How Can You ‘Sense Care’ In Products, Technology And Software?
Edition #170
Introduction
Welcome to The ContraMind Code.
The ContraMind Code provides you with a system of principles, signals, and ideas to aid you in your pursuit of excellence.
The newsletter shares the source code through quick snapshots for a systems thinking approach to be the best in what you do.
The Code helps you reboot and reimagine your thinking by learning from the best. It also enables you to draw a blueprint for what it takes to get extraordinary things done. You can share your valuable thoughts and comments and start a conversation here.
Take a journey to www.contraminds.com. Listen and watch some great minds talking to us about their journey of discovery of what went into making them craftsmen of their profession, to drive peak performance.
A Full Spectrum Of AI-Enabled Experiences.
David Armano has developed a powerful concept called ‘IX’, which he explains as Intelligent Experiences. This is a shorthand way to demonstrate how AI will enhance digital experiences.
The definition of ‘Intelligent Experiences’ is quite evocative and can generate many ideas and innovations that can create imaginative experiences for products and services.
David defines ‘Intelligent Experiences’ as:
- Intelligent: Simulates or achieves the ability to “think.”
- Intuitive: Interacts with human counterparts in a natural, emotionally aware manner.
- Anticipatory: Learns from and can anticipate human collaborators' needs and emotional state.
- Autonomous: Takes actions, performs tasks, and makes decisions independently.
David writes ‘Somewhere between artificial and intelligent lies the new rules for how humans will interact with technology, overwritten by advancements in AI.’
This illustration by David makes the point beautifully:
Read the entire article here.
Banishing Burnout, With Arianna Huffington.
May is Mental Health Awareness Month, a month dedicated to raising awareness about mental health, well-being and reducing the stigma surrounding mental illness. This episode from Masters of Scale provides a great perspective on the reasons that lead to burnout and the simple and easy rituals that help you protect yourself from this problem.
Any profession or job, not just entrepreneurship, involves stress and a chance of burnout. The intensity and frequency of these may be different. Hence, finding ways to overcome them is vital for each of us.
Here are some thoughts for you to reflect on from the conversation between Reid Hoffman and Arianna Huffington in this episode:
“75% of health care costs and health care problems are stress-related and preventable.”
“Right now, we still talk about work-life balance, which I think is just not the right way to address this problem, because it's not like work and life are at opposing ends, that in fact, rise or fall in tandem. So we need to get away from this idea of the trade-off.”
“It's a marathon for myself, and part of what I need to do is I need to have some mental flexibility and agility, and I need to not be dragged down by the obsession.”
“The most important 20 minutes of my day are always the same. I set my timer for 20 minutes, then lie down for a nap. I would argue that it's mostly about societal norms. Daytime nappers are malingerers.” - Chris Yeh
“I can trace back all my hiring mistakes to being tired, which has the impact not just of impairing your cognitive abilities to make the right decisions, but also subconsciously of making you want to say yes.” - Arianna Huffington
“Your subjective assessment of how well you're doing with insufficient sleep is a miserable predictor of objectively how well you're doing.” - Dr. Matt Walker
“Focusing on wellness does not mean trading efficiency or ambition.”
“If you don't, context switch too much, you can generally run longer between rest periods as well.” - Reid Hoffman
“Small microscopic changes that can have a huge impact”
You can also listen to this episode on:
A Conversation With Jony Ive.
Iconic designer Sir Jony Ive is in conversation with Stripe CEO Patrick Collison for a fireside chat at the recent conference, Stripe Sessions.
This is a beautiful session with so many thoughtful ideas and discussions around the philosophy of work, design, society, culture, products, values, human concern, care and how all of these are intertwined in ways we never imagined.
Here are thoughts and ideas shared by Sir Jony Ive that can make you think deeply about why you must spend time reflecting on what you are doing daily:
“What we make stands as a testament to who we are.”
“What we make describes our values.”
“Design is something that genuinely attempts to move species.”
“People confuse innovation with being different or breaking stuff.”
“Our goal collectively has been to bring order to chaos.”
‘Design fails to recognise that the user on the other side is a person who is using a software and has an effect on that person.”
“Contributions of designers and other creatives you can’t measure easily with a number.”
“Who here wants to spend time in a conference room? I can’t think of a more soulless and depressing place.”
“You can easily sense care in a service, but it is far more complex to sense care in software. You might understand it more if I said, if you sense carelessness in it.”
You can click the above link and watch the video.
How Can You ‘Sense Care’ In Products, Technology And Software?
Sir Jony Ive’s conversation with Patrick Collison was inspiring, authentic, and humane.
Some of his answers about his ‘Philosophy Of Design’ will surely touch a ‘raw nerve’ if you are building products, which may include hardware or software, writing a piece of code or software or designing user interfaces for platforms, applications or software products. You may also be leading or running a business where customers interact with you daily across different channels and technologies.
Sir Jony Ive makes a compelling point when he says, ‘You can sense care in service, but it is far more complex to sense care in software.. design has an effect on that person’. This is an incredible thought and insight.
Ask yourself these questions to understand and appreciate the concept of ‘Sensing Care’ that Sir Jony Ive talks about:
How often have you felt this way when you saw a product and developed a ‘lust’ for it? Take a piece of paper and write down the products that created that feeling in you - ‘a deep desire to own’. It may be a handful only, but imagine the number of products that might have lost this opportunity, which we use daily. We live in a world where we have made even brands into commodities!
Did some products, the way they were designed, displayed, and packaged, make you feel they were premium or expensive? How did they evoke this ‘sense of feeling’, ‘ premium’, or ‘expensive’ without you seeing the price tag? Think about it for a minute.
Think about the number of times you felt ‘lost’ when you opened the user interface of a software application. You really had no clue what some of the buttons were, left you confused about how to navigate around the application, and it genuinely created a ‘sense of fear’ and ‘sense of doubt’ in yourself, and hence, initially refrained from using it yourself without help. Or in some cases, stopped using them after initial interest. The ones who conceptualised and developed them, did they even care about this effect on you as a person?
When was the last time any software or mobile app interface intuitively ‘read your mind’ to suggest alternative pathways or navigation to achieve the ‘usage need’ you had in mind? If you find a few, spend time asking what made them do it.
Think of the number of times you abandoned a cart or stopped using a sales or service channel, as it was too complicated and time-consuming. Did they even care how you would have felt let down by the experience?
What feelings does product usage or a warranty leaflet leave you with? Was it too overwhelming, or did you feel it was just done to protect the company and not help you use the product or make it easy to claim the warranty? The question is, did the company even care about this?
Think of the recent communication about changes in terms and conditions from banks, credit card companies or products that you have subscribed to and are paying monthly or annual subscription fees, etc. Could the experience of sharing this change in T&C have been designed better? How did you feel, or did you even care about this change? What do you think - The companies cared about you or about themselves?
How did you feel when you received a cryptic message from the company stating that your ‘loyalty points’ were lapsing? Did you think they even cared about it? For them, it was a ‘transaction’, for you, it was an ‘emotion’.
If you are debugging software issues, how easy is it to ‘sense’ how code has been designed and written with interest? Do you see a structured thinking pattern and a clear explanation of logic in how coding was done? When writing code, do you sense this care in how the coding is done for others to understand, decipher and debug?
Do you see care in the way a product is packaged and shipped? Do you find it hard to trash the packaging for the sheer sense of detail in its design? Think about ones that you didn’t throw away. Ask yourself - Why?
Only customer obsession, passion, ownership and pride can create a ‘sense of care’ in products, technology and software applications. The best of these products, software, or technologies have a ‘quiet but unspoken design language’ that shows in their every detail how much they care for customers or users. The rest really don’t just care.
Some of the lessons we learnt from this week’s mission:
AI will enhance future digital experiences, and there will be new rules for how humans interact with technology.
Focusing on wellness does not mean trading efficiency or ambition.
What we make stands as a testament to who we are.