SCRATCH PAPER

The world has been reduced to tiny glowing rectangles; we are all prisoners within.

Before the onset of digital technologies, we used to consume content in different layout sizes and textures. We would read daily news on rough gray broadsheets many times bigger than our faces, and content related to our interests on glossy magazines. We would dive deep into stories on paperback books the size of our palms, and into nuggets of human knowledge on encyclopedias only slightly bigger. We would get up and turn on our radios to listen to chattering DJs, our televisions to watch sitcoms and soap operas. We would reopen dusty photo albums to take a trip down memory lane, and drive to the theater to savor the latest blockbusters. We had all kinds of containers to house all kinds of content. A change in activity also meant a change of device or even location, and therefore a palpable change in mood and mindset.

When digital technologies arrived, we celebrated. Finally, we didn’t have to carry so many things anymore. All our media, from news to movies to songs and books, could fit in one device. No matter what kind of media we fancied, everything was there on the rectangular window of the PC.

Our screens grew more and more powerful, gobbling up many standalone devices along the way. Our magazines, calculators, gaming devices, music players, cameras… they all disappeared into the omnipotent rectangle that eventually shrank into our pockets.

The newfound convenience came at the expense of a more immersive ‘content’ experience. We could not see or touch our content as they were anymore. They were locked behind glowing windows.

Over time, our hardware tried its hardest to disappear into the background. At the same time, our content adapted to fit the screens, as desktop and mobile websites and apps optimized for our fingers. Still, the limited number of screen sizes proved to be a huge constraint.

With the rise of tablets, we got rectangles of all sizes, but the problem remained that the ‘all-in-one’-ification of our content and media made us numb to a change of activity and media form. Because we could do all kinds of things from playing games to watching movies to talking with friends on our iPads, our content lost their unique forms and textures. Because everything could be accessed with mere clicks and swipes, we lost boundaries between our activities. We regressed from the time when different platforms on which our content lay conditioned our minds for the tasks at hand. Digital technology was actually a big step back from the glorious era when the size, shape, texture, and even smell of the material housing our content added so much to the experience.

Skeuomorphism stepped in as a half-hearted attempt to add texture to our smooth, boring rectangles, but all it got was heavy criticism. Standalone devices like e-book readers also sought to bring analogization back, but instead people saw them as incapable one-trick ponies.

What else does the tech industry have up its sleeve?

Unfortunately, we just got more entrenched than ever into the world of screens. Innovation came down to thinner bodies, bigger screens, higher resolutions, and faster processors. Technology has become boring.

The only way to make it exciting again is to liberate our content from their rectangular prisons.

But first, we need to have beyond-the-screen technologies. We are beginning to see them come to life in the form of augmented-reality projections (Sixth Sense), wearable technologies (Google Glass), haptic feedback (Tactus), virtual reality (Oculus Rift), and flexible screens (Youm). It’s also promising to see beyond-touch input interfaces like gesture control (Kinect), voice control (Siri), muscle tracking (Canada startup) and eye-tracking (Air gestures)

These new technologies would not only liberate our content as they were meant to exist, it would make them more powerful than ever. We will get the flexibility and variability of analog materials as well as the convenience and speed of digital devices. It’s the best of both worlds.
Content would no longer conform to a limited array of devices, instead it would be the entire physical world that will conform to them. We no longer have to be prisoners of our screens. Right now, it’s still a dream, but I believe this is the only way for tech to recover from its boring slump and be awesome once more.

I just entered the subway. I have 20 minutes to kill. 

At this point, there are a couple of what I term “boredom-killing devices” to choose from. A smartphone, a tablet, or a book. I had the first two with me. Should I choose the one more that is more convenient to carry or one that is more immersive? If I had 10 minutes, I would have chosen my smartphone. Less friction, but also less immersion. I had 20 minutes however, so I don’t mind the tradeoff betwen friction and immersion. 

I pull out my tablet, what to do now?

I have around 200 apps to choose from. Yes, the vaunted paradox of choice. I eliminate all the apps which require internet connection, and I don’t have any movies, leaving me with my reading apps and my games. 20 minutes is too short to get lost in a book so I take out long-form stuff such as Kindle, Ibooks or Goodreader. Should I write or draw? Yes, that will feel productive, but I can’t force creative activities when I don’t feel like it. It leaves me with Pocket or games. Reading or playing? I choose the option which would make me less guilty. I’m faced with choosing among 500+ articles. I’m biased toward recent tech stories, so I quickly read one. I get bored in the middle.

I exit the app.

I choose among the approximately 100 games I have. Which will be the lucky one? I take a quick glance on the folders I arranged: top games, brain games, puzzle, action, and miscellaneous. Some unclassified games are scattered around. They are the recent downloads, but at this point my partiality toward recent stuff takes a backseat. Top games beckon, so I enter the folder. Mostly long-form games, RPGs, nice adventures, I just want something that delivers bite-size fun. Should I have selected from the quick action games? Or maybe I mis-arranged this folder in the first place. Then, I see Asphalt 7, I have a good top-of-mind impression of it, so I enter.

The seconds trickle by, I’m waiting for the game to load. I can’t believe I’m getting impatient already, should I have just read another article? It’s the lowest friction activity after all. Finally, I’m in the game. Ready to race. I tilt my iPad to steer, press on the screen to boost. This is the reason why people play games right, since it doesn’t require thinking? Unfortunately, the mechanical controls produces an opposite effect on me. I think about how given a choice, I would revert to low-friction activities simply because they’re easier. I wonder how much time I’ve wasted because of how I chose to spend these pockets of free time. But maybe actually wasting them is better to recharge for bigger activities? My mind then drifts further on the series of choices I made from thinking about how to spend my 20 minutes to playing this mindless game.

10 minutes left. I click on my Evernote app, and start writing.

why isn’t the surface pro like a real laptop?

1: screen size

2: small trackpad

3: constrained screen angle

4: inability to put on lap

problems mostly come down to ergonomics.

why isn’t the surface pro like a real tablet?

1: screen is too wide

2: too thick and heavy

3: easily gets warm

4: short battery life

ergonomics is obviously compromised, but main problem is the battery life.

ergonomics is a big concern for the laptop mode, but other than that it’s a revolutionary ultrabook - multitouch near-retina display, wacom stylus support, dual form factor, all in a crazy thin and light laptop.

if only people saw it this way. 

the problem is that microsoft essentially marketed the surface pro as a tablet, so all of a sudden it becomes a heavy, hot tablet that you have to plug in after every four hours. 

nice try, microsoft, but with all your technical prowess you don’t really understand the basics of marketing and interaction design.

I’ve recently been very fascinated by user experience. I know that user experience is way bigger than user interface, it’s much more than just a well-designed packaging or pretty logos. I encountered a post by Om Malik earlier which summed it up pretty well. User experience is basically delivering happiness at every touchpoint. This is a very interesting insight. The touchpoint part was kind of mind-blowing for me. Ever since the Lagardere project, I realized that what brands should really do is to catch consumers at every touchpoint. It’s the big picture of the consumer journey that allows businesses to really deliver value. I believe that real value and impact is delivered if a company or brand does not focus on the consumer journey but rather on the user journey. The perspective here is instead of catching every opportunity to milk profit out of the consumer, you catch every opportunity to please him. In this case, a good user experience means a brand has to deliver happiness from its advertisements and in-store experience, all the way to customer service, packaging, checkout, after-sales, and of course most crucially, the actual consumption/usage of the product. But what if the brand is not a global multinational like Apple or Nike or Coca Cola? Again, the definition is delivering happiness in all touchpoints. In the case of a smaller service, I can think of no better example than Paper. It delivers happiness in the few touchpoints where it is present, from the app store, to the actual app, the guide notebooks inside, the actual purchase, its Tumblr and official website. Hence, it still holds true: good user experience is delivering happiness in all the touchpoints where it is present.

This leads me to the next clarification: what is happiness in this case? In the brand/consumer setting, I take ‘happiness’ to mean a positive experience, a moment of delight. Hence, delivering happiness would be equivalent to delivering delight. But can brands or businesses actually do more than that? Can they go beyond the definition of happiness as delight to its definition as ‘flow’ or ‘eudaimonia’? Can they create real positive value in the world?

I believe the greatest value is to amplify humanity in two ways: our human experience and our human potential. Products which bring the most value to these two facets command the highest premium. And those that do not have to compromise on price. True innovations answer these two basic needs, and they cannot be said to be innovations if they fail to do so. Google is a good example. Using it amplifies human experience. It gives us delight in all the knowledge that is available to us. At the same time, it also amplifies our human potential, empowering us to do more in a shorter period of time.

I used to think that there is such a thing as a solution ecosystem which is ideal in the Platonic sense, a solution ecosystem that amplifies humanity in the most optimal way possible. I thought that whichever business can capture the biggest part of this ideal ecosystem, whichever startup can plug the loopholes here will emerge victorious. Now, I realize that life is always a matter of compromise. We live within constraints, as do all solutions we come up with. I have identified three main constraints: technical, legal, and financial. Whichever solution can balance these constraints while amplifying our humanity will win. In line with this, solutions do not live in a vacuum. They are not working toward a static picture. Solutions which respond the fastest to the ever-changing landscape also has the highest chance of survival.

Of course, there are innumerable cases when it’s not the fastest to adapt nor the solution which brings the best value that wins the game. There are externalities involved. Why? The answer lies in the 4 Ps of marketing. User experience is most palpable in product. But because of life’s constraints we have 3 other Ps, price, place, and promotion. Windows is a good example. It was not the pioneer nor the solution which amplified humanity the most. All it had was a massive marketing and distribution strategy and it won the game. The world became worse off because of that. But something happened. Winning has a way of being self-reinforcing. Because it was so huge, it became a standard. Meanwhile, having a standard in a nascent industry like computing actually turned out to be good for everyone since collaboration and development became relatively seamless. Hence, Windows’ own success and scale were actually the primary factors for its value to humanity. Mac OS, on the other hand, even with its better design, ironically became harder to use simply because it wasn’t the standard. As I mentioned though, the ideal picture is not static nor is it a vacuum. Apple responded to that landscape and shifted its focus to media. That heralded the era of success it is enjoying today. However, this has brought about other problems such as the ‘dumbing down’ of technology as well as young people with shortened attention spans. Hence, a solution once more needs to be found to answer this new problem, as a reaction to the changing landscape. This leads me to think that life indeed is a balancing act. When a solution is successful in pushing us to one direction, we need another solution to push it back in order to bring us to a happy middle.

When we say that a business needs to bring genuine value, what then are we trying to say? When we want to create a positive impact to the world, what then do we really mean? Is it about being innovative for the sake of being innovative? I believe that new technologies for their own sake don’t really mean a thing. If an old technology can amplify our humanity better than a new one, then why change it? What is the point of new if it is not better? My fascination with new technology lies in the fact that most of them are actually delivering a positive impact in making our lives easier and more delightful. The reason why Apple is so successful is because it has mastered the art and science of amplifying humanity through technology. That’s why it puts itself at the crossroads between liberal arts and technology because it knows that to develop innovations one must adapt technology to humanity, not the other way around. Our humanity is an irreducible value, so everything has to conform to that, including technology. Is a positive impact then just making people happy? If that’s the case, we would probably be still in the dark ages. The article I read last week on the difference between happiness and meaning proved elucidating. If we only produced happiness, we might as well be animals. Producing happiness is simply about satisying desires. There needs to be something more. This is where meaning comes in. Meaning is a dedication toward a higher purpose. But then again, this higher purpose could be positive or negative as well depending on how you want to look at it. Hence, I will define meaning here as making the world a better place, moving the human race forward. Create value in the world means living a life of meaning and empowering other people to live meaningful lives. The ideal picture then, is for 7 billion people to be happy living meaningful lives. The sad truth though, is that the world cannot accommodate 7 billion self-actualized souls due to all its constraints. Is a positive impact then something that works toward an ideal picture? Again, I used to think so and this is the kind of impact I fantasize to bring. However, I now think that a positive impact is about responding to problems with innovative solutions that bring people back to a happy middle. Whether humanity marches forward toward an ideal picture, which may not even be ideal for everyone, is just a by-product of that.

The less visible the interface, the higher its value.

People often mistake user interface for user experience. Although historically they’ve been quite directly related, these days their relationship has turned inverse. The best interface is no interface, as tech writers like to say. But I would like to take that one step further. In the age of information saturation and gadget deluge, the best user experience is no interface.

What does this really mean?

For user experience to be truly magical these days, apps have to do away with as much of the ‘face’ as possible and focus on the ‘inter’. Users these days do not want to waste their eyeball time exploring the ins and outs of an app. We are demanding, spoiled even. We want to get to our tasks and contents directly without worrying about how we will operate our devices. This is called intention-based computing. The minimalist revolution has answered this need to reduce visual clutter as well as cutting the amount of steps to operate the apps, but these days users have gone a step further. We want zero steps. We want our devices to know what we want before we even know it. We basically want the interface to read our minds.

Google Now has led the way in this direction. Google as a search box is a prime example of intention-based computing, helping us get to the information that we want in the shortest time possible. Google Now takes this to the next generation: predictive computing. It uses the aggregate information of our location data, search requests, online habits, email and calendar info to surface information at the exact moment when we need it. When I searched for Taoyuan Airport on Google Maps, Google Now showed me a card with the flight schedules from Shanghai to Taipei the moment I got out of the house. It also showed another card with the bus schedules from my house to Pudong Airport. I spent zero time and brainpower fiddling with the interface, but I still got the exact results I needed.

The less visible the interface, the higher its value in terms of time and brainpower saved.

Another service which impressed me is IFTTT, If This Then That. This is another technology which is extremely busy behind the scenes, but basically has no interface. I can just set some parameters at the start, such as automatically posting starred articles on Pocket to my Tumblr, or saving tagged Facebook pictures to Dropbox. These tasks used to take time and effort on my part, but they are now completely automated without me having to manage any interface. It does this much more consistently and thoroughly than I do, all without requiring me to think or spend any time on the app. A magical user interface has no need for an interface, because it can just read my intentions and do the tasks for me directly.

Apps like Google Now and IFTTT reflect technology at its best. Unlike current technological poster boys like Facebook and Twitter, these apps do not command any of our time and attention. They just get out of the way and deliver what the user needs. They empower users to be more productive and focus on things that matter to them. As the app marketplace gets even more crowded and demanding of our attention, it’s apps like Google Now and IFTTT which will own the future.