Innovation of Small Things

“It was a time when the unthinkable became the thinkable and the impossible really happened” 

― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

Innovation has grand connotations. An innovation will change the world, hence it must be grand. It must be complex. Simple things can't change the world, can they? If it is not big, it is not innovative.

I have heard these assertions many times over in designing products and solutions for customers and businesses. I have seen how complicated those products and services became yet some simple things could succeed where feature-rich ones did not. My assertion is that a few small things put together thoughtfully can have a huge impact. Size of the idea or innovation is not necessarily correlated to it's impact. This article is about a few simple things that Tesla has done in their cars, which are extremely innovative in my humble opinion. Here is my yardstick - they are innovative because any car maker could have done them at any point in the last 10-15 years. In one case, in the past 20 or more years or so. The cost of doing it would not have been prohibitive (and still isn't), and they are not technically challenging or complex things to do. Yet Tesla, with no background in making cars, did them.

The Key Fob

This is my favorite innovation. Here are examples of key fobs from other car manufacturers.

Pretty much all them rectangular in shape, with a bunch of buttons that can be used to perform various functions - lock/unlock, open doors or trunks etc.

Take a look at Tesla's car key:

Ok, cool! They made a car key fob that looks like the car itself. Next, consider where the buttons are to perform various functions.

This is the real innovation - why must a car key look like a cube? Why cant it resemble the shape of the car? Not difficult to manufacture, using plastic and moulds.

This key also has buttons. They are just placed on the appropriate body part to represent what you are unlocking/locking. Brilliant! Because any car maker at any point in time could have done this. This is not due to Tesla's prowess in technology, or that this is an electric car or any such reason. This is the willingness to think through the small things and innovate in them. Kinda like Apple devices and rounded corners.

Garage Door Opener

Cars have had built in garage door openers for a long time. Wireless garage door openers were invented around 1930s [reference]. HomeLink, almost de-facto standard for garage door openers in automobiles started operations in 1995 (scroll to section titled HomeLink Sells 20-Millionth Unit in this article). There is a possibility this feature existed before, but the internet failed me here.

GPS is also a feature that has existed for a while in cars. See Wikipedia article for a history of GPS in cars. Mazda launched a car in 1990 with built-in GPS navigation system. In 2000, US government released a more accurate GPS signal for civilian use, leading massive growth in GPS use.

It is safe to to say these two features have existed for a while in the market, and deployed by automakers in their cars. Innovation brought about by Tesla is to link these two systems. When a garage door opener is programmed, the car remembers the GPS location as well. If you follow the instructions, the car knows when it is approaching the garage door, and when it is inside the garage. It can automatically open the garage door as you pull into your driveway and automatically close your garage door as you drive off. Brilliant!

Can I tell you how many times I worry that I have forgotten to close my garage door? Solved! From a steps taken by consumer to get on their way, this is one small step less that the driver needs to worry about.

It should be fairly easy to automate this task. The systems are all there. Any automaker could do it. No automaker did it. There is nothing big, grandiose, world changing. As a driver of a Tesla, I can say that I love this feature more than 0-60 in 4.5s. Because I use this twice a day. I did the 0-60 for the first month, and was quickly bored out of it.

Think about the experience for a second: The car opens automatically as I approach it. I get in and start driving. I don't have to worry about unlocking the car. I pull into my driveway, and drive straight into my garage. Notice how garage door opening automatically doesn't register any more? I get out of my car, close the garage door as I enter my house, hang my key fob and get on with my life. I did not lock or unlock the car. It did it automatically. BTW, did I tell you about the fabulous key fob?

Navigation Powered by Google Maps

GPS' are wonderful things. I sometimes wonder how people got around without them. In cars, GPS suffer from the one problem of updates. Roads are changing, business locations are changing and keep it upto date is a hassle. Recently, I paid $200 to update the maps on my Honda. In a Tesla, the maps are powered by Google Maps. This means they are almost always upto date. As the car has a data connection, it can do live queries against the map, just like your smartphone, only on an 11" screen! There is an offline mode, in case you are in a remote area that doesn't have cellular service.

The consequence of using Google Maps is that you can do place searches by business name or common name. I can ask for East Bay Sports and it knows how to get there. I can ask to be taken to the nearest Patxi's Pizza for my deep dish fix, and it knows how to interpret that. Now I don't need to use Google maps to first find the address and then key it into the car's GPS. One more point of friction eliminated!

The thing that takes it to the next level is I can do this using the voice interface. Saying something like "Navigate to East Bay Sports" works. If there is ambiguity in the match, a list of results pops up on the screen and driver just needs to select one of them. Lets compare it to the Mercedes voice navigation interface: It asks you to say the name of the city, street and number in three different questions. It feels like filling out a form, using voice commands. Very clunky and distracting for the driver, not to mention it takes much longer to input the destination.

A wow feature that I discovered - when navigation is giving me audio instructions, only the driver side speaker is emitting those instructions. The rest of the car speakers are playing music or radio. It was not obvious to me till my nephew, who was on the passengers seat, pointed it out. This navigation audio has it's own volume setting so that the driver can choose how loud these are. Brilliant! It is such an easy thing to do, as most cars have stereo speaker systems, yet again, no automaker did it!

Small Things

May not be sexy or cool sounding. But small things make a lot of difference in reducing friction between stages in a customers journey. It is then the unthinkable becomes thinkable and possible. The status quo will be challenged, no more 'it has always been this way'. True innovation will emerge.

A few small innovations often have a multiplicative effect rather than an additive effect.

When you design your next product or service, can you think of such small things that will make it an unforgettable experience for your customers? Can you reduce one small point of friction? Can you think of things that have been done for ages, but no one knows why? If you can, then probably it's a good candidate for innovation.