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Society has always felt the need to categorize people, usually by a person’s occupation, social ”˜status’ (man I hate that crap) or their hobbies. We are no different in the web industry, we seem to have done a pretty good job of siloing people into specific roles.

“Are you a designer or a developer?”

This is a question that we all get asked on a fairly regular basis and we usually give a nervous either/or answer. But why? Surely we are capable of being both; we are; we are hybrids.

Now sure not everyone is a hybrid but there are many of us out there that are equally skilled as both designers and developers.

This is a topic that I have been thinking about for quite a while, the insecurities within me prodding at me to chose a single silo. It wasn’t until I watched Daniel Mall’s talk at NA Conf in January that I obtained the validation that I was subconsciously seeking in order to choose both. Dan also put a name to this group of multi-skilled wunderkind, ”˜Hybrid People’.

I like the word ”˜hybrid’. It almost has a superhero vibe about it, like we should all wear capes and save unsuspecting visitors from bad design and broken contact forms.

The common argument in support of siloing is that you should specialise because you “can’t be good at everything”. This is absolutely fantastically correct. We can’t know everything, but hybrids don’t know everything, we are just prepared to learn anything. Our lust for cross-domain superhero powers is what makes us hybrids and it’s what makes us different.

Next time someone asks me if I’m a designer or developer I will answer “I’m a hybrid”. Truth be told we are all hybrids, some of us just don’t own the cape.

The difference between sustaining and disruptive innovation is commonly misunderstood by many in business. The main differentiation that I make is that sustaining innovation comes from listening to the needs of customers in the existing market and creating products that satisfy their predicted needs for the future. Disruptive innovation creates new markets separate to the mainstream; markets that are unknowable at the time of the technologies conception.

Established market leaders are extremely good at dealing with and exploiting sustaining innovations in order to fuel the short-term growth of their companies. Disruptive innovations however, pose a challenge to market leaders that many fail to overcome. Why is this?

Disruptive innovations create markets that are initially too small to ‘be interesting’ to large established firms. These firms have a responsibility to their shareholders to maintain continued growth rates which cannot be satisfied by the small initial returns obtained through pursuing emerging markets.

The inability of large firms to enter these markets early gives smaller firms and start-ups the advantage of time. The dominant firms will, inevitably, enter these emerging markets when they become ‘interesting enough’, however the time between the markets conception and the entrance of these firms is a valuable resource for smaller firms that can use this period to build up knowledge of both the market and technology and establish a niche brand.

“All predictions about markets that disruptive technologies will create have only one thing in common, they are all wrong.”

It is impossible to accurately predict the markets created by disruptive technologies because they do not exist. This sounds obvious but so many companies pursue the identification of a single path for a disruptive technology. Only by doing this can they formulate an exact plan for their company when entering the market and justify investments of resources and capital. This pursuit is futile. Instead of trying to pursue an absolute path these companies should be preparing a plan that allows for multiple failures before identifying the true market for the technology. This iterative process has been well adopted by many internet companies over the past decade however companies in many other industries are still struggling with this concept.

I am fascinated by disruptive innovation and the factors that determine whether a particular innovation will succeed or fail. Clayton Christensen’s book ‘The Innovators Dilemma’ explores these thoughts in depth. I would definitely recommend reading it (if you haven’t already).

Today you can find software to meet your every need from a task list app to keep track of what groceries you need to pick up to a business management system that is going to keep track of what your customers are purchasing and how much they are spending.

Oh and there’s software that does even more amazing things like running the rockets (and the retired shuttle fleet) that put people up into space. Although this is probably going to be a little out of budget for average city dweller. Reuters once reported that the software designed for the space shuttle program cost $5000 dollars per line, yes PER LINE! Now think that that code base had around 500,000 lines initially.
$5000 × 500,000 = One expensive project ($2,500,000,000)
Anyway back to the topic…

The problem with having all of these amazing systems that aim to make our lives that little bit easier is that you have your data in a large number of different places. This will always be an issue because certain applications will obviously need to store different data about you. However what happens when you want to move between services? The hard truth is that often it is a pain staking process of manually recreating a data profile item by item. This may be okay if you only have a few things to transfer but when you’re transferring years of invoices to a new invoicing system it’s painful (trust me, it will drive you to insanity). Wouldn’t it be easier if you could just get all of your data out of the old system with a simple click and then drop it into the new system. Well yes it would be, but who is interested in spending vital development time (and money) on helping people to leave their product.

Many traditional businessmen might ask you to visit a shrink after proposing something as utterly ridiculous as making it easy for people to leave. However there is a lot of good that can come out of investing time in making sure that you provide a positive user experience right to the end, after all the easier it is to leave the more confident your users will be when putting their data in your hands.

© Google Inc.

A pioneer of this open data movement is the Data Liberation Front, a team of Google engineers that strive to make it easier to move data in and out of Google products. Currently they have measures in place for 28 (that I know of) Google products and a website dedicated to providing information on how best to move your data. In true Google style once again this super-company’s engineers are right at the front of innovation. The data liberation front’s website outlines 3 main points that I think sum-up the data openness well:

• You should be able to get out all of your data
• It shouldn’t cost you any extra to get your data out
• It should be as easy as possible

By fulfilling all of these points you are well on your way to making sure that you are providing your users with the best possible experience. You might also find that they are more likely to use your products again in the future. I plan to build ‘data liberation’ tools into all of the software that I produce in the future, and might even revisit some old projects. My view is that it’s time wisely invested, what do you think?