Category: Ponderings

Elevator (or lifts) – a Symbol of System

I stood on ground floor staring at the level indicator of the elevators at my office. It was stuck there at level 5 for a whole damn minute. I swore I’d kill whoever came out at ground floor for holding up the lift.

Ding. The lift arrives on ground floor and my angry face is ready. Door opens and there is no one. I get over it quickly and head into the lift to work.

As I thought about it on my trip up, lifts and elevators are a great symbol of a system. One where human input, interactions and sense of responsibility is very important. As someone held the lift open on level 5 (for what reason I actually don’t understand as no one actually entered it), it symbolises those that selfishly hold back the system in order for self gain.

By holding up the lift, the other lift that is higher up, will not come down. Instead it will wait there, on a higher level, assuming the lower lift will move. This ‘assumption’ is coded into the system.

A system is only as great as the users allow it and if the governing laws and ‘assumptions’ are not followed by those that use it, it will not function efficiently. When the people start becoming more selfish and less community-focused then certain actions will cause trouble but even more importantly, cause stutters and unnecessary pauses in the system.

Give you another example – cars merging lanes in order to find a clearer lane, in traffic. If everyone stays in their damn lane, and moves at an average pace, every person will reach their destination at the fastest speeds. But no, everyone just wants to keep pushing in and maximise their gain. Slow, stupid, inefficient, so damn frustrating.

But can we blame people? When traffic is caused by bad road design and when people take the lift up as every lift coming down has been full, these bad behaviors causing inefficiencies are a response to bad system design. In a perfect world the system would be perfect so the users would not need to think of ways to take advantage or find shortcuts.

I guess you could apply this to governments and the people as well but eh that’s too heavy. This is just my thoughts after waiting for a lift as I was late for work. But at least now I have promised myself never to hold up a lift. If it goes it goes, I will wait for the next one. At least I won’t be the reason for the system to fail.

Posted on by Jonathan 0

RHYTHM AND ROUTINE

The first post in my ‘ponderings’ category, let’s see how long I keep this up..

Recently both these words have been on my mind. Rhythm and Routine. As a data lover it is sometimes hard for us to grasp things that can not be explained with number. One day I was bumping to music in the shower in the morning, getting myself into a good mood for a good day’s work, I thought about this – How is music so personal and immediate, so much that just listening to it can bring out people’s emotions. Is there a formula for the perfectly catchy song? Is there a secret recipe for an enjoyable song? If I am able to decode it, can I mass produce this?

There’s the obvious mass-market mainstream hit and then there’s the niche songs for certain moments or moods. Let’s focus on mainstream here as I want to apply this to a business perspective. Hear me out.

At this point I associated a good business idea or product should be like a song, the moment people hear it or experience it, they are hooked. The continuation and perpetuity of your product will depend on how many times someone can replay it without getting bored or wanting a different song or product. So far it makes sense.

But what specific part of a song makes it so emotionally stimulating, is it the lyrics, the notes, the singer’s voice? Or is it rhythm? I’m sure the answer here could be different across different people, with a lot of combination of what’s most important as well but for me I specifically feel, rhythm. A song with good rhythm feels routine and consistent. I like that.

Reflecting on my brief delve into mixing music, you learn to counting bars and beats of 4. Deciphering a song into bars of 4 allows you to start the blend, introduce a new instrument or let the beat drop. It felt good being able to predict what is going to happen next even if never having even heard this song. This is the basics of DJing.

Alright, I am going off topic. But the keyword here is rhythm. If someone can effortlessly adopt your product, it has to have a good rhythm. It has to have something that is found, felt or experienced every day already. It needs to feel natural and it can not be forced. Just like a wrong note or an off beat or a fragmented rhythm, this will ruin the whole experience. That is why I must always remember rhythm, in everything I do, everything I create. Rhythm is not only important for a product innovation however, but in people management, in personal sanity (haha) as well.

Every mass-market product needs to have some sort of element of routine hijacking.

But how do you create rhythm in a product? This may seem difficult at first but my most immediate response to this question is – routine. If you can build into the routine of people’s lives, you can create something that they can adopt. Although changing consumer behavior is very difficult (a discussion for another time), in the least I now believe every mass-market product needs to have some sort of element of routine hijacking. “Routine Hijacking” – Maybe I’ll use this term more as well.

Just take Uber and Deliveroo for example. Every day like an after work ritual, I will open these two apps. They have so successfully and effortlessly integrated into my life after providing me convenience and being very user friendly. Google? Google hijacked all our routines.

I guess in conclusion: A song’s success is very similar to the success of a business idea. The more easily people can sing along, the easier it will be perpetuated and the higher the chance of success.

(Hm.. note to add some sort of images here later)

Posted on by Jonathan 0