Sensorial’Org

All this said, Amazon is not a good model for other sites, because the pages are overwhelmingly complex with much too many features, many of which don’t help users in considering the current product.

Amazon can get away with this complexity because most users are familiar with its design because they shop there so often. But a first-time user would be baffled. Since most sites don’t have people who shop there as much as they do on Amazon, most sites need a simpler design.

See also: Interview with Web Usability Guru Jakob Nielsen and Amazon No Longer the Role Model for E-Commerce Design.

Innovation Parkour

• Presented by Matthew Milan
• 3 myths: innovation is expensive; innovation takes a long time; it takes a special kind of people to innovate
• The premise of innovation parkour is the assertion that we can learn to innovate and that means we can get better by practicing
• A video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jquXcwooV6A (not the video shown in the conference, but to give you an idea of what parkour is
• There are no obstacles; use obstacles to innovate as opposed to seeing them as barriers
• Routine creates efficiency and predictability
• Pilots recognize the constraint of their environment, and learn how to be calm in critical situations, and how to overcome them.
• Observe => Orientate => Decide => Act
• Interaction: reacting, regulating, learning, balancing, managing and entertaining, conversing
• Innovation is a conversation with constraints.
• Parkour is not about running and climbing, it’s about navigating uncertainty in real-time
• There’s four facets: unconscious incompetence (not knowing what we don’t know), conscience incompetence (knowing we don’t know), conscious competence (knowing we know), and unconscious competence (don’t knowing we know)
• Proposition: innovation favours the prepared mind which allows us to navigate uncertainty
• Tennis drills are repetitive and relentless because they teach the body to think so that the mind can focus on strategy.
• Similarly, there’s no secret about yoga. All the poses are well established across many styles, but it is a bottomless practice.
• Each of these practices is about the synthesis of flow and repertoire: knowign the tools so well as to let you unconsciously create value
• Kino-cognitive model: doing and thinking are one and the same => flow + repertoire = innovative insight
• How do we practice innovation?
  • Visualization: practice seeing; insight is reframing what we already know
  • Collaboration: practice trusting other people and the value they can bring
  • Participation: practice openness even though it can be risky
  • Innovation: practice freedom by embracing obstacles, freedom to let go of yourself because there are not leaders
• Delicate balance of being in complete control (think poetry and knowing the language and mechanics completely => no soul), and being complete out of control (you no longer make sense)
• The adrenaline rush makes you think of things in interesting new ways.