UX is now the key differentiator between cars
Jason Cammisa:
If it seems like I’ve spent too much time on this: I haven’t. User interface, or UX, is now the key differentiator between cars. [It] used to be you bought one car over another because of ride or handling or engine refinement or efficiency. All that stuff has been evened out. Everything’s the same these days. Ten years ago people were trading in their cars left and right just to get bluetooth and then it was nav and carplay. But I’m not talking about that. These days every one of a car’s functions, including HVAC and lighting is integrated into its infotainment UX and this UX is so bad that it makes you ask did anyone bother testing this in the real world?
Be curious, not judgemental
Lessons from COVIDSafe
Dr Lesley Seebeck on fire in InnovationAus. She’s writing about government but this applies to all large bureaucratic organisations.
1. Technology isn’t just about technology
A fundamental lesson of running a technology shop is that most apparently technical faults aren’t technical in nature but organisational.
A ‘technical failure’, for example, may expose how after a reorganisation, no-one had assumed responsibility for backing up key systems, or that a long-departed contractor had hard-coded passwords.
2. There’s a talent deficit
And the deficit is on the tech side and the policy side.
“Twenty years of outsourcing, combined with a continued erosion of public service knowledge and rapid technological change” means that government is just bad at doing tech.
But more ‘techies’ alone won’t help much. Technologists need to be exposed to the complexity of policy and delivery; policy and program managers need to understand the nature, opportunities, constraints, and weaknesses of technology.
Ministers, too, have a responsibility to be much more familiar with technology than they are now. They need to learn to avoid optimism bias, be wary of vendor promises, and be willing to listen to the practicalities of complex design and implementation.
3. There’s a governance deficit
Given the fusing of policy, programs and technology, government needs an appropriate means of oversight—one that has a good grasp of technology and the economic, societal, and national security implications in design, implementation, and operation.
Figma’s Mission
The mission today is simple: As Google Docs did for word processing and GitHub for code, so Figma is doing for design. “The entire economy is going from physical to digital, and design is just the latest chapter,” Field says. “And design is a team sport—it’s collaborative by nature.”
– Alex Konrad in Forbes: How Figma Became Design’s Hottest Startup, Valued At $10 Billion
“Design” as a short-hand for UI design is always irritating, and this also ignores service design etc.
Four connected shifts
- Every application category is getting rebuilt as a SaaS product because it allows continuous development and deployment.
- Everything needs native collaboration, so the idea that there is one file that gets saved in one place is going away.
- Everyone is online now; everyone assumes every part of their life can be done with a smartphone.
- Tasks that weren’t done in software before are being shifted into software.
– Ben Evans, New Productivity
To be curious is to be empowered
And this is another way that Sudeikis and Ted Lasso are alike, because both are always learning and relearning this lesson, which is: Be curious. Both are philosophical men whose philosophies basically boil down to trying to live as decent a life as is possible. Not just for the sake of it but because to be curious—to find out something new about yourself or someone else—is to be empowered.
(via GQ)
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