Wednesday 17 February 2010

Desk-centric design

Do you hate your desk?

Chances are you do.

Have you thought deeply about why you hate your desk? Do these feelings have to do with your mother? There may be some Freudian thread to follow here, but I have a better answer.

Desks aren't comfortable. They aren't made for comfort, they are made to provide a working surface for your keyboard, your monitor, files, books, etc... Desks are sized based on average human proportions. Humans come in all shapes and sizes, so it should be easy to see the weakness in the foundation of desk-centric design.

Chairs are the other main component of an ergonomic workstation. Chairs come in all shapes and sizes and prices. If you're paying very close attention to all the fundamentals of ergonomic workstation design, you may be able to find a chair and a desk that suits your body, and you may be able to afford it. Just maybe, you'll get it right.

Chances are, you'll still be disappointed in the comfort efficiency of your workstation. The static placement of your display (monitor), the location of your keyboard, relative to you, a dynamic individual, is just not optimal.

Whether you spend $100 or $15,000 setting up your computer / desk / chair workstation, you're still at high risk of RSI if you log many hours each day working on the keyboard.

Repetitive stress injury (such as CTS) is a risk that arises mainly from desk-centric design.

Human-centric, dynamic design is our focus. We have been developing high-tech, low-cost solutions. Our systems prevent health problems that are rooted in our evolution beyond the desk, and our failure to adapt ourselves to the technology that is available.

Desks are antiquated fixtures that do not match today's technology - our ability to transcend the need for cumbersome desks, and our ability to operate efficiently on virtual desktops should be reflected in the furniture we buy and surround ourselves with.

Desks are no longer a necessity, yet we spend billions of dollars each year on desks. We support material gobbling industries reliant upon our willing addiction to this arcane form of self-imprisonment. It is image based slavery. We work at a computer - we sit in a chair - therefore we need a desk.

Wrong!

LET MY PEOPLE GO!

The long awaited technology - the platform of our future is almost here. It's called COMFORT.

Keep hating your desk - and prepare to get rid of it forever:)

Antidisestablishmentarianism

It’s amazing how my memory "works" as a father of 2 young children. Yesterday I ran across a word that triggered a memory from 30 years ago:

antidisestablishmentarianism

When I was in the first grade, me and another kid were arguing over something VERY important and neither of us would concede.

He decided we should have an I.Q. contest to prove who was right. Had I known he was “packing” I certainly would have passed on this duel.

The winner would become the leader of the band of kids that had gathered at our elbows, and the impression would carry forward all the way to middle school. It was totally spontaneous – nobody saw it coming, certainly not me.

Mr. Smartypants: (With eyes intent) “So if you’re so smart, what’s the longest word in the English language?”

Me: (Smiling with clever foolishness) “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”

Mr. Smartypants: “WRONG! It’s Antidisestablishmentarianism,” with an authoritative smile and a confidence way too big for a first grader.

Me: “Anti what? Say it again – that’s not a word.” I said weakly.

Mr. Smartypants: “Antidisestablishmentarianism - look it up in the dictionary!”


Me: “Ok – I WILL!

I should have taken this more seriously – the other kids were siding with Mr. Smartypants! I had fewer friends suddenly, and now I was nervous. I had lost round one.

Mr. Smartypants: “Do stars twinkle?”

It seemed like a trick question and I thought I remembered it right . . .

Me: “Yes.”

Mr. Smartypants: “WRONG! They are always on and the atmosphere makes them LOOK like they are blinking.”

“Ya! That’s right!” Said the other kids – whether they knew it or not.

Mr. Smartypants had gunned me down with 2 shots. From that day forward, I couldn’t regain confidence in the eyes of that (mean) little gang of kids. I still had friends, but Mr. Smartypants was king. He seemed to own the class and I couldn’t live down the day he killed my street cred.

You may not remember the first grade, or maybe you don’t have kids reminding you how things worked back then. Reputations are forged, little personalities are shaped by skirmishes that seem silly by (adult standards), and leaders emerge.

Mr. Smartypants is probably a well-paid bean counter working for a fortune 500 company now. I don’t begrudge him - his Mom or Dad, or maybe his big brother loaded him up with cool facts, and when he pulled the trigger he shot to kill.

We all know people like Mr. Smartypants. They’re facile with factoids, and ready to blast a hole through (you) if you challenge them. They drive in the fast lane, unapologetic about grazing you at the cross-walk. Some are malicious. Some are confidently oblivious. Some are dangerous. They rise as you fall, like helium on oxygen, or oil on water.

I could attempt to explain why people behave this way, but for the purpose of this discussion it suffices to say that establishing your position first has inherent advantages.

Let’s go back to that word antidisestablishmentarianism. Go ahead and look it up.

It’s NOT the longest English word, as it turns out. It didn’t matter - Mr. Smartypants issued the challenge, confidently established himself first and he won. His weapon of choice was an irrelevant fact, but nobody ever said life was fair.

It is a fitting coincidence that this 28 letter word runs counter to my life's agenda, and that of every independent inventor/entrepreneur.


It is the most common mistake of an entrepreneurial undertaking, to underestimate the power of antidisestablishmentarianism (the establishment).

I’m talking to you, Mr. Inventor / Entrepreneur with the Next Big Million Dollar Idea. After all - if you were satisfied with the status quo (the establishment) you wouldn't have invented anything. You're not satisfied. You're an instigator, an agitator, and a problem solver. You see problems and you think it's your mission in life to fix them. Maybe it is!

You’ve discovered a piece of truth and you think it’s important enough to take risks that will affect your finances and your reputation. You really have no idea what you’re up against. You are blinded by the love for your brilliant product and/or the people around you who love what you’ve done. You love the dream and you want to live in it as long as possible at any cost.

Big corporations get it. They ARE it. The antidisestablishmentarian forces that hinder rapid adoption of your new technology, in favor of established products, methodology, distribution, and more importantly, the people who control distribution, cannot be over stated.

You’ve really done a good thing, there’s no question of it-you’re awesome invention is sitting right there in front of you. It’s undeniable. Ideas are free and everybody’s got them. Get ready for a random I.Q. test where the facts don’t matter as much as whether you can afford to use them.

Don’t imagine for a second that your brilliant invention and the patent you can barely afford to prosecute (or get in the first place) will equal SALES.

Don’t imagine that the sales you have made with direct bursts of effort, at trade shows, or festivals, or shopping malls, will scale up in a profitable way because it works on a small scale and scales up nicely on paper.

Don’t assume that because millions of inferior items are being sold in the mass retail channel, that yours can sell as many, or more (or even some small percentage). This is fool thinking! This is the sirens' song, guiding you into the rocks as you gaze lovingly upon your spectacular idea.

The power of massive corporations is a function of time and organization that relies on economies of scale. Read that again and try not to think about your incredible product at the same time. FORGET IT and read it again, and read it again. Spend a few weeks studying the concepts that are encapsulated in those 2 words. ECONOMIES OF SCALE.

Mass retailers already sell products similar to your idea, or at the very least they’ve developed a category for it. It looks similar (to the untrained eye) or functions less well, but it’s similar enough that the average consumer will not know the difference.

If not, they will –one production cycle right after you’ve spent too much time and money trying to educate corporate buyers for free. They LOVE people like you. You’re an expert in your field, and they are happy to pick your brain and apply your useful knowledge to their distribution models.

Think about it -who owns the attention of the average consumer? WHO OWNS IT TODAY? Big corporations. They OWN it. That distribution pipeline is THEIRS. How did that happen? It took millions and billions of dollars in advertising and the organizational efforts of thousands upon thousands of people to create these established distribution channels (Target, Sams, Wal-Mart, etc.).


Do they owe anything to the guy who comes along and improves or invents a product that might fit in their program? You guess the answer. Guess wrong and you’ll pay dearly to learn what you should be able to figure out without spending a cent if you think about it with a clear head.

Every square inch of shelf space is calculated profit. Real stores are based on models and planograms generated by experts who know how to increase the bottom line for the corporation, and who couldn’t care less if your single product is “better” than one of their products. They are already making money! Are you? And even if you are, is that relevant to their situation? Hardly!

If you think you can just convince a buyer (let alone get a meeting with one) to squeeze your fancy widget onto the shelf and replace something, you’re wrong. That space is someone’s paycheck. Someone won’t like that. Someone, or someone who knows someone, will do everything in their power to prevent you from taking a penny of their paycheck, or causing them the extra legwork to deal with your pet project.

Vendors who supply big corporations are chosen based on how many items they can produce and supply. THERE ARE NO SINGLE ITEM VENDORS ANYMORE. Read that again. Forget about setting up a factory and producing one item for mass production. If you’ve already done it – focus on the markets you can access profitably, and forget about trying to make Mass Retail see the value of working with you. It’s suicidal!

It’s too much liability for the corporation to consider allowing "your" product to enter their distribution pipeline. Vendor account setup is costly, product delivery protocol must be specified and confirmed. Non-delivery risk is just too great a liability to consider small new vendors anymore (no matter how cool the product may be). It’s much easier and more predictable for corporate buyers to speak with one of their existing vendors, ask them to investigate your idea and see if they can produce it.

Big corporations work with experienced vendors who bring dozens of items across multiple categories. Mass retail corporations setup seasonal bidding wars between vendors and reduce their number of vendors each year, consolidating and tightening the grip on profits as they go.

It doesn’t matter what you’ve invented, or what idea you think you own, no matter how spectacular. Even if it’s patented. So what if it’s the best – better than all the rest, even peerless. You won’t get on that Mass Retail shelf and make a profit worth your while.

You will end up giving it away to a trading company, who comes to you posing as a “buyers agent” for one of these corporations. Yes, they will light you up with compliments and questions, theoretical orders for 20,000 pieces of your product. If it appears you’ve got it locked up with patents, they might fly you out to China and wow you with the scale of production that happens in those huge factories, crank out a few prototypes for costing purposes, and see if they can reverse engineer it in another building, all the while wining and dining your fantasy of working with them directly. At the end of the day, they will decide how much it costs, how much they will pay you over and above cost (pennies if anything), and if the patent is weak you’ll never hear from them again and a very similar item will show up on their shelf next season without any attachment to you.

Or you might end up having it taken from you, in what amounts to a license agreement full of covenants you cannot afford to defend from your position once they start rubbing you into the wall. Trading companies are full of tricks, but it’s all about the same thing. Getting up close to you, and then getting in between you and your product so THEY can sell it to the mass retail corporation. That’s their business.

It’s almost irresistible to think that you can help a corporation by offering your product to them, and that they could help you by buying it. They are certainly glad to have your help for free and they welcome it. Buyers walk trade shows looking for the next cool idea (without identifying themselves, of course). If they see something they like, they’ll send one of their agents (a trading company) to learn everything they can from you.


WITHOUT INSIDE ACCESS TO DISTRIBUTION, you have the privilege of bleeding out slowly while enriching the establishment you’re trying to access.

But don’t stop inventing, and don’t stop developing your ideas. Don’t give up on your entrepreneurial dreams. Just don’t waste your time trying to jump on a high-speed train. That’s what Mass Retail distribution amounts to. You will lose every time.

Establish your distribution slowly, pinching every penny, and taking only the steps you can verify and afford. That pace is excruciatingly slow for someone (who isn’t independently wealthy) who is excited about a new idea. Force yourself. Avoid costly trade shows where the sharks hunt for free meals. Protect your ideas with secrecy, and with patents if you can afford to. If you can’t afford a patent, you can’t afford to protect your idea, and you can’t build very far from that position before your idea is picked up by mass retail (and it will, if the idea is truly magnificent, and starts catching on). Establish YOUR business in the spaces between established modes of distribution and grow your network organically. What that means to you will be as particular and unique as the product or idea you have developed.

Big corporations set the standards whether you like it or not. They are established, recognized by large groups, supported by a consensus, whether or not they or their products have any relevance or value in truth.

It is a monumental uphill battle to re-establish the standard. The more time that passes, the larger the consensus, the less likely you are to succeed.

I’m not trying to discourage anyone from pursuing entrepreneurial dreams. I’m here to tell you from years of experience, that the establishment is there to crush them. Don’t help them crush your dream.


Pursue your dreams with your eyes wide open.

IF you succeed, it will be the result of your dogged persistence and passion as related to the truth you’ve discovered. Your power is undeniable – the people who share your vision and love of the truth will spread the movement.