Robi Ganguly’s Big Ideas

As I’ve mentioned before (mobile interfaces, Tivo as UI innovator and optimizing the UI for the laptop) I’m a big believer in the importance of UI design as a competitive advantage. Particularly in the more “limited” interaction hardware, like TV and Mobile, I believe it’s a core competency that you can build a company around.  

It looks like that’s the thought behind this spin out of a project from Microsoft’s R&D labs. I have $.02 to add to their plans: I think that these folks would be wise to engage with other leading companies that have succeeded in creating compelling interfaces in their devices: Tivo, Research in Motion (makers of the Blackberry) and Apple come to mind. They should work to figure out how to share their innovative design competencies.

Of course, Apple’s not terribly likely to cooperate, but you can try at least, can’t you? The fact that folks are positioning this company as a challenge to the iPhone probably doesn’t help, but I don’t need to tell you that Apple’s very good at interface design and brings a lot of “street cred” to the table.

When it comes to Tivo, I still believe that their greatest asset is their design competency (and of course, how that’s been executed in the software/service..) and someone over there should wake up to the fact that you can build a standalone company just around that. Make that stock price move by focusing on higher margin businesses that you’re actually good at and stop making all those damn boxes… I’m getting a bit off-track, that’s a rant for another time.

Research in Motion, of course, has proven to be damn innovative on mobile devices. Their latest innovation, the trackball, appears to be gaining momentum, given that they’ve recently released a full-sized Blackberry that uses it as well as introducing the Pearl in Red (of which I’m a very satisfied new owner).

So, why should these folks agree to work together? What would be the benefit to collaborating with a potential competitor? This is where this stuff tends to break down – management at each company is too fearful of helping out someone else and resorts to the “we’re already successful, no need to help someone else out, we can go do it on our own” argument.

The problem with that argument should be abundantly clear: the rationale for not collaborating absolutely neglects the benefits to the customer. At its worst, the thinking is anti-customer (“I want to ‘lock in’ MY customers”, executives whine, as if they ever owned me…) and even when not actively possessive, the logic is lacking in customer focus.

Collaboration about mobile interfaces is a necessity for us customers. The world is a constantly evolving place, filled with complications that are overwhelming and unavoidable. Adding to that complexity through proprietary interface design makes my life more difficult, more annoying, more costly. When you introduce such obstacles, you make me less likely to enjoy your product, to adopt its features (particularly the super cool, really helpful ones hidden somewhere in the 3rd level of menus and on page 125 of your manual…) and to develop a relationship with my device.

Yes, that’s right, we develop, or hope to, relationships with our devices. As we embrace technology and the devices that enable interaction, we seek to own and customize the experience. Personalization is important to me. It allows me to invest time upfront to save time over the long run. It allows me to take this little gadget that 8 million other people own and make it different, make it mine.  But how in the hell am I going to personalize my device when I barely can figure out how to change the display settings? If you think that ringtones are the evolutionary end to mobile personalization, you’re not thinking big enough.

So, there you go ZenZui, that’s my outlandishly Big Idea for you: I challenge you to bring others into the fold and dream bigger than just widgets and tiles (Business 2.0’s take on the announcement). Take the step of solving the real problem for me on mobile: give me an interface I can expect to see across devices and introduce a new paradigm for interface design and collaboration by inviting your competitors to work with you for the overwhelming benefit to me, the consumer.

(Having said all that, I am heartened by their current thinking about the business model, which they’ve posted on their site.)

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