We are Living in a B-Bubble World
And I am a b-bubble girl...
Further to my post on the difference between I think is easy and what SF Bay Geniuses think is easy, I just received an email from a friend of mine telling me that she would like an email from me because reading my blog is too difficult:
"I'm afraid I understand only about 1/10th of what you are talking about and, even then, I'm not sure. A personal email on how you are doing would be great!"
...and I consider myself pretty daft when it comes to technology compared to the people I hang out with day to day. I chip away at knowing the whys and the whats, but the hows? No way.
Last night, post Berkeley Geek Dinner, a group of us stood in a circle, shivering, whilst Steve Gillmor predicted the demise of paying for desktop applications - and thus, the demise of Microsoft (Scoble is as self-aware as his blog suggests). To illustrate his point, he conducted a loose survey of the group.
He asked, "How much of an hour is spent with RSS, email and desktop applications?" and wanted us to break it down.
Mine was roughly 50% RSS, 20% email (although since the alpha frenzy begun, that number has severely shifted) and 30% desktop applications (from word processing to design apps), which represented a skew from most of the people in the group, who hardly used desktop apps at all.
This seemed to satisfy Steve's point, which he must have went deeper into with Robert.
Steve kept dismissing individual protests of "we are not representative", but I don't know why. Oh yeah, he's been surrounded by this world alot longer than I have...
Certainly he is right: someday, desktop apps will be the tale we tell future generations like I talk to my son about the Commodore 64. And, he is right when he says it won't be as far into the future as we think it is...
...but I don't think it will be as soon into the future as he predicts. The problem with much of the free software online is that it just doesn't have the same ease of use and features that my good 'ole namebrand desktop apps have.
If I'm dissatisfied with OpenOffice and Writeboard and have no idea where to find something online that can truly duplicate all of the features of PhotoShop (funny, I don't see many people attacking Adobe), I can't see my (very web savvy) Mom Dad or my (incredibly smart) girlfriend who just emailed me dropping the use of their 'tried and true' products anytime soon.
We (meaning the bubble people) represent a very tiny portion of the world. Most of the people online don't even understand blogging (the whys let alone the hows), and there is still a huge population that isn't online but use software to do their books, write letters, index their CD collection (CD? Whats that?), etc. Of course, those who aren't using computers at all are virtual 'virgins', so they would probably adopt whichever is the simplest technology to adapt to.
Even Joshua Schachter was recently (loosely) quoted by David Weinberger for saying that the growth in tags of our beloved del.icio.us is slow and, although he is seeing tags and bookmarks moving into less tech-heavy areas, it is not lightening speed (yet). Yet, I was at an event the other day and someone told me that del.icio.us is so last year! So, who do you think THAT person was designing for?
Ah...I'll go into more of this later, but I maintain this:
I've spent most of my career, ripping out my hair, lamenting, "You just don't get it!" Now in The Valley, I'm ripping out my hair, lamenting, "You just don't get that there are people that don't get it!"
Technorati Tags: usability, web2.0, scalability
3 Comments:
Dude, that is the whole point... out there on the Bleeding Edge, you are working out the kinks so the late adopters can get something simple to adapt to.
While "we are not representative" is accurate now... it's temporary. You are representative of "soon".
Technology that is mainstream now, is stuff I was working on building in the mid-80s.
Now the adoption phase of Insiders-Only, Elite Geeks, Geeks, Pornographers, Wankers, The General Populus - is much faster, so it's critical to be designing beyond the horizon.
Ya sure,
I totally understand and support (and live) the designing beyond the horizon. But when you are in the Valley, there is a major amount of misunderstanding going on, and you end up designing way beyond the horizon where you become too far ahead of your opportunities, too (I see tonnes of examples of that, here).
It's what happened during the first bubble and why we saw the bubble burst (Dave Winer likes to tell the story of the pet food online IPO that was overly funded). What is happening now relies on a wider adoption to fly. eBay took off in the early days because it was simple enought that everyday people could 'get it'. Amazon, the same thing. They survived, the pet food online, well, I haven't seen them around these parts.
Yes, let's design beyond the horizon, but let's not design so far ahead that by the time everyone gets there, you are old news, and the hot, new exciting companies with the same ideas trump you because they aren't saying, "We were doing that, like, 20 years ago", they are saying, "We've created this for your needs (even if you didn't think you needed it before)" The first is offensive, the second is exciting.
And, like I said, I see both all around me.
Point taken... keep your eye on the needs of the people for whom you are designing.
When it comes down to it, that IS exactly why I walked out of research with a time to market of 5-10 years and into the real world with a time to market of 3-5 weeks.
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