Accidentally in Code

Tag: innovation

  • The French Ski Problem

    The French Ski Problem

    skis mountain
    Credit: Flickr / Nils Rinaldi

    In 1988, there was a revolution in the ski industry. Previously, skis had been straight-edged and the skier controlled them through force and incline. The new shaped skis were parabolic, with a side-cut edge that caused the ski to turn when introduced to the snow. Pressure causes the ski to bend: more pressure, more bend, tighter turns.

    The whole way of skiing changed as a result. The stance got wider, the centre of gravity, lower. The turn became a way to accelerate, rather than a way to stop.

    But the French wouldn’t let a little thing like physics get in their way. They adopted the parabolic skis but continued to ski upright, legs close together, weight slightly back, cigarette and/or cellphone optional. They still managed to achieve impressive speeds – to even qualify as a ski instructor in France, you need to pass the “Test Technique” skiing within a percentage of the time of a professional skier – but they ski like no one else in the world.

    When talking about innovation, we often see what I call “The French Ski Problem,” the risk of focusing on novelty without application, rather than incremental improvements somewhere more widely applicable.

    If you are an innovator in the ski industry, you could make:

    1. Improvements to parabolic skiing: Useful to everyone.
    2. Improvements to straight ski technique on parabolic skis: Useful only in France.
    3. Improvements to straight ski skiing: Not useful anywhere.

    To which you might ask, who is worrying about (2) or (3), and the answer in skiing is: I have no idea. But in Software, (1) are human problems, (3) are made up engineer problems, and (2) is the nebulous space in between – often real solutions, to niche problems.

    (3) is infrastructure with no human benefit, because nothing actually wins out on technical superiority (e.g. that test framework that nobody actually uses). (2) is infrastructure with human benefit, that allows for better speed, or increased stability (e.g. Twitter’s move of their infrastructure, it’s been a long time since I saw the Fail Whale). And (1) addresses the pain points of real humans, allows them to do their jobs better, live richer lives (e.g. the invention of the smartphone). This is where we connect people to the people they love, even when they are thousands of miles apart. Where we make sense of huge quantities of data, so that they can make better decisions, or have improved medical care. Where we create platforms that allow people different and novel ways to make a living.

    My main point here is impact. A small incremental improvement of (1), is vastly more impactful than anything done at (2), let alone (3).

    A question to ask is, are we building infrastructure, or are we building a product (1)? If we’re building infrastructure, does it enable the product (2), or are we just… building infrastructure (3)?

    Real innovation doesn’t happen in a vacuum, it comes from solving problems. There’s a reason why incredible earthquake preparedness innovation comes out of New Zealand, that mobile innovation is brightest in the developing world (where cellphones are often people’s primary, or only device), and Silicon Valley is an endless source of products for rich young men.

    Thanks to Alice and Linda who helped with this post.

  • Girl Geek Dinner Sydney: Pixels, Post-its, and Unicorns

    Girl Geek Dinner Sydney: Pixels, Post-its, and Unicorns

    All I want to be is someone that makes new things and thinks about them

    I’ve known Tammy a long time (we worked together in Minnesota!) so I know how amazing she is – and I was really happy she agreed to speak at the Girl Geek Dinner we hosted. I thought it was a really interesting talk, about how to support and create innovation.

    Tammy’s been in UX for a long time, but it has not always been called that. Had had lots of different names, but it hasn’t got much clearer. One interview said they were looking for someone who could build the Death Star.

    Lots of engineers don’t talk to users. They build systems that don’t talk to each other. Doing great science, but understanding basic typography would serve them well.

    Made some basic aesthetic changes to a website (“drained the color”) – and users thought it had increased speed by 80%. It had not.

    Studied engineering and psychology at university. Asked – what if we talked to users? Could they create what they need? This didn’t work. Possibly because she was a beginner researcher.

    Wanted agency to get things done, so worked with non-profits. Non-profits always need things. Worked on helping increase access to water; the water user of one American is equivalent to 32 South Africans. It turned out, designing a better water carrier better than digging a new well. Then men would help carry water – because they would race things.

    Helping people build things after Katrina. People who couldn’t afford to flee wanted to build things for themselves.

    Banks in Australia were guarded from the Global Financial Crisis because of the way they process lending. Banks in Australia face a different challenge – innovation.

    She did not want to work in a bank – not compelled to swim with sharks. Prior was literally helping to cure cancer (selling DNA).

    Design Maturity Continuum – design for function and form.

    Innovation is… doing something different that delivers value.

    New perspective + right idea + flawless execution = delivers value.

    Can innovate on: Business Model. Process. Offering. Delivery.

    Tagline – “Prepare for the best”

    Now @ BT group in Westpac. Has drank the cool aid. Gets it. Believes in what they are doing.

    Better decisions on financials, have greater wealth in super account. Supers work in Australia, because financial literacy is better.

    “Design thinking: – isn’t more complicated. Balance customer want, business case, and what you can deliver. Makes for a great business model.

    Financial services are not transactional, they are commoditized. Business only has a future if it helps people manage money most efficiently.

    What are unicorns doing? Most places do some. All three, is transformational

    1. Insight through empathy.

    Henry Ford – people said they wanted a faster horse. Ask people, but what they say/think/do has a cultural context. The Bank of America “Keep the Change” campaign uses it – so many people save their coins, allows customers to save the change on their transactions.

    2. Collaboration.

    Not everyone has all three, so have to talk to each other. Bring in people early. Use postits on a wall to brainstorm/communicate.

    3. Experiment.

    Something isn’t the right answer, because it is true for us. Users are different – we are not designing for ourselves. Need to be broader, prototype.

    Sometimes these will fail. Need to be able to fail without costing careers. Make small bets. Uses idea of business case on a page, and mocking up ideas.

    This is a cultural mindset, not just a process.

    • Optimistic.
    • Intuitive.
    • Empathetic.
    • Inspirational.
    • Insight-driven.
    • Narrative.
    • Experimental.
    • Collaborative.

     

    Look inside, and outside. Learn in UX classes.

    Need to bring your whole self for transformational, it requires all the things.

    Innovation is not the designer – it is everyone’s responsibility.

  • First, Do No Harm

    First, Do No Harm

    Bluenose II, Lunenburg, Nova Scotia
    Credit: flickr / cphoffman42

    We took a whale watching boat in Lunenburg. As we pulled away from the pier, the tour guide talked about the history of the town. How many boats used to go out. Where the fish came in. Until the big fishing boats came, and drove out that way of life. He said, the old fisherman knew, they said that would be the end of the fish. They were proven right. It’s getting better, now. But it will never be like what it was.

    In medicine, there’s the concept – do no harm. We don’t have that in technology. We create things! They’re wonderful! We’re sure we know better than the luddites. But, sometimes we’re wrong.

    How do you know, though? Weren’t the Catholic objections to the printing press in a similar vein? Save the scribes! (See Here Comes Everybody – Amazon). Really, they were likely afraid of the spread of information. And with the over-fishing, we’re talking about depleting natural resources. I think in general innovation that increases the amount of information people have is good, and that we need to be more careful with our natural resources… but it’s not all clear cut. When I saw Freeman Dyson speak at the Perimeter Institute he talked about how he did not think the atomic bombing of Hiroshima had ended the war. Key quote from that article:

    So in that sense the atomic bombing was unnecessary. Of course we had no way of knowing that then.

    Thinking about innovating without knowing the consequences bought me to two things. The first – why I don’t want to live in the valley. I think that in order to build things for humans, we need to live amongst them. The attitude of observing from afar and thinking we know better is not a good thing. As Don Norman puts it, we fill much needed holes.

    The second, education. I increasingly think that we can’t trust educating to educators. The system is too bureaucratic and slow moving. Excessive unionization has entrenched mediocrity. I think things like the Khan Academy are the future.

    What do we gain from a system like that? Scale. Quality. Flexibility. A smaller number of passionate people who actually know their stuff will pass that knowledge and hopefully that passion on. Students will no longer be at a disadvantage due to terrible teachers. They’ll be able to work at a pace and with a structure and format that works best for them.

    In 20 years of education, I had a number of appalling teachers, and most of them were – at best – mediocre. It seems like saving students from that would be a good thing.

    But, thinking about what we might lose, I think about the couple, two, actually, of extraordinary teachers, who knew their stuff and shared their passion with me. I was lucky to have that. A tiny minority of those who made up my educational experience, true. But the ones I remember. It seems like you could create an environment when every teacher for every class was like that, and that would be extraordinary. But the would be no one-on-one personal connection with any of them. And that, is what we’d lose.

  • I am an IBMer

    I am an IBMer

    cate sam palmisano
    Credit: ShaoWei Png

    Tomorrow is the last day of Extreme Blue. At the US Expo in New York last week, I stood 6ft from Sam Palmisano, and listened to him talk about IBM’s vision for a smarter planet. He spoke about why we need to build a smarter planet and how IBM is trying to engineer this vision.

    That was the day that I “got it”. Earlier the same day, Nick Donofrio had talked to us about the origin of Extreme Blue, the importance of focusing on the problem and how IBM almost died in 1993 and how, since the reinvention, the company approaches innovation.

    Numerous IBMers have talked to me about how great it is to work for a company that has reinvented itself multiple times. Finally, I understand the magnitude of the change – I get it. I am proud to be an IBMer – even if it has only been temporary.

    However, here’s the most awesome thing. It doesn’t feel temporary. Wherever happens – wherever I go next, whatever I end up doing – I’m taking these values with me.

    Focus on the Problem.

    Innovate.

    Act with Integrity.

  • Holiday Science Lecture Presentation: Art, Life and Programming

    Here’s the slidedeck! Because I’m presenting in French I’ve kept text to a minimum:

    Art, Life and Programming

    View more documents from Cate Huston.

    Posts with detailed notes about what I’ll be covering and the videos (which won’t work from Slideshare – boo!):

    Part 1: Introduction

    Part 2: Art

    Part 3: Life

    Part 4: Programming

  • Time to Pull Myself Together

    Inspire Particle Show
    Credit: flickr / arthurx Titanium

    On Monday, I’m giving my “Art, Life and Programming” presentation. I’m a little burnt out after a crazy semester and frankly terrified, because I’m presenting in French.

    So since I got back to Canada, I’ve been working on revising my slides and thinking about what I’m going to talk about. It’s turned out, that there’s a lot more work to do on them than I thought. So I’ve been getting panicky and stressed, which makes me less inspired, so it all seems harder than it should.

    This morning, though, something clicked. 1. I have a hard time believing that I have something of value to say to that number of people, and 2. the university promotion of my talk has several errors in it (this was a little upsetting – I would have been happy to correct it, had it been sent to me). However, let’s combine these things – clearly, what I’m talking about is not obvious. Not everyone knows about it. So hopefully there will be something of value that I share with all these people.

    And, if I’m not happy with my slides (which I spent a lot of time on back in August or December), that just goes to show that my presentation skills have improved.

    If I’m not happy with my content, if I feel like there are things missing – that just shows how much more I know now than I did 3 months ago.

    At the highest level, my talk is about how technology has changed the world, and how it will continue to. At the highest level, what’s my goal? To inspire people with and about technology, to make it seem accessible as a career, a choice for university.

    On Monday, I’m going to be terrified. No point denying that as if you see me you will almost certainly know. But also on Monday I’m going to be doing my tiny bit to make a difference. I’m going to be jumping up and down and hard and as high as I can, because we need to make a tidal wave to make a change.

    We can recycle all our plastic bottles. And we can cut down on international flights. We can walk to the corner store instead of drive, but our world has more problems than global warming. We can shop sustainably, we can encourage development through services like Kiva, but globally, there are many problems other than poverty. Governments can borrow money and spend it on services to create jobs, but how well that works is variable.

    Here’s what I believe – technology will help us save the planet – it will provide viable alternatives to flying, and smart solutions to reduce our global footprint. Technology will make the world smaller and provide more options to people in developing countries, lifting them out of poverty. It will make it easier to force corrupt governments to be accountable, and provide means for citizens under oppressive regimes to communicate with the outside world. Innovation, not just in the financial sector, will be how the west recovers from this latest collapse.

    This, I think, is bigger than my fear. So that’s what I’m going to focus on. Because I think in order to make this reality, we need nations of technologists and innovators, not bankers and traffic wardens. What better way to start than with a big group of 7-10 year olds and their families?