The Innovation Paradox or How to Keep Things Simple with Emerging Technologies

Omar Khan at UXDX EMEA. Video: https://youtu.be/mcpaMRN-eTg

Readable transcript: edited from the recording's captions for readability (fillers and false starts removed, punctuation and section headings added). Wording is the speaker's own. Timestamps are positions in the video. Names marked [?] could not be verified against the audio.

Who I am and what makes me

[00:00:07] Who's having a great conference? Excellent, excellent, excellent. Now before we get started, I'm a designer and it's really important to understand my audience and my users. So just really quickly, who here is perhaps from an engineering background? Anybody? Okay, I've got a hand up there, some in the back. Yes, quiet bunch, but that's all right, your hands are up. How about, do we have any product colleagues in here, or are you all in Plenary right now? No? Okay, good, excellent, paying attention, superb. And what about some designers? Very good, excellent, all right.

[00:00:41] So now I know a bit about all of you, why don't I tell you a little bit about me and why you should even probably listen to me. I don't listen to myself. There's a few of the team in the rafters and they take any chance they can to avoid hearing me speak. So let me just tell you a little bit about myself. A little backstory. On this day 35 years ago I started my journey, and that journey took me through a number of different things, but they've kind of made me, and I think it's important that when you as a designer are giving advice to people, you let them know what makes you and what you make.

[00:01:16] So let me tell you the first thing that makes me. I'm an avid gamer. I always have been. I was building custom PCs when I was a kid and I don't apologize for that. I love a bit of DIY. DIY doesn't love me. I have several scars, injuries, etc. And I do enjoy cooking, to varied success. Now I've also been very fortunate to be an extremely small part of big teams working on things for companies like NOW TV, Nintendo, NBC Universal and Sky, where I am at the moment. And really all of these different things have helped teach me and formulate my approach to design and innovation.

[00:02:00] And that's why I'm here to speak to you today. I want to tell you a little bit about some of the things that I've learned along the way from my colleagues and lots of different people, and all the mistakes I've made, and hopefully help you guys from repeating them too.

Why innovations fail

[00:02:11] So there's a common saying, and that saying is thus: the road to purgatory is paved with good intentions. Now I have a slight variation on this. I actually think it's paved with failed inventions. And why do inventions and innovations fail? Well, let's talk about that for a sec.

[00:02:32] These are some of the things people like to say when their innovations don't work. My personal favorite: it was ahead of its time. Most of the things I've worked on have been ahead of their time. They didn't see the use case. Hm, they didn't? Interesting. But you did. Or maybe you didn't see what they wanted. It was complex and unnecessary. So why'd you do it then? This is strange. This is bizarre behavior, frankly.

[00:03:02] And that's because these are all excuses. I apologize, these are all excuses, because building innovative products is way easier than you think, and it requires reframing what you think innovation is. So let me tell you some lessons I've learned from history, colleagues and the industry. So bear with me if you will. I'm going to take you on a journey and a story, a story that you shall tell your grandchildren about, and they're going to be pretty bored, of three lessons I've learned.

[00:03:35] So let's start with lesson one: technology. Now I apologize for anybody who can't read what that says, but from Japanese it roughly translates to something called kareta gijutsu. Now this means lateral thinking. Now I want you all to remember that, because at various points in this conversation I'm going to be asking you which of the lessons apply.

[00:03:56] Number two: overthinking. Please don't do it. I do it all the time. I spent a good five minutes thinking about which color jacket I was going to wear on stage today, and the honest answer is I only brought one jacket, so it's a bit of a waste of time. And finally, relatability. Okay, innovating and building the future is scary for me every day. It's scary for people who do it every day. But you know who it's scariest for? Those people that you want to use this product. Make those innovations relatable.

Lesson one: lateral thinking with weathered technology

[00:04:30] So let's take a journey down the first lesson, lateral thinking with weathered technology. Now I know that sounds weird, and that's because things often don't translate into English perfectly from other languages. But let's look at where this came from. So this man is Gunpei Yokoi. Does anybody know who Gunpei Yokoi is, or what he did? More importantly, anybody in the room? I do and I'm in the room, but perhaps somebody else in the audience? No? Fair enough, let me tell you. After all, that's why I'm here.

[00:05:05] Gunpei Yokoi was a company man. He worked for a very long time at a Japanese company that had their roots in playing cards, and he liked to invent little things on the side for the company. His real job was looking after the factory technology in their factories, and he invented this: the Game Boy. Anybody grow up with the Game Boy? Excellent. I unfortunately only got involved when it was Game Boy Color, but you know, sadness.

[00:05:33] Now the Game Boy is a seminal product in technology history. I believe you can draw a direct line from the Game Boy to the iPhone, and they wouldn't have happened without each other. But let's talk a little bit about what this meant for innovation, because this was the competition. Ah, Game Gear. Who remembers this? I heard a boo. It's a little unfair, but I have very fond memories, especially of Aladdin on the Game Gear.

[00:06:05] Now this is an innovative product. Look at it. 16-bit color graphics, a backlit LCD screen. That's big money. And most importantly, it's black. This is in an era when the majority of computers and home technology had the same color as a shop mannequin. So if you made your product black, that told the consumer it's innovative. But there's a problem, because we all remember Game Boy, but not all of us remember Game Gear, and there is no Game Gear today. Why is that?

[00:06:44] Well, let's think about lateral thinking here, because Yokoi-san understood something deeply important. He understood battery life. So that backlit LCD screen, those 16-bit color graphics, they went through AA batteries like I go through Toblerone [?], which is to say extremely quickly and way too frequently. Now Yokoi-san understood that no parent wants to take their kid on a long drive while also lugging along 16 AAs. It's just no fun.

[00:07:19] So what he did is he instead put a low power black and white LCD screen inside the Game Boy, and it was paired with amazing games. Now this is what lateral thinking with weathered technology is. You take old technology that has a low BOM cost, that has wide consumer adoption and understanding, you take that technology and you find a really cool new way to use it. And that is lateral thinking with weathered technology.

[00:07:49] Now I would be remiss to say that we all have our peaks and troughs, and sometimes we make mistakes, and the one time he didn't follow his advice we ended up with this: the Virtual Boy. Now to go back a few slides, I would suggest this was perhaps ahead of its time. When I was a teenager I was very fortunate to work at GameStop. Working the tools didn't give you any shares, unfortunately. And my boss there was a lifer, and he told me many a funny story of an eight-year-old projectile vomiting while trying this product.

Lesson two: you must have a point of view

[00:08:30] Okay, lesson two: you must have a point of view. Now I learned this lesson at Sky, and I learned it from the chap who runs the entire organization, Anthony Davies. I also learned it from my colleagues in industrial design, and I want to talk to you about this, and I think you'll see it resonates with similar talks we've had today. This is the previous Sky Q remote. Now this was developed some years ago, in a time where our UIs had not caught up to the modern era. They were very innovative for their time, and you can see there's a number of buttons that's there, and it's hardly a remote that looks easy or good to use.

[00:09:12] This is the Sky Glass and Sky Stream remote. This remote is syndicated all over the world to multiple countries, and you can see it's a much simpler remote, namely because we're taking advantage of the D-pad on there. Now this is interesting, because we had a point of view that there were things you could do in the user interface that weren't possible back then, to be able to reduce the amount of buttons on that remote. And if you look at it, we knew that that D-pad could do the same thing as 10 individual buttons.

[00:09:43] The data didn't support that conclusion though. The data said people are using all those buttons, they're pressing them all the time. And much to the industrial design team's chagrin, they understood that their creative view was that you could replace these things. And so by having that point of view, we moved forward in innovation. You cannot let the data dictate what comes next. You can use it to inform you, but you have to use your superpower as a designer or an engineer or a product person to see through that, and understand you put your stake in the ground when you're making innovations, because if you don't, you'll never move forward.

[00:10:24] That's a very classic remote, and I just bought a DVD player that has one that does not look too different from that. I realized the oxymoron in saying I'm here to talk to you about innovation and I've just bought a DVD player, but you know, old media.

Lesson three: put your users at ease with the future

[00:10:38] Finally, you've got to put your users at ease with the future. Now what do I mean by this? Because this is kind of a slightly, ever so nebulous thing to understand, but I've got a couple examples that maybe I can use to unpack to you all. This is the Dyson 360. Look at this thing. Big camera in the front, Hoover made by a legendary company, tank treads. And everybody knows tank treads are superior to wheels. Who grew up with Thomas and Friends? Thank you, Dan. Okay, well I did. I'm sure some of you did, but you just don't want to put yourself out there. And as we all know from Terence the Tractor, I don't have wheels like you because my caterpillar tracks are so much better.

[00:11:25] Now the issue is when you look at this product and you look at what people say about it, just go look at its reviews on Amazon. People often say things like it's very efficient. It's not a bad thing. They also say things like it's a bit scary, it creeps me out, I don't like it. Now imagine if this product had been the robovac that came out 20 years ago. Do you really think that people would have been comfortable putting it into their homes? Especially when you're talking about things like robots, where people have this natural reaction to immediately think of Sarah Connor in The Terminator.

[00:12:03] Instead we had this: the Roomba. Now the Roomba is round, which is very cute. It chirps and it whistles as it goes about its day, and if you look at those reviews on Amazon, people talk about its personality and how much they love it. It's relatable. People aren't afraid of it. And it helps as well that this device also uses very relatively basic technology, like bump sensors and basic Hoover bits. And if you're paying attention, which lesson does that form? I'll give you hints: lesson one. It's PDP [?] season. Do you guys have an answer for me in the front row? Lateral thinking.

[00:12:54] Now on top of all of that, it's the only Hoover that pets also like. Honestly, for years dogs have been involved in warfare with Hoovers, and somehow they enjoy this thing. It still boggles my mind. I don't get it.

Building Watch Together: the lessons I didn't apply

[00:13:09] So let's talk about these lessons in practice, or rather let's talk about a time I didn't put these lessons in practice. And I would like to give you a little example from recent history where we built the Watch Together app. Now in order for you to understand this, it probably requires me to do some scene setting and context, so let's do a little bit of that. So last year we released a product called Sky Live, which is an interactive motion camera that's sold as a peripheral for our line of televisions, which we sell in the UK and other countries as well. Other TVs are available.

[00:13:45] And Sky Live essentially allows you to do a whole bunch of things, whether it's motion gaming or interactive workouts or having a video call. And the reason we did that is because we see that entertainment's evolving. We're creating the best TV experiences that connect people together with the content they love and the people they love, and we want to bring people together as well. We want to connect them through those shared experiences, and we genuinely believe that stuff like this is way better on the big screen. How many of you remember doing your neck in, hunched over a phone during Covid? It was horrible. Use the canvas you have.

[00:14:19] And so we set out to build a product, and that product was to take the very best of our content on our streaming TV and pair it up with the interactive camera we developed, and bring that synchronized content together with video calling. It's really important, because there's actually not many people doing this. I can think of one other fruit-based company that has a similar product, but much less content.

[00:14:44] So what was our challenge? Well, our challenge here was innumerable. This is the most complex piece of software I've ever worked on in my life, and it only has four screens. That should tell you something. But I think I might have misunderstood initially what my challenge was, because I looked at it like this: ah, we're going to show all our users, they've never seen this sort of thing before, we're going to wow them, shock and awe with innovation. And the first place we thought that we would do that is in how you actually join one of these calls.

[00:15:17] We wanted to see how we could take the latest technology trends and apply them to getting into one of these sessions. And so we have a camera, so we immediately thought about image recognition. So this is an early prototype journey we've created. By the way, it's important to suggest that I've dug a lot of this stuff out, and there's a lot of designers in the audience who are responsible for it, but they have no quarter. So what we wanted to do here was essentially allow a user to receive a QR code and scan it with the camera that they have on their TV, and once they scanned it, magically they would be sent straight into that video calling and content synchronization world.

[00:16:00] Now this was pretty cool, but we were thinking, oh, it's a bit difficult, because you get the QR code on your phone, you have to hold it up to the camera. It's a little tricky. Somebody maybe who doesn't have full motion might struggle with it a bit. So we were like, I think we can innovate on this more. And I remembered my childhood and I remembered the Ocarina of Time, and I remembered, of course, music, sound. We've got an array of five microphones on this device.

[00:16:30] Now I see, what if we use sonic codes? And you can thank Zoe Potin [?] for that name, harmonic code. It's TM. And so we essentially said, okay, instead of a QR code we're going to send them a little musical snippet that they can't perceive, and they'll play it, and then automatically they will be pulled into the video call. So there you go, you play it. It was a real toss-up about whether we use the Ocarina of Time or the White Ranger for that one. And in you go.

[00:17:05] But okay, the idea of sonics works, but what if you're sitting there and you're fiddling with your volume so that Sky Live can hear it, and all this stuff? It just didn't feel right. So we continued to go down this rabbit hole with what3words sharing. Does anybody know what3words in here? Yeah, excellent. Does anybody here from what3words? No? Good, okay, I'll keep talking then.

[00:17:31] So the idea is it's a similar principle, but instead of having to play a code from your phone, what you get are three words, "which vampire book" in this example, and you activate the mics on our platform and you say "which vampire book" and hit enter, and off you go into the video call. So it's pretty cool, huh? It's just one small part of the whole thing, and yet already we've got harmonic code, image recognition, super easy journeys. We're all feeling pretty excited.

[00:18:01] But my dear colleague in product, Helen Blackburn, who had spent a long, long time working in video calling technologies, suggested that I might have collectively lost my mind. Whether or not I did, it's still a point of debate. So let's think about those three lessons again. So let's start with that lateral thinking with technology, eh? So these technologies are cool, but are they right? We designed for a huge user base, and it's sometimes hard when you're a group mostly in your 20s and 30s who are super tech forward, looking at things that you think are cool, but are they cool for your people? And do these new technologies actually separate them from that experience? Image recognition and harmonic codes are cool, but does the average consumer really care or understand them?

[00:18:54] Overthinking it? Might have been, just a little. I think it's important in design to go wide, but you also have to bring it back down to earth. And finally, relatability. Do people understand these concepts? And that's tied into the notion of the technology piece on this one. Do people understand harmonic joining and this kind of thing? Can you literally stop someone in the street and say, use your harmonic code to join a Sky Live Watch Together session? No, you can't. They would go, what's a harmonic code? And then you have to explain it. It doesn't work.

Going back to the humble clicker

[00:19:33] And then, not me but mostly the designers in the team, who also accused me of overthinking it, had a bit of a brainwave. And going back to the notion that you want to make these things relatable, you want to think laterally with a technology that's already available to you, and you want to make sure that you're not overthinking it, we looked at what we had and we went back to the humble clicker. Now the remote control is the most understood interface paradigm in the world, bar none. In the same way that LLMs are succeeding right now because they use a text box, which everybody now understands how to use, the remote control is widely understood. I don't care if you're 102 or you're two, you will figure out how to use a remote control, because it's key to life in the 21st century.

[00:20:27] Now the other thing to bear in mind is that ultimately, to join one of our calls you needed to enter nine digits. Can anybody see anything on this remote control that might help you enter nine numeric digits on a TV? Anybody at all? No? Yeah, I don't see it either. I don't see it either. It's the number pad, of course. Again, lateral thinking. This is not an innovative layout, but it exists and it's there. And so we realized actually it's really easy just to get your remote control out and go ahead and type in nine numbers and get into one of these sessions.

[00:21:10] Ah, there we go. So you get the code and you type those nine digits in and you're in. And it's really easy to say to somebody, yeah, join a Watch Together session, just use your phone. Now the thing here is that the product itself is innovative, because it's doing something with both the content you love and the people you love and putting them together in a way that isn't being done. All the stuff around it is easy and simple and everybody understands. And that's the thing. You don't need to make everything all singing and all dancing. You need to think about what people are going to take away from this product.

[00:21:46] You don't want to hear them saying, oh it's cool, but, or I like it, but. You just want to hear them say it's great to use. And I tell you, when we launched this product last year, a lot of the reviews mentioned the fact that compared to other video calling products out there, especially on TVs, this was really easy to use. And that for me is a personal huge win, because that's what we're trying to do as designers.

[00:22:10] So just to sum it up, often the simplest things are the most impressive, and it doesn't matter what you make, whether you're working on enterprise software or you're building an app for kids or, like we do, you're making video games. Just focus in on those three lessons and you'll get to innovative outcomes that are successful. Now for those of you who know me, you know no detail is too small, no idea too big. For those of you who don't, my name is Omar, and if you'll indulge me I'd love to answer any of your questions. Thank you, everyone.

Q&A

[00:22:50] Host: Omar, brilliant. To be honest, the questions are interesting, but I think I would rather spend five minutes talking about your Game Boy back catalog and how it compares to...

[00:22:59] Omar: We probably shouldn't do that.

[00:23:00] Host: Question from, how to encourage a culture of innovation within a team and a company? Oh, it's gone down. We're still going to answer it. Where companies have their own priorities, we're getting more used to AI, GPTs. Atel [?], are you in the room by chance?

[00:23:18] Omar: Hey, thank you for that question, and it's a great question, and it is a difficult one. And so I think in terms of building a culture of innovation, you have to start small. But one thing I always say is that building great environments for innovation to happen, it's not about process. Of course it is, secretly. What you have to do as quickly as possible is show results. And if you start on that small scale and you have results and you build them up, it's great. There's nothing senior leadership like more than five slides saying I did this, it was successful, here's how we can use it.

[00:23:57] Omar: What they hate is when you rock up with 30 slides of process diagrams and this and that and lots of, just like I've done, big images with quotes from famous world leaders and this kind of thing, and then you have one slide about what you would like to do. So to build cultures of innovation, my firm belief is that as designers and product people and people working in tech, you have to reframe it. Don't focus just on solving problems. Go seek out opportunities and then prove them out as quickly as possible. And that just starts with you, man. You figure out what can I affect right now, and you share and you share and you overshare.

[00:24:34] Host: Brilliant. This is obviously the most important thing you will, or anyone will, be asked in the conference. Omar, your umbrella. What's the deal, man?

[00:24:44] Omar: This is my emotional support umbrella, which has been lent to me by the staff of UXDX. But I feel it helps with gesticulation.

[00:24:51] Host: How so?

[00:24:52] Omar: Pointing, I think. In all seriousness, so going back to the last point about how do you build cultures of innovation, to quote Ra's al Ghul from Batman Begins, theatricality is a powerful ally.

[00:25:08] Host: I love it. Does your emotional support umbrella have a name?

[00:25:10] Omar: Let's go with Bernard. I'm Bernard.

[00:25:14] Host: Round of applause for Bernard the emotional support umbrella. Amazing. All right, I think we have time probably for one more. So are there any great processes for teams to best identify if they, like you, are going down the wrong track with innovation?

[00:25:32] Omar: I think the most important thing is always to not just remember these three lessons I've shared with you, but also, and this is a phrase I learned from the woodworking community, which is: think about it. And what that means is just take a step back and think about it. Why are we doing this? What's it going to solve? What's it going to do? And I think it's very hard. A lot of this depends on the size of organization you work in. If you're a small team of five, it's quite easy to re-steer a ship. If you're a team of 5,000, that becomes increasingly more difficult.

[00:26:08] Omar: And so it comes back to this other point I made just a second ago, which is overshare, overshare, overshare. And while I do believe you have to view ideas as very delicate, you also have to be thinking about how is this going to look when it gets out there. Focus on the opportunity. Do you think this thing will be successful? If you don't think it'll be successful, why? And then try and work backwards. That's how I would handle it.

[00:26:37] Host: I have a feeling one of your colleagues may have put the next comment up. It's your birthday? Yeah, happy birthday. For anyone who can't see from a stage view, Ros looks so happy with herself right now, and it's wonderful to see. Fantastic. It's been a great question: is lateral thinking a muscle you can train? How do we get into that mindset?

[00:27:03] Omar: Yes, it is a muscle you can train. Lateral thinking though requires information, so you have to... Who's Sabina? Sabina, are you here? Hi Sabina. So you have to think, are you a designer or a product manager?

[00:27:20] Audience: Neither. A marketeer.

[00:27:24] Omar: No, no, not at all, not at all. We love our marketing colleagues. After all, you've got to sell the stuff we make. So yes, you can train it, but it requires knowledge and information. And so obviously we can't all be the world's encyclopedia, but what we can do is we can look at the things we're making, and we can really go deep into what adjacent technologies are there.

[00:27:51] Omar: One anecdote I didn't share is harmonic code was inspired by the world we work in. So the very first remote controls did not use, is this Bluetooth, guys? What is this? AV team? It's not got an IR blaster [?]? Doesn't matter. They didn't use any of those technologies. What they had instead was a reverberating set of columns that fired off hypersonic sounds to your TV to change the channel and instruct it to do things. And so by looking at the history of remotes, looking into all that, it kind of sparked that idea, and we were like, okay, how can we do that? But then also, by bringing it back to the history of remotes, we realized using those nine digits.

[00:28:29] Omar: So it's about being educated on the technology sphere you're working in, and then looking at new ways to apply that. So if you think about it in a marketing content context, if you'll say, I don't know, building out say some kind of sales microsite for a product that you want to put out there, well maybe think about what are the things we can do to deliver this as quickly as possible, for as least cost as possible, but get that impact. Even if it means potentially cannibalizing some of the technology you've built yourself. In the web space right now there are tons of tools out there that'll let you spool something up in five minutes, and it saves you money, and more importantly that's your focus on the thing you need to do, which is get that word out there.

[00:29:13] Host: Yeah, fantastic. I think I'm looking for a little C [?], that's what we have time for. Fantastic. Ladies and gentlemen, Omar Khan, everyone.