What I learned from O’Reilly Solid 2014, Part 1
Principles in creating great products
A few weeks back, I attended the O’Reilly Solid conference. While the physical products like robots, 3D printers, and (my favorite) a remote programmable sous vide machine, were awe inspiring, the great presentations that revolved around the interplay between the real world and the digital world were worth the cost of entry. Well, that and the salted caramel chocolate cupcakes.
As a designer in the digital space, I’ve moved farther and farther away from “just” marketing sites into more interesting, interactive, and often design of physical products. Between digital design and industrial design, there’s definitely overlap. Here are some of the things that I found I could most directly apply to my daily design life.
Modularity
Modularity — the darling concept of 2014, and for good reason. As we see cities and entire countries fail as their very immutable industry becomes obsolete, modularity is a smart way to counter painting yourself into an industrial corner.
In his discussion of electrical grids, Alex Hornstein from Tiny Pipes notes what is pretty obvious in our post-industrial economy — when big things fail, they tend to fail big. He discussed this in the context of electrical grids, but you can see a similar trend in manufacturing. When you produce a specialize product with specialized interconnected parts, when one of those specialized parts fail the whole thing fails spectacularly (like old fashioned Christmas lights, when one goes out they all go out).
Furthermore, committing to the production of a large entity ties up more resources in this big thing. Neil Gershenfeld from the MIT Center for Bits and Atoms, discussed the waste of specialized products. When they’re obsolete (which is inevitable in an economy that encourages forced obsolescence), the best you can do is recycle the component parts down to their elements. But if you think more about modularity, you can swap out parts more easily, almost Lego-style.
Finally, modular product design makes innovation more accessible to more people. Nadya Peek from the MIT Center for Bits and Atoms in her discussion of machines that make our machines discussed how their project is open source, meaning more people can get into the game. More players in the game allows for the same benefits as crowd-sourcing — creating a more competitive and innovative space.
And Gershenfeld notes this creates a different type of economy that doesn’t just rely on mega-experts and large industrial production facilities. Instead, there’s the opportunity for micro-industries or pop-up industries that can create local, self-sufficient economies with lower barriers for entry.
Feedback
Machines are never going away—they’re only going to be more integrated into our lives. A crucial part of that integration is how we give them feedback, since machines are only as smart as the input we give them.
Ben Waber from Sociometric Solutions discussed how his company uses wearables to get feedback from people with minimal intrusion (some examples included, GPS location, body position, and voice tone). This seamlessness possibly makes for better data collection, but first you have to get past the creepy-factor. Data collection that is so seamless that you don’t know it’s happening definitely rides right up to (and sometimes crosses) the line to creepy or, even worse, paternalistic. As Timothy Prestero of Design that Matters noted in his discussion of making medical equipment for impoverished countries, adding data tracking technology to their products actually made the people they were trying to help more suspect of their efforts.
Instead of being seamless, giving proper feedback actually works better when we’re getting the right feedback from the UI. Think about human conversation, where we give each other friendly “Mmm, hmm”s to indicate that we’re eagerly paying attention. The organ builder, Rick Isaacs brought the notion of haptic feedback to life when describing the move in the 60s away from automation of organ functionality. The automation took away some of the feedback from the machine that gave the musician the subtle feel that they need to play.
Touch, was the second biggest theme to come out of 2014, encapsulated in the fact that almost every speaker brought up the darling Nest. There are many reasons to love the UI of Nest, but perhaps the most resounding endorsement is that it is just so darn touchable, shown with many social media pictures of adorable kids instantly fascinated, transfixed by their desire to touch the UI. Rob Coneybeer from Shasta Ventures noted the importance of this emotional connection between us and our devices. The more we love them, the more we’ll embrace them and use them. That gives the device a better chance of collecting the data needed to make the experience better.
