December 5th, 2007

The future of your social software is already here

“The future is already here - it is just unevenly distributed.”.

This quote by William Gibson (often reprised by Tim O’Reilly) is bantered about in tech circles whenever people get the feeling they’re glimpsing the future. It was particularly appropriate for the iPhone launch last June, when countless people pointed out that the touch-screen has been around for a long time.

The quote also pertains to web application design and the research teams need to do in order to make great software.

In a talk I gave the other day on social design, I went on at length about how you need to design for personal value before social value. (I’ve long called this the Del.icio.us Lesson). I illustrated how most successful social web applications provide personal value at their most basic, using social value to augment it and make it better. So YouTube is a great video storage application first…and it also has great sharing features if you choose to do that.

(As a counter-example consider Technorati Tags, which provide social value but don’t provide personal value. One word: SPAM)

A software designer from the audience asked the next logical question (a question I get a lot!)

“How do you proceed if you’re considering adding social features to your application but aren’t sure whether or not they provide real personal value?”

The answer is that you have to find out if the problem you’re trying to solve already exists. If, as Gibson might say, it’s here but just not distributed yet.

If it is here, then it follows that people are already dealing with it somewhere, somehow. They might not even be using software to deal with it, but they’re struggling nevertheless. The trick is to find out where and how this happens. (don’t be afraid of Do It Yourself research)

The iPhone, of course, isn’t as revolutionary as it is evolutionary. In fact, the problems of mobile phones were quite well understood by everyone who used them. The situation was simply that we were putting up with them.

The most successful software doesn’t solve problems that don’t exist yet. The most successful software solves problems that nobody else is trying to solve, or nobody else is trying to solve in the same way.

If you cannot find any evidence that the problem your new feature is trying to solve is indeed an existing problem people are already dealing with, then I would seriously reconsider building it.

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Comments ( 8 Responses so far )

1. ~bc on December 5th, 2007 (Comment) #

Josh, you know I love to poke holes in your analogies. I think it’s interesting to point out while touchscreens have been available for a long time, ones that accept multiple inputs simultaneously (multi-touch) have not. They have only been seen in laboratory conditions until the iPhone. You could say that they hadn’t been evenly distributed yet though.

More to the point of your post: a quick design tip - don’t solve problems you don’t have yet. I had a similar discussion about HTML email the other day: what problem is it trying to solve?

2. Josh on December 5th, 2007 (Comment) #

~bc, from the wikipedia entry on multi-touch:

“The first commercially available product using multi-touch technology was the Lemur Input Device, a professional multi-media controller from French company JazzMutant. It was launched in 2005.”

3. ~bc on December 5th, 2007 (Comment) #

Touché. If $3,000, single-purpose, suitcase-sized devices from ‘05 are the same as pocket-sized $399 multi-purpose pocket computers from ‘07. Corrected I stand: long time.

USB existed prior to the iMac too… but it takes proper application before it’s truly available. Which I think goes back to your point: apply only when application is useful.

4. Humbleweaver on December 5th, 2007 (Comment) #

Many years ago, there were(or there still are) refrigerators that can order online from a local grocery for grocery items one already needs. I thought it was too early for its time, or just didn’t like the idea of a machine deciding what I need to buy, especially grocery items.

Now I thought to myself, what if the refrigerator can create the list, post it online and let my (private) social network have access to grocery items I need. They can have an idea of what they can bring next time they visit.

5. Josh on December 6th, 2007 (Comment) #

~bc - who’s saying they’re the same? I was simply pointing out that iPhones were not the first commercially available multi-touch screen.

And either way it doesn’t matter, because as you mention touch screens (even multi-touch) have been around for way longer.

Which only serves to prove Gibson all the more right…

6. Jeremy Horn on December 6th, 2007 (Comment) #

Not exactly ‘here’.. but definitely on the way.

Personal value is achieved through the increasing control and accessibility of and to one’s own data and creative content online!

As a matter of fact, every day more and more products come out that provide for new relationships between people and between products that can be seen to be increasingly expanded peoples’ control and personal value achieved through these newly emergent relationships. Through these inter-product relationships people are able to better address and solve their own problems and achieve their unique goals.

The basis for what I see as the ability of people to draw and create their own personal value from existing and new online products is Modular Innovation. I just talked about this concept recently in my latest blog post.

Read here… Modular Innovation 101

Enjoy!

Jeremy HornThe Product Guyhttp://tpgblog.com

7. Ryan on December 6th, 2007 (Comment) #

Interesting discussion between Josh and bc.

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