That’s the formula that brings home the peameal bacon, right? Cool features equals cool profits squared.
There is so much in the media about technological innovation and the seemingly daily new gadgets available to consumers, that we can quickly come to the conclusion that the only way to compete in this market is to constantly be new, fresh, and ultimately cooler, than everyone else. But is this really the road that leads to useful and client friendly applications? Is this really the road that leads to efficient profitability? In my opinion, the answer is no, coolness alone will not get you too far.
It may be extremely obvious, but the first and foremost thing that one should consider when imagining and investigating new ideas is purpose. Every feature of an application right down to the minutest detail must have a purpose. Without a purpose, not many people will understand it nor use it[1]. It will just turn into something that your organization has to be prepared to support without amassing the expected wealth in return.
Once the purpose has been uncovered, you then need to ask yourself “Does anyone really care?” Of course your mother cares, but does anyone else really care? And how many of them are there? Again this is obvious, and quite basic, but it just seems that in this industry you need to make an effort to ask these questions because there is so much that can distract you from producing useful applications. I could continue to write about the obvious, but I’d rather discuss the distractions that keep us from seeing the obvious.
Of these distractions, there are two majors; the first is our perception of innovation, and the second is the ever improving tools that allow us to innovate more easily. Our perception of innovation distracts us because we work in an industry full of people who love innovation. We research the newest ideas, and spend our wages on the newest consumables, until at times we start to think that new is innovative.
The ease of innovation distracts us because we begin to think that we can do anything and do it quickly. Even if we produce something frivolous for the sake of being cool we can always easily produce something more useful to cover it up.
Keep in mind though; there are some balancing factors in this industry that should be forcing us to produce useful and client friendly applications. Do you remember the famous song from the musical Annie Get your Gun? It goes something like “Anything you can do I can do better”. Well there is a new version of this song in the software world and it goes “Anything you can do Google can do better, and give it away for free”. So go back to your workstation, take a couple of minutes to imagine any one of the giant corporate monsters swooping down out of the air to gobble you up and spit you out, and then see how much frivolity ends up in your clients’ hands.
