Last week I used a product development theory called the Kano Model to explain why it’s wrong to be disappointed with the iPhone 5. I wrote the article just before the launch event, and lo and behold, it didn’t take long for the Internet to start yawning:

Um, it’s a little bit longer. Really Apple? You spent months in court fighting Samsung and portraying yourself as the world’s only truly innovative company and this is the best you can do? A phone that looks like what would happen if phones were capable of inbreeding?

Today I’d like to explore the fallacy of this kind of disappointment further using a mathematical theory I alluded to in my previous article, Maxima and Minima:

In mathematics, the maximum and minimum of a function are the largest and smallest value that the function takes at a point either within a given neighborhood (local or relative extremum) or on the function domain in its entirety (global or absolute extremum)

More specifically, I want to discuss the idea of the local maximum within the context of product development, and how that relates to innovation. For the purposes of product development, I liken the mathematical concept of neighborhood to product. For example, the iPhone (as a product) will hit a local maximum when the current design cannot be improved any more. This isn’t necessarily the best product you can make in the entire industry, but it is the best iteration of the current product¹.

(Image source: 52weeksofux)

To explore this further, we also have to differentiate between the concepts of iteration and variation. In product development, variation is a way to explore a bunch of alternative product solutions. In contrast, iteration solidifies the product idea that gets chosen. To quote Jon Kolko: “Where an iteration moves an idea forward (or backwards), a variation moves an idea left or right.” Or, to put it into the language of maxima and minima, variation surveys the landscape to help companies choose the right neighborhood (product) to move into. Iteration then helps them to find the local maximum in their chosen neighborhood.

Now, let’s look at the iPhone. Because of the Samsung trial we know that Apple did a great deal of variation work before they chose their neighborhood. See, for example, this sketch of different possible designs from a slide show on AllThingsD:

(Image source: AllThingsD)

If you dig deeper into the slide show you’ll see many variations they considered before settling on the basic design for the original iPhone.

It’s not just the hardware though, of course. There’s also iOS. As far as I’m aware there aren’t any early sketches for iOS publicly available, but I’m willing to bet a lot of money that they didn’t just sketch one thing and then designed it that way. It’s pretty safe to assume that the variation process on iOS was every bit as rigorous as for the iPhone hardware.

Once they’ve done a bunch of variation work on the hardware and software for the iPhone, Apple chose their neighborhood and started iterating. There were some major improvement jumps along the way (like iOS2, and iPhone 4), but it’s all still in the same neighborhood.

So let’s get to the crux of the matter. From an engineering perspective, variation is expensive, iteration is cheap. Especially if a product is already out there. Apple is able to give away the iPhone 4 for free because they have been iterating on the hardware for so long that they can manufacture the phones very cheaply. If the iPhone 5 was a drastically different phone (I’m talking about a completely different neighborhood), everything would have started from zero.

From a business perspective, why would Apple choose to make a very expensive move to a different neighborhood, when they know that they haven’t hit the local maximum on the current phone yet? Apple is iterating because they understand this concept, and because they know that the only thing that matters is if customers like it. As John Gruber said:

The collective yawn from the tech press was louder this year; the enthusiasm from consumers is stronger.

What does it mean for startups?

There are some important lessons for startups in the story of the iPhone evolution.

First, spend as much time and money as you can afford on variation upfront, because if you move into the wrong neighborhood, it’s really hard to change that later on. Some companies have done it successfully, like when Path completely redesigned their product from the ground up. Other companies are finding it really hard to move, as evidenced by the almost universal disdain for the new Twitter app for iPad². And the jury is still out on whether Microsoft’s very expensive foray into the tablet OS world will be a success or not.

Second, don’t move to a new neighborhood until you’re absolutely sure that you’ve hit the local maximum right where you live. I’ll say it again – iteration is cheaper than variation. Instead of trying to rethink your product every few months/years, rather spend time to understand how you can make the current variation better. Apple is proof that this strategy pays off.

I have a feeling that Apple isn’t going to move out of their phone neighborhood any time soon. They might send some family members to buy a new house in the TV neighborhood. But when it comes to phones, they’re still on to a good thing, and they’re smart enough not to be tempted by the fake grass on the other side of the “change everything!” fence.

Elliot Jay Stocks in Made to measure:

Responsive web design isn’t about filling every available bit of whitespace — it’s about balancing the innate flexibility of the web with a designer’s desire to control the output.

Adam Kirsch’s Neverending stories is a very interesting exploration of fairy tales, and why they’ve had such longevity in our culture. The essay struggles to find its way in the first half, but it picks up steam when Adam starts to speculate about why these ancient stories continue to be so popular. I especially like this theory:

Rather, what fairy tales obsessively conjure up is a world of mutability, in which things and people are not immured in their nature. The frog becomes a prince, the wolf becomes a grandmother, the little mermaid becomes a woman, the beast becomes a handsome man, the 12 brothers become a flock of ravens. So much of the appeal of these stories, in a preliterate, premodern culture, must have been simply in their demonstration of the power of words to defy the laws of nature. In this way, the storyteller enacts the magic powers he describes and possesses the wealth he fantasises about.

All good writing conjures up thoughts and images that go beyond the immediate realities of the story that is being told.

I recently finished reading Paul Soulellis’s essay in Issue #3 of The Manual called “Design Humility”. I’ll write about it more at some point, but for now, phrases like “walking slow, but looking hard” and “amplified vulnerability” are racing through my mind at such speed that I don’t know what to do with it all yet. I love writing like that. Writing that makes you dizzy with sudden understanding and new ideas. Writing that defies the laws of nature.

I’m often amazed at how the people I follow online tend to talk about the same things, even if they are most likely not connected to each other. It happened again this week, with three articles about the value of starting (and finishing) something, even if you’re not sure how it’s going to work out.

First, there’s I cannot design or code a responsive website by Nick Jones:

I didn’t know how to do it right, so first I did it wrong. After I had done it wrong a few times, things started to work. It’s not perfect, but it works. I still don’t know the right way to do anything but I don’t worry about that anymore. Now I just hack and hack and trust that I’ll arrive at a solution. Sometimes it even makes sense.

By ignoring my doubts and trusting my instinct, I made myself vulnerable to attack. The attacks never came. They only ever existed inside my head. It turns out, the guys I was afraid would laugh at my new site, were the first to give respect. Most of my fears were a waste of energy. So are yours. What if you shut out all the noise and just got started?

Then Alex Maughan wrote a great piece called Making is Momentum:

I need to do more and self-criticise less. Critical analysis of oneself is of course important, but it needs to be done with a positive end in mind. I’ve just been beating the crap out of myself. There’s a big difference. It’s not only about replacing the stick with carrots, it’s also about constantly making sure I’m buying the right carrots from sources that prove themselves to be the most trustworthy and wholesome. […]

I need to start being nicer, both to myself and those around me. Making is momentum. Perfection is spurious and stifling.

And finally, here’s Brian Bailey in The Smallest Way Forward:

In the case of a creative project like a novel, the most important thing to do is to write another page. It will be that way every day until it is finished. To be successful, though, you have to allow for other ways to make progress. Pauses are healthy, but it’s important to pause a specific task like writing the next chapter or implementing payment processing, without pausing the project itself.

It’s not the most important thing each day; it’s anything that moves you forward, that brings this new thing a little closer to being a real thing.

That’s three essays in the space of one week, all about the same thing. About not letting the fear of failure or defeat or imperfection stand in the way of creating something. Perhaps we can sum up this whole topic using the King’s words in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland:

Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end: then stop.

Frank Chimero speaks the truth about writing:

Most writers are frauds. We are ignorant and learning out-loud. The written piece is the useful by-product of figuring things out, like how churning butter makes buttermilk. More writing comes from doubt than expertise.

I’ll add that this is a good thing — this doubt. I write when I’m uncertain about something, because it helps to clarify my thinking. Sometimes the words become an argument I believe in, and I hit Publish. But often the foundations start to crumble after a few paragraphs, and I hit Delete instead.

Both outcomes are fine. One gives me the confidence to expose my thinking to the fires of public scrutiny. The other ensures I don’t make a complete fool out of myself by starting a thought that I realize too late has absolutely nowhere to go.

Jesse McKinley explores a fascinating trend in industrial design in the article The Cult of Disappearing Design:

Part interior illusionist and part aesthetic anorexic, Mr. McInerney is a practicing member of the cult of disappearing design, the now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t ethos that aims to secrete away anything that needs a button, a cord or a subwoofer to work.

Check out the slideshow as well. I think there is a point where invisible design becomes a bit too devoid of emotion for my taste.

Kevin Kelleher in Facebook’s Growing Silent-Majority Problem:

This third group – the silent majority of Facebook users – hold the key to the company’s future. Facebook is never going to win over its harshest critics, and it’s unlikely to alienate the people who see it as part of the fabric of their everyday lives. If the company can persuade that silent majority to become more engaged in the site – interacting with bands, liking consumer brands, clicking on the ads targeted to their surfing habits – its future looks pretty bright.

I always find it useful to think about engagement metrics on the web in terms of the three A’s:

• Acquisition. Getting new users to sign up for a site/service.
• Activation. Getting those new users to make their first contribution/purchase.
• Activity. Getting the first-time contributors/purchasers to repeat that activity over and over.

Facebook certainly doesn’t have an acquisition problem (yet), and their ramp-up process is very good, so I also don’t think they have an activation problem. But I can definitely see the argument that they might have a serious activity problem on their hands. Kevin shares some interesting engagement stats, as well as how he thinks Facebook can solve this problem.

(link via @mobivangelist)

Yesterday I read an opinion piece on a local news site that was just one long, scathing attack on the writer of another opinion piece on the site. No substance at all. You don’t have to go far on the web to see that kind of behavior. There is something about the false sense of anonymity provided by web sites, blogs, and comment sections that just bring out the worst in us.

Don’t get me wrong — I love disagreements. I believe that an essential quality of a good designer is the ability to balance his or her confidence in their proposed solution with an openness that they might be wrong. But we don’t disagree online any more, we just attack. I’ve often thought that new users of the Internet should be forced to read Paul Graham’s How to Disagree before they’re allowed to go any further. When it comes to online discourse we are, for all intents and purposes, locked in an Eternal September.

It is with these types of thoughts on my mind that I wrote a talk about how I think we can do better. I also turned the talk into an article for Smashing Magazine, which was published today under the title Making A Better Internet. The summary:

In this essay, I’ll weave together a story about the current state of Internet discourse. At the end, I’ll tell you how I think we can make it better. And then, we’ll most likely all go back to what we were doing and forget about it. Despite the probable futility of this exercise, I’ll carry it out anyway, because I love the Web and I really don’t want us to destroy it.

I don’t know what the reaction to this piece is going to be. I’m quite nervous about it, but we’ll see how it goes. If you’d like to see the slides from the talk, which I gave at a recent Cape Town Content Strategy Meetup, they are embedded below:

Read article on Smashing Magazine | View slides on Speaker Deck | Discuss on Google+