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Don Norman explains this in the latest edition of The Psychology of Everyday Things (amazing book on product and design, btw). Sometimes, it can take centuries

Don Norman explains this in the latest edition of The Psychology of Everyday Things (amazing book on product and design, btw). Sometimes, it can take centuries before tech goes from idea to everyday reality in the hands of ordinary people. For example, the videophone was depicted in a famous illustration as early as 1879 [0] but it's only in the past two decades that mobiles have made them somewhat ubiquitous. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephonoscope#/media/File:Telephonoscope.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephonoscope#/media/File:Tel...

georgeecollins 5y ago
Former game designer and former student of Donald Norman.. have to upvote this. I did an internship with Donald Norman in college as part of my major, just because it was a requirement. I was working in a lab at the time and I thought I would get a PhD. Fast forward five years later when unexpectedly I became a game designer-- everything I learned in that class was gold.
lostcolony 5y ago
That reminds me; I was listening to a comedy channel on SiriusXM, and it played an old Lewis Black bit. And in it, he referenced using a Blackberry. And I was struck even at the time at how transformative the iPhone was, even though it did nothing original. Every feature of the earliest iPhone existed in a mobile form already...it was just combining them together and executing in a reasonable fashion. Microsoft had tried in the 90s but the tech wasn't there. Blackberry had an extremely successful product, but it mostly targeted business users, with productivity apps, and its use of a physical keyboard made it a chore to use. The iPhone did nothing new...except that it could do all the things the business targeting devices could, while instead targeting consumers, and provided a touchscreen (itself not a new invention, but nevertheless making it stand out in terms of usability). Execution and market positioning are everything.

georgeecollins 5y ago

Former game designer and former student of Donald Norman.. have to upvote this. I did an internship with Donald Norman in college as part of my major, just because it was a requirement. I was working in a lab at the time and I thought I would get a PhD. Fast forward five years later when unexpectedly I became a game designer-- everything I learned in that class was gold.

lostcolony 5y ago

That reminds me; I was listening to a comedy channel on SiriusXM, and it played an old Lewis Black bit. And in it, he referenced using a Blackberry. And I was struck even at the time at how transformative the iPhone was, even though it did nothing original. Every feature of the earliest iPhone existed in a mobile form already...it was just combining them together and executing in a reasonable fashion. Microsoft had tried in the 90s but the tech wasn't there. Blackberry had an extremely successful product, but it mostly targeted business users, with productivity apps, and its use of a physical keyboard made it a chore to use. The iPhone did nothing new...except that it could do all the things the business targeting devices could, while instead targeting consumers, and provided a touchscreen (itself not a new invention, but nevertheless making it stand out in terms of usability). Execution and market positioning are everything.