Godrej's internal magazine Change publishes my article - "Are you ready for the information economy?". Read it here: http://issuu.com/godrej/docs/jan_2012/11.
April 27, 2012
April 12, 2012
ID Student project featured on FastCo Design
Francesca Passoni and Cristina Cook's project, GoKey, completed as part of Prof. Martin Thaler's Product Design Workshop in Fall 2011 has been featured on FastCo Design. They launched their project on Kickstarter this week and are looking to garner $10000 worth of support.
March 26, 2012
Coke Freestyle, social vending machines should curate drink mashups.
Yesterday, I was at the Pei Wei diner in Chicago. It was an interesting outing, mostly because I finally got to use Coke's new Freestyle vending machines. If you do not know what Coke's new Freestyle vending machines are, head over to Coke Freestyle to learn more. I, for one, was super excited!
While I was at my table (craftily chosen next to the vending machines), I did a little informal user observation study. Of course, people were amazed by the features of the new machine. Most people would spend a few minutes exploring their options. One couple talked about the options with each other before choosing their drink. But here is the kicker - not one person (in about 10-12 people who used it during my short observation period) explored mixing different drinks. The whole point of this new machine is that you can mix and mashup drinks. All the people I saw went through the choices and then picked one drink, and then walked away.
Granted this was not a rigorous study by any means, but it led to me asking why...I think by providing people with so many choices, I think Coke is confusing people more than helping them. So what do they do? They default to known preferences, something they are used to.
Here is a thought - what if Coke curated some drink choices? Maybe even get some of their brand ambassadors to endorse drink mashups. This way one option would be to choose your own mashup, another would be select something a celebrity has endorsed. Then have a story page connected to each mashup, so that people can brag about them:
"Oh what are you having?"
"I am having an Oprah Winfrey mix, the one she drank at the Oscars"
Better yet connect the Freestyle to social media, so that users can like or dislike mashups, tweet their drink mix, or bring up favourite mixes of their friends. Pepsi is trying to do this somewhat with their Social Vending Machines, but does not go all the way.
In a world of free information, curation and the ability to curate for others will be the key to long term engagement. The Coke Freestye is a great idea but it stops one step short.
Coke, are you listening?
[posted first on www.anijomathew.posterous.com]
February 10, 2012
ID student project TidyTilt hits 2232% funding on Kickstarter
Zahra Tashakorinia and Derek Tarnow, two students at the IIT Institute of Design designed an accessory for the iPhone called TidyTilt in Prof. Martin Thaler's workshop. One the requirements of the workshop was that students post their designs on Kickstarter for funding. So they did...Zahra and Derek asked for a modest $10,000 to start working on their product. Never in their wildest dreams would they have imagined what happened next.
On January 29, their Kickstarter venture hit $223,174 - that's 2232% more than the initial request. Clearly this is an indicator of what good design (TidyTilt) can do when applied on a great platform (Kickstarter).
Widly successful, both Zahra and Derek are now in production mode for TidyTilt. Congratulations Zahra and Derek!
October 04, 2011
Why Amazon Fire is the new disruptor...
Yesterday, a good friend of mine casually mentioned - "You know, I pre-ordered the Amazon Fire". If reports are to be believed, 95,000+ others made the same decision. Why is this important? Well for one compare it to RIM's performance in the second fiscal quarter - only 200,000 Playbooks were sold in the entirety of that time. The Kindle Fire is not an amazing innovation by any means. It has a dual core processor, 8 GB HDD, 512 Mb RAM, NO CAMERA, and limited access to applications - by any measure this is mediocre hardware. BUT it costs $199! ONLY $199!
This is where Jeff Bezos did something smart - something which other hardware manufacturers cannot do. Hardware manufacturers (Samsung, Motorola) have one problem - they are hardware based. Which means that if Apple holds all hardware aquisition contracts for tablet hardware, they have to work around it by charging more for their device. Because thats all they have...the device. And because they hold this position, the companies (including Apple) have to continuously fight a losing battle - cutting edge hardware technology.
Bezos took an alternate position - he decided his company could make money off cloud content instead of the device. He should know - he has been working hard to make Amazon one of the best cloud based information service out there. Now all he needed was a platform to access this content - an Amazon branded platform. A "cheap" Amazon branded platform.
So what does he do? He waits. Rob Wheeler in his HBR post suggests why waiting is a good thing for disruptive innovation. He says that "Disruption occurs given two criteria. The first: that incumbents move upmarket to the most profitable segments, ignoring low-end competitors at the bottom of the market. The second: that the low-end competitor introduces a product with a scalable technology or business model advantage at its core that has the potential to displace the incumbent."
When the time was right, Bezos picked the platform that was most on a trajectory to failure - the RIM Playbook. By using the RIM Playbook as a hardware template (he hired Quanta, the same company that designed the Playbook, to design the Fire), Bezos dramatically reduced his front end design costs; by using technology that is just right (not cutting edge), Bezos reduced his supply chain costs; AND by using the same hardware platform, Amazon gave Quanta breathing room .
Now that Bezos had the price he wanted, he could focus on the experience. The Fire is so compelling, not because it is the fastest, or the lightest, or has the best camera. But because it is the BEST cloud information device out there. Better than the iPad, better than Android, and better than WP7 or 8. And Fire will change the way we interact with the cloud!
My friend invested wisely. Fire is the new iPhone. Fire is the new disruptor.
April 09, 2010
Rob Fabricant asks if Apple is Really Committed to the iPad?
An interesting article by Rob Fabricant of Frog who questions Apple's moves with the current release of the iPad. His basic position is based on the claim that hardware is easy, its software that is difficult to make - and Apple has not made any significant advances with the iPad software.
I tend to disagree with this position - sure Apple sees this as one device among a host of new devices...but there are two really interesting aspects to the iPad:
1) its blazing fast - anyone who has played with the iPad will testify to how fast it is; sometimes even faster than my tablet PC - this is significant as Apple sees the iPad as a pure information appliance.
2) its form factor is conducive to interpersonal communication. Of course this means nothing until 3rd party apps publish useful apps that exploit this - but my guess is we will see a lot more interesting things come out of this.
Time will tell if Fabricant is right - but for now, its an interesting position. Read on and comment...
April 08, 2010
November 18, 2009
Sixth Sense again!
Pranav Mistry strikes again. Hear him speak at TED India about the potentials of the Sixth Sense technology he is working with Pattie Maes at MIT Media Lab.
Link to TED here.
November 17, 2009
When the iPhone becomes a low fidelity prototyping tool
via www.youtube.com
This is an amazing example of the iPhone can be a powerful prototyping tool without even downloading the dev kit! A Wizard of Oz prototype could be set up by running a simple video file.
{thanks to Juan Salamanca, one of our PhD students for pointing me to this}