Of Science, Invention, Innovation and Creativity: Some Myths and Stories 

Bill BuxtonMicrosoft Researchbillbuxton.com

These are slides from a talk at Stanford Forum, April 28, 2010. Since my slides are hard to decipher without the live commentary, I have added notes and links that augment the original slides. I hope this helps.

The obvious is not always apparent.

Paco Underhill

WHO?

The myth of the lone inventor is just that … a myth.

Creativity and innovation are group activities that take place in a particular social and physical context.

Not just any old group: A team made up of the top goalies in the NHL would still be a losing team. It must be a heterogeneous team, collectively with the right set of skills for the task at hand. Determining what the “right” set is may be the most creatively demanding tasks of the whole exercise.

TTTEach T represents one of the 3 pillars of the core team skill set: Business, Technology, and Design. The wide bar means breadth of literacy. The stem represents that depth within one’s expertise comes at the expense of being more narrowly focused.

Literacy provides a common ground which enables team members from different backgrounds to communicate. Together a reasonably broad base of expertise is formed – much broader than could ever exist from an individual. Note: the Ts are recursive. The lesson for those in the software industry is a caution that the combined base of our skills is rather narrow, relative to those generally required. (T metaphor thanks to Bill Moggridge.)

IRef: Innovation Calls for I-Shaped People. BusinessWeek.com, July 13th, 2009.

Head in the clouds, feet in the mud: Innovation requires those with the ability to “go meta”, i.e., go from the specific to the abstract, yet also be comfortable with the tools and materials of the physical world, i.e., pragmatics.

WHERE?

Committee to Study High Performance Computing and Communications (1995). Evolving the high performance computing and communications initiative to support the nation’s information infrastructure. Washington DC: The National Academies Press.

Computer Science and Telecommunications Board of the National Research Council (2003). Innovation in information technology. Washington DC: The National Academies Press.

The evolution of network technology

Innovation is more like mining for gold. It consists of multiple phases.

Mining

No Alchemy!

Prospecting

Refining

Goldsmithing – the result is worth more than its weight in

gold.

Petitbled roller blade. Patented 1819.

Example: A recent commercial success .…

… from a very old idea

The mouse has a 30 year long tale.

1965: Invented by Doug Engelbart and Bill English

1969: In use at the National Research Council of Canada

1973: Xerox PARC adopts mouse for the Alto computer

1981: Xerox Star, released commercially

1984: Apple Macintosh first released

1995: Release of Windows 95

The Casio AT-550• Calculator watch.• Crystal was touch screen• Used character recognition.• Digits and operators drawn on

screen, one on top of next• Enabled “heads up” or “eyes

free” data entry• Released in 1984 for < $100!

Despite living in the age of twitter and IM, none of the popular smart phones support heads-up touch screen text entry.

Yet this watch was released the same year as the first Macintosh!

217 = 131,072

And by the way, 1984 was 17 Moores’ Laws ago, that is a computational differential of the order of:

Through a variation on Chris Anderson’s Long Tail, we gain some insight into the dynamics of innovation, and see that these long gestation times are the norm, not the exception.

The Long Nose of InnovationMulti-Touch as an Example

Invention Refinement & Augmentation Productization

Maturity$1B Industry

Radar

1984Our work on multi-touchat University of Toronto

2007Multi-touch rises above the radar.Release of Apple iPhoneRelease of Microsoft Surface

~

The Long Nose of Innovation. BusinessWeek.com, January 2nd, 2008.

Adobe as example:Software companies have aTerrible track-record of creatingNew (as opposed to n+1) products in-house.

WHY?

HOW?

OMA - Seattle Public Library

RFPNov1998

AwardMay1999

ConstructionMar 2002

ModelDec1999

OpenJul 2004

Design

Construction

For slide with narrative, see:An Hour with Bill Buxton

On the nature of “natural” interaction.

A basic litmus test: the quality of the user interface correlates to the fidelity with which the technology mirrors the following skills of the intended human user.:

- Motor sensory- Cognitive- Social- Emotional

For more background, see: http://billbuxton.com/3Mirrors.pdf

Natal, a 3D camera that supports remote gesture interaction with video games on the Xbox

It is about context, physical and social, not just technology. Natal may well provide a “natural” way to interact with the game in the living room. On the other hand, the same person playing the same game is decidedly NOT natural, nor appropriate, if it is being played on the entertainment system on an airplane, especially when landing!

A deep dive into handwriting sheds insight into the granularity at which we need to understand human action and potential in order to design appropriate technologies

Guiard, Y. (1987). Asymmetric division of labor in human skilled bimanual action: the kinematic chain as model. Journal of Motor Behavior, 19(4), 486-517.

See: March 21st, 2010, Video on Natural User Interfaces (8:18). Microsoft Research.

What appears to have been written

What was actually written, as captured by carbon paper under the writing blotter.

?• Man or woman’s shirt?• Women’s shirt buttons

wrong because they violate the principles of bi-manual asymmetric motor action.

• Q: Why?• A: Because when buttons

were first available, they were expensive, and since wealthy women did not dress themselves, buttons were oriented for the convenience of the dresser, not the wearer.

Le bon Dieu est dans le détail

Gustave Flaubert

The design of technology is cultural issue. Can cultures change?

Stoop-and-scoop, gender-neutral language, smoking in public, drinking-and-driving, … all demonstrate that the answer is “yes”, if and when they collectively have a change in values.

For questions or more information, see:

www.billbuxton.com