On a recent trip to Germany, I scanned through a catalogue from one of the large DIY retailers. I saw around 10 pages covering smart home devices. Last year it was a mere two pages. The market for smart devices is obviously growing. But it also made me speculate; how many of these first-generation products are actually going to survive in the long run?
So ein Ding…
A few years ago, digital agencies had glorious days of developing apps for all types of businesses; however, many of these, if not most, ended in ingloriousness (a few were of course massively successful). They failed because the motivation behind developing the apps mostly was ”so ein Ding müssen wir auch haben”. The starting point of these projects was that the tech evangelists told us that apps were the future - not from a great understanding of user needs, contexts or values.
If tech is the answer what is the question
I see many of the same indications when it comes to future technology, and I fear that we will end up in the same situation when it comes to companies and their relation to AI, connected smart devices, blockchain, etc. I frequently meet executives that are interested in tech and immerse themselves in conferences, talk to thought leaders, and take courses at Singularity U. But when the answer to most questions is simply tech, I believe we underestimate the importance of the user needs, and we will end up with a lot of purposeless creations and wasted opportunities.
In order to use resources optimally and to improve the chances of success, there is a need for executives that both understand the technological possibilities of the future and have the guts to take a step back to ask the tough questions of whether the solution is actually adding value to the customer or user. In other words: if tech is the answer, then what is the question?
The guts to change the conversation
At IS IT A BIRD we have worked on many projects over the past years with the purpose of understanding the context in which the technology has to fit within. In these projects we have had to challenge the clients’ initial technology-focused convictions about what the project would amount to, simply because we could see that it wasn’t aligned with the customers’ everyday life.
A good example of that was Google Glass. A cutting-edge tech innovation with a very real problem - only engineers thought that it was cool to wear them in public. Imagine being that one person in the development team that stood up to say: “this is not a good idea because it doesn’t fit with the normal user’s context.” Obviously, that didn’t happen either.
Innovation is too important to leave in the hands of engineers
It’s all about changing the conversation to a more people-centric one. It takes courage to ask critical questions when it comes to the development of future tech ideas. The tech discourse is strong and for good reason, but this is too important to leave in the hands of engineers. The risk is developing a high-end tech solution, that by coincidence may be successful in the market, but more likely will end in oblivion. I say it is time to get off the technology high horse and truly focus on what creates value for the customer. Tech is an ever-increasingly powerful tool to deliver value to users, but in order to increase success, we need to do our homework, uncover the user needs in all the different contexts, and let empathy guide our decision. So, in your future strategy, don’t make digital/tech/ai your main priority, but make how to create value for a lot of people your main priority - which is sometimes best done through tech.
