Author: will

The road to Robocop: how connected devices and sensors are the bionic enhancements that are evolving us

Posted on by will

Robocop Statue

Detroit City is about to erect a gigantic statue of their three-time hero Robocop – the part man, part machine crime-enforcing cyborg. As fantastic as the story is, every day there is more and more science in the fiction.

Peter Weller’s character had to die before being packed into the giant metal suit and coming back to life as the bionic-enhanced supercop; but in the real world, it turns out we are all actually becoming more bionicly enhanced every day.

Take the well-known artificial cardiac pacemaker, a device which is implanted into the body that uses electrical impulses to regulate the beating of the human heart.

Part man, part machine?

The first experiments concerning artificially regulating the heart were conducted in 1899, and the first working prototype was assembled by some Aussies in 1926. Since then this man-made bionic improvement has helped save the lives of thousands of people.

Luke Skywalker bionic hand

Or take the humble hearing aid, which has improved or returned hearing to millions of people since the first one was invented in the 17th century. Then there are bionic limbs, helping people like Oscar Pistorius do what they do. Medical scientists are actually getting closer and closer to having real Luke Skywalker-type bionic limbs.

Although these bionic technologies have been around for a long time, until now they have focussed primarily on restoring or correcting defects (hearing loss, amputations, etc). Now, the internet and the variety of connected devices we carry with us every day are opening up a new world of bionic enhancements, accessible to everyone.

We already use our smartphones to replace our memories. Who knows anyone’s telephone number off the top of their head anymore? To-do applications like Wunderlist and note-taking applications like Evernote are becoming our long-term memory, and turn-by-turn navigation has not only replaced the paper street directory but most of our sense of spatial recollection as well (unless you’re a London cabbie).

With our smartphones constantly on the internet, the answer to any question is just a few taps away. Who was the last King of the Tudor dynasty? When did the Boer War end? Google or Wikipedia are with you – on the couch, on the bus, or in an exam.

Is this a form of bionic memory enhancement?

While our smartphones, tablets and PCs, and our always-on connection to the cloud, replace our memories and more and more become our primary interface to interact with the world, new forms of wearable technology will enhance us and our bodies even further.

Sports-sensors like the FitBit or the Nike+ Sports Watch track our movements and give us feedback on performance. They can even be programmed to tell you when you haven’t walked far enough or drunk enough water today.

Star Trek Tricorder

A $10 million X-Prize is fuelling a race to make the famous ‘Tricorder’ from Star Trek, a hand-held scanner that can detect any known human illness, a reality. The leading entries focus on using complex sensors to generate gigabytes of data about the body in a scan to be used to diagnose illnesses like cancer, or detect a heart attack before it strikes.

Is using sensor data to monitor your body a form of bionic enhancement?

The watch-phone, or ‘smart watch’, like Samsumg’s planned device or Apple’s rumoured ‘iWatch’, embeds our smartphone and, by extension, the whole power of the internet, closer to us (in us?) than ever before. Now we can communicate with each other wirelessly, just by telling our wristwatch to call somebody, and without having to get out our phone or hold it to our ear. It’s almost as good as telepathy.

Luke Skywalker bionic hand

Augmented reality headsets like Google Glass give us the power to retrieve information from the web at a glance, and layer it over our field of vision in a constant heads-up display. Smart contextual algorithms will decide what to show us at any time. We can be notified of our upcoming appointments or upcoming changes in the weather, or the in-built camera could even identify the person we are talking to and start to lay over important information about them in your field of view.

Building on visual heads-up displays like Glass are technologies like Augmented Reality Audio (ARA). Using binaural headphones ARA headsets can blend additional audio sources with what you’re hearing in the actual world, and do so based on our location, the time of day or even how you’re holding or moving your head. These headsets also have microphones built in that can not only create noise cancellation, but potentially give the wearer vampire-like super-hearing, or even allow you to select a single audio source from the environment (a barking dog, for example) and just blend it out.

An ARA headset can not only help improve our abilities, but can actually start to change our perception of the environment around us. This is not only a true augmentation of reality, but a significant enhancement of ourselves.

We’re entering an age now where our bodies and our perception of reality will become continually enhanced by the devices and sensors that we wear or that we are connected to. I hope that we are able to retain our humanity and our humility as we continue to defy Darwin and evolve ourselves into the future.

Windows 8.1 will evolve… and respond to consumer feedback

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The Financial Times reported today:

“Microsoft is preparing to reverse course over key elements of its Windows 8 operating system, marking one of the most prominent admissions of failure for a new mass-market consumer product since Coca-Cola’s New Coke fiasco nearly 30 years ago.”

One of the most prominent admissions of failure since New Coke? What gratuitous hyperbole.

Of course key elements will be changed in the upcoming release. That’s what upcoming releases are for, in any software development: to evolve, respond to consumer and market feedback and innovate.

The claim comes from a Financial Times interview with Tammy Reller, head of marketing and finance for the Windows business. The only actual quote from the interview they include was this:

“The learning curve is definitely real.”

Apparently this statement means Microsoft will be making a U-turn on their strategy of making touch a key input paradigm for both tablets and laptop/desktop form factors, and bringing these form factors together into a consistent user experience.

And if Microsoft takes moves to either simplify the user experience to lessen the learning curve, or provide support for users to make learning easier – does this really represent a massive “admission of failure”?

Even if Microsoft replaced the ‘Start’ button, does that really represent such a massive admission of failure? Really?

Tech media is seemingly enjoying dumping on Redmond lately; even going so far as to blame Microsoft alone for the recent slump in PC sales, although this sales slump also coincides with recent economic downturn.

We knew there were lots of problem areas with Windows 8; particularly the awkward relationship between the Metro-style interface and the old desktop. If Windows 8.1 (Blue) addresses this challenge and makes the relationship somehow clearer or easier to understand, this can only be a positive evolution along their current strategy.

Although the current leaked developer preview of Windows Blue doesn’t reveal much other than a few customisation options, I think it’s far too early to herald the downfall of Windows.

A FlashBuild – the Flash Mob for product development

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Customer involvement and user feedback is at the core of building great software experiences that people want and love.

It’s a bit old now, but I just stumbled on this impressive way to build an app with customer feedback at the core. Nordstrom innovation lab built an iPad app in just one week to help people pick sunglasses. To better involve customers and user feedback in the development process, they built the app in a sunglasses store!

Check out the vid:

This is how you involve customer feedback in your development cycle!

Whose line is it anyway? (Don’t block your colleagues)

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In improvisation theatre (yes, I was a theatre nerd in high school) there is a concept called blocking. Essentially, whenever you have an interaction with someone on the stage in improv, your interaction should allow the next person to pick up the thread and run with it to continue the scene. In other words, you need to provide a hook for the next person to continue the story.

If you don’t provide a thread for the next actor to continue the scene, it’s called ‘blocking’, as you’ve essentially blocked the scene from proceeding.

A quick example:

Actor A: “Do you want to go for a walk with me?”
Actor B: “No, I don’t feel well.”

B has blocked A’s offer to go for a walk, without providing an alternative option for the storyline, leaving A with the responsibility for creating a new storyline for the scene.

In development teams I see people blocking each other all the time.

Another example:

Developer A: “Can we add an extra parameter to this function?”
Developer B: “No, it doesn’t work like that.”

Developer B has blocked Developer A from solving the problem, without giving A another thread to follow. In other words, B has shunted the topic back to A, leaving A with the responsibility to try to find another way to attack the problem, but with no extra cues from B on what might work better next time.

Saying ‘no’ is not the problem here. But when you say ‘no’, you should always try to give a thread to allow the scene to continue.

Let’s try the example again:

Developer A: “Can we add an extra parameter to this function?”
Developer B: “No, it doesn’t work like that, but if you look at the sample requests you might get an idea of what’s working already.”

Now Developer A has a thread; she has an idea where to go to continue the search for the solution.

Not blocking someone can be as simple as giving a cue to let the scene continue. So when interacting with people in your team, or with other teams, remember: everybody wants the scene to continue, so avoid blocking.

The show must go on!

The users lose

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When the giants of the tech world play the game of thrones, it’s the users who pay the blood price.

About two weeks ago Twitter removed the Instagram inline preview of Instagram photos, meaning Twitter users can no longer see Instagram photos their friends have posted directly in the twitter stream: users now need to click the Instagram link, and open the Instagram site in another browser tab to view the photo.

Why? Due to hostilities between Twitter and the now Facebook-owned Instagram that can most likely be traced back to bad vibes stemming from some sneaky dealings during the company’s acquisition.

This is just the latest example of the user’s experience suffering as successful and loved products start to feel the investors’ pressure to focus on monetisation and revenue. LinkedIn users felt a similar blow when tweets stopped appearing on people’s user profiles as Twitter tightened up access to the API back in June.

The very open philosophy of APIs and data exchange that helped to build companies like Twitter is slowly getting left by the wayside in the search for sustainable monetisation strategies for “Web 2.0” products.

Where does this leave users?

Application experiences are increasingly taking place behind walled gardens – meaning that all, of the majority, of user’s interaction with the service is taking place within the proprietary application interfaces (twitter.com and the official twitter apps, in Twitter’s case, for example). This will lead to less choice and fewer options for users in terms of where and how to consume content and interact with the service.

Moreover, the products and services created by 3rd party developers leveraging APIs such as twitters have heavily driven innovation in the core products and the surrounding ecosystems.

When the first web mashup was born seven and a half years ago when Paul Rademacher reverse-engineered Google Maps to put craigslist rentals on a map it set a precedent that influenced, maybe more than anything else, how the web would develop for the following years. The social web as we know it today, led heavily by product companies such as Twitter, Facebook, Tubmlr, Foursquare, WordPress and many others have been built on a philosophy of openness, hacking and mashing up diverse data assets into new and compelling experiences.

As more and more of the power on the web is drifting toward more closed and walled-up product ecosystems like Facebook, Google+ and others, we need to call on these companies to remember the philosophy of openness that built the web that allowed them to succeed. Data should be becoming more, not less, available and sharable, and the pillars of the modern social web are in the position now to set the precedent for the next 7 years of innovation on the social web.

The stand-in Lumia 920

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Can’t wait for your Nokia Lumia 920? Although shipments have started, not everyone has been able to get their hands on one yet.

But here’s an inventive solution constructed by my friend Geoff to “get a feel for the Lumia”.

Almost as good as the real thing!

Inspiration from Tennyson (and Bond)

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Inspiration is oft revealed in the unlikeliest of places. Such as, for example, the latest Bond film Skyfall, where M quotes the marvellous Alfred Lord Tennyson and his amazing work, ‘Ulysses‘:

Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

The piece was also used extensively during the 2012 Summer Games, as you can read about here.

Skyfall was a cracking film, too.

The Product Owner – the poster

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Being a Product Owner sure is a lot of work!

Following my talk at the recent ALE unconference in Barcelona, I re-made the iconography used in my talk and turned it into a poster: The Complete Product Owner Poster.

The poster is available in three colour combinations, and is printable on any normal office or professional printer. It also looks great pinned up on the wall next to your desk. 🙂

Click the version that you would like to download below to download and print the PNG file.

Enjoy!


 

Apple Maps and the Tall Poppy Syndrome

Posted on by will

Ever since Apple launched iOS6 with their brand new Apple Maps, the web has been flooded with reports, posts, tweets and even special tumbler blogs dedicated to pointing out how ‘catastrophically bad’ Apple’s Maps product is.

The cacophony reached a crescendo on Friday with this post from the normally respectable Business Insider, pointing out how the portion of map used for the icon for the Apple Maps app isn’t 100% cartographically accurate. The freaking icon.

Is it just me, or is this getting stupid?

Sure, it’s the first version of a product and they have some work to do. We can all point out problems and issues with it. I work for Nokia building Nokia Maps, and I know how complex a map and navigation product is. But are these kinds of relentless and ultimately pointless attacks proving anything?

My seventh grade science teacher used to call it the “Tall Poppy Syndrome”. In a field of poppy flowers, when one poppy grows taller than all the others, the other poppies do whatever they can to pull it back down again.

That’s what’s happening here. We have all sat by in wonder, awe and respect as Apple charted their amazing course to recovery to become the most valuable company on the planet. And yet now the world that rocketed Apple to success is trying to pull that poppy down again.

The mob is fickle.

The Germans have a fantastic word in their language: Schadenfreude (n). Literally translated it means the happiness you feel at experiencing the misfortune of others. There’s even an adjective form: schadenfroh.

It seems the entire tech world is enjoying seeing Apple squirm after the barrage of negative feedback and criticism over the Maps product. A whole sea of schadenfroh tech journalists, bloggers and consumers smiling to each other and insisting that they could have done better or would have advised Apple differently.

Even after Tim Cook’s public apology people were quick to point out that “Apple apologies are actually not that infrequent”, or absurdly “That would never have happened if Steve Jobs were still alive.”

Even as the iPhone5 broke all kinds of sales records at its launch last weekend, it clearly wasn’t ‘good enough’, as Wall Street was disappointed, and that makes tech bloggers sad.

It all kind of reminds me of a track from William Shatner’s classic album, Has Been. He says:

Riding on their armchairs
They dream of wealth and fame
Fear is their companion
Nintendo is their game
Never done jack and two thumbs Don
And sidekick don’t say dick
They laugh at others failures
Though they have not done shit

The “tweet pitch”: an elevator pitch in 140 characters

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What’s the one sentence that describes your product?

We all know about the Elevator Pitch – the 30 second pitch that you would deliver to your CEO or to an investor whom you meet in an elevator, where you have until the elevator doors open to pitch your great idea. I’ve written before that it’s essential for every Product Owner to not only have his or her elevator pitch always ready and prepared, but even to practice it so that every opportunity you have to deliver it is as good as it can be.

In our modern world of constant interruptions, short attention spans, skim reading and ever-faster elevators, however, you might not get 30 seconds. You certainly won’t get 300 words.

I think what we need to understand is the tweet pitch. What is the core essence of your product, in 140 characters or less?

It’s an interesting exercise because, like preparing an elevator pitch, it forces you to boil your product down to the fundamental core.

For sure, you can’t say everything about your product in 140 characters – you can’t describe your vision, your market segment, your business model and your strategy – but that’s precisely what I like so much about the tweet pitch. It forces you to get to the core.

Several other products (probably) do the same thing or something similar. So what is important about you? What makes your product different?

Every product has a market segment. But is that what is unique about yours?

If you only had 140 characters to sell your idea – which characters would you choose?

(I cannot claim that I coined the term “tweet pitch”. It’s been written about before at least here and here, and I have to give credit to Timm for putting the idea in my head this week).