February 27, 2010

At The Intersection of Technology and Liberal Arts

Filed under: Thoughts — Tags: , , , — Michael Long @ 6:46 pm

The iPad announcement revealed at least two important facets of Apple’s approach to developing compelling mobile device products.
At The Intersection of Technology and Liberal Arts

At The Intersection of Technology and Liberal Arts

When Apple (AAPL) announced the iPad, their latest creation, on Januarary 27th Steve Jobs closed with a very interesting glimpse into how Apple creates game-changing products in the highly competitive, and highly saturated, mobile marketplace. In Steve’s words:

We’ve always tried to be at the intersection of technology and liberal arts, to be able to get the best of both, to make extremely advanced products from a technology point of view, but also have them be intuitive, easy to use, fun to use, so that they really fit the users – the users don’t have to come to them, they come to the user.

His words felt more like fatherly advice than a mission statement. In the past, technology companies focused on technology for technology sake: Success was measured by results coming from high technical goals, yet low human interface goals. Mr Jobs was telling the world that Apple has always chosen technology to serve the person with whom the device is interacting.

A4 Processor

Apple A4 Processor

Another glimpse was given into how Apple actually drives through this intersection of technology and liberal arts. Apple’s Hardware VP, Bob Mansfield, talked about the new processor designed by Apple, the A4, and how the hardware and software teams worked in concert to create a processor to help Apple meet high user interface design goals. Many companies tend to silo-off their hardware and software teams. Touch devices like the iPhone have shown us we live in a software-driven hardware world. The makers of these devices must behave accordingly in order to create compelling experiences that compete with what Apple has created thus far.

Many organizations seem to understand at a certain level that this intersection is important for success. The creation of design departments within their engineering departments seem to allude to this understanding. However, getting the various disciplines to work in concert is another challenge altogether.

January 10, 2010

Energy and Perfection

Filed under: Thoughts — Tags: , , — Michael Long @ 4:30 pm

Perfection can never be achieved. It is the one thing that all life strives towards. If perfection is achieved, we have stopped evolving.

Have you ever spent so much time and effort to make something perfect that you lost sight of your original intent? In retrospect, would you say the energy expended towards perfection was properly directed? Did the effort align with the result? Did you get in your flow state?

I believe perfection as a concept is just an illusion. And not so much an illusion really, but a perception. A perception derived from witnessing many individual elements harmonizing in a way that it becomes difficult to imagine a way to make improvements.

Perfection is simplicity: Nothing to add, nothing to take away. In this regard, perfection should not require an inordinate amount of energy to achieve. Combine the right elements and arrange them in such a way that your intended result is achieved.

How do we know which elements to gather? How do we arrange them? By increasing our understanding: The better our understanding of an environment and its members, the better our chances of making the right choices.