How We View Innovation
Or, why nobody will ask you to build the iPhone
Apple was able to re-invent the phone, not because it asked users what they wanted (and then listened), but because it had a clear set of values and a focused idea of what makes for a good user experience with digital technology. And because they were entering a new market without an already established position, they had total freedom to execute a vision— a vision of simplicity that lead to revelatory products like the iPod and iTunes.
Reveal the True Problem. Go Abstract.
If you had asked a person using or considering a Palm smartphone in 2005 what they wanted in a device, they might have said:
- “a faster web browser!”
- “a button for accessing the camera!”
- “a larger keyboard!”
Specific, right? Palm would hear this feedback and improve their product incrementally. Their focus was on the existing product, and the path to improving it seemed clear enough: change the buttons, make the browser faster, and more people will buy.
To be sure, the result of these specific tweaks would be a better product, in most cases. Palm would in fact make each smartphone better than the last iteration by adding features users wanted.
But everything they did was completely within the confines of their existing solution: A smartphone for people who know how to use a PDA. They were making better smartphones for people who already had familiarity with smartphones.
They needed to go more abstract to innovate. They needed to break with convention. They needed a reset.
Why? Because Nobody Will Ask You For The iPhone.
The actual problems with smartphones of the day were fundamental. In a time when PC sales were soaring (propelled by access to user-friendly software, cheaper hardware and the lure of the internet) hardware and software experiences on mobile phones was just terrible by comparison.
There were way, way too many buttons on these devices, which made them intimidating, complicated and in many cases, inconsistent.
PCs and Macs had a mouse, and simple interfaces. The user experience was far from perfect, but it was consistent and easy to learn.
Smartphones were all over the place. It wasn’t uncommon for 2 products from the same manufacturer to have totally different button layouts, which is total insanity.
Still, no consumer could have told Palm “You know, what I really need is a totally new kind of smartphone with no keyboard and just, like, a giant screen that I can use to display any UI imaginable. I want desktop-class communications software, the full Internet… oh, and a built-in iPod with touch controls.”
Re-Examine Assumptions From The Ground Up.
Apple did not focus on advancing the mobile phone user experience within the confines of conventional wisdom. The iPhone did not have any plastic chiclet keys or a stylus. Apple didn’t focus on improving what laid before them. They focused instead on delivering a great experience, period.
Apple took a ground-up approach. For a company like Palm to adopt this approach, it would mean throwing a lot of things away, and moving on. And in the end, Palm just couldn’t do that until it was too late. They didn’t look at things from the bottom up — it was too painful. So instead, they drudged forward for too many quarters simply making Palm OS better, building it higher and higher like nothing in the market had changed.
What Apple did in 2007 was recognize that the mass market wasn’t looking for a faster Palm Trēo.
Of course, it seems obvious looking back that you shouldn’t have to be smart to use a smartphone. It should be easy, like the Mac. But it wasn’t. And the internet browsing apps on these devices really was “ like baby software” as Jobs put it.
Palm couldn’t see this, because they were too involved with the current definition of a smartphone. They were focused on improving their solution. They did not have the clarity of looking at things from the perspective of an outsider. If they had, they would see the limitations of their assumptions.
People didn’t want a faster Palm OS Web Browser. They wanted the internet as they knew it and loved it. They wanted the full internet; they had just been conditioned by Palm and other manufacturers into thinking it was not possible on a mobile phone.
The iPhone changed everything. An iPod, a Phone, and a breakthrough internet communicator. Once people saw this thing, they couldn’t un-see it. They had no use for a smartphone, whatever that was. But they wanted the iPhone.
Think Like a Beginner.
Apple focused on a problem, and with the clarity of a beginner. How did they define the problem?
Smartphones are not very smart, and not very easy to use.
Apple’s advantage was a beginner’s mind. Steve Jobs saw smartphones of the day for what they really were: clunky and not very user friendly. Especially when compared with the Mac. So the iPhone was born.
How We Apply This Thinking:
The problem is not that notification centers aren’t working well. The problem is notification centers. They have become so unwieldy that we miss things. The solution can’t be better notification management, or a greater number of devices to beep and buzz. This is more fundamental.
The ideal solution is to to take important things out of the screens and into the visible world, were you won’t miss them.
A sticky note takes something out of the notebook so you can look at it, not for it. That’s an idea that works well. We’d like to modernize it.
We make information visible, on a smart sticky note. It’s called SeeNote.
