January 2020 #CX Briefing

I have a monthly all-text #notrack briefing that you can sign up for regular access at https://design.co/signup — below is my January briefing email.

Four Things That I’m Thinking About CX

* There are two basic kinds of experiences: solo and group. Solo means by yourself; group means with others. Solo happens alone and unconnected; group happens together and connected.

* A solo experience can be a good kind of disconnectedness. Any introvert knows that being fully connected to just yourself can feel like a gift. For a true extrovert, however, being solo isn’t their naturally happy place.

* When just considering solo experiences they can be binned as largely mental or largely physical. Reading a book is largely a mental act; going running is largely a physical act. The Internet’s made solo experiences entirely scarce.

* When considering group experiences they can be largely mental ones: like watching a movie together. Or, they can be largely physical ones: like eating at a restaurant with friends. The Internet’s made everything into group experiences — or the proverbial "alone together" paradigm coined by Sherry Turkle.

Three Things I’ve Noticed In The Last 30 Days

* There seems to be a new product, engineering, or design tool that gets a dollop of funding every month. Whether it’s new nocode, lowcode, or somecode tooling, I feel the opportunity to “make” instead of “imagine” is right now. But if you can’t speak machine (i.e. grok computation) you’re at a disadvantage.

* Established organizations in Financial Services, Energy, Commodities, Government, Retail, Consumer Products, Transportation, Travel & Hospitality, and Healthcare all tend to speak machine at the Spanish I or Spanish II level of fluency.

* What’s increasing the need for these “end-ups” (versus startups) to speak more than “un poco” machine is not only competition from Big Tech, but also the incoming generation of digitally native employees who demand better tech tooling at work. So it’s a challenge coming from both the outside and the inside.

Two Unsolicited Non-Tech Products That I <3

* The Nathan Sports SafeRun Ripcord Siren Personal Alarm is a small handheld device that makes an incredibly loud noise for safety.

* Jonesbar represents my ongoing pursuit for the optimal snack bar — if you like the texture of figs then it might work for you.

One Special Link

* How To Speak Machine: Computational Thinking For The Rest Of Us is out now as a kind of sequel to The Laws of Simplicity. You can order it in the USA here https://amzn.to/2HjDtM6

One Final Point

* The 4th Industrial Revolution metaphor is starting to take hold. First generation was the steam engine; second generation was electricity; third generation was the computer; and fourth generation is the cloud. With each Industrial Revolution leap there’s been a different level of impact on the percentage of people on our planet. As an early proponent of STEM to STEAM education, I chuckle at the thought of how the ????steam from the first IR metaphorically relates to the ??cloud at the dawn of the fourth IR.