Designing for Tomorrow

Innovation is hard, it’s like trying to speak a language that hasn’t been invented yet, nobody can tell what you are doing, you don’t know if it is coming along nicely or not, and most people think you are crazy. We do not often give it the weight of importance, time, staff or budget it deserves.

Innovation is not an app.

Apps are not necessarily the future, in fact, I would argue, the last thing you should do is build an app when you see these statistics:

• 65% of smartphone users download zero apps in a given month.
• 99% drop off rate with an app download Call to action and an actual download.
• There is 77% uninstall rate after 3 days, and a 96% uninstall rate after 90 days.
• The majority of apps are never opened when downloaded, or are uninstalled the same day, just due to lack of attention span in waiting for it to download.
• Every on-boarding screen, or account creation screen where you need information from the user causes at least 20% of your users to give up.

Why is this?

1. False Expectations: We see that when something is truly novel, like with Facebook, Instagram, or most recently, Pokemon GO, it can really skyrocket into popular adoption. We fixate on the success stories and how we could theoretically have just as much success, but those success stories are few and far between. It’s like how airplane crashes are highly sensationalized and car crashes are a mostly ignored by the press and then people get the impression flying is dangerous and driving is safe, when statistically the exact opposite is true.
2. Oversaturated Market: There are over 2.2 Million apps in the app store right now, and 83% of those apps never see a top chart and disappear into the abyss of wasted effort and near zero impact.
3. 90% of technology startups fail, The majority of things people want to do on their phone, they can already do with their existing apps, so convincing them to use yours is like trying to sell air conditioning units in Alaska.
4. Apps are just not the future for user experience, at least not in their current format.

Visualize this scenario with me, if there were a street that could somehow magically host 2.2 Million food trucks (3 times the total number of restaurants in the entire United States), and it were perpetually 2:00pm, so people have already eaten lunch and were not really ever even all that hungry, would you say to yourself, “We need to start our own food truck.” Probably not. But that’s what we keep doing, and we’re surprised when people do not flock to our apps.

What’s the solution?

Good Design

It is much easier, faster and less expensive to do bad design. It’s much harder to actually do good design.

1. Human Centered Design: I recommend you take this course on HCD from IDEO through NovoEd, it teaches you to challenge your assumptions, get in touch with your customer, identify and solve real problems, and in a way that actually works. It’s also free, so do it. Free course on NovoEd
2. Gamification: I recommend you get in touch with a better understanding of human motivation. Why are games fun? What drives us to make decisions, to enjoy what we do, and pour our time and attention into things? Yu-Kai Chou is an amazing teacher and has a brilliant breakdown of these that you can begin applying to your systems.
3. Challenge your Assumptions: OneHope sends out Daily Drucker emails every day, and it is immensely refreshing. Peter Drucker teaches on modern management and how to build better companies, innovate, respond to market changes and be better at what we do.
4. Incumbency vs. Insurgency : If you work for an organization, I’d recommend watching this video on the Founder’s Mentality on YouTube, it describes the differences between an insurgent startup and an incumbent large established organization, and how to be aware of and respond to those differences.

Focus

It is so easy to justify doing more than is good for you or your organization. It is critical that you focus your efforts for maximum impact.

1. Think like an Artist: When a painter paints, he or she cannot have 72 canvases going at the same time. When DaVinci painted the Mona Lisa, he had to focus all his effort and attention on that one task to produce a masterpiece.
2. Say, “No.” more often: Steve Jobs mentioned the importance of this. That in innovation, the 1,000 things you say no to are just as important as the one thing you say, “Yes” to.
3. When you say, “Yes,” Really commit: Startups usually tend to do lots of testing, and when they see something working, they are more willing to bet it all on that initiative. Larger organizations tend to test a lot, but never really commit to anything showing promise, as it involves too much change, too many resources to be pulled from other established aspects of the business. But, try to combat that trend, when something is working, give it the time, budget, and talent it needs to have a chance at true success and sustainability.

Service Mindset — It’s way more than just an app.

1. Technology is not a product: which is really confusing, especially if you come out of a more traditional industry that has products and outputs, because developing an app or webpage feels like developing a product. There are very similar processes before launching, the research, design, the testing and then launch and promotion, and like a product, an app or website sort of sits on a virtual shelf in a digital marketplace. However, with a product, once it is in their hands, you are done, it was a successful sale; technology on the other hand is different, because your “buyer” is not a buyer, but a “user” and users stick around, or at least, if you are offering something worthwhile, they do.
2. Technology is more like a storefront: Instead of your app being a thing that someone takes, it is more like a door that someone enters, and once they have entered the space you created for them, they have certain expectations and if you don’t meet those expectations, they leave.

OneHope’s app in partnership with YouVersion, the Bible App for Kids, has been significantly more successful than any of our other technology initiatives that I have been a part of, and that is primarily because it has a large team of people whose primary role is to consistently deliver high quality service to children and parents. There is continually new content in the app. They are responding to user needs and developing a host of additional content that supports an ecosystem of utility around the brand. It’s much much more than just an app, and if the team had never touched it again after the initial launch and expected it to thrive as it had, it certainly would have failed.

Now What?

Equipped with good design, a clear focus and service as your mindset, what should we do?

If you look at the context the Church today is in, compared to the context around when Christianity started, the Greco-Roman world, there are a lot of similarities:

The Greco-Roman World (specifically 10 BCE — 30 CE)

Diversity: Trade goods, religions, and technology were spreading quickly due to the common language of Greek, common currency of Rome and safe roads and trade routes connecting most of the mediterranean basin.

Tolerance: As Rome expanded its empire, it allowed other religions to be added to the pantheon. More gods? No problem, all are welcome.

Reaction to Christianity: As monotheists, Christians rejected tolerance and the cultural norms of their context, ostracizing themselves by not greeting people with the customary, “Long live God Caesar” or bringing the necessary sacrifices along for paying civic taxes, or offering thanks to the appropriate god to whom the steak you were barbecuing for your neighbors was sacrificed, etc., they violated all the social norms and were just seen as weird and confusing.

The Connected World (1990–2020)

Diversity: The internet allows the whole world to be aware of and engaged with everything else the rest of the world is doing, Google Translate and Emojis eliminate language barriers, and international shipping and currency exchange allows for a virtual elimination of borders.

Tolerance: Given the internet’s pervasive reach, people find it more necessary to accept one another’s ideas and beliefs in order to avoid conflict and engage.

Reaction to Christianity: Christianity today is received in much the same way as it was then. “Why can’t you just accept that what’s true for you isn’t true for me?” “It’s okay that we believe different things.” Nobody understands why Christians cannot just mind their own business and leave people who think differently alone.

Granted, this is just an initial non-academic pass at a comparison, I expect there are numerous ways to better compare cultures and social climates. I hope to further research this comparison and learn from it further, but assuming it’s valid let’s look at what this implies.

When examining these cultures as similar, the church is different. Then, the church grew exponentially, whereas today, in the parallel church online, the church is floundering around foolishly, not growing, disrupting or affecting the greater culture. There is something missing.

Where the Internet Falls Short

The internet began as a solution, primarily, for the rapid transfer of information between individuals. That is still foundational, however, as it has become more sophisticated, we are able to transfer lots and lots of information much faster, so fast that we are often tempted to use it to replace interacting with each other IRL (in real life) or in meatspace as a friend of mine says. But like every designed system, decisions are made on our behalf that we are not privy to and do not necessarily recognize, decisions that color how we communicate with one another, flaws that we take for granted, as we leverage the internet for its intended purpose.

Henry Ford said, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said, ‘a faster horse’.” I only know that because Drucker reported it, as he described thinking about the market beyond the market. Horse breeders were in the horse business, but Ford was in the transportation business. A stable could not have anticipated or responded to the greater need of transportation as a whole, because they were myopically focused on horses.

If you are confused about the metaphor, I think apps and websites are the equivalent of horses, and I want you to try thinking like Ford.

I worry that the church today is focused on technology in the wrong way, we describe it as a great tool for reaching the unreached. This is true, the adoption of mobile phones with their connection to the internet worldwide is unprecedented. But let us not forget that the internet is a means to an end, that end being communication. Originally, the internet connected several university computers together so they could share research more quickly, learning faster and working together by communicating more complex information more quickly.

So, as this medium grew, and businesses leveraging the technology became profitable, they designed software to facilitate our communication, things we love: Comment Feeds, Facebook’s Like button, the ability to post your own blogs, post pictures on Instagram, find a date, share updates in a concise 140-characters, and there are dozens of others we could mention. These design choices affect global culture as much as they find their source in the culture where they are born.

Here are a few design assumptions I noticed:

1. What is popular is better.
2. What is newer is better.
3. Everything should be free.
4. My activity should be private.
5. Anti-institutional bias.
6. Equality of all people/profiles, ideas and information.
7. Extreme egoism.
8. “The more content I provide, the more value I have.”
9. Everything is recoverable, undo, delete.
10. Everything is infinitely reproducible, no scarcity.

Almost all of these are visible in YouTube which is consistently in the top 10 Internet pages in the world. What pressures do these facts of the mediums we use apply pressure to or affect ministry work? Is that good? Bad? I do not know yet, but I think it is worth asking.

There are also several problems with the current communication trends on the internet, as noted by Wael Ghonim in his TED talk a couple years ago, here are some things he identifies and somethings I add.

1. People Gravitate to Echo Chambers: where they are surrounded by people who think and believe just like they do. It is so easy to mute, unfollow and block people who disagree.
2. Discussions Usually Devolve into Angry Mobs: people forget social niceties, there are real people on the other side of a computer somewhere reading what they write. People would act and behave completely differently if face to face than they do online.
3. People Do not Know How to Deal with Rumors: or validate information, so misinformation and lies obscure and hide the truth. No credibility/trusted source. Information lives forever.
4. It is Hard to Change Your Opinions: people make impulse decisions about complex issues based on incomplete understandings and jump to conclusions, yet they find it incredibly difficult to change your opinions since your previously held opinions are public, and you would be admitting you were wrong, publicly. Losing face.
5. People Speak At One Another, Not With Each Other: People post shallow comments over deep conversations; sensational, sensational posts for more views rather than thoughtful, carefully worded discussions, and votes rather than meaningful engagements. People broadcast snippets of life to a thousand or a million people, but know and are known by almost none of them.
6. Speed of Consumption: I think it’s easy to agree engaging in conversation and reading are different. Asides from the basic difference in speed (Conversations average 110–150 wpm whereas average readers are the majority and reach around 200 wpm with a typical comprehension of 60%.) It’s that last figure that is most interesting. Reading has a comprehension rate, whereas a conversation seems to always be so high as to not merit much research into conversational comprehension averages.
7. Body Language and Tone of Voice Missing: The research and opinion on the specifics varies, but there is consensus around the idea that a large part of communication is nonverbal, it is completely missing in text, and in video, it is not contextual for the viewer. (Emojis are helping with the text, which is an interesting side note.)
8. Pushing Information, Not pulling: People are constantly pushing information, opinions, updates out, but very rarely are they requesting information, engaging and seeking, which is markedly different from how most conversations go. Conversations in person are the opposite, it’s usually a trading of specific questions and the resulting answers. You rarely walk up to someone and unsolicitedly begin telling them what you think about something.
9. Misinterpretation of Silences: This is connected to body language and tone of voice, but silences and pauses can easily be misinterpreted given the lack of presence of both parties. One cannot tell if the respondent is furious and refusing to answer, distracted by a passing cat or unconscious.

Overall, it seems that the internet is just a poor host for civility, thoughtfulness and deep meaningful communication with one another. The internet’s penetration to every nearly single person on earth is then almost meaningless to the church, if the internet is an ineffective or flawed means for connecting individuals to one another or to new ideas, beliefs which is what is required for evangelism and effectively sharing the gospel.

Think Medium.

Medium as in the substance by which something occurs, sound waves are carried through the medium of air, cars travel by the medium of the road. radio is transmitted through the medium of, a particular frequency of electromagnetic waves. There are several meta-categories for the media (as in the plural of medium described above) that all internet communication happens through.

• Apps: championed by Apple.
• Webpages: championed by Google.
• Chat: championed by FB.

It is through these three avenues that most value is being delivered by the internet today, the latter being the newest addition given chat-bot’s introduction in 2016.

I suggest that rather than attempting to make better apps, we should strive to solve the meta-problem of the medium of the internet, what is a solution outside of an app, website or message that would allow us to engage with other people in a way that promotes civility, thoughtfulness, where it is socially acceptable and encouraged to change your mind.

A team at google is using their OpenSource AI tool, to start solving some of these types of issues. They consider hateful and abusive language online as a form of censorship, causing people to be unwilling and afraid to speak openly. Their Conversation AI detects abusive language and harassment and can selectively silence those users.

The internet offers the ability to recreate your identity, fragment your IRL persona from your online life. There is a lack of digital accountability that is inherently a part of the medium. Because nobody owns or controls how everything is accessed, there is no uniformity or protocol to connect our fragmented digital selves.

What are the primary values of God as demonstrated through Jesus’s life? Love, grace, forgiveness, mercy, acceptance, reliance on community and God, selflessness? How do we build a new medium that holds those values fundamentally? What does that look like? Probably not like youtube, twitter and Facebook though. I do not know either, but we should figure it out, because the medium by which we communicate matters, it affects the message we share. So, please think about forming the next digital communication medium so we can more effectively communicate the gospel through it.