Ged Carroll

Category: ideas | 想法 | 생각 | 考える

Ideas were at the at the heart of why I started this blog. One of the first posts that I wrote there being a sweet spot in the complexity of products based on the ideas of Dan Greer. I wrote about the first online election fought by Howard Dean, which now looks like a precursor to the Obama and Trump presidential bids.

I articulated a belief I still have in the benefits of USB thumb drives as the Thumb Drive Gospel. The odd rant about IT, a reflection on the power of loose social networks, thoughts on internet freedom – an idea that that I have come back to touch on numerous times over the years as the online environment has changed.

Many of the ideas that I discussed came from books like Kim and Mauborgne’s Blue Ocean Strategy.

I was able to provide an insider perspective on Brad Garlinghouse’s infamous Peanut Butter-gate debacle. It says a lot about the lack of leadership that Garlinghouse didn’t get fired for what was a power play. Garlinghouse has gone on to become CEO of Ripple.

I built on initial thoughts by Stephen Davies on the intersection between online and public relations with a particular focus on definition to try and come up with unifying ideas.

Or why thought leadership is a less useful idea than demonstrating authority of a particular subject.

I touched on various retailing ideas including the massive expansion in private label products with grades of ‘premiumness’.

I’ve also spent a good deal of time thinking about the role of technology to separate us from the hoi polloi. But this was about active choice rather than an algorithmic filter bubble.

 

  • 2016 just where is it all going?

    I started to think about 2016 just where is it all going?And Uber immediately sprang to mind. It is obvious that Uber’s CEO had never watched The Princess Bride, a cultural touch stone for both generation x and generation y, otherwise they would have known the maxim:

    Never get involved in a land war in Asia

    There is a lot of reason why this is true, the phrase captures the essence of a remark Douglas McArthur had said. If you play the board game Risk, Asia poses a problem due to the amount of territories involved.

    I expect Uber will continue to funnel money into China and still get sand in its face. Quite what this means for Lyft I am not so sure.

    Twitter gets a change of management, but that doesn’t do any good. The reasons for this are already apparent:

    Twitter has stopped growing at all in the US in 2015. This is a big deal because the US is the bellwether market for advertising innovation and advertisers like growing audience numbers.

    It has growing content volumes on broadly static growth, which has infrastructure costs. It also has costs from trying to innovate itself out of trouble with advertisers.

    Although there aren’t hard numbers to support it, there is a body of evidence to suggest that the number of times a day a consumer accesses the platform has declined and the number of impressions per post would flatten or decline.

    All of this would be bad news for potential advertisers and their intermediaries in the advertising and PR world.

    Fintech bubble that will take good ideas and bad ones down together. Banks are currently considered to be ripe for disruption. One of the key problems with this is that technologists think it will be easy to sweep aside regulations that banks operate under.

    The reality is rather different, these aren’t taxi services or hotels but people with real political and financial clout. These are the same organisations who managed to persuade governments to bankrupt themselves in order to bail them out in 2008.

    In the late 1990s and early 2000 there was a similar bubble around Linux and open source software. A number of companies at the front of it including VA Linux didn’t last the bubble, but the effect was to make Linux ubiquitous from consumer electronics to banking systems. I suspect a similar impact for technologies such as Blockchain. It may prove to be a handier way than historic transactional databases for say low transaction rate businesses; but that doesn’t mean that corporate enterprises will buy the technology or services from start-ups. Instead, the bits that prove themselves through the Linux Foundation are likely to be co-opted by the likes of HP, Oracle or Huawei in the future.

    Ultimately these providers aren’t selling a shiny technology but trust. Think of it in terms of two axis of risk:

    • CTOs will take a chance on a technology where a major vendor is involved if it makes sense (IBM and the internet for instance)
    • They will take a chance on a new vendor to do something that is well understood (think the Indian outsourcers like Infosys and Wipro)
    • But they would be hard pressed to take a risk on both vendor and technology at the same time, think systems integrator marchFIRST which championed then new web technologies to enterprises around about the time of the dot com bust

    We will have reached peak ad-blocking. Ad blocking still requires a modicum of savvy from a consumer audience, just as an in the same way encryption isn’t completely mainstream – the same will be true with ad-blocking. However there will be an increased interest in native advertising.  There won’t be the complete meltdown of retargeting or programmatic for instance that ad blocking would tend to imply.

    The internet in the EU will become increasingly regulated. At the moment the European Union is succumbing to The Fear. In the past, whether it was the Red Brigade, The Baader Meinhof gang or Northern Ireland there was a lot of emphasis put on keeping normality. The only real notable change in the UK was sealing up bins on the London Underground and other public transport services. Because there was a collective memory going back to the second world war, there was a recognition that keeping society normal was a key element in dealing with terrorism – whether the rise of the right or the left.

    After the cold war the parameters of risk versus impact on societies reaction acted to it changed. This was the coming of The Fear – the roots of it can be found in the US reaction to 9/11. America had not experienced terrorism or foreign attack on its soil since the war of Independence. The fear felt by Americans was palpable and infectious. Each risk faced by a society was coupled to an asymmetric response. This was something that terrorist theorists planned. The risks become more abstract including paedophiles or the catch-all of ‘organised crime’ to give governments greater insight into consumers lives. It has only taken 20 years for Germany to forget the lessons of life under the Stasi.

    This won’t change any time soon as governments have a lack of incentive to give up on powers they have already legislate for themselves. If one looks at the UK mainstream political spectrum, both Labour and Conservative regimes have been remarkably similar in terms of legislating consumer privacy out of existence.

    We will have reached peak smartphone and tablet. China has now reached replacement rate for devices, there is a corresponding lack of paradigm shifts in the pipelines for smartphone design and software. Tablets have shown themselves to be nice devices for data consumption but not requiring regular upgrades like the smartphone or replacement for the PC.

    VR in 2016 will be all about finding the right content. VR won’t work in gaming unless it provides e-gaming athletes with some sort of competitive advantage, if it does then gaming will blow things up massively. Gaming will not be the only content vehicle for VR, it needs an Avatar-like moment to drive adoption into the early mainstream. From a technology point-of-view the smartphone drive towards OLED displays should benefit virtual reality goggles.

    GoPro is going to get eaten alive. Manufacturers like drone-maker DJI have been integrating GoPro-esque cameras into their products and UPQ (think a cross between gadget company and a fast fashion outfit like Forever 21) are providing much cheaper (but not cheap and nasty) alternatives.

    More information
    What stands between Uber and success in China? | CNBC
    Uber CEO accuses Chinese messaging app WeChat of censorship | The Telegraph
    Why Twitter’s Dying (And What You Can Learn From It) – Umair Haque
    MarchFirst enters the terrible twos | CNet
    Why ISIS has the potential to be a world-altering revolution — Aeon
    LG Secures Super Bowl Slot And Ridley Scott For OLED TV ad | Forbes

    Older predictions
    2015: just where is it all going? | renaissance chambara
    2014: crystal ball gazing, how did I do?
    2014: just where is it all going? | renaissance chambara 
    Crystal ball-gazing: 2013 how did I do?
    2013: just where is it all going?
    Crystal ball-gazing: 2012 how did I do?
    2012: just where is digital going?
    Crystal ball-gazing: 2011 how did I do?
    2010: How did I do?
    2010: just where is digital going?

  • 2015 crystal ball gazing, how did I do?

    I did some predictions in January this year, how did I do in my 2015 crystal ball gazing?

    Sony Corp. cleans house with the management teams of its US businesses. One of Sony’s start-up bets (the e-ink watch, smart locks etc) comes good. Sony will still be supported by its Japanese financial services business.

    Not quite sure how Sony’s management team survived but they did, only Amy Pascal got canned rather than a wholesale purge. Sony still seems to have its start-ups percolating, instead Sony has blown up in DSLR cameras and selling sensor components to rivals. Sony’s financial services business still seems to be contributing to the bottom line. Sony decided to spin out its audio and video business, just as it had spun out its TV and PC business already.

    I could see the student becoming the master as Huawei sells into IBM enterprise markets in the developing world and possibly Europe.

    Huawei is making big gains in enterprise storage, with a shot of getting a worldwide top three vendor in the immediate future.

    Shareholder activists don’t take a run at Google. Google is moving from a growth stock to value as search advertising revenue growth is declining.

    But that didn’t stop them rolling out Alphabet to make the big bet efforts more transparent for investors. It was also an admission that Google is becoming a value stock more like GE as top line revenue growth declines. Its two tier share structure still prevents shareholder activism, but that doesn’t mean Google has a cloth ear.

    Google’s privacy and antitrust regulatory woes will continue to fester outside the U.S.

    The European Union, Russia, Korea and possibly the U.S. I reckon I have this one.

    Expect more societal push-back as geeks become the new investment bankers in terms of being societal punch bags.

    The localised protests in Silicon Valley against the ‘Google Bus’ expanded. What drove protests transnational was the rise of the sharing economy alongside the labour market and economic distortions that it drives; just Google Uber or AirBnB.

    There won’t be an over-arching XML type bridge for the IoT. Battery life will limit the fantastic visions that pundit have for wearables and the internet of things.

    The market is fragmented for the cloud infrastructure on IoT. We still have Apple Watches that struggle to get a days use out of a battery charge.

    We are going to continue to see baby steps towards more immersive experiences, as VR glasses slowly make progress in the marketplace. OLEDs would be an ideal application for VR glasses, particularly if they want to hold off smartphones in a frame.

    So far, we haven’t seen OLEDs being used and the Oculus Rift still isn’t an expensive consumer product yet.

    Content is likely to role out in a similar way to IMAX – visually stunning documentaries about space and nature alongside computer games.

    Content has been slow in coming to the fore, the stuff that I have seen is marketing content (I was involved in making films for New Balance to market their football range of products). I am still waiting for content to come through, it will take time, possibly longer than 12 months.

    Despite The Interview, Hollywood still won’t do cinema / digital simultaneous releases, or global simultaneous releases for any content that wouldn’t have been direct to TV/video in an earlier age.

    Looking back, I feel guilty putting this one in, there is nothing more predictable than the intransigence of the media industry.

    The YotaPhone2 won’t get the customer base it deserves as it struggles against the superior marketing muscle of Samsung in the premium Android segment of the market.

    I was right on this, but not for all the right reasons. Samsung had a hell of a time this year as cheaper Chinese players further commoditised the Android marketplace at such a pace it even started to hurt their supply chain. Yota did make an impact however in a different way; Huawei’s P8 launched with an option e-ink back to the phone.

    Late on in the year, Yota Device sold a substantial share to REX Global Entertainment Holdings Limited, a Hong Kong listed company that is better known for its leisure, tourism and gaming holdings than its expertise in technology. In essence this looks like some sort of shadow purchase. Having the backing of a Chinese company could speed the entry of the Yotaphone 3 to market – the previous models were dogged with slow access to market (presumably getting through the Shenzhen eco-system).

    The Cyanogen distribution of Android won’t go anywhere fast due to its geographic exclusivity agreements with the likes of OnePlus and MicroMax cramping the style of handset manufacturers with global ambitions.

    Cyanogen isn’t going anywhere fast, OnePlus went their own way with an Android distribution.

    This offers an opportunity for Jolla’s SailfishOS.

    But not of enough opportunity apparently, the company has had to restructure and can’t get the kind of funding it needs.

    Google revamps the resources and process to get more Chinese smartphone manufacturers going through its official channels for compatibility (CTS) and have a Google Mobile Services (GMS) license.

    No Google still didn’t get its act together.

    An increased emphasis on paid media over earned engagement / community management and marketing automation makes social look more like electronic direct marketing.

    I am taking this, in the words of a media agency strategy director I was speaking with ‘Facebook offers a combination of the reach of television (advertising) with the precision of direct marketing.’

    Asian platforms WeChat, LINE and KakaoTalk have led the way in both consumer and brand adoption. They will continue with a relatively slow international rollout.

    Their rollout has certainly been slow with adoption picking up slowly in East and Southeast Asian markets. Facebook Messenger is apparently experimenting with e-commerce, but its early days.

    I suspect that international e-commerce will have breakout years.

    What I didn’t expect was that the demand would come from Chinese consumers

    We’re likely to see European states take a similar stance to India and China and more widely blocking sites for security considerations and media IP enforcement. Expect the UK and Australia to lead the way in terms of site censorship.

    Between anti-terrorist legislation and the right to be forgotten, I have this.What I didn’t suspect was the sustained war on cryptography.

    More information
    2015: just where is it all going? | renaissancechambara
    Sony will spin off its audio and video business as it searches for profitability | The Verge
    Sony Pictures co-chair Amy Pascal stepping down in wake of hacking scandal | The Verge
    Why Huawei Thinks It Can Enter Storage Market Top 3 by 2018 | eWeek
    Google Owner Accuses EU of Antitrust About-Face | WSJ
    Google Said to Be Under U.S. Antitrust Scrutiny Over Android | Bloomberg
    Korea Government to Investigate Google’s Android OS for Anti-trust Violation | Android Headlines
    San Francisco’s guerrilla protest at Google buses swells into revolt | The Guardian
    Don’t buy the ‘sharing economy’ hype: Airbnb and Uber are facilitating rip-offs | The Guardian
    Huawei P8 E-ink Smartphone Case Sports a 4.3″ Screen | The Digital Reader
    Yota Devices aims high after buyout, with $50 million promised for product development | Android Authority
    Oxygen OS 2.1.3 Update OTA available now for OnePlus X; Android 6.0 Marshmallow next | Venture Capital Post
    Mobile OS Maker Jolla To Cut Half Its Staff, Restructure Its Debt After Funding Stalls | TechCrunch
    Amazon.com is seeing a surge in buyers from China – Quartz
    Net-a-Porter’s China General Manager Claire Chung Talks Mobile Sales and Yoox Merger | Jing Daily
    Europe’s Latest Export: Internet Censorship | WSJ
    Porn filters: Cameron vows to protect internet censorship from EU law | Russia Today

  • San Bernardino + more news

    San Bernardino Shooters’ Phones Had ‘Built-In Encryption,’ Just Like Every Phone | Motherboard – all of this smacks of the WMD report in Iraq. The FBI are trying to use the tragedy of San Bernardino to get mass-access. This would be unwise. It sets a precedent and even a technology framework for other countries to demand access – like Saudi Arabia or China… It means US products wouldn’t be trusted abroad. The US government has a international trust deficit due to disclosures from ECHELON to Wikileaks. More cryptography posts here.

    Settlement in suit over ‘Happy Birthday’ copyright | The Japan Times – So basically Warner Chappell had been asserting rights that it didn’t have to make $2 million a year… And kept going until they were taken to court

    How Chinese manufacturers are adjusting to the new normal | HKEJ Insight – move from OEM to ODM – taking over design. It makes sense for Chinese manufacturers to want to do this. They can simplify manufacturing, reduce the bill of materials and over time build their own brands. Though brand building is probably the hardest aspect of this for them

    Alibaba buys the South China Morning Post: Full Q&A with executive vice chairman Joseph Tsai | South China Morning Post – The newspaper, the broadsheet, is iconic. And there are still a lot of subscribers. Lots of people still want to touch and feel that paper in their hands. What we hope to do is to build on that and add more digital subscriptions and digital distribution. – artefacts still matter, though the South China Morning Post isn’t a social signifier or tool in the way that the FT  or The Economist is

    China’s Hippest Smartphone Maker Warns Shakeout Will Get Worse – Bloomberg Business – its like watching 15 years in the PC industry in time lapse as the smartphone industry has got commoditised and grown so fast at the same time

    An introduction to the trippy, far-out world of quantum computers

    Panetone de Oreo — The Sandwich Cookie Hijacks the Traditional Christmas Treat – Video – Creativity Online – new product usage occasion – baking desserts

  • Generational user experience effects

    This post fell out of a conversation I had about mobile applications in particular SnapChat. The idea of generational user experience effects came from my own experience of consumer electronics. This  crossed over from wired and analogue devices through to the present day, which provides me with a wide perspective on how things have changed.

    My parents grew up in an environment where the four most complex devices they would have been exposed to as a child were a watch or clock, the household radio, a sewing machine owned by the local seamstress and the piano or organ in the parish church.

    Form follows function

    I was just old enough to remember electricity coming to the family farm were my Mum grew up. The 1960s vintage Bush TR82C radio still ran off a battery until the mid-1980s.  This provided the agricultural mart price changes and weather forecast, as well as the musical entertainment on a Saturday night. Non-rechargeable batteries were relatively expensive and battery operated devices where used sparingly.

    My Dad saw electronics enter industry, where previously electro-mechanical systems and pneumatic circuits had driven simple processes that would now be governed by a microprocessor.

    They were fine with new appliances and even the new 1970s Trinitron TV with touch controls; hi-fis and kitchen appliances usually had neatly labelled buttons that may have had logic controls rather than the physical ‘clunk’ of a mechanically operated mechanism behind them.

    This is the kind of generational user experience that Dieter Rams developed. The nature of the design if done well made the operation seem self evident.
    Sony Walkman DD

    Modal interface design

    The problems started to come with digital watches and VCRs (video cassette recorders).  The user experience in these devices were different than anything that had gone before. VCRs and digital watches were like the computers of their day modal in nature.

    You had to understand what mode a device was in before you could know what pushing a given button would do.  In my case this wasn’t an intuitive experience, but I got there by reading the manual. If you own a G-Shock or similar Casio watch, you still experience this modal experience, this is the reason why a G-shock comes with a user manual the size of two packs of gum. g-shock modal nature
    My Dad had the head to deal with these technologies but didn’t have the time to go through the manuals. In the late 1980s / early 1990s Gemstar launched a simple way of programming the video with the correct time and channel with a PIN number for each programme that was between six and eight digits long. It was known by different names in different regions; in Europe it was called VideoPlus. And it was easy enough for anyone who could use a touchpad phone to grasp. Panasonic launched a rival system based on scanning barcodes that wasn’t successful, though programming sheet still goes for £10 or so on eBay.

    VideoPlus allowed me to skip duties as the household VCR programmer. But I didn’t get away from modal interfaces.

    Menu driven interfaces where all the rage with friends digital synthesisers. None more than the Yamaha DX-series, which not only had a complex way of creating sounds and a byzantine menu system of accessing them. Knobs and dials in interfaces were expensive, menus driven by software were virtually free once the software was written – and the microprocessors to drive them continued to drop in cost. This was one of the main reasons why albums from that time often credited someone with being a ‘MIDI programmer’. From a manufacturing point of view robotic pick-and-place machines that automated the manufacture of consumer electronics (until the rise of the hand-assembled Chinese electronics from Foxconn) were an added driver for having ‘dial-less’ circuit boards.

    During the day, I worked with a range of computers at work and my first email account was on a DEC VAX as part of the All-In-1 productivity suite; think of it as a Google services type application on a private cloud with a ‘command line’ like interface that operated on the same modal principles as the VCR or digital watch.

    All-In-1 had a simple email client, word processor, a ‘filing cabinet’ – think of it as Google Drive and the front end of business applications – we used VAX for stock management and to order supplies.

    Given the spartan interface, it seemed appropriate that I learned how to touch type on an application for the VAX – mainly because after you had read the newspaper cover-to-cover there wasn’t much to do on a night shift.

    We had a few other computers in the labs for running test equipment, usually some sort of DOS, a couple of Unix-variant boxes (HP, SGI and a solitary Sun Microsystems machine), an Amiga (because they had handy features for video) and  Macs.

    WIMP

    I naturally gravitated towards the Mac. Once you got the hang of the relationship between the movements of the mouse and the cursor on screen, the interface of Windows Icon Mouse Pointer (WIMP) was remarkably similar to the form follows function design of analogue consumer electronics. Interface design aped real-world button designs, folders and filing cabinets, even waste paper baskets. Even the spreadsheet mirrored a blackboard grid used at Harvard University to teach business students.

    Once one you had got used to the WIMP environment it was remarkably simple. More complex devices required menus but for many applications, once you knew some basic rules you were up and running. Part of this was down to Apple laying down interface standards so cmd Q meant quit an application, cmd C meant copy, cmd X meant cut and cmd V meant paste in any programme.

    This was something that Microsoft took as a design lesson for themselves when making Windows, however it was interesting that they started to break these rules in applications like Outlook.

    Things became more complex with applications like Adobe PhotoShop which became so feature rich, it meant that there was more than one right way to achieve a particular task, so instruction manuals tend to be of limited value.

    The leap from WIMP to hyper-media was a small one, the act of clicking on a link was relatively easy. What one didn’t realise at the time was the new world this opened up. We went from interlinked documents to surreal worlds created in Macromedia Flash and similar authoring tools on CD-ROMs and eventually the web. An immersive experience was promised that was never fully delivered mainly because we expected William Gibson’s Sprawl trilogy to be our manifest destiny.

    Icons under glass
    MessagePad :: Retrocomputing on the green

    In the early 1990s Newton had pioneered a simple version of the icons-under-glass metaphor that consumers would really take to heart with the iPhone and later Android devices. The Newton was too ambitious for the technology available at the time. The Palm series of devices pointed out the potential of icons-under-glass as a metaphor. The Palm V can be scene as a conceptual model for the modern smartphone.

    Please wait...

    With a metallic case, slim lithium ion battery that was not removable and a bonded construction were all eerily reminiscent of the industrial design for the iPhone models rolled out some eight years later.

    The launch of the iPhone marked a sea change in consumer adoption if not technology. Apple built on the prior generations of touch screen devices and improvements in technology to update the experience. They made one choice that made the iPhone stand out from its competitors, dominant player Nokia made devices that were designed to be used one handed – phones with a computer inside. Apple flipped it around so that it was selling a computer that happened to do phone things as well. When you went into a shop, it had a bigger screen and a more polished interface so was great for sales demonstrations.

    Eventually the technology started to appear everywhere. The coffee machine at work has an iOS like interface complete with skeuomorphic icons for buttons.
    Icons under glass

    Social interfaces

    In some ways, mobile interface design aped existing analogue devices. But things started to change within applications. Designers started to build applications that focused on a particular use case, which made sense given the software feature bloat that had happened on desktop applications and even web experiences like Facebook. Most social app designers haven’t managed to squeeze as much functionality out of their real estate as WeChat/Weixin. You then started to see the phenomena of app constellations where non-game single purpose apps deep linked to other applications.

    Designers started to take a minimal approach, to cut down ono the screen real estate taken up by controls.

    Instead controls only appeared in what might be broadly termed a contextual manner. The only difference that applications which have contextual menus tend to ‘telegraph’ the options and offer a help section in the app.

    I am not sure when it started but Snapchat is a prime example of this phenomena of the ‘social interface’. Their interface features are not explained by a design or manual but are more like cheat codes in a game, shared socially.  It feels like a fad, minimalism taken to an extreme, a design language that will move on yet again.

    More information

    VCR Programming: Making Life Easier Using Bar Codes | LA Times
    Quick History of ALL-IN-1 | The Museum of Email & Digital Communications
    Jargon watch: app constellation

  • Not all engagement is good engagement

    When thinking about the nature of engagement; I think that it is important to differentiate between bad and good engagement. One of the key issues is that engagement metrics currently don’t distinguish between bad and good engagement. Not all engagement is good engagement.

    In terms of a case in point about good engagement, let’s look at the brand Burberry. It’s hard to understand how far the Burberry brand has some over the past decade. So the brand has fallen hard from the overall decline of luxury sales in China, but just ten years ago it ran the risk of losing its luxury status completely. The brand first faced seeing its product becoming terrace wear as football casual firms dressed in Burberry prior to their violent clashes. Then chavs took to wearing the iconic Burberrycheck.

    I remember seeing a Japanese lady at SymbianWorld around this time dressed in a well tailored Burberry check suit as part of her business attire and finding it completely at odds with my perception of the brand.

    So it makes sense that ‘bad neighbourhoods’ offline would have similar effects to online. There is now research to back this up. The bad neighbourhood identified is people who brag in social posts. Scopelliti, Lowenstein and Vosgerau have done quantified the adverse effect that bragging has on relationships.

    The second thing in the research is that those doing the bragging are so utterly unaware of its effects on their audience.

    More information
    The two faces of Burberry | The Guardian
    Burberry versus The Chavs – BBC
    Scopelliti I., Loewenstein G., & Vosgerau J. (2015) “You Call It ‘Self-Exuberance,’ I Call It ‘Bragging.’ Miscalibrated Predictions of Emotional Responses to Self-Promotion,” Psychological Science, 26(6), 903-914.

    More luxury related posts here.