My Curious Life

If you’re one of my kids, you’ve heard this phrase a million times: “Are you going to react or respond?”

While the question is a useful way of instructing an older child on decision-making and self-control, it’s also applicable to the world of business, as Clayton Christensen and Scott D. Anthony note in an article Forbes ran in early August.

Christensen and Anthony focus specifically on Sony’s crisis with the Playstation 3 and its lackluster sales as compared with Nintendo’s Wii and Microsoft’s XBox 360. Pushing the technology envelope just for the sake of staying ahead seems to be more of a knee-jerk reaction to the ever escalating war in the game console space, while Nintendo’s Wii is more of a response, opting out of the war and venturing in an altogether different direction. Nintendo made a conscious decision to take this path.

The question now is what Sony will do next … react or respond? The battle now has become a duel with Microsoft, and so far Sony has taken some serious hits. It would be interesting to see if Sony can find new ways to make the PS3 the centerpiece of a home entertainment system and serve multiple needs, thereby justifying its bigger-than-average price tag. Or perhaps Sony can be creative and find ways to let PS3 owners interact directly with Xbox360 owners via some sort of online network? Or build-out online services that meet the needs of various members of a family, again trying to make the PS3 a central home device?

Here’s hoping that Sony takes some time to reflect on what it’s learned and makes a conscious decision to respond.

My family and I spent part of August enjoying an amusement park in northern Idaho just a day’s drive from our home in Oregon. This amusement park, named Silverwood, is an amazing example of how being true to a design goal and attentive to customers can reward you in almost any area.

Silverwood is now the largest theme park in the Northwest, and has had continued growth for over 20 years. They do a number of things well:

• a fairly easy-to-understand layout of the park,
• reasonable day pass and 2-day pass rates (you need at least two days to take it all in),
• plenty of convenient on-site eateries and restrooms
• rides for all ages and abilities, and
• controlled growth and expansion

They have been on a slow-growth path for the past 10 years, adding rides and attractions every couple of years so that things never quite grow too familiar or boring. Compared to the expensive, jam-packed and sprawling Disney parks, I think Silverwood has a really good thing going. It would be a fantastic exercise to do a user experience intensive on theme park design …

Are there other regional theme parks like this that try to manage both pricing and size in order to carve out a niche for themselves in an industry dominated by Disney, Six Flags and Universal?

It’s all Khoi Vinh’s fault. He admitted, with shameless abandon, that he’s outright excited about the upcoming Transformers movie, despite the hand of Michael Bay directing it.

So, in the spirit of honesty and transparency, I’ll admit that I’ve been anticipating the movie’s release for months. I was a fan of the original Transformers cartoon-sales-pitch-in-a-box from the 80’s, and I can’t say that I ever grew out of it. The loss of my beloved Transformers in a tragic garage sale mishap while I was at college … well, it was setback in the ongoing preservation of my childishness childhood.

Here’s hoping that Michael Bay hasn’t tarnished the childhood heroes too much, though I don’t think even he could make it worse than the Go-Bots.

A number of weeks ago, Wired invited its readers to submit a photo for one of 5,000 individualized covers to be printed for the July 2007 issue of the magazine. Dumb luck had it that my submission got picked to be one of the 5,000.

After the initial glee and gloating (Glenn, na-na-na-na-na!), I had forgotten about the whole thing until the magazine arrived in Monday’s mail, with the photo of my wife and I on the cover.

Wired’s tie-in for all of this is the hyperlocal, totally personal geoweb. It’s an interesting read that does pose some complicated questions … questions that are already on the table as more devices become GPS-equipped, trackable and interactive. Just look at the security issues surrounding the new U.S. passports with RFID chips and you get a glimpse of how this new global geo-presence can be both a blessing and a curse. Pair it with something like OpenID, and, well, things get exponentially more interesting … sure, I can be found anywhere, but which part or parts of my identity do I disclose and to whom?

In all honesty, I’m more optimistic about the potential of these technologies than pessimistic … though I’m sure there will be bumps in the road. I think we’ll see some privacy issues come flying to the fore as we as a society become more aware of our movements, but it seems that the new generation is more willing to make their lives an open book and will simply push through the changes necessary to keep reaping the benefits of being hyperlocal.

Andrew Keen released his controversial The Cult of the Amateur book on the world this past week, then followed it up with a ChangeThis manifesto that proved to be equally brash and, in my opinion, extremist. Apparently, I’m not the only one who feels that Keen is doing this for effect (and book sales).

Keen argues that by making everyone an author of content, we will drown in a sea of mediocrity and bring an untimely “death of traditional mass culture”. He predicts the disappearance of big media as individuals essentially trade mainstream media for democratized content published by throngs of amateurs, resulting in the “disappearance of shared cultural understanding and experience.”

While I am by no means an expert at media trends and consumer consumption of the media, I find Keen’s arguments to be very ineffectual, sounding more like something one would expect from the media giants who are struggling right now to adapt, rather than as a rational analysis of media and its future.

It seems to me that in the past, popular culture has been molded by a limited and selective set of media produced by large corporations who tried to target the largest possible audience. This was a direct result of the need for special skills or training and the cost of production being so high.

As the internet has exploded and lowered these barriers for an ever greater number of media producers, the range of possible audiences has increased dramatically. This seems to be one factor that Keen misses … the notion of expansion of culture and audience, rather than contraction. In addition to larger, more expensive and expansive media productions like movies and television, new audiences of varying sizes have sprung up around specific topics or interests and any number of other factors in a multitude of combinations. These new audiences are subsets of the larger culture, with their own additional shared media experiences and cultural references.

Look at all of the email, blog and video sharing of things that capture our attention and interest … commercials, videos of a kid with a lightsaber, stupid email jokes and horrible chain letters. These are new cultural artifacts and references that we share, and they hold just as much significance and relevance as a blockbuster movie or top ten single.

I would expect that as traditional media adapts to this new and changing audience makeup, large media outlets will begin to focus on the things that they do best … entertaining and informing via channels that are better served by large budgets and dipping into the professional talent pool and ever-expanding pool of amateur talent to produce mega-blockbusters and cultural icons. At the same time, semi-pro and amateur producers will continue to fill in the gaps, producing smaller and more targeted productions for the varied niche audiences.

To survive these changes, big media needs to reconnect with its audiences (yes, there are more than one) and start following their interests more closely, perhaps even grooming more amateur and semi-pro talent and watching where it goes. If something semi-pro or amateur takes off, throw those big budgets and Hollywood muscle behind it to make something even bigger.

The whole thing boils down to the fact that the audience is no longer captive … we seek out shared cultural references and experiences on our own now, rather than waiting to have them spoon fed to us. And there are more audiences than ever, in more places than ever, which means that these shared experiences and references may overlap in strange and interesting ways with the various audiences of which we are a part.

A disappearing audience? No, I think not. Perhaps Hugh MacLeod said it best … Keen’s world may never have existed at all. I guess in that case, Keen’s work might be an interesting work of fiction that might find its own audience somewhere.

Last fall I did a series of personal studies on case designs, the convergence of media and computing, and had the grandiose idea of submitting my Home Media Hub System Sketch to a couple of competitions which have since come and gone.

And to add insult to injury, Sony introduced a system in January similar to the one I sketched just a few months before. Apple, of course, has the Mac Mini, but I don’t want a system that’s so limited and hobbled at the heart of my living room. I guess Sony’s TP1 is at least validation that I was barking up the right tree.

The thing I’m more interested in, though, is extensibility of the base system without having to have an oversize case or even open the case for that matter. My sketch proposes a connector on the top and bottom of the unit that allows for pass-thru power and data, allowing the components to be stacked two or three high. This would just be one possible solution.

In a further attempt to push this concept, I posted on Dell’s fabulous IdeaStorm site, a place where anyone interested can initiate a conversation with Dell and its many customers/users/fans. We’ll see what happens … if just one company starts innovating in the case design space other than Apple, I’ll be happy to see it.

Today was one of those days where things just kept percolating to the top of my consciousness, steeped in the information I’ve been taking in recently.

I had an opportunity to view the broad, but not deep, D5 interview with both Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, which was actually quite amusing. Take about 45 minutes and help yourself to some playful banter and snippets of what’s to come from these two competing computing giants.

Gates hinted at a lot of things to come from the Surface technology announced just a couple of days ago, and it got me thinking about all the surfaces in our day-to-day lives and how a bit of intelligent interactivity might revolutionize how we view the world.

The Microsoft team already showed off an example of an interactive dining experience, doing practical things like ordering food and divvying up a bill. But what about interacting with other guests? I can easily conceive of some interactive games as simple as cards or checkers that could be played on the tabletop surface with other individuals at your table or at a table across the room … perhaps even around the world. I might not mind waiting a bit longer for my order to come if I had something intriguing or entertaining to keep me occupied … think of it as a high-tech butcher paper tablecloth and set of digital crayons.

But what about applications elsewhere? Why couldn’t the surfaces of school desks be transformed into independent virtual learning stations? Imagine children completing tests, studying materials, or working together on virtual projects at individual or shared workspaces. Gates hinted at how the surface technology uses video input to help interact with items placed on the display/touch surface. This same tech could easily recognize items placed upon it and bring up static and active content about the items, in addition to allowing virtual experimentation. The possibilities are literally endless.

Even mundane things like our physical desks could be turned into virtual workspaces … an extension of the “files and folders” metaphors we’ve come to take for granted. A work surface that large would allow for some very interesting positional relationships to come into play when it comes to our virtual content … my stack of family photos in one corner, my live World Cup feed in the other, a desk clock, my current blog post up for editing …

Extend these surfaces to walls and suddenly things that occupy physical space to perform key functions can literally disappear into the walls, changing our environments much as flat panel televisions are changing the places and ways in which we incorporate them into structures … no longer as physical pieces of furniture to be placed and occupy space, but as a kind of virtual picture frame or window allowing the world outside to come in.

For example, a hospital room equipped with a wall surface interface might act as a television or music entertainment system for a patient until the nurse comes in to monitor vitals and enter information into the patient’s chart. Wireless monitors on the patient (wired, perhaps for those with pacemakers sensitive to interference) could feed data without requiring extensive equipment to be present. Star Trek fantasies of high tech medicine would inch closer to reality.

And not to be forgotten are the surfaces upon which we walk. There’s no reason that we couldn’t allow our floorspace to respond to our presence. Think of places like airline counters where customers are instructed to queue up in line. Virtual lanes could be displayed as necessary, in adaptive ways, to accomodate varying traffic densities. Or perhaps entertain and inform customers as they wait. Virtual instructions could light a path to your seat at a stadium or guide you to the nearest open exit.

The possibilities are nearly endless, and I can’t wait to see what a few enterprising startups might do with the new technology.

Today there was a confluence of events that really brought this idea home:

Experience design is relationship building.

I had an opportunity to watch Jesse James Garrett’s presentation from MX San Francisco today. I loved how he commented on the fact that we, as humans, tend to anthropomorphize things. We are hard-wired to interact with the objects around us, especially those things that we integrate into our daily lives, as if they were people. We attribute human characteristics to completely soulless devices. We become emotionally attached to our cell phones, iPods, cars and other objects of routine, repeated interaction. They become objects of friendship, frustration and everything else in between.

Later in the evening, as I sat with my wife to watch television, along came one of Liberty Mutual’s commercials:

Liberty Mutual is a company who has really come to understand, either on their own or through their advertising agency, that humanizing their business lowers the barrier to developing an emotional connection with their customers and potential customers. This is one of very few commercials that I actually stop to watch, even going back on TiVo to watch it again. There’s something visceral and enticing about the ad itself, especially since Liberty Mutual isn’t an overpowering presence, just a lingering thought at the end. Their second commercial in the “Good Deeds” series continues to build on the initial impact, further emphasizing the character trait of responsibility that they want to come to represent.

Various elements of the commercials, like the haunting, solo voice of the lead singer of Hem, stand out amongst the rock/pop soundtracks of most ads I’ve seen recently. The Liberty ads embody the idea that “actions speak louder than words” … each ad is a series of random acts of kindness, showing the traits that Liberty wants you to believe are representative of their company. And each commercial ends with the Liberty Mutual logo and a short voiceover that drives the point home:

When it’s people who do the right thing, they call it being responsible. When it’s an insurance company, they call it Liberty Mutual.

Another thing they’ve done well is to make this characteristic consistent across their touchpoints … print, TV and web. The real clincher will be if they can be consistent across the personal touchpoints of phone and physical office. That will be the key … are they making their entire system, from montly statements to agent conversations, into a cohesive system that consistently represents this concept of responsibility. Doing that will turn every experience into a step in the building of a lasting relationship.

Anyone who’s a Wired magazine subscriber should be seeing a DVD in the mail shortly, along with the most recent issue. The DVD, a production of Shell Oil, spins a nine-minute tale called “Eureka” of Chief Engineer Jaap Van Ballegooijen, responsible, at least in part, for the “bendy straw” oil drill.

Aside from being an obvious ploy to polish Shell Oil’s global image, I found myself entertained by the tale, which also tries to humanize Shell … putting a human face (Jaap’s) on this large mega corporation. Much like GE’s recent commercials with the theme of ecomagination, I’m wondering if this is what we can expect the next wave of advertising to become … something that’s a combination of entertainment and brand-building, kissing cousins with the dreaded infomercials that seem to be horribly prolific these days.

I’m caught somewhere between disgust and amazement. Much like the “rubbernecking” that occurs near an accident on the freeway, I felt compelled to watch the mini-movie all the way through.

While not making me any fonder of giant oil corporations and the global dependency on petroleum, I’m willing to admit that I now see Shell as a giant with more depth of character than I previously believed. I may not like them any more, but perhaps I despise them a little less. In that sense, I suppose, the group responsible for Shell’s new marketing direction might have good reason to shout “Eureka”!

I admit it, I’m a comic book fan and “true believer” from the Stan Lee fan club. I still have a thing for mutant superpowers and good versus evil on a grand scale. Heck, I even waste a great deal of my limited free time playing City of Heroes / City of Villains. There’s nothing like a bit of play therapy when you’ve had a rough day … log on and kick some bad guy butt … totally takes the tension away.

So after day two of WebVisions and pages upon pages of notes in my notebook, I needed something to give my brain a chance to digest all that I’d taken in. I’ve found that some of my best thoughts come after filling my brain with a million ideas and then distracting myself with some completely passive activity, like watching a movie … and why not something that satisfies my need for comic book action!

Spider Man 3 was pretty good. Lots of action, interesting special effects, and the introduction of some new villains is always good for a sequel. The reviewers seem to be glowing with praise for the movie, but I really wasn’t all that amazed … it was another Spidey flick with the same sappy Mary Jane affliction and significantly more action scenes. Venom was cool, as was the Sandman origin segment, but overall, your average everyday superhero movie. Despite the high cost of a movie ticket these days, it was good entertainment.