Erika Hall - Just Enough Research, 2nd Edition

Throughout 2001, the internet buzzed with rumors of Ginger or simply it, the revolutionary future of personal transportation. It would change everything. Jeff Bezos was into it. Bono was into it. Tens of millions of dollars in venture investment had been poure d into it.

Finally, in December of that year, it arrivedand the Segway debuted with a counterrevolutio nary thud.

These days, Segways seldom appear outside of warehouse corridors except as a novelty, miracles of engineering conveying awkward gaggles of tourists as they hum serenely by. Its as though the finest minds of the late twentieth century envisioned a brave new world ushered in by amphibious duck tour.

Transportation is a complicated system with strong conventions. The more industrialized the society, the more people traveling faster, the stronger the conventions. Otherwise, more collisions and chaos. There are currently four fundamental personal ground-transportation options: walking (or wheelchair), bicycle, motorbike, and a utomobile.

For these options, there are two basic paths: the sidewalk and the street. Pedestrians and individuals in wheelchairs get to use the sidewalk. Vehicles, including bicycles, go in the street. A transportation journey has a beginning and an end. If you travel by personal vehicle, you have to store your vehicle at each end, either inside or outside. Bikes go on racks outside or wherever they fit inside. Cars and motorbikes go into authorized zones on the street, parking lots, or garages. Reliable transportation is essential to daily life, as a flat tire will quickly confirm.

No matter what our personal transportation preferences, we all share the rules and conventions of our locales, and most people share very common needs. People need to get to school or work on time. They need to carry groceries or children. They need to travel through sunshine and rain.

This established system is used with relatively small regional variations by billions of people around the world. But the Segway didnt fit. It was slower than a car and at least ten times the price of a decent commuter bicycle. Even those who could afford it werent sure what to do with it. You couldnt take the kids to school on it. You couldnt commute twenty miles on it. You couldnt pack the family into it or make out in its back seat.

Critics jumped on the dorky aspect and the high price, but those werent the dooming factors. Early adopters often put up with cost and ridicule for innovations that meet real needs. But no one needs a Segway.

What does the failure of the Segway have to teach design research? That where humans are concerned, context is ev erything.

A little learning is a danger ous thing.

Alex ander Pope

You like a little danger, d ont you?

To design, to code, to write is to embrace danger, to plunge ahead into the unknown, making new things out of constantly changing materials, exposing yourself to criticism and failure every single day. Its like being a sand painter in a windstorm, except Buddhist monks probably dont have to figure out how to fit IAB ad units into their mandalas.

You work one pixel or line or phrase at a time, and every strategy shift or miscalculation leads to rewriting and reworking and revising. Yet youre shadowed by the idea that the best designers and developers and writers are self-motivated, self-inspiring, hermetically sealed units of mastery. The myth of the creative genius makes it very difficult to say I do nt know.

You may be on a team that sees enthusiasm as a substitute for knowledge, high-fiving your way along a primrose path of untested assumptions. Or maybe you are driven before the whip, no time to stop or even breathe. You may not be going the right way, but who cares because you need to get there fast. Or you might be in an organization where everything is done in response to marketing, sales, and the competition. Every day brings a new buzzword or trend.