In September's
Wired
magazine, senior editor Robert Capps (rcapps [at] wired [dot] com) observes that the MP3 audio
format prevails despite the advent of digital audio algorithms that offer greater sonic
resolution with comparably small file sizes. Capps speculates that the
incremental gain in fidelity, as delivered by newer digital formats, offers
insufficient advantage to prize the lossy, old format from the clutches of
mobile audio listeners. In short, MP3 may be mediocre (Bob used a harsher word
that, coincidentally rhymes with his last name) but for the majority of
listeners-to-go, it is mighty good enough.
In MP3s,
Capps finds the perfect metaphor to shed light on an often-overlooked
phenomenon at the intersection of Good-Better-Best Street and
Better-Faster-Cheaper Boulevard. There is mounting evidence to predict that,
when presented with an array of sparkly tech-choices, portable music listeners tend to favor, as
Bob puts it, "flexibility over high fidelity, convenience over features,
quick and dirty over slow and polished." In short, "having it here
and now is more important than having it perfect."
A note to
our Type-A readers: In future articles, AV-1 explores how this phenomenon
relates to classrooms, but for now, feel free to share your comments and
observations (below or on the AV-1 List).
Among the
numerous examples offered, these three stand out as most relevant for our
purposes: Flip Ultra, Skype, and Netbooks.
1. Good Enough Camcorder: Flip Ultra
Flip Ultra first hit the
market in 2007. At a time when market leaders Sony, Panasonic and Canon
unleashed HD camcorders on the consumer market, the folks at Flip bucked the
trend with lo-fi 640x480 resolution, postage-stamp-sized LCD display, and
no-zoom-for-you features for $150. By December 2008, these cigarette-pack
cameras became the
nation's
best selling video cameras, commanding 17% of the camcorder market compared
to Sony's 21%. It is any surprise that
Cisco snapped up Flip
this May for $590M?
What's so special
about a cheap camcorder? It's SIMPLE. That's all there is to it. There is
nothing to forget to pack with it for the holidays because the USB cable is
built right into the camera, which automatically installs its FlipShare
software onto any connected computer (PC or MAC). FlipShare includes basic
movie editing features and one-click publishing to YouTube and social
networking sites.
Who, you may ask,
would buy such a thing? The same people who buy point-and-shoot digital cameras
and single-use cameras: K-12 schools, grandparents, stocking-stuffers, parents
of graduating seniors, parents of graduating kindergarteners. Until the Flip came
along, there was no camcorder equivalent to entry-level still image cameras. It
was a case in which the money (and market) was just waiting on the table.
2. Good Enough Voice Calls: Skype
Skype allows users to make
Internet voice calls to other Skype users through a computer (PC, MAC,
Linux)... Anywhere in the world...
And it's FREE.
Given the uneven throughput of the commodity Internet, callers may encounter
occasional wobbly audio and latency (a brief delay between long-distance,
two-way conversations occurring over a low-bandwidth medium), however Skype's
compatibility and usability are without compare. The nearly
half-a-billion
Skype users around the world seem to agree that a somewhat
less-than-telephone-like experience (married to virtually
no support) is
an acceptable level of service for free, worldwide, computer-to-computer
calling.
Why Skype? By the
early 2000s, Internet access throughout the liberated Eastern European states
had made Internet access more economical than plain-old-telephone service (
POTS). The
development of two-way IP protocols such as
H.323 and
SIP
provided a foundation for Voice over IP (
VoIP), however most
implementations proved to be costly,
hardware-centric
solutions just as susceptible to the aforementioned anomalies associated
with low-bandwidth. Along came
three
Estonian programmers who'd already lit the world on fire with
Kazaa. They figured that
occasional audio glitches might be acceptable if the cost of entry was low
enough.
Assuming you already had a computer and Internet access to download the
free Skype software client, the cost would be zero. Turns out, zero-dollars is the
sweet spot for good-enough VoIP. The company was
acquired
by eBay in 2005 for $2.6B (against whom Skype's founders have now filed a
$75M/day
suit),
sold
off this September for $1.9B. In 2006, they added videoconferencing, and in 2009, was a winner in
cNet's
Webware 100.
3. Good Enough Computing: Netbooks
Netbooks
look like baby laptops: smaller screens, cramped keyboards, skinny form
factors. They come with low-cost processors that extend battery life and, only
recently, higher-end models feature actual hard drives in place of RAM drives.
Don't expect to run Photoshop on one of these. Don't even think about loading
Cakewalk multi-tracker.
Most folks, however,
rarely require such processor-intensive applications. Most of us surf the web
and send email and instant messages -- tasks to which netbooks are perfectly
suited. (Frankly, most of the time, a smartphone would be enough, but we'll save
that discussion for later.) Unlike feature-rich laptops, which can set you back
well over $2k by the time you've tricked out a "desktop replacement,"
it appears as if an invisible law enforces netbook pricing limits, since you'll
be hard-pressed to find one selling for more than $400. Heck, the 2.4-pound HP
Mini Broadband Edition with an 80GB drive is only$199 (plus mobile data
plan activation).
Netbook shipments
increased
700%
in the first quarter of 2009. An indirect contributor to the surge is the
universal acceptance of
cloud
computing in which the applications used to construct spreadsheets, word
processing documents, presentations and even CAD drawings are available on the
web, for free. These browser-based applications may lack some (or, in some
cases, most) fancy features of Microsoft Office or AutoCAD, but most users are
not writing dissertations, designing high-rise buildings, or making final cuts
to an indie film.
In some cases, the
gap between software features that are needed (just a few) and features that
are provided (oodles and oodles) has resulted in consumer push-back (see: Windows
Vista, Microsoft
Office 2007 Word ribbon). Bloated applications can sometimes remind us of
that Swiss Army knife we received for our twelfth birthday, but we'll save that
sermon for later, as well.
Many people do,
however, work in groups and collaborate on documentation. This, it turns out,
is an activity for which
Google
Docs are perfectly suited. With Google's spreadsheet, for example, many
people can perform data entry on the same document simultaneously -- a feature
unavailable to Excel users, thanks to archaic record locking. Need a web-form
to post a quick, down-and-dirty survey or to collect data? Google Docs can hook
you up in minutes and deliver the data ready-to-go in a Google spreadsheet.
In the face of
penny-pinching economics, the combined effect of these two tech-events -- Atom-powered netbooks
plus the demystification (should we call it google-ization?) of cloud computing
-- result in a perfect storm of consumer technology adoption.
4. Good Enough: Your Turn
Consumerism is in
our bones. With cold hard cash burning a hole in the pocket
of our Christian Dior trousers (or Gucci bag), we shop with intent to buy nothing but the
best. Should our budget fail to meet our aspirations, we feel a loss over the
compromise: we had to settle for less.
It is easy to
dismiss the notion that good-enough design theory, as applied to a product or
service, amounts to little more than a novel form of self-hypnosis to sooth our
ego while we haplessly lower our standards, however that is not what good-enough is
all about. Great implementations of good-enough theory liberate users from feeling that they have compromised at all. Furthermore, those who buy in to good-enough tech often regard themselves as savvy shoppers and clever early-adopters.
The essence of
good-enough is found in the degree to which it strikes a perfect balance
between what
could be done with an array of features, functions and services, and
what actually
needs doing. Somewhere within the region between these two points
resides good-enough
nirvana.
It is the market
that drives the direction of the needle: what people might be willing to pay in
order to achieve ease-of-use, tempered by what people are willing to live with,
accept or work around.
We are surrounded by
tools, objects, solutions, gadgets and processes that are, to the casual
observer, nothing fancy. It is those things that persist despite their apparent
ordinariness that are often truly elegant or, some might say, innovative.
Look around you and tell us, what do you see?
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