The Wrap #22 | More heart = less smarting.
A shot of thinking fuel, brought to you each month by Futurestate Design Co.
If heatstroke didn’t do it, our pick of this month’s articles will certainly make anyone who can associate with what they contain feel a little sweaty.
This month we take a look at the promise and reality of smart cities, why catching up to everyone else might kill you, and why losing what makes you special in pursuit of what the markets say makes you special is a well-greased slope.
Smart people want not-so-smart cities
What’s going on?
In October 2017, Sidewalk Labs, the urban innovation arm of Alphabet set out a plan for Quayside; a big idea, with flashy new tech. A vision for a smart city. Fast-forward to 2022 and the very same city has, instead, rejected this vision of a smart city and launched a new project – one that promotes the notion that an urban neighbourhood can be a hybrid of the natural and the manmade.
So, what happened?
Sidewalk’s vision for a smart city ladled on everything we’ve come to think of in a smart city: sensors, data, connectivity… it should have been smart city nirvana. Instead, a two-and-a-half-year struggle ensued. The Toronto locals, unimpressed with a seeming lack of seriousness about those pesky privacy concerns that Google keep tripping over, ultimately forced Sidewalk to pull the plug.
Why it matters
It turns out that ‘smart cities’ aren’t so smart after all. It’s a concept that embodies an idealistic future and overlooks the importance of basic human needs. With their emphasis on the optimisation of everything, smart cities as conceived so far seem designed to eradicate the very thing that makes cities wonderful.
We like to think of these situations as a reminder. A future born out of fiction can be tempting but, without taking the right steps to achieve it, it’s fundamentally a step too far – or in completely the wrong direction. Yes, leaders have to be brave when deciding where to take their businesses – or cities – but they should do so with an approach that defines a futurestate that everyone actually wants.
Read on at MIT Technology Review
That new coat of paint smell might kill you
What’s going on?
It’s taken 18 months but the Amazon design team can finally see the finish line as they start to roll out a completely overhauled experience for Amazon Prime Video. Amazon, naturally, is terribly excited about it and will laud it as a new generation of Prime Video experience. But the reality is that this is a pure catchup play: increasingly, if you take away the logos and labels, you’d be hard pressed to tell these services apart.
Why it matters
Too often, businesses of all kinds look to their competitors for their benchmark, and more critically, their inspiration for what to do next. This is actually very unlike Amazon, whose Bezossian-quotes that Amazon must ‘invent on the customer’s behalf’ is a particular favourite of ours.
When it comes to the design of a consumer platform, there are plenty of reasons that bringing your product up to scratch is a smart decision – as long as you recognise that this is what you’re doing, and you don’t see it as the ultimate goal. When there isn’t much differentiation in your sector a below-par experience can certainly have a substantively negative impact on your product. But be equally wary of what happens when sectors homogenise on design and features: inevitably, there’s a race to the (pricing) bottom ahead as it becomes harder and harder for consumers to choose between service A or B.
See a full breakdown of the redesign on The Verge
Uber races to 421st… out of 435
What’s going on?
A new consumer-sentiment study of 435 brands, using more than 1.4 billion keywords on various social media channels to measure consumers’ emotional connection with known-name brands across 19 industries found that Uber ranked near the bottom, at a lowly 421st. There’s plenty of reasons why the score may now be so low: falling foul of privacy laws, payment disputes with workers and, safety disputes with customers to name a few.
This is a business that feels a long way behind the common perception of it from just a few years ago: Uber has gone from a cool, edgy service that fought the system to do something great for consumers to grubby and exploitative.
Why it matters
We’ll say it again, unapologetically, that why and how you achieve something are at least as important as what you’re trying to achieve in the first place. No matter where you are on a digital transformation or scale-up journey, if you forget what made you special in the first place, or you sacrifice your values in the relentless pursuit of growth, there’s an inevitable storm ahead.
While Uber’s questionable internal shenanigans are well documented, every company has a similar challenge: how not to lose its essence as it transforms and grows. No-one is invulnerable, no matter how meteoric a rise they’ve had, or how long they’ve been around. Keep both eyes on what makes you special or you may end up being 422nd.
Read the full breakdown at Fast Company