End-User Revolution

A lil late on the news, but it looks like Mindstorm is joining in on the end-user revolution! I also noticed an interesting conference called CustomerMade. The conference seems to have featured the international editor of OhMyNews. Although I read OhMyNews regularly, I never realized that it was run the way it was described... Interesting...

People have been sending me e-mails pertaining to a rather wide areas of end-user involvement in surrounding technologies. The categories range from how people have taken their physical surroundings (urban settings, agricultural environments, etc...) all the way to how users customized their "My Whatever" home page and adapted it to their needs. There also seems to be a great amount of interest in 3D printing technologies in relation to the self-manufacturing mode of things. It's certainly got the "cutting edge technology" character to it. There seem to be a new book coming out in the realm of end-user tailorable software systems as well.

I sense that there's something interesting about the amount of end-user involvement in the various technologies that we're surrounded by. Perhaps it's simply low cost of entry (i.e. skill and/or resources required), or perhaps it's the magnitude of the challenge itself... Maybe it's just sheer survival instinct? What makes you wanna take matters into your own hands?

The list you see on the sidebar is growing! I've come across great books that sound quite promising in terms of convering a lot of the things I'd like to look into. Jinsuk, a friend of mine at MIT, has sent me this article on iRobot "sanctioning" the end-users tinkering with the roomba. I think the subject of both "sanctioned" end-user innovation and "unsanctioned" end-user innovation may be an interesting area to cover!

Right now I'm tempted to say that the end-users involved in both the "sanctioned" and "non-sanctioned" hacking activities belong to the early-adopter category. Primarily because it is non-trivial to engage in end-user innovation for these high-tech toys. Regardless, I think there may be some slippery slope creation that can lure others in when manufacturers provide tools to make the job somewhat simpler. If that is indeed the case, then it seems logical to say that unless a large population of early-adopting hackers will work on unsanctioned hacking activities because they give them a high of "coolness" (cuz you're going against the grain and potentially sticking it to the "man"), "sanctioned" hacking will just help to grow the population of hackers (at the cost of the manufacturer actually having to spend some amount of effort, of course). I suppose if the cost-benefit analysis yields convincing argument for doing this, the manufacturer will do it, but otherwise they'll either just look the other way or come down hard and stomp on them. Being the red-blooded guy that I am I may be quick to think that it is "evil" to stomp on such activities, but I wonder if there are good arguments from the other side of the fence....

So I'm finally starting to get really serious about my MBA indepdendent studies thesis. That's the last thing I need to do to be done with my MBA. ^^; I've entertained various topics in the past, one of which was going to be about the future of the music industry. Then a great book on the topic of the future of music was published by Gerd (who was a professor of mine at Berklee Extension School) and David Kusek. So I scrapped that idea. Now I have another topic I'm fascinated in and would like to take this opportunity to learn more about. To keep me motivated and to also serve as a place where I quickly jot down my findings on the topic I'm starting a blog. Hopefully this will allow me to interact with experts in the field that would like to educate this humble student as well. =)

The topic is about the "End-User Revolution". What exactly am I interested in? Well, when I look at the trend in which technology has been introduced to the market, it seems like it started off as being all about the technology itself. Lots of cool inventions that allowed people to do things that were never before imagined possible. But, things were centered around the system in which the technology did its magic. What you saw was what you got, and you just kinda had to bear with it. Then the industry started to study how human beings can more effectively use tools. It seems like various industrial design efforts, ergnomics, etc... were all about this. Then there were also notions such as market research, usability study techniques and other related user research that all basically gave more focus on how the users interacted with technology. This is where we throw in the buzz words such as user-centered design, etc... I want to cover that spectrum of history along with a survey of current state of research into the subject of end-user involvement in innovation. I would then wrap up with a conjecture for the future.

As I begin to gather my resources, my current hypothesis is that the industry will have to once again make a leap, but this time to provide end users with a much greater power to create their own experience, which makes the model not simply user-centric, but something much more flexible. It goes without saying that there is a big community of hackers and DIY folks that have taken this to their own hands, but I'm talking about it becoming adopted at a more full-blown mainstream level. I see gilmmers of the potential for this happening, but I could be wrong, of course. =) That's what I'm trying to find out. I'm also thinking that I need to cover quite a bit about the notion of "paradigm shifts" and how it relates to the industry as well as the market.

To start, I'm putting together a list of all the books I'm going to have to read (or re-read even if I had read it previously) on the sidebar. If you believe there are other books I should look into, please lemme know! Magazine articles and other forms of references are welcome, too! I'm hoping to be done with the thesis by the end of the year 2006 (December)~ Alright, let's start the journey!