> It is no coincidence that interaction design is replacing technical prowess as the primary competency at startups. People who create great experiences will be the most valuable to startups, and startups that create great experiences will be the most valuable to users.
Interaction design is not replacing technical prowess.
Interaction design is actually increasing the need for technical prowess.
Now, creating a product that is technologically funcional and fulfills business needs is not enough. It must also fit with the overall user experience strategy.
>>It is no coincidence that interaction design is replacing technical prowess as the primary competency at startups. People who create great experiences will be the most valuable to startups, and startups that create great experiences will be the most valuable to users.
That's conclusion is a step too far from the majority of the post. Usability is the most important differentiator when all technology is adequate, but when it is not the fact that the technology exists is most important.
Though I mean most social media, and even things like Heroku and Parse is about experiences, but real technology startups like Planetary Resources or Google care most about technical prowess.
Edit: I just find it somewhat annoying that this article leaps from "startups choose to innovate in experiences instead of technology" to "experiences matter more than technology".
I like Chris' writing, but putting aside from the (pretty > prowess)? argument, I don't feel he has correctly mapped cause to effect here.
The reason that UX has become more critical for certain classes of software is because (a) consumers rather than business have become the predominant driver of spending for desktop computers over the last 15 years, and (b) because the web and app stores removed distribution and sales channels as competitive advantages, leaving price and experience.
Product design is now more important, sure, but it's because the playing field has been flattened and because more consumers are buying. NOT because of some broader macroeconomic trend that can be applied to all markets.
In Crossing the Chasm, Geoffrey Moore elucidates the critical fact that when selling a product whose economic buyer and end user are not the same person, you must sell differently to succeed. He is right and there's a reason that book is like a bible for tech entrepreneurs.
That said, this fact of life when selling to enterprises is what caused me to permanently exit the enterprise software space. Success requires you to make crappy software.
Fortunately the SaaS-ification of enterprise has allowed the enterprise world to mitigate this problem by allowing the actual end users of products to also be the economic buyer through their monthly budget.
I consider SaaS delivery to be a wonderful financial innovation. I agree with parent that this change isn't due to macro changes in buyers but rather innovations in pricing and channel which align incentives in a positive way.
I encourage all of us HN'ers to continually challenge ourselves to find innovative ways to align incentives for maximum value creation. It's good for society and tends to be even better for profits.
Don't forget touch. In the last 5 years we've moved from a world where most computer interaction happened with a monitor on a desk and a virtual mouse pointer. Now many consumers user smartphones as their primary computer - which they hold in their hand and touch with their fingers. This made the computing experience more emotional and personal and there the "experience" part of the software a lot more important.
"The emphasis on experiences also helps explain other large trends like the migration to cities. Cities have always offered the trade-off of fewer goods and less space in exchange for better experiences."
...is just false & i certainly don't agree with this assertion -- to each is own, but i live in a small town in the mountains and it's pretty rad. i love city life just the same, but the reason most people have moved to cities is because that's where higher paying jobs typically are located. this essay makes way too many assumptions.
> the reason most people have moved to cities is because that's where higher paying jobs typically are located
Yeah, and even that's still just a consequence of the fact that big cities offer more opportunities, which leads to competition for the best candidates. I'm still hoping that this connected world embraces remote working and the trend reverses.
Right on. I also live in a small town in the mountains - a good life! I do enjoy the 3 or 4 weeks a year I spend in large cities, but that is not the full time lifestyle I want.
The whole first paragraph purports to describe the "developed world," after wwII then proceeds to describe conditions specific to the US. Britain, for example, had food rationing until 1954.
This blog post seems a bit lazy, and lacking in true references (a link is better than nothing but still isn't a great way to cite a source). It raises a good point, but I'd much rather read an article or book that used proper references and made a stronger point. I think the book that kawera linked to might do that.
My graduation thesis was around this subject. The book "The Experience Economy" by Pine & Gilmore is a great start and generally regarded as the origin for the idea of experiences as products: http://www.amazon.com/The-Experience-Economy-Theater-Busines...
Well, I would argue that this performance based view has been at least around since Goffman's "The presentation of the self in evereryday life". Management research has already been paying close attention to this subject by the strategy-as-practce research approach, not to mention critical management/organization research. But this is definitely an exciting area with very interesting work coming of of that direction.
I think there is a valid argument somewhere here but a lot of the points are based on things that can not be taken as fact. For example, the point about people moving to urban cores is a story that has been reiterated by just about every city mayor but when looking at statistics its not entirely clear that that is what is actually occurring... in fact it seems it may be the opposite http://www.city-journal.org/2011/eon0406jkwc.html
Your link skirts the issue somewhat (though so does the OP).
The real change that has taken place in cities has not been 'more people in the [designated 100 years ago] city area'. It would be pretty much impossible for most of New York city's 'growth' to happen in the city area (at least, without removing planning regulations entirely). Demand is going up massively though. The inner-city 'slums' of the 20thC are very definitely not coming back and have been replaced by areas of affluence, which are pretty unaffordable to live in for most of the population.
The suburbs are changing too. People are using 'local centres' more, and paying more to be close to a nice one. So even the suburbs are less 'suburban' than they used to be.
"Apple, the most valuable company in the world, maniacally focuses on product experiences, down to minute details like the experience of unboxing an iPhone."
Sure, they focus on the experience their customers have...using the physical products they just bought from Apple. I thought it was the conventional wisdom, by now, that Apple was a hardware manufacturer and they make money by getting you to buy physical objects. iTunes, iCloud, etc are ways to make their hardware more attractive.
Here's the honest reaction my brain had as I read the article: "What a load of horseshit."
I wanted to write something much more civil and detailed about why I think the article is weak. But then I realized there's a lot of value in just sharing the honest, immediate gut reaction. Yes, it's harsh, but you don't often get that kind of honesty.
(And I am aware of the studies that show experiences make us happier than things -- and I agree with them. That's not where the horseshit is).
Where do you think the horseshit is?
I've been noticing this effect lately in my business where people don't NEED to buy many things anymore, there are almost always a much cheaper alternative that will satisfy their needs, but people are willing to pay a considerable premium to get an experience/emotion.
Fair question. Looking back over the article, I pretty much agree with the first paragraph. And I think the second paragraph may be true -- I've noticed some changes in my own perspective as well as several friends -- though the matter is definitely not clear cut. There's still a lot of excess consumerism in my own life as well as most people I know (everyone I know that I can think of).
Paragraph 3 bugs me because I've never left a music concert, even for performers I absolutely love, without feeling that I had just way overpaid and invested a ton of hassle (fighting traffic, standing in line, etc.) for less reward than I had hoped for. (Correction: one concert that I got free tickets to was a fantastic experience, leading to family bonding and inspiration for life).
And musical recordings are a huge part of my daily life. I don't see musical recordings vs. concerts as a good example of the product/experience dichotomy. A musical recording represents a pre-packaged experience I can have whenever I want ... and that's exactly how it plays out in my daily life.
And the example of cities offering experiences in exchange for other non-experience goods doesn't work for me. City verus rural is not about experience versus product. There are experiences you can have in a rural area that are not available in a city. City people pay money to take trips to rural areas for "experiences". And of course vice versa. So both cities and rural areas offer both experiences and products.
The thing that gives me the strongest sense of "horseshit" is the claim that technical prowess is taking a backseat to interaction design. I can see how it may appear that way to some people -- and those people are exposed to observations I'm not exposed to (since I'm not currently at a start-up).
However, I simply do not think it is possible for technical prowess to take a backseat to anything. Software development may indeed be the most complex endeavor humanity has invented for itself. The desire to make the experience fantastic -- an excellent goal -- simply adds more requirements and hence more complexity. So the most fundamental thing you need in a software company is technical prowess (or at least, technical prowess is one of the fundamental things you need, and perhaps there are 3 or 5 other fundamental things you need as well).
You could certainly argue that technical prowess is no longer enough -- that developers need to understand "interaction design" too, for example. But that's different from saying that technical prowess takes "a back seat" to interaction design.
If you claim that it is more important for a software startup to have access to strong interaction design capabilities than to have access to strong technical prowess, then I claim that you're wrong. Of course, only time could tell which one of us would be right, but I'd feel very confident that the smart money would be with me.
In summary, I think the focus on the entire experience, like Apple has practiced for a while, is a great idea. But I felt like the article over-stated it, and that almost all of the statements the article made in support of the idea wilted as I read them. That, plus some hyperbole (such as "the era of competing over technical specifications is over", and that interaction design is replacing technical prowess), triggered the "horseshit" response. The article made some pretty big proclamations, what with eras ending and whatnot, and if proclamations like that aren't backed up well, you risk triggering a "horsehit" response.
That said, I don't usually go around telling nice people who've shared their thoughts with enthusiasm that I think there stuff is horseshit. I hope you don't take it too hard. My first instinct was "horseshit". My second instinct was to soften that up and sugarcoat it. I almost always follow that second instinct. But this time, I decided what the hell, why not try a smidgen of radical honesty and lay out my full, unfiltered, honest reaction. And whether we agree or disagree, at least you get a glimpse into one reader's reaction.
fair enough. I think that Interaction Design is now becoming a technical job, using feedback loops and numbers (ie Steve Jobs dropping the original iPod into the fishtank to illustrate dead space in the ipod) rather than the marketing/design led way (ie adding bigger fins to cars in the 50's)
I thought this was going to be about how you need varying levels of experience to get a job, sometimes unreasonably. Which got me thinking: that's a social problem that maybe one of these left-field startups could solve. Provide a service which gets young people 'experience' to put on their CV for when the graduate and start looking for work. I guess what it would amount to is internship/apprenticeship arbitrage.
If I get the drift of the article, then I'd say Rejection Therapy http://rejectiontherapy.com is a good example of a thoroughly experiential product (moreso than say a movie you just watch).
Perhaps it'll be an industry of experiential entertainment that will provide real alternative to Hollywood and the MPAA.
The problem with this article is that chris misunderstands the meaning of the word "experience".
In the context of the research about happiness, experience meant real live experiences.You usually remember those kinds of experiences, they become a part of who you are, and you do use memories of them to change your mood.
Products usually have a different happiness charasteristic. They make you happy but only for a short time and then you get used to them.
Is software products or experiences ? well that depends on the software. airBNB seems to fit on the product model, like a well designed lamp. Using a programming language is an experience.
An experience economy might be a possible post-scarcity form of economy, but in the world as it exists today outside of the realm of software we're nowhere close to post-scarcity.
Currently the idea of "experience" being the primary goal is being used as a political device in order to force unemployed people to work in for-profit companies without pay for significant periods of time, so I don't think it's a good idea to take a fetishistic attitude towards experience itself whilst simultaneously overlooking other equally or more important issues.
Interaction design is not replacing technical prowess. Interaction design is actually increasing the need for technical prowess.
Now, creating a product that is technologically funcional and fulfills business needs is not enough. It must also fit with the overall user experience strategy.