Photo by occhichiusi
There's an interesting new Wired article on what they term "The Good Enough Revolution". In it they posit that the intersection of high-tech and low-fidelity is where "good enough" was born and that it's transforming the world as we know it. As the article states, from Flip video cams to Kindle & mp3s to healthcare, we've seen many cases where adaptation of new technologies coupled with increased simplicity has resulted in breakaway technology with mass adoption.
It's a fun read, in that it talks through the recent histories we have watched unfold in a way that gives new insights into their genesis and players. The post also puts focus on something that we often experience and then forget: 1.0 versions generally suck.
Check out the Ford Quadricycle. This is the first Ford combustion engine vehicle. It's radically simple compared to what we see in today's forms of transit. It was a synthesis of a bicycle, a carriage and the internal combustion engine, all of which had been around for generations at the time of the Quadricycle's creation in 1896.
And it's a piece of crap.
It maxed out at 20 MPH, carried one person and had zero safety features. LAME. But at the time it was pretty amazing, and ultimately led to stuff that Ford is more famous for.
That said, it was good enough.
From this, Ford was able to move on to more advanced machines and technologies, ultimately feeding the course of history. The same is true when Jonathan Kaplan and Ariel Braunstein made a really crappy camera that sold a million units and jumped from there into the digital video market with a crappy lofi cam, the Flip Ultra. The decedent of which, the Flip Mino now constitutes 17% market share and sold to Cisco for $590 Million.
The simplicity of the Flip was as much a factor in its design as it was in the fact that it was an innovation. Innovative applications of technology are rarely born fully fleshed. Instead, when introduced they are often fugly, rough edged ... one step past prototype.
I love simplicity, and I believe that you should always aim things to be, as Einstein said, "... as simple as possible but not simpler," But lots of things that are "good enough" are kind of funky. The funkiness can be charming, but it's not sufficient to say that slashing features or polish is going to make something good enough.
Reducing a product down to its essence makes it possible for the object to capture the imagine of consumers, who then will start using it in unexpected and novel ways. This gives input into the product designers and provides implicit design direction. Arguably, making something "good enough" isn't what makes it good. Making something "good enough" creates a medium for end user innovation, which can result in awesomesauce.
