Good design principles underpin winning products
Stumble It!In a competitive and crowded market for mobile devices and collaboration software a trap for new entrants is to try to do all things well: this goes against the timeless design principle of cohesion.
Image Source: http://www.epicycle.org.uk/images/futurama.jpg
Cohesion is about ensuring you do the main thing better than the competition.
Cohesion is particularly important in today's market for high tech products such as portable digital devices and web-based applications.
Forrester Research (06 Dec. 2005) ask the question Where Have All The Single-Function Devices Gone and set the context:
"Today's cell phones can play MP3s, and the newest MP3 players can play video and view photos. PDAs roll numerous productivity and entertainment functions into one handheld device: email, calendar, voice, camera, music, and video. Consumers faced with so many technology choices are forced to ask themselves when a device crosses the line from manageable multitasker to operational overload".
In response they suggest four Rules Of Portable Multitasking
- Don't obfuscate the core function of the device
- Only add functions that don't detract from the core application
- Price multitasking devices based on primary markets
- Watch users carefully
Forrester's principles apply equally to developers of web-based applications such as virtual collaboration tools:
- Find a Problem
- Uniquely Solve it
- Avoid Function Creep
- Respond to user ideas
This also reminded me of an excellent article in the Harvard Business Review 11/1/2005 by Mark Gottfredson and Keith Aspinall, Innovation Versus Complexity: What Is Too Much of a Good Thing? which suggests
“The first step is to ask, What would our company look like if it made and sold only a single product or service?"
"For Starbucks, it might be a medium-size cup of coffee; for a bank, a simple checking account. Then determine the cost of producing that baseline offering. Next, add variety back into the business system, product by product, and carefully forecast the resulting impact on sales as well as the cost implications across the value chain. When the analysis shows the costs beginning to overwhelm the added revenues, you've found your innovation fulcrum. By deconstructing their companies to a zero-complexity baseline, managers can break through organizational resistance and deeply entrenched ways of thinking to find the right balance between innovation and complexity.”
Digg | 
del.icio.us | 
Reddit | 
Yahoo! | 
Add to my favourites
Bioteams Books Reviews
Could cell phones destroy civilisation
"Cell", the new novel by horror writer Stephen King, paints an all too plausible scenario where our addiction to cell phones enables a malicious virus to be pulsed to every phone in the world turning all who take the call into a flock of murderously mad zombies.
Buy it now from:
Amazon.Com
Amazon.Co.UK
Related Mobile Devices Articles
Mobile phone etiquette: Shhh!
A few weeks back I published my Polite Intrusive Technology Etiquette (POLITE). Well it seems like lots of other people think something needs to be done here too including 'The Society for Handheld Hushing' who have published a manifesto, Shhh! in ChangeThis. TSfHH provide a neat library of pre-printed notes you can give rude cell/mobile phone users to get them to turn the volume down like “We know that your ongoing conversation with ... is very important to you but it does not interest us in the least..”
Online learning and mobile phones
What Can You Learn from a Cell Phone? Almost Anything!
One of the realities of working in todays Virtually Networked Teams is that team members can use mobile phones to keep in constant touch with team-mates. Marc Prensky argues that this is only the start of what you can do with a mobile phone.
Do mobile workers prefer smartphones to PDAs
CIO Briefing (August 17) reports that road warriors prefer smartphones over laptops and PDAs, but is this really true or just a bit of spin? Reach your own conclusions!
Leave a comment