Innovation Incubator: First Blood, Part Deux

First post...woohoo!

Now that that's out of the way. I've been spending a ton of time over the last few weeks thinking about just exactly what innovation is, from the wonderfully simple to the very complex. Besides our project posts, I'm going to explore some ideas about innovation and the process of design that will hopefully aid anyone who wants to consider ever trying something like the project we've been doing this summer.

First off comes a lead from a dear friend who has watched us work all summer. He suggests checking out these award-winning designs. The awards ranged from the incredibly simple (but life-saving) Tongue Sucker to one of the coolest cars ever made (which I would really like for Christmas, if anyone has around a $100K to blow on me).

More to come!

I am concerned about how the presentation is going to work, or, more specifically, how I am going to help with the presentation being in Wyoming and all.

I guess I might be jumping the gun since we have some work to do to redesign the actual product (we do have work to redesign the actual product, right?), but I'd like to start thinking about this now. If it comes down to it and it becomes just too clumsy to create a sleek presentation without me there to practice it with everyone, so be it, but I would like to be a part of the presentation.

I wonder which day(s) we'll be presenting in Toronto. Will we have any time to get something semi-sleek before we jet up there and then practice it a bunch (with me) while we're there? Of course, this begs the question: do we really want to spend our time in Toronto practicing a presentation (yes, I realize that statement may reflect poorly on my dedication to all things innovation, but so be it)?

What did we have for steps in this thing again? Were they something like:

1. Redesign what we need to of the product (are we still calling it Better Letter?) conceptually, especially including a place for responses by public officials.

2. Redesign the prototype according to the reconceptuatlization plus make it look a bit snazzier.

3. Re-do the Powerpoint (video too?) to mesh with our redesign and maybe streamline the presentation a bit.

4. Create a handout (how many do we need for Ithaca?) to supplement our presentation and give a lot of the things we previously included in the presentation that we could take out.

5. Practice the presentation full-bore.

Does that sound something like a game plan? Ideas?

Since K-State apparently can't log in yet (we're on that, right?), here's the text of Heather's email for easier, bloggier reading.

What's up everyone?
I don't think K-Staters can post to the blog yet, so I'm sending out the ideas I've been thinking/talking about for the past couple of days.

Germ: How can citizens better communicate with public figures?

Other than e-mail, which is essentially what Better Letter is now, how do people communicate?

Is there a way to incorporate Skype? With Skype, do both parties have to be online at the same time, or can one leave a message? So far, no one knows much about how Skype works, so I'll do some further research on this.

Are there any voice-to-text programs that could be integrated into this application to help people with diabilities? I talked to Disability Support Services here at K-State today about how people with physical and visual impairments use the Internet. There's a popular program called Dragon Naturally Speaking that is speech-to-text and there are other speech recognition programs out there. For visually impaired people, there's a program called JAWS that works text-to-speech. JAWS does have a free download that is the full version of the program, but is timed (40 minutes). I don't know how interested anyone is in addressing the issues of people with disabilities, but there you go anyway.

I agree with Nate there needs to be some place for these public figures to address the people. It needs to be a 2-way communication application.

Finally, video. I know everyone is skiddish of video, but we did discuss the possibility of uploading them to YouTube and sending the link (I think that's how it worked?). Chris probably remembers more about this than I do.

Anyway, I know they say they're expecting Better Letter with more than just bells and whistles, but I really think that by addressing the various ways people communicate is adding depth and not fluff. I know everyone is really worried about expanding too much and losing the
simpicity of the original idea, but I think the foundation is still intact.

Anyway, there's my thoughts on this idea. Let me know what you think.
Heather

Hello all.

In an effort to try to get the incubation engines up and running again, I'll pose a few questions here that I feel probably need to be answered before we move forward.

1. What about the Better Letter idea, as presented in Ithaca, do you think needs to be changed or removed? (We're also waiting to get detailed confirmation on how the idea falls short of the project parameters. Once we have that information, we will be in a better position to answer this question.

2. What features/improvements do you feel need to be added to or made to Better Letter?

Heather provided some good ideas in her email. Here's my quick rundown on those, as well as some other ideas we should consider.

I don't know a lot about Skype, and as such have no idea how it would or could be integrated into Better Letter.

As for integrating disability support features into Better Letter, I think it's a fine idea, but I'm not sure whether it improves the product at all. Before you think I'm an unfeeling bastard that hates disabled people, my reasoning behind this is such: Our idea primarily targets people that are already reading news websites. (We're hoping that by improving the news website with the BL application, that could bring in new readers.) If a disabled person is already able to access and read the news website, isn't it fair to presume they already have the capability to use the Better Letter app, which requires no special web or computer skills whatsoever? I'm not against incorporating a disability function to the app in any way, but am simply curious if it would be necessary, given the context under which we are working.

That said, I'm still very open and interested in hearing more development on this idea. (As I told Heather earlier, I think this could even have the potential to be an idea in and of itself. In fact, if we were able to develop a program that makes news websites easily and efficiently accessible to disabled people, I think we might just have a better idea than BL.)

The video/picture feature could be a useful one. While I still feel its effectiveness in contacting politicians would be limited, it could prove very useful in contacting other public figures, such as editors, reporters, and possibly business leaders. As we discussed in our Ithaca meeting, you can write a letter to the editor about a pothole on your street, but words are unlikely to be as powerful as a picture of the gaping asphalt monster trying to swallow the bicycle-riding neighborhood kids. (Ok, that was fairly powerful, but I digress.)

This would be a feature that would not be terribly difficult to incorporate, either. The pictures would be easy; the video would be much more feasible by using an outside video hosting service (like Youtube) and embedding the link in the email to the public figure. This would work around the problem of crashing their email server.

Nate's idea of incorporating a "speak back" feature (also known as a reply button on an email) seems like an easy thing to incorporate.

During our Ithaca meeting we also discussed incorporating the comments section into BL, or vice versa. This is something worth exploring.

As for the presentation, we need to mention that the news service's corporate logo will appear at the top of the pop-up, not the Better Letter logo.

The "problem" I see (I'm not entirely sure it's a problem) is that these features, to me, seem awfully close to bells and whistles, as bells and whistles are being defined in this context. Again, I encourage anyone who disagrees to explain why, and I'm very open to being convinced otherwise.

Also, once we get answers to question 1, we can better tackle question 2.

I anxiously await your responses.

Continuing the thread of what makes good innovation, let me introduce you to Wikipedia Scanner, which takes IP address information available from Wikipedia for anonymous edits and compares that info with who owns particular IP blocks to discover who is making anonymous edits to one of the world's most popular sites. It's created by Virgil Griffith (well worth reading his Wikipedia entry).

Royalty, the CIA, voting machine maker Diebold and others have all tapped into Wikipedia to change entries related to themselves (or something they are interested in).

I personally think the idea is freaking brilliant. But beyond that, it is a simple but extraordinarily powerful idea. And check out the design. Nothing flashy, it just does the job it's supposed to.

Oh yeah, read Wired.com's list of edits identified so far.