The innovation trap
Harish Bhat, who is a friend on Facebook, and posts a lot of interesting stuff, posted about
the flexible e-paper display launch .
Though I am impressed by the innovation in terms of material use and invention, I still feel that products like this fall into what I call the classic Innovation Trap.
The Innovation Trap is the phenomenon of designers being blinkered and hobbled by designs and forms that they are familiar with. In the case of the product above, it seems to be the goal to get as close in appearance as possible to laminated paper..to resemble some form of actual paper. But one wonders why that resemblance is needed at all.
The classic example of the Innovation Trap was when automobiles started being designed. Being familiar only with horse-drawn carriages, early cars looked boxy and square, exactly like the old carriages. It took a while to realize that though it was irrelevant for horse-drawn carriages, for cars, aerodynamics would improve the efficiency, and that the shape of the automobile must be very different from that of a carriage.
This problem was once again demonstrated when, in the era of tailfins and long lines, with the cars looking like ships, the VW Beetle was introduced. It was pronounced an ugly car...when it was actually very functional in design, and hence very beautiful.
In similar fashion, there is no need for outer-space-only spacecraft to have the sleek, aerodynamic, cigar-shaped look of the rockets that lift off from the Earth's atmosphere. Since they operate in a vacuum, and there is no resistance from the atmosphere, outer-space-only craft (I am sure there is a technical name, very scientific) for such vehicles), they can look as clunky as they want to be, with antennae, and solar panels, and such, sticking out in all directions. Maybe design has to take into account the possibility of an aerial snapping when hit by a passing meteor, but in general, it does not need the shape that a craft that needs to enter the Earth's atmosphere should have, to reduce the friction and heat of re-entry.
Another example of this is the "qwerty" keyboard, that is still widely in use. I know that many computer techies (like prashanthchengi ) use
the Dvorak keyboard
and many mobile phones and keyboards have an "abcd" keyboard; but the majority of all keyboards still use the "qwerty", which does have many problems. But...it's as if we, when used to something, are often unwilling to conceive of
something different .
This applies also when someone has made a true innovation. When Sony built the Walkman, for years, we saw me-too's flooding the market. Now the iPad and the iPhone are cool things to imitate...even when their drawbacks are quite apparent.
I suppose one may also call it "design fashion". One particular design becomes the "norm" and other designs, even if better, fall by the wayside sometimes, and are not commercial successes. The cathedral of "That's the way things are always done" seems to loom large on the skyline of design, and sometimes real creativity is sacrificed at its altar.
How long it took for the no. of camera exposures to be counted downwards, or the fuel guage on cars to show how many miles the fuel available was good for (varying with the speed of the car) rather than just showing how much petrol was in the tank! With the innovation, one could get the actual information one really wants...how many exposures are left, and how many miles one can drive the car for. (Most cars in India still have only the old-fashioned petrol guages.)
But in spite of the Innovation Trap, true innovation and creativity continues to happen, and that's the great thing about the human mind....!
the flexible e-paper display launch .
Though I am impressed by the innovation in terms of material use and invention, I still feel that products like this fall into what I call the classic Innovation Trap.
The Innovation Trap is the phenomenon of designers being blinkered and hobbled by designs and forms that they are familiar with. In the case of the product above, it seems to be the goal to get as close in appearance as possible to laminated paper..to resemble some form of actual paper. But one wonders why that resemblance is needed at all.
The classic example of the Innovation Trap was when automobiles started being designed. Being familiar only with horse-drawn carriages, early cars looked boxy and square, exactly like the old carriages. It took a while to realize that though it was irrelevant for horse-drawn carriages, for cars, aerodynamics would improve the efficiency, and that the shape of the automobile must be very different from that of a carriage.
This problem was once again demonstrated when, in the era of tailfins and long lines, with the cars looking like ships, the VW Beetle was introduced. It was pronounced an ugly car...when it was actually very functional in design, and hence very beautiful.
In similar fashion, there is no need for outer-space-only spacecraft to have the sleek, aerodynamic, cigar-shaped look of the rockets that lift off from the Earth's atmosphere. Since they operate in a vacuum, and there is no resistance from the atmosphere, outer-space-only craft (I am sure there is a technical name, very scientific) for such vehicles), they can look as clunky as they want to be, with antennae, and solar panels, and such, sticking out in all directions. Maybe design has to take into account the possibility of an aerial snapping when hit by a passing meteor, but in general, it does not need the shape that a craft that needs to enter the Earth's atmosphere should have, to reduce the friction and heat of re-entry.
Another example of this is the "qwerty" keyboard, that is still widely in use. I know that many computer techies (like prashanthchengi ) use
the Dvorak keyboard
and many mobile phones and keyboards have an "abcd" keyboard; but the majority of all keyboards still use the "qwerty", which does have many problems. But...it's as if we, when used to something, are often unwilling to conceive of
something different .
This applies also when someone has made a true innovation. When Sony built the Walkman, for years, we saw me-too's flooding the market. Now the iPad and the iPhone are cool things to imitate...even when their drawbacks are quite apparent.
I suppose one may also call it "design fashion". One particular design becomes the "norm" and other designs, even if better, fall by the wayside sometimes, and are not commercial successes. The cathedral of "That's the way things are always done" seems to loom large on the skyline of design, and sometimes real creativity is sacrificed at its altar.
How long it took for the no. of camera exposures to be counted downwards, or the fuel guage on cars to show how many miles the fuel available was good for (varying with the speed of the car) rather than just showing how much petrol was in the tank! With the innovation, one could get the actual information one really wants...how many exposures are left, and how many miles one can drive the car for. (Most cars in India still have only the old-fashioned petrol guages.)
But in spite of the Innovation Trap, true innovation and creativity continues to happen, and that's the great thing about the human mind....!