In this straightforward video, Marius Budin offers a look at our insecurities as get older through the eyes of Google Suggest. If anything, it's clear that there's one thing we fear throughout: loneliness. Although, the suggestions in the early years worry me.
The first, What “Disrupt” Really Means, by Andy Rachleff makes the point that its usually business models that are disruptive, not products. And contrary to Clayton Christensen’s definition of disruptive (low-cost, low-margin, low-quality) Rachleff suggests there is such a thing as “high-end” disruption, when a company like Uber offers a competing service that is more convenient, but more expensive than its taxi alternative.
The second, Stop Re-inventing Disruption, a response of sorts by Maxwell Wessel, argues that Rachleff’s idea of a high-end disruption doesn’t make sense. Disruption is a low-end, low-quality, low margin affair, and explains why incumbents get beat even though they are intelligent, well aware, and have capital to spend. The disruption happens because these companies consciously choose not to compete on the low-end because their business has evolved into a high-margin one.
Wessel also makes the distinction between disruption and innovation, which do seem to be used interchangeably sometimes. Innovation is simply making a better product, while disruption is a longer process…upending industries with low-end products that slowly eat away at the incumbents. He says that most of the examples of Rachleff’s are simply classic disruption done more quickly…as the pace of the world increases so does the pace of disruption.
Both authors make the point that some products are simply better, not necessarily disruptive. Wessel argues the iPhone was simply better than the phones it replaced…it wasn’t disruptive in the Clayton Christensen/Innovator’s Dilemma sense of the word. This is where the term “disruptive” becomes problematic…obviously the iPhone completely changed the game within the mobile industry. It’s disruptive in the normal sense of the word…
At any rate, I’m not sure that whether or not something is “disruptive” is much of an issue on the level of product design, but it is interesting to note that for some products to succeed they don’t necessarily have to be higher quality than the alternative. They might just be cheaper, or offer some functionality that the incumbents cannot (like Google Docs collaboration features). Even though they aren’t higher quality, they still find a foothold in the marketplace. As existing products add feature after feature over time, the opportunity for disruption increases.
The post Weekend reading: Disruption vs. Innovation appeared first on Bokardo.
Lots of interesting bits in Redesigning Google: how Larry Page engineered a beautiful revolution. The thesis:
“We went to Google looking for the person responsible for the new design direction, but the strange answer we got is that such a person doesn’t exist. Instead, thanks to a vision laid out by a small team of Google designers, each product team is finding its way to a consistent and forward-looking design language thanks to a surprising process…they’re talking to each other.”
Also note that the mandate to focus on design came down from Larry Page himself…without support from the executive team these sorts of things have failed in the past at Google. And anecdotally, it might be hard to underestimate the publicity value of this shift for Google and their recruiting efforts…they are now seen as a much more design-friendly place to work.
hat tip: @anandrajaram
The post Redesigning Google appeared first on Bokardo.
Sure, there are a few talented people who have gotten EGOTs (an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony), but has anyone gotten a CEGOT? Find out who the lucky recipients of Campies are this year, awarded to the best and the worst in the world of technology and academia. Tom, Mills, Amanda, and Dan make their selections, as well as their predictions for 2013. The Digital Campus crew has often been right in the past, so be sure to tune in and know the future. (Past performance is no guarantee of future results.)
Links mentioned on the podcast:
Tumblr growth
Peter Brantley, “You Have Two, Maybe Three, Years”
Lorcan Dempsey, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at Libraries, Discovery, and the Catalog: Scale, Workflow, Attention”
Calling a Quorum — for Real
Buffeted by the Web, but Now Riding It
Amazon Is a Great Company Because It Has the Most Generous Shareholders in the World
Running time: 56:50
Download the .mp3
In a beautiful rendition of the galaxy, Google visualized 100,000 stars, starting at the sun and out to a view of the Milky Way. Start with the tour, which takes you through an overview of what there is to see, and then explore on your own. Specifically, once you zoom out over four light years away from the sun, you start to see other known stars. Click on the labels for information and a closer look at what looks like flaming balls of lava. [via @pitchinc]
While President Obama spoke on the other side of campus and the security helicopters buzzed the Digital Campus studio, Tom, Dan, and Mills (Amanda was at a secure and undisclosed location–so undisclosed we couldn’t get her on the show) discussed Dan’s iPhone fetish–yes, he has an iPhone 5–and what the constantly changing landscape of new devices like the iPhone 5 might mean for the humanities. We also breathed a huge sigh of relief that one part of the never ending litigation over Google’s book scanning project has come to an end. If only it were the last chapter in that saga! Is it news that Facebook now has more than 1 billion users? Or that they are using your tagging of family and friends to improve their facial recognition algorithms? Give the podcast a listen to find out what we thought about these topics and more.
Links mentioned in the podcast:
Google’s book settlement website
Google buying Viewdle
A newly discovered photograph of Emily Dickinson
Facebook tops 1 billion
A humorous analysis of the Facebook Billion
Running time: 47:05
Download the .mp3
In the latest Chrome experiment, Google mapped cloud coverage around the world in Cloud Globe. The interactive animation shows coverage from July 1, 2010 to September 12, 2012, with a globe that you can move around as expected and a timeline on the bottom that indicates high levels of coverage. As the animation plays through, storms are highlighted with a circle and pointer. Finally, you can turn on the vegetation layer, and the green regions happen to be under the clouds. Imagine that.
Renee DiResta got to wondering about state stereotypes, so she looked them up on Google and mapped them.
In the months before a US Presidential election, the quality of political discourse hits new lows. Blue State/Red State tropes dominate the news cycle as the media gins up outrage over perceived injustices in the culture wars. It’s all about our differences. So I started wondering, how do Americans really think about "those people" in other states? What are the most common stereotypes? For each of the fifty states and DC, I asked Google: "Why is [State] so ” and let it autocomplete. It seemed like an ideal question to get at popular assumptions, since “Why is [State] so X?" presupposes that X is true.
Roll over a state on the map, and the top four suggestions are listed. Hilarity ensues. "Why is California so... liberal, broke, anti-gun, and expensive?"
[via @rachelbinx]
It could be that your users are always attentive, always aware of what’s going on with you and your product or service. They are always up-to-date with what you offer, where they are in their progress with you, what account they’re logged in with, what payment plan they’re on, and what they were doing last with your product.
Or, it could be that they’re just like the rest of us and trying to stay afloat while their attention is being pulled in a thousand directions at once and could use you reminding them what seems like it should be obvious.
A couple points about obvious:
The other day when I logged into Google on my iPhone I was presented with a simple little message telling me what account I logged in with. (I have three Google accounts…I think)
As a designer it would have been super easy to assume that this wasn’t necessary…indeed for a while Google didn’t tell you what account you logged in with, but then it became frustrating when you tried to access your Gmail or Calendar when you were logged in with a different account. By stating the obvious (that you just logged in with a certain account) Google is making it more likely that you don’t have this frustration anymore. (granted the mere fact that we log in with different accounts to the same service is a problem in itself…this is a decent solution for the current structure of Google’s service)
In short, stating the obvious too often gets a bad rap. But when the first priority of user interface design is clarity, often the most important thing we can do is to state the obvious.
Peter Nitsch created Ascii Street View, converting Google Street View to colored letters. Search for a location and experience the retro goodness. [via Waxy]