This post builds on the "You are what you practice" section of my "Deliberate Practice - Pursuing Perfect Product Launch" article in the March 2011 issue of Visions magazine. This post explores how two teams decided what to pursue and what to make the focus of their practice.
One team experimented with ideas and concepts but didn't build interactive prototypes. The other team advanced their learning by building and testing interactive prototypes faster than their competitors.
The Original Concept from the Google team
As an April Fools Day contribution, a team at Google presented a product concept. They released a video for a faux product - Gmail Motion BETA.
The pitch for this product was ‘Using your computer’s camera and a spatial tracking algorithm, Gmail Motion tracks physical movement and turns it into actionable commands’
This product video was moderated by Paul McDonald. According to his LinkedIn profile, he is the current GMail product manager. During the video, the apparent functionality of the product was faked using common video production techniques.
From conception through production, I suspect that the video required at least a day of effort by a small team. Video production incorporated studio lighting, high quality audio, a finely tuned and edited script, high quality animations, and a supporting cast.
The team at Google knows that much of this product concept is cumbersome. It is reasonable to assume that although they have sufficient resources to develop many product concepts, the Google team understands that this product concept is impractical.
I was entertained by the faux product video.
Crafting a Functional, Interactive Prototype
Later that same day, another team from the University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies (USCICT) posted their video on YouTube (a Google property). From the project description provided by the Google team, the ICT team developed an interactive prototype using a Microsoft Kinect system and functionality from their FAAST project.
Additional information:
Institute of Creative Electronics
The system was demonstrated by Evan A Suma, Ph.D, a Postdoctoral researcher. One commenter stated ‘consequences will never be the same.’
I admire the team the built the prototype. They integrated their technology and demonstrated a working system in approximately one day.
You are what you practice
Expanding on the ‘You are what you practice’ concept, one company produced the faux product video that reflects their capability for creative humor. Their deliberate practice has prepared them to produce another humorous video. The next time, their video production may be faster.
The ICT team produced a video that captured my imagination. Their video demonstrated their toolkit. The speed of their response to the faux product video from the Google team, demonstrates their ability to implement and iterate and learn.
On 5 April, Evan Suma of ICT wrote "the Gmail marketing manager contacted me yesterday and said they thought the video was awesome, and thanked me for doing it"*
The ICT team can produce valuable consequences faster.
The actions of the ICT team remind me of Colonel John Boyd's OODA loop described in a book by Chet Richards. The aptly titled book is Certain to Win.
* e-mail correspondence. Evan A Suma and Mark A Hart
