Task 1.3

Blogging continues.....
My first blog of the new semester.....and this time not for SAAD but for SDAI...

You would be wondering what SDAI stands for? Its System Design And Implementation (SDAI)
From what I'm told by my lecturer..... SDAI is just the continuation of System Analysis and Design (SAAD) and looks at the design and implementation phases in more detail.
Anyways my first blog is to summarise an article titled -Growing Up: Moving from technology- Centered to Human- Centered Products for task 1.3.

Initially, I found the article to be boring and really LONG! But since it was the first task and i wanted to get started with blogging, I forced myself to go through the article several times to get the gist of it and understand what is the motive of the article. Finally i found it interesting and quite informative about the computer industry.

Basically the article outlines how the computer industry is evolving from just being technology- focused companied to customer/ human-focused companies. Before technology companies would just sell their products based on what technology they produce and hoped people would buy it. And people did buy those products. Those people who were willing to try new technology and able to purchase them were called Early adopters. However, as products matured companies suddenly found themselves in a completely different position. A mass market was created and these people were taking interest in their products and started demanding better technology and features. These people were called Late adopters. These people are considered to be conservative and pragmatic who would wait for technology/ computer companies and their respective products to establish themselves in the market before they make a purchasing decision in their favour. But they would demand for brand name, price, appearance, value, convenience, prestige, ease of use, low cost, good user experience, reliability and basically want solutions that simplify their lives and not technologies that complicate them.

Companies realized that their products needed marketing experts to persuade people that their product was unique from other company products. But at the same time this would bring internal tension and conflicts within the organization, especially between technologists/ engineers and marketers. The reason being that its hard to come up with new technologies and implement them at a faster rate and sometimes the features that customers want is either not possible or will take time to achieve or unreasonable. But Marketers don't understand technology and the engineers for their job is simply discover and meet consumer requirements.

In general, customers have greater demands and want to be shown that the product is a worthwhile investment. And unfortunately the mass market is not technically sophisticated so require services such as help desks from the organization to handle their technology/ user related queries. These services can be expensive for the organization so would need to work on the product beforehand to ensure it enhances the user experience. Thus, technology companies discovered that they not only need marketing, technology but also require user experience to meet overall customer needs.

Now its time to introduce you all to the phenomenon - "Human Centered Product Development". Human centered development means that successful products requires 3 equal partners, or 3 skill set or 3 legs of tripod: Technology, Marketing and User Experience. All three provide necessary and complementary strengths.

To explain the importance of these partners take the following scenarios: a product fails if it is easy to use and understand but has deficient technology so that it is too slow and limited in ability. Similarly if a product fails if it has wonderful technology but is too difficult to use. A Product also fails if it has wonderful technology, accomplishes wonderful things, and is easy to use but is too expensive. Hence all three partners must be in balance.

An example from the article, of companies facing similar situation, are the following:

• The Xerox Star is a product that failed despite superb user experience; it had insufficient technology and marketing.
• The Apple II and the IBM PC illustrate are products that succeeded despite limited technology and poor user experience. They had great marketing but more important they handled tasks of sufficient value that their users were willing to tolerate the deficiencies.

A lesson to learn from this article is that people (early adopters) are willing to overlook the deficiencies because of the great benefits. Superb functionality can conquer, can make for a viable business, but without full support for all three legs of the tripod, it will never stand as a business for the everyday consumer (late adopters/ mass market). So in a mature market, a human-centered development process is not only appropriate, it is required.

In conclusion, computer industry has to go through this revolution of changing times and changing behavior where old fashion techniques won't work and have to adopt new philosophies to thrive in a competitive industry and one of the solution is to embrace quickly the phenomenon of "Human centered development" which requires three different skill sets, three legs of product development: Technology, Marketing, and User Experience.

Hope everyone enjoyed my blog and don't worry there are many more to come for this semester...

Look out for it! .... :)