The Lack Of Innovation

Berlin has some beautiful sunshine today, which is also the reason why we met in person. And for today, why don't we talk about innovation? Together with the birds in the background. Yeah, Alex, innovation is something that I'm missing recently. Everyone is looking at what Apple does, or Chez GPT does, but what's the big next thing? Yeah, I mean, even within the Apple and Chez GPT, I can resonate with, or I can echo that I miss a little bit the innovation lately. I mean, I think we've talked about this a couple of times, or everyone who talked to me either professionally or privately knows how I am feeling about the current landscape Is it app development? Is it new products overall? Also the design landscape, right? I feel like there is not so much happening at the moment. That's something we can talk about because I was recently, it's a while ago, but I was recently doing some app design sketching with a friend who's right now developing an app. And I was just, so he wants to build a little app that helps people to transcribe text that you have in a video, right? So you notice captions that you see in every video almost, and he's building right now a little solution for himself or actually for other people as well. And we were thinking about how the interface should look like. And I was thinking, okay, so you have like a main screen and then you tap something and then you go like one level deeper and stuff like this. And I was like thinking, this is what everybody does, right? And I was like, hey, how about some new way of thinking or of approaching a UI interface and working things out a little bit different? Because something that I was coming to, point that I was coming to was to maybe go away from this subsections that you have in apps and rather have like one main screen always with an overlay that allows you to switch those screens, but not always going deeper into the app. You know what I mean? So I think Apple Maps is the best example. So if you go into Apple Maps, you have always like this thing that is kind of movable, the overlay, right on the background, you have the card and the front allows you to do selections and to take actions actually. And I was thinking maybe app design in general should change. I mean, now I would like throw on top of that, right, you mentioned a pattern, which, yes, I think a lot of like apps, mostly navigation apps, map apps have this, but I think you see it more and more that you have like one area where you have your main interaction and then you use bottom sheets for like either manipulating what you see above or so on. But now I would say, right, even that doesn't feel like innovation because it is there, right? It is a pattern. And this is where I feel like nowadays, and it's a difficult topic, right? I don't know how to tackle it or how to discuss it even, then I have the feeling that if you look at early design students, they have a lot of drive to rethink and to reinvent these certain things. And mostly the outcome is extremely poor. And then what I would tell them is like, okay, don't go too far off from the conventions, try to work with what already exists. There is like learned behaviors, there's learned patterns, there's things that people are familiar with, and it makes sense to stick to them. But at the same time, this exact approach is what really killed most of the innovation lately. I was just about to say that, right? I mean, good advice on one hand, on the other hand, it doesn't make room for new ways of thinking and new ways of interaction. But the question I'm asking myself, I mean, since you are also very deep in this whole design topic is, what are new ways and what could be innovation? And when I asked this question, I'm not talking about how should the solution look like. I am thinking rather about what or how can you make the life of users and customers easier? What do they need? What's the job to be done? And I think we can't go into the solution space, right? We can't solve it here. Probably the answer to this is around what is the right approach? What is the right process? How can you work on innovation? And this is an extremely difficult topic. And again, I feel like a lot of the industry has developed in a way where because of the things that we know, it becomes more and more difficult to actually be innovative, right? So it starts a little bit with how do people approach projects? How do we test certain things? What is the feedback that we hear from our customers? What do our customers tell us when we show them something, right? I think most of the product development nowadays tries to really rely on feedback from customers, which is a really good thing, right? Which is a really good thing. But now you have the problem in the human psychology, people can't predict the future. They can't tell you how they would use a feature, how they would use an app, what they would use and what they don't. I think that's then only something that the actual present can show. You need to build it. You can use certain input from them. But I think at the end, it's to the people that work in product to make that interpretation and to actually bring this innovation. So I do believe that people in product, is it designers, is it product managers, is it the engineers, right? I mean, we talked about it. I wouldn't draw a line on the role itself. And I think it's on them actually to push these boundaries. And that is very uncomfortable and that is very difficult also like with leadership and so on, on like, okay, is whatever we're proposing the right thing to do? I agree. But I'm asking myself another question that is kind of related to that. Is the problem the processes and the way people work? Or do we also have a problem with the systems around it? So just a very simple example to go a little bit away from product, but I think it's very similar there. Let's take a look at the movie industry. So let's take a look at the movies that you see out there, right? So the way the movies are these days have changed drastically, right? So you have like a franchise, let's say Iron Man, Superman, whatever. And whenever the actor doesn't want to play anymore, you exchange the actor. It's very simple, right? But the basic thing, the basic story goes on. But then you have very much new stories coming out, right? At least that's how I see it at the moment. And additionally, let's take a look on how social media is developing. So if you don't do what the algorithms want and need, you're not going to grow. So from a content production or from a system landscape that you are in, you are by definition already limited to what the system is providing you. So how can I build innovation if I'm already limited to the landscape of the system? Sure, but I mean, A, now we're talking almost like pop culture, right? I think there is generally, is it movies, is it music and so on, there is a pattern to what works with the masses, right? It's like a film, they all follow basically the same principle of storytelling. They all follow the same way of like visual storytelling of how you edit it, how you cut between the stuff and so on. You would say it's boring to some extent, but art is also then not like really made for the masses, right? If you go too far off from the principle, you have people either, yeah, it could be perceived then it's either too long, it's not. It also changed a lot how we watch movies. It all is super fast. People's mind is like now trained on, oh yeah, you scroll through Instagram, you have a lot of like impulses constantly. So a film that doesn't follow that principle can also then be perceived slow. Okay, but the question is then going back to it, what is the problem? Is the problem, I mean, how has it changed, right? I mean, there were people who were making certain decisions that lead to a system, let's say a mass system that people adapted to. But the question is, is that good for the customers? I mean, I'm missing like new cool movies that are far away from what we know from mainstream. And if I go back 10 or 20 years, there was a much broader landscape of art in quotes. Or also remember when we started working in app development back in the days, there were not much apps, right? People were going crazy and tried out many things. And of course, the big players were the ones who spent a lot of money on research and developing certain best practices and stuff like that. But on the other hand, I'm also a little bit afraid that we are now too limited on what has been experienced. And due to the fact that it's not that easy to break the patterns and behaviors that have been trained and learned, it's hard to build something new. Yeah, and I think still in this space, there is a certain level of innovation. Not a lot, not frequently, but I mean, a lot of the patterns that we now all use have been invented by a single company or by a single person, right? Think of the way we now are used to consume content and the way we look. We watch Reels on Instagram, on TikTok, on YouTube, a lot of apps built in Reel-like experiences or stories and so on. Someone was the first to do it, right? There wasn't an existing pattern of like, oh yeah, I vertically want to scroll and want content to constantly change and give me new things. So there was a new interaction that got invented. Now the question is, how do you get there? How do you find these things, right? And I think this is where, I mean, even at our company, like I'm, in the last couple of months, I started spending a lot of time on actually looking at how can we break this? How can we create an app that is not the standard app inspired by the Revolutes, the N26 and so on, the classic fintech app that is successful that now everyone's copying? And then there is a process question of how you work with people or how people are supposed to work to bring this innovation. But there's also another point coming to that, right? I mean, there are many people who are adapting to the design patterns of Revolute or something like that, but to be careful with what I'm saying right now, but I know a big player who recently just adapted his app and they actually copied a big player. And what you saw on the app store is that many people were complaining. Many people were complaining about the new UI. And of course, after a couple of months, nobody was caring anymore because you get used to it and you need to trade because you want to make money, right? But even there, we have the same problem. Just because it gets copied, it's not necessarily the best for the users. And I think that's also one of the difficult parts, right? Because a lot of people are initially resistant to change. I haven't seen a single redesign of any product, big product that was immediately seen as this big improvement because change is always a hurdle, right? It always brings a certain level of friction of you're doing things that you suddenly need to do things differently than from how you've been used to it. But still, over time, people then start adopting it, they start learning it. Not just because, yes, you need to trade or you need to make money, so you need to use it and there is no better alternative. But simply because then, again, you get used to it. And if you would switch it back, people would again be pissed, right? So this is part of the risk that you have to take. And this is also where I think it is important that you have a really strong vision and a strong direction given. And you need people to drive this. And it's not something that works by community or community-based design, community-based decisions, right? Because you cannot democratize something like innovation. Well, that brings me still back to the question, what can I do as a person developing products to be more, in quotes, innovative? I mean, again, back to processes and I will stick a little bit to design, but it doesn't need to be visual, right? It can be applied to everything. I think A, it comes a little bit like with a mentality and with a mindset where you try, I mean, it's actually like if you look at design thinking or if you look at like all the design principles in place, you need to iterate, you need to ideate, sorry, that's the better thing, you need to put a lot of different ideas out first, knowing that you might throw them in the bin. Like one thing that I'm forcing the people that I work with is like, have many ideas, bad ideas. If I don't see you throwing away bad ideas and having conversations around why this isn't good, then you didn't apply the right process. Like if you just stick to, oh yeah, I saw this working, then it doesn't work. I saw this working or big companies that does this for me is not a reason to do something because even if we look up to those big companies, A, you can't do something that works for everyone and B, I don't believe that everything they do is great. It works because they are big, it works because they have loyal customers, but hey man, there is a lot of shit out there. I've seen the new login screens of Google, I don't know where they're coming from and like I don't believe that that is the best thing we can offer to the world to log in. That brings me actually back to something we were recently talking about a lot, understand your customers first. We had this podcast episode, I think we need to link it into the podcast description, which was about rapid prototyping. My opinion is it's also important in addition to what you said to go back to a state where you do a lot of prototyping. So having a lot of ideas is very important and throwing them, and I say it now in quotes, I rather mean testing them, it's just super important because how can you be sure if something works or not if you don't test it? By just throwing one solution that works for everybody, being sure that this is the best one, you are closing many doors for something new that is coming and therefore the point I like to make is you have to sit down, you have to sketch out things and you need to make a good testing plan because something that I really often see is that there is not much of A-B testing, there is not much of testing in general and technically there are all capabilities, especially in app development, in web development, to test out to a certain number of users or to certain visitors out different versions and this is something that can only happen if you are open to try out many things. But now very unpopular opinion, testing, right? And this ties a little bit back to what I said earlier, right, with like people don't know what they want, people are usually resistant to change. That is a problem when you test things, like what is the feedback that you might get? One of the best examples is like back when the iPhone came out, right, Blackberrys. Oh, I would never move away from this keyboard where I am so fast and I can type everything and I can feel and I can type it blindly, blah, blah, blah. I mean if you would have only listened to the users, there would be no iPhone. There would still be a lot of phones with keyboards because that's what the users wanted, right? But it needed someone to actually have the vision and not only have the vision but execute the best standards because just like putting the keyboard on the screen wouldn't have worked, right? It required a lot of technical knowledge behind it and a lot of like also skills on the implementation side to make it work. What is the proximity? What are the keys that you pressed before so that you make sure you're reducing also the errors that someone can type in? But it needed someone like our dear friend Steve Jobs who probably was a terrible person to work with but an extremely strong visionary. It needed someone like him to really push this and to really believe that this is the right thing beyond what customers told you. And I think that's where it becomes difficult. And I think there is a study about it, I need to look it up again when it comes to the development of phones, especially the iPhone, right? Because there was a big break on the iPhone, for example, this whole screen thing and no buttons anymore except the home button that we used to have. And now even that's gone. And now even that's gone for good actually. But the important thing is to look at the percentage of change. So yeah, the phones have changed from a point of view by going away from a keyboard and replacing it with the whole screen. But it was still not that much change that it's not a complete new thing, right? It's still a phone. We know it's still a phone. It still has a camera. So the break point was big but not too big to be rejected by all customers. And I think that's the sweet spot and also tough line to find when you try out new things. It's okay when it's breaking certain patterns and user behaviors, but it cannot be too big to completely throw away the basic idea of the product that you're having. And it needs to be executed at excellence. And this is where most of the MVPs then will always struggle. I was just about to say that MVP is a misused word, right? Because it's not a word that is used for bad quality. It says minimum viable product. So minimum marketable features, there are different definitions. But you need to make sure that you deliver value. So you cannot ship something with missing design patterns or let's say wrong button size and stuff like this. Which brings me to the point that you just mentioned. You have to make sure that the quality doesn't drop. The quality in terms of development, the quality in terms of research and definitely the quality for execution. But this is where I think, yes, you need to start, you need to understand your customers. You need to take a problem space, sit down and think about all the possible solutions, get inspiration from all over the place. Look at how every other industry solves these things. How it's solved in the hardware space, how it used to be solved in the past. There's so many different things. And then at one point, when you have enough evidence for you that this can work, you need to commit. You need to commit and you need to execute it to the best possible way. The problem is that if we then start sticking to, oh yeah, because we need to test it, let's make it as simple as possible. That is where you will screw the data and where you will never be able to push for the direction that you truly believe in. And I think this is where I believe that simply companies also need to hire different people that have specifically for what the company needs and what the mindset is and so on to bring this level of innovation. And then it's not an interchangeable role where everyone can just do it because everyone can do our heuristics, check all the competitors, create a benchmark and try to copy the best thing. The next step is, okay, there is few people that are really strong that have like good intuition and a good vision. And those are the people that you want in your company to drive it forward and to bring this into the teams and to make sure that you lift this innovation. And I just want to go one step back again when it comes to developing the products. I think a very important point is to take a look at your product and the landscape that it covers in terms of solutions that you're providing to your customers. Correct me if I'm wrong, but from the times when we worked together, the products we were working at, there were so many things inside an app and stuff like this that is simply not used, where you simply have not much traffic, features that have been developed that are not as successful as you have planned. And I think a very important step is to take a step back and first of all, rip off the things that are not working and that are not delivering value. Because innovation is also something that must be easy, intuitive and very clear. And I mean, you know, I'm building a lot of products and hacking around in make.com and stuff like this. And something that I'm experiencing right now is how important it is to focus and narrow down on the real issue that you want to fix first before you start going broader. And I believe a very important step for product development, no matter in which role you are, is to take a very honest look in the mirror and also into your data and to check what do I have built that is not working as expected. And then you have two options, either enhance, test, iterate or rip it off and get rid of it. Because the foundation for innovation is a clean, now I'm talking about interface, is a clean interface, is a clear value proposition that I can give to my customers. If I have, for example, a nutrition app that helps me to set up my plan, I have thousands of pages and recipes and stuff like this, but nobody cares, nobody's going into that. Do I really deliver value or am I just doing it because everyone does it? And the reason why this is coming up at the moment, I'm right now reworking my website. You have heard of that project, right? And I have many pages on the initial product bakery website, which is now a christianstrang.com website. However, and I just asked myself, hey, what is really important on this website? So back in the days, my website got ranked on Google because of my blog. And then I started introducing how to get started, podcast episodes, books I've read and stuff like this. But nobody is taking a look at it. And I just asked myself, hey, why did I do that? And I just noticed, okay, for Google, for SEO and stuff like this, but the people who were coming to my and our website were interested in the blog articles. So what do I do with all the other pages, leaving them in just to have them? Or am I ripping them off, deleting them and starting or continuing with what I was supposed to do with just writing blog articles? And this is just a very simple example in terms of a website, but go back to the things that solve your customers' problems. And I hope that a lot of these mega app builders or visionaries out there listen to this episode because that is also one of the things that I see a lot, especially people coming more from the business side. It's like, oh yeah, let's build this app that does everything because on paper, higher potential for revenue, right? If you can just like have 10 products that you monetize instead of one, but you barely can like if you first need to figure out one before you start building 10, otherwise you just have like 10 things that work bad, especially in cultures like ours where it's not as common. I think like in the Asian market, the Russian market and so on, it's different. There are successful mega apps that do everything. But then the innovation comes from just like a very strong closed ecosystem, whereas I think… It's a business model by itself, by the way. Correct. But then you can't really focus on the single small interactions, how they can be delightful, how they can create these little moments for the users that help you as a company, that help you as a brand and that make the overall experience better. Thank you, Eamon. Should we close it here? Yes. All right, then we will enjoy the rest of the sunny day and talk to you next week. Bye bye. This was the Product Bakery. All links can be found in the podcast description and make sure to follow and subscribe for weekly episodes on all podcast platforms as well as YouTube. Thank you.