David Crow

Connector of dots. Maker of lines. Rider of slopes.

Web 2.0 as Modularity

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At AIMS , Jon Lax presented an interesting view of Web 2.0 as standards and modularity. Jon did a great job explaining Web 2.0 to new comers. The presentation was a continuation of the conversation about innovation and design that started with Jess , Gene , Scott and others this weekend at CanUX.

Innovation, User Experience and Web 2.0

Jon Lax, Teehan+Lax
http://www.teehanlax.com/aims/

Podcast now available.

A Quick Story

  • Brought in on a series of merger activities
  • Digital communications are a great way for companies to communicate with employees, and shareholders
  • Rare to get C-level buy in on creative
  • The stock price was wrong when it was presented to the CEO, the CEO doesn’t understand the Web, the site isn’t right
  • The designer would press refresh, get an up-to-date stock quote, and get it inserted into the presentation for the CEO
  • The CEO is thinking about

How do you make this important to CEOs? to the Business?

  • The answer traditionally has been ROI
  • Businesses make non-ROI decisions everyday.
  • ROI doesn’t matter.
  • What decisions get made everyday that don’t concern ROI?
  • Example, Blackberry, no ROI to the business -> the user experience is the value of the device

Left with problem, What if…

  • For a year that a CEO doesn’t use stock price to evaluate their performance
  • Would their comments be different?

Why do some companies succeed at delivering great user experience while others struggle?

  • Thinking about their users
  • Google
  • Larry Page’s quote about users, not making sense to shareholders

The most demanding customer

  • Apple’s persona of their typical customer. The person they need to satisfy is called “Steve”
  • When your CEO is the most demanding customer of their own product. It shows!
  • Built to Last, Good to Great -> Books (* Check Amazon *)

Christensen -> Innovator’s Dilemma, Innovator’s Solution, Seeing What’s Next

  • There is a limitation on how much performance that a customer can absorb
  • Example, Word 12 keeps adding features but you can only use so many
  • Moving forward, we keep going after higher value customers,
  • Selling your product for more $$$ to a better customer

Technology Architectures

  • To get the performance that you need companies chose to create massively integrated solutions
  • First mover, beating competitors with features and functionality
  • Modular architectures evolve over time
  • Beat competitors with speed, responsiveness and customization

Examples: Travel Industry

  • First Generation companies
    • Expedia
    • Travelocity
    • Orbitz
  • Second Generation
    • Kayak.com
    • PinPoint Travel
    • Yahoo! Farechaser
  • The way you kept people was through loyalty
  • Very little price differentiation
  • Services has commoditized very quickly

Kayak.com

  • Slick interface, screen scrapers
  • Just have to plug the pieces together using industry standards
  • AOL has re-skinned the Kayak.com application (PimpMyTravel)

Google Maps

  • Google looked at this as a method for modularizing the user experience
  • Using AJAX to redefine the experience
  • Released an API -> mashed up with Craigslist

Web 2.0

  • One developer, 30 hours is about to disrupt MLS
  • Google Maps and Yahoo!Traffic
  • Chicago Crime maps

Difference Web 1.0 and Web 2.0

  • Web 1.0 was primarily a discussion around technology (just getting things working)
  • Web 2.0 is about modular systems being put together
  • Being fast and responsive IS EVERYTHING
  • Flickr built on MySQL and PHP running on MySQL (LAMP platform)
  • Able to build smaller teams and faster
  • Technology Tax : VCs assumed that a percentage funds raised went to Sun, MS or Oracle

The Trends

  • The Web as a platform
  • Infrastructure has been set
  • Remixable or Recombinant Web
  • Power continues to shift from companies to users
  • Web as software or service

Project Management and Development Methodologies are Changing

  • Releasing early and often
  • Advertising has moved away from the massive integrated marketing compaines towards boutiques
  • Check with Katerina and Stewart about revenue from Flickr
  • eBay buying Skype – bringing buyers and sellers together
  • eBay traffic that comes from Andale (Power Seller application)
  • Web 2.0 is really about being modular – this includes the User Interface
  • AJAX disrupts online advertising – click page, click page, goes away
  • GoogleMaps has innovated around how local search
  • How can I put myself in that experience? How do I deliver value?
  • Does the technology you deliver the user experience matter?
  • You probably want to be using technology that is modular or swappable
  • Many Pieces Loosely Joined
  • Move towards Agile development in larger companies
  • How do we run our business in a modular way?
  • It’s tough for big companies to do Agile, they want predictive, which Agile is not
  • Layer of business people is not a great model for Agile

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