Joseph Rueter

I think Apple described the iPad as “… the internet in your hands” in their Keynote on Wednesday because they described the iPhone in similar form. “It’s the internet in your pocket,” they said of the iPhone and “It’s ___ # of songs in your pocket” they said of the iPod. I think they are making a mistake. Or, we just don’t really understand what they mean of the statement yet.

It’s an underwhelming set of features, the iPad. It’s just a huge iPod TOUCH at first glance. Who cares? And if you’re using it while standing at a high table or sitting in a recliner chair or couch your golden like the presenters at the demo were. Anywhere else and hello neck pain (sitting at a desk without a keyboard)? So, its seems like the device has a limited numbers of use cases because of form. Maybe. Or we’re missing something when we look at it and it’s specs only.

A huge difference with the iPad and iPhone to my mind is pent up and experience educated demand. When the iPhone was released I remember people, including myself, so fed up with their mobile phones that they were overjoyed Apple, the maker of tasty user experiences, finally brought their touches to relinquish the pain of other devices.

Not so with the iPad. We don’t hate our laptops or even our other non iPhone mobile “smart” phones like we used to hate our pre-iPhone phones. We’re happy for the most part. So, when we see the iPad it’s not easy to see that the CRUX of the product is that it’s a huge screen and NO MOUSE! The thing does not have a mouse! It removes the pain many of us have learned to live with, namely, that a # of applications on our computers are annoying hard to use. Remember the last time you’ve known what you want to make and not how to make it on the computer? The iPad is a huge step in the direction of reducing the number of times that thought comes up. It will force the redesign of user experiences and user interfaces to make it easier to make things.

This is huge! I really did not light up to this until I watched the QuickTime of the Keynote on Apple.com. The first half I was underwhelmed. The second half where they show the redesign of the User Interface of Mail, and the iWork apps was totally invigorating. With the iPad Apple is dramatically upgrading the potential for an entirely revamped workshop of digital tools! Every application, every tool can now be made better for users to use! It’s about fingers.

There are an untold number of things I wish Applications would do differently to make them easier to LET me just do what I want to do. Excel is one that comes to mind. Where are all the buttons to get what I want to get done done? Apple redesigned Numbers for the iPad! There are so many other applications like this. The work flow for many (if not all) apps is dependent on a mouse now. The iPad work flow can’t depend on a mouse! It all needs to be redesigned and re-imagined with touch as THE access point.

Welcome to the world of computing much more like working in a workshop where all the tools you need are right where they need to be for you to work on what your working on. They’ll have to be. All you have are your fingers! The tools for things will need be visually connected to what your trying to work on, right there along side of them.

So, as it turns out it is about your fingers. But, it’s not necessarily all about the internet.

The next most interesting and maybe more obviously connected to monitory gain of an entire industry is that the iPad comes “pre-installed” with banner ad blockers! If users shift their work flow to the iPad the multi-billion dollar industry of banners ought to WAKE up. Build something, build HTML5 banners, build something different. The behavior of users and the characteristics of their devices will again drive change in business.

Back to the iPad specifically. It’s about your fingers!

It’s a simple question easily answered by brands in the past. Be Us. Be true to our brand everywhere. It’s comforting. It’s what we do. It’s what we’ve done. It’s even better (nearly necessary) if we can find great (measurable and effective) ROI. Be us in every place we can control (everyplace we care about) and trumpet (force) our message. In fact, there really was no provocation to the question of who to be. Be Us! Be stable, confident, tastefully arrogant. Hail to the brand.

The question is real now. The unsolicited opinion and desires of the customer for what they think and what they think a brand should be is manifold in most cases, public and easy to access. Should brands be “true” to who they think they are OR should they be who the people they want the kind favor of think they should be?

It’s a current struggle for many as the assumptions of what is possible and best practice for a brand are changing all around. The messaging and communication landscapes have proliferated, time-shifted, gone geographically agnostic and become ubiquitous effectively to the degree of infinity. Tons of stuff that once worked either doesn’t or works quite differently. So now what? Does this change how a brand behaves and therefore influence it’s identity like moving to a new culture would?

I think on one hand, yes. On the other hand, no. Where do you see the lines?

First off, it’s early. Second, there is:

-Lots of opportunity to be solved for.
-Lots of implications to be embraced.
-Lots of “best practices” to discover.
-Lots of behaviors to change.
-Lots of culture to shift.

image via Wallie-The-Frog

Let’s assume we know HOW to engage the crowd. Then what? To my mind the question is then, WHEN to engage them.

Give it to the crowd when:
-You don’t care about some aspect and want the crowd to decide.
-You have an idea but need it vetted.
-You perceive you don’t have enough time or money.
-You’re curious.
-You’re one of the best brief writers on the planet.

Do you see or know of additional conditions for WHEN to engage the crowd? Please, toss them in the comments. Or maybe it’s the case that we should always engage the crowd. In that case, we better all be amazing brief writers!?

image via //solidether

I know it might seem obvious. I know. However, “social media” is just media that happens to be social. Right?

Media is text, still images, moving images, and audio. It’s just media. We’ve had media in these forms for generations now.

In the past, few made media. Few distributed it. Many experienced it. Now we all can create it in all it’s forms. It’s easy. The barrier to entry is remarkably low. We’re all publishers now. Or rather, we all have the potential to be. Many of us are.

So what makes media social? To my mind the subject and the mechanisms for distribution are on the top of the list.

When the subject of media is a person’s life or relates to it or that of those they know it’s quite understandable that we’d want to share it. We’re social beings. But it’s still just media.

When the sharing apparatus — the distribution channel — is structured to make promotion easy it’s reasonable to expect the media to seem to amplify itself. But, remember, it’s just media.

So when media about people is easy to create and distribute in a way that makes it easy to share you get an explosion of media that happens to be social.

Maybe what is more important than the tool or the object of sharing is that we have an explosion of the inclination for social activity. That seems more core than the tools themselves.

Now the question is, how good are we at it?

Media is segmented. Habits are not what they were. Culture is changing. Business is undergoing massive shifts. Technology is enabling communication, new habits and behaviors faster than culture is changing or embracing them. Agencies are in turmoil. It’s a crazy time. Some feel like they’ve been hit by a train.

Users are being considered in the design of products. We’re all our own publishers. Transparency is a new currency. The crowd is on the rise. Industrial design firms are doing marketing. Heads up, there is another train coming.

image via bridgepix

John Winsor and Alex Bogusky have written a book titled Baked In that posits a way forward for products and marketing working together. I enjoyed the doodles throughout and fully agree with the principles of learning by doing and prototyping often. Check out the book’s blog at http://www.bakedin.com for an example of the principles of the book embodied. It’s interesting for many reasons not least of which is that they drank their own Kool-Aid.

The thesis goes something like, creativity is an ultimate business weapon and marketing should be part of the definition of products in such a way that they market themselves. The book and blog are baked together. They each market each other and themselves due to their connection to Twitter and their invitation for people to interact and participate.

I received an early version of the book. I was eager to read and happy to do so. I’ve wondered out loud with others and ruminated about it’s contents as well as the state of industry/culture.

To my mind… current convention holds that quick profit is a premium and primary goal. Therefore convention nearly always chooses the path of least resistance for design and manufacturing. As a result, the machines that make things have become nearly, if not the only, primary audience for the design of many products. Design in this system is focused on what the machines can make. Users are after thoughts. In the common case then, marketing enters the picture as something that happens ABOUT a product or ON BEHALF of it after it’s made and most often in order to get people to buy up stock of it.

Baked In provides a conceptual framework for flipping convention on it’s head. It’s about marketing being something that happens TO products and BY products on their own behalf. As an example, what if the designers played a significant role in deciding what gets made? What if marketing was a first thing considered in product development? Baked In argues that creativity and marketing should be intimately in the mix. Marketing then would become an essential characteristic of a product. Without marketing the product would cease to be the product by definition. In fact, products not designed with marketing in mind might in the future be doomed to a warehouse stock existence.

The middle chunk of the book gets practical and offers a series of “recipes” for baking marketing in. Clever. They’re insightful and articulate. Taken together they seem like firm ground to stand on when designing/marketing products. My favorite at the moment is “Get Out Of Whatever Business You Think You’re In.”

To my mind each of the recipes can fit in to one of three categories. Inside Culture includes recipes for teams and organizations to think and work together by. Outside Culture focuses on the macro culture for a time and product and how to make the most of it all. And finally recipes for Disposition which focus on thoughts/values/approaches to be considered when baking marketing into products.

The last section of the book argues that systems are a major way forward. I agree for a couple reasons. First, I am reminded here of the work of Daniel Pink and Roger Martin. Daniel argues in A Whole New Mind that where the left brain has dominated business the right brain’s ability to consider empathy and inventiveness as it relates to value creation is becoming and will become increasingly sought after. Roger, Dean at the Rotman School of Management and author of The Opposable Mind, argues that an integrative approach that includes both business (left brain) and design (right brain) are where value will come from going forward. I see both arguments lending well to systems thinking for designing/marketing products. Let’s integrate thinking and doing and sharing (marketing).

Second, systems seem to be a logical conclusion to the argument the book is making. By that I mean that if marketing and product design are to be integrated, which would its self be a sort of system, then it stands to reason that systematic approaches to the contexts in which those products exist are also in order. Moreover, systems seem appropriate ways to build for expanding and sustaining value.

So… Baked In. It claims creativity is an ultimate business weapon. To my mind it’s not a stretch to suggest that systems are it’s ammunition. It’s time to make them.

Maybe, a next step is to bake marketing into our thoughts. Maybe we’re all idea merchants. Maybe that’s the goal of this all. How do we think things should be? The question then is how good are we at that thinking and doing. Maybe it’s about spreading ideas. Maybe it’s about prototyping and building things. After all, everything that exists is an argument in a way about how things should be. Are we happy with how things will be on our current trajectory? Wither your answer is yes or no both suggest that we get to work and make things.

Problems are obvious. Most of them are anyway. They exist.

Most problems exist because some system is broken. They stare us in the face. They plague thoughts. We might think, “If I could just get X solved, or maybe I could just get it to go away.”

Most of the services and help we seek are to solve or fix problems. At home we get the plumbers, mechanics and the like to fix problems. At work it’s managers, outside providers and so on.

When working to create value from a problem first stand point we nearly always assume the premises of the problem, the system it was created by or that it lives in. We accept the system cart blanch. In doing so we nearly always accept the boundaries of the system and all it’s rules.

Solving problems that way can work. Sure, people do it. Sure, it can be somewhat successful. However, success is a relative term. What if we were far more interested in solving for opportunity?

Opportunities are widely available but they’re not often obvious. They need to be solved for. They tend to come from disparate ideas being combined. Most opportunities don’t yet exist. They can be tricky to “see.” They’re not yet actualized.

Solving for Opportunity… It might seem like a subtle shift from solving for problems. Sure. A problem might be why you direct your attention to finding a solution or finding an opportunity. However, a problem and it’s system need not command the boundaries, the playing field, for finding a solution. It need not be the only reason to look for a solution either.

Solving for opportunity is exciting. It offers an approach that first finds the opportunities available. Then, it crafts solutions for not yet existing value.

One approach protects value. One creates value.

image via jup3nep

I’ve been apart of a number of conversations recently regarding web startups in Minneapolis/Saint Paul. It’s curious.

I think we’re bound by the culture. Yet, I wonder if we can leverage that culture in someway and push the current community. Towards what? Towards an increase in delivered solutions. We live here but we don’t necessarily have to think here.

The Scandinavians and farms in our linage have influenced us to be stable, to take little risk, to fit-in and thereby stick to our jobs. Not terrible traits. We also have a tendency toward equity and an interest in making things work. After all that’s what you do on the farm.

I think there’s significant enough potential for our Midwestern-ness to be modified for increased yield in the startup space to be having discussions and asking questions. Foremost on my mind… where is there a climate where we can hybrid our tendencies with that of start-up activity? Does such a thing exist? We have hybrid crops. Why not have a hybrid climate of our culture traits and startup community traits?
So, why this post? Because I wanted to say “I am excited by the prospect. I am thinking about this.” You?

Down on the farm when you need a windmill you’d piece one together. You make it with what you have. We’ve have the Midwest. We have the internet. Do we want to a startup farm?

image via eye4it