.

My question is how can we make this more of a free market economy which encourages and rewards innovation and change? Is it time for the government to step in? This pattern of abuse cannot continue.