Thread by @RohanIrvine

Last two session of the afternoon. @steveportigal
Stop solving problems

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Steve is going to talk about a number of different approaches companies are going about creating products and services.

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Steve wants us to be a bit more reflective about how we go about work and wants us to be able to weight the risks from our choices.

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1. Extend

A product exists in the market, and you decide to make the same thing but better.

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Shazaam for:
Fonts
Album covers
Hotdog / not hotdog

It's like Uber for:

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It a ridiculous form of faux disruption.

It points to the shallowness of the thinking that you can swap words in and out and then make money.

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If you take an idea and extend it...just check whether it's actually worthwhile doing.

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We end up having these radical reinvention that are actually the same things that exist.

The disruption aesthetic.
What's it actually providing?

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Black mirror is a cautionary tale. Not a blueprint.

We get seduced by the tale.

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Here's a product that takes water, and creates a class system for it.

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This tells terrible things about us.

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Steve went to a student presentation where they looked at how autonomous vehicles would impact employment and design the sleeping cab as a YouTube studio for the trucker to focus on other income.

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2. Solution

The Dyson story is about trying 5000 times to solve the same problem. Success.

The Segway story also focussed on the solution didn't think about what people looked like on them. Not a success.

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We remember when Steve Jobs got it right, and not when he got it wrong, and that he made all the products. The mythologies of genius.

We skip over the abuse, and you have to find people who will take that abuse from you to create that success.

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The most solution focussed solution.

You have to submit to the solution to use it.

You will adapt to us. That's the risk of the solution approach.

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3. Fix

Simple problem - we know what the problem is and we know how to fix it

Complex problem -we know the pro lem but don't know what the solution is.

Wicked problem - the pro lemon isn't know and the solution is to known and often unknowable

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With wicked problems we're likely to fail. There's usually lots of effort put into the fix but we don't see the change that we want.

Not being able to point to a specific cause makes it hard to find a solution.

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Just because something is a wicked problem doesn't mean we don't try to fix it, let's be more realistic about what the consequences our interventions will have.

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We have A LOT of work to do with making basic experiences work. Simple problems need to be solved.

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It's not a great as working in wicked problems but it's just as important.

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If you just shift the problem onto someone else you haven't solved the problem.

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Fixing the problem by admonishing the user.

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Warby Parker (like sneaking duck) created a full experience where you can try several glasses and send the ones you don't want back.

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Another consequence of problem focus is usability testing. It's the only way we learn about people, but we're only interested in the thing, not the person.

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4. Discover

If we start with people we can build products and services based on needs.

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The shallowest form is observation, where they just look at what people are doing. It gives the sheen of innovation and challenges the most basic assumptions of the user and makes a product about it.

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Start with people, get the complete picture.

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A big part of the work Steve does is let people present themselves completely rather than checking off questions.

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Steve had a project where he was asked to find out how people fall in love with things. The research was focussed on how you love and they distilled principles that they gave back to the company to implement. They didn't make a product.
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Sometimes the reason companies to do research is because we think we're the same as our customers.

People are complicated and interesting and you owe it to yourself to challenge your assumptions.

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Steve's role is to help organisations make decisions about where they want to be in the world and how they want to get there.

Steve sees the his approach as less risky than not acknowledging what you don't know.

Follow opportunity rooted in people

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Audience Q: complex problems and wicked problems. How do you stop yourself from treating worked problems like complex problems.

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A: there's so much smart stuff written about this, Dave Snowden has a video about kinnefin*

Steve recommends seeking out someone with an expertise to unpack that question.

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Q: What excited you about UX and the future?

A: The present is pretty great. We get caught up in the new and shiny but research is about listening and learning about other people.

The future of UX is living up to our promise when we said we would do UX.

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