Companies should build fractals of delight
I was reading Marshall McLuhan Unbound, which I would totally recommend that every founder read his books. I was turned on to McLuhan from David Perell and his latest Friday Finds email on Time, Propaganda, Nietzche, Freedom (the subj. line of his e-mail).
A line stuck out on Page 26 in Book 3.
McLuhan says:
Depth awareness is created by parallel suggestion not by connected statement.
He continues…
Shakespearean drama gets the emotion of multitude from the sub-plot which copies the main plot.
…and a third line which I want to throw into this soup I’m boiling right now:
Each of our senses make its own space, but none in it’s own isolation.
Which brings me to two things while “designing environments” or building “new products”.
- Sub-plots and apps. Designing apps are like Shakespearean plots — you need to consider all ‘sub-plots’, and not think of the app as a series of disconnected ‘features’.
- Connect as many senses as you can. Part of engaging the Amygdala (the part of your brain that commands emotion), is to activate as many of the human input sensors as you can (smell, touch, sight, sound, and taste).
Sub-plots and apps
An application (App) is a story, you may think that I’m poo-pooing and getting super ‘heady’ — but think about it for a sec.
The stickiest products (that you really love) become part of your personal narrative. You have preferences on apps you use, when you engage with your phone, schedules you’ve built around it, DND (do not disturb) times, the list goes on...
Thus, a well built application is a corollary to your day-to-day. Like Shakespeare’s sub-plots being copies of the main plot, every sub-narrative a company builds into their application should be connected to the main theme that the business is trying to sell.
Here’s an example — the Sutro service mode function exists to change the cartridge and battery to get the monitor back up and running again. Currently, it’s built as a very “engineering” and “functional” act, but I’m constantly think about how we can turn these mini-acts into larger fractals of the overall story around pool management and water safety. You want it all to roll-up like a Romanesco broccoli. At an individual tip of the broccoli you don’t know if you’re looking at a whole Romanesco or just the tip.
Connect as many senses as you can
This leads me to my second point of connecting as many senses as you can in the environments you build.
A big part of building an application is building an environment. You’re building a new way of someone doing something. In Sutro’s case, we change the way that people manage their swimming pools.
At the meta level, there are so many emotions we can tap into.
- Happiness when people are with family and friends around the pool
- The sight of water in the backyard (it’s beautiful and innately human)
- Sexual tension when you’re around a pool in your swimming suit
And getting micro:
- The sounds of cleaning your pool with a pool net (sound of water slushing)
- The breeze or warm sun against your skin when you’re cleaning your pool
These are all environments (whether we know it or not), we contribute to — and people will think about (or physically see) Sutro during these times.
So an example here — I was speaking to our electrical engineer / firmware engineer Himanshu Shah from Aethon Labs, and the question is why can’t we involve more of the senses through our onboarding process?
What if during the onboarding, we had you interact more with the device, there were noises that showed you the flush function of the pump running, and lights that showed you how the photospectroscopy worked?
Right now, it’s very transactional. We just want you to sign up, hit a few buttons, and throw the device in the pool.
The IKEA Effect
There’s an interesting theory that was first mentioned by Dan Ariely and later published by Thomas McKinlay at Ariyh on the IKEA Effect.
It basically says that “People overvalue products that they build themselves”. And so if users are part of the process better shows how the Sutro works and they have the ability to edit, change, remix, and interact with it — it may derive more value for the end user.
In Conclusion
A product is much more than an input-output machine, you’re telling a story that is a puzzle piece to a larger narrative that your user has.
Music I was listening to while writing this
I’ve been on a bossa nova kick lately and this really hit the spot. I’ve also been wanting to listen to the different cross-sections of jazz to see where modern music gets it’s spice from. There’s a lot you can learn from our ancestors. The DNA of today only exists from mutations or copies of the past.
This is day 19 of my #90DayOfProse challenge
