The Three Levels
I distinguish between three levels of innovation in user experience: creativity, innovation, and success. Success might seem like a strange choice, but it is important. Innovation without successful implementation is of little use and will not create products that create positive feelings for the user.
Creativity
Creativity is the ability to come up with ideas. Basically any ideas. They can be new, they can have been used before in another context, and they can be copied and adapted from a directly competing device. Figure 2-1 illustrates how the creative mind might work. There is a lot of chaos, but also a lot of raw material to work from.
Creativity can be a gift granted to specific persons, but in most cases creativity is solely about using the right approach, having the right mindset, and using the right tools. Creativity is merely the ability to create an idea, without necessarily taking into account whether the idea covers any user need or can be implemented with currently available technology. Creativity itself will hence rarely make your product successful. Innovation is also needed.
Innovation
The majority of ideas created by teams or individuals in companies and organizations rarely make it to the market. My definition of innovation is to bring an idea to the market. This means that the term innovation automatically includes that the idea can be implemented with currently available technologies and resources.
However, bringing an idea to the market does not necessarily mean that the innovation will be successful. Many innovations are never or rarely used, and these innovations will hence typically not provide any benefit (e.g., profit) for the company or organization bringing them out. The most common—and saddest—case is that the innovation is not even noticed; not by analysts, not by magazines, and not by the consumers.
This tragedy of failed innovation often happens when a company launches a new technology that the user may feel sounds cool, but the company forgets to provide any valuable methods to use this new technology. Technology in itself very rarely sells any products.
It also happens that companies actually design methods of using the new technology, but the users see no need for the functionality. Or a company may fail to design the functionality with an adequate user experience that makes users realize a need for the technology. Figure 2-2 shows an example of a clear innovation—combining an orange with a kiwi—but one that has no obvious user need (at least for me).
Figure 2-2. Example of innovation with no (proven) user need
Throughout the history of mobile phones and devices, there have been a large number of failed innovations where technology has been sold as the next great thing, but where either the implementation was not adequate or where the users did not see the need (examples are Wireless Application Protocol [WAP] and push-to-talk [PTT]). Your technology—or rather the solutions you design for your technology—has to cover an existing, perceived, or latent user need.
By launching a good idea too early, by designing it with an insufficient user experience, by hiding it deep within menus, and so on, you may be wasting a lot of resources when developing your product and bringing your idea to the market, and you may also be opening a door for your competitors to copy your idea—and to design it right.
Success
Successful innovation is when a new (or old) idea is brought to the market that the markets, analysts, magazines, and most importantly, the users perceive as innovative. Analysts and magazines may sometimes see it as successful innovation when you simply bring a new technology or idea to the market. However, the customers who pay your salary in the end are not so easy to trick. If they not do perceive or feel any value or relevance for your new technology, then you do not have a successful user experience innovation. Successful user experience innovation is when your users acknowledge and appreciate your ideas, and when they see them as innovative.
Successful user experience innovation happens when the users feel that the innovation gives true value and is relevant for them. Hence, it comes back to the needs of the user. If the user feels that the innovation is relevant, cool, or amazing, then you may have created a successful user experience innovation.
Most ideas are not new. Many innovations are not new either. But the company that manages to bring an idea to the market first with the right user experience is often seen as the real inventor of the idea. And the idea is seen as truly novel. History writers and users generally only remember the companies that did a new technology right, not the companies that did it first.
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