User centricity is primarily associated with marketing disciplines that put the user at the center. A cliché, cynicists may claim, devised by corporates to appease clients. A more evolved approach to user centricity truly makes the user a primary partner. As citizens we are users of systems created first and foremost to cater to our needs. Governing systems, just like commercial ones, need to be attentive to their users for their survivability and adapt accordingly.

In our life as citizens, user centricity is not always taken for granted as a primary consideration, and at times, not catered for at all. In many countries, very significant political, economic and social changes are fermenting or openly taking place at this very moment.

In non democratic regimes, such as the Arab states in the Middle East like Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Tunisia,  regimes, up to very recently, were  fear based. Till a moment came when the masses felt  they had nothing to lose.  A bottom up citizen based ripple effect swept the area and the people rebelled aggressively, no longer accepting the ruling dynasty paradigms of their dictators.

In the democratic western world – it’s fermenting in other ways. In some countries aggressive riots sprang – e.g Uk,  in others – non violent  protests, like in Israel, (where I come from), but not less powerful. All across Europe unrest is fermenting, as people, frustrated by the  economic unrest and the feeling  their current governing parties, delegates of the people, elected by the people and for the people, no longer attentively  cater for the interests of the people as their primarily consideration.

All are threatened by shifts and the unrest from the growing feeling of misuse of the credit and trust with which the prevailing parties were endowed. It’s already here or lurking behind the corner, and not just as a build up towards election day. The masses are losing faith in the thin closed circle  that brings time after time the same players in varied constellations and perpetuates solutions the citizens no longer trust.

All this unrest has a common denominator – the voice of the citizen. User centricity is not just about consumerism – it is about engagement, influencing and shaping the systems that serve us. Same goes for our identity as citizens, and our prerogative, or duty, if you wish, to  call out to put us, citizens, in our rightful place – as the center of the systems built by and for us.

The need for a new pact between the governing parties and their constituents is fermenting bottom – up. It’s a call for bringing back the human factor into the center of the equation. Sovereignty should be based on trust, Trust is enhanced by transparency. Both are  rare goods these days.

Citizen centered, Wecentered,  in the face of political, financial and corruption turmoil all across the world, is a paradigm that will  redefine the balance between politicians and us, citizens.

In a citizen centered state of mind it is not the governors who have an unlimited mandate because presumably they know best what the people should have and therefore a totally free hand to prioritize and dictate their worldview with blind oblivion to what we, the citizens, feel we should have.

Holding on to attitudes of   “though the dog may bark,  the caravan moves on”, blind to the growing and the shifting  power of  citizens,  blinds leaders from reading the writing on the wall. A state is a human grid. We are citizens and in democracies, the elected delegates should represent their citizens’ interests.

Citizen centered paradigms grow in dynamic movements through bottom up open systems, where citizens call for freedom,  better living conditions, hope, and in more affluent and democratic countries  a more just allocation of resources, and an affordable future.

The citizen centered paradigm demands a new lens for the relations  between the state and the citizens, for focusing on the citizens  and their well being. A state’s ecology is manifested by its social conscious, considering the human aspects of its officials’ operations and not losing the human touch in executing its policies.  The new citizen centered paradigm calls for transparency, culture and conduct that cater for the good of all, considers the well being of the citizens and exercises a reciprocal authentic pact with them.

I have just returned from over 2 months of extensive travelling, which explains why I have not written for a while.

In resuming writing the icentered blog I will add another dimension to the icentered paradigm – that of citizen centricity, or Wecentered, as another lens of Icentricity.

To date citizen aspects of user centricity evolved primarily around digital relations between citizens and governing institutions, aiming to facilitate interaction and make processes and information more accessible to citizens, within the framework of existing paradigms.

However, the political, financial and social turmoil taking place around the world make us all part of a changing paradigm. User centricity is not confined to web based digital life. The internet  and user centered web culture are among the main powers igniting and feeding  many of the tectonic shifts that are taking place. As citizens we are users of systems created primarily to cater to our needs. Governing systems, just like commercial ones, need to be attentive to their users for their survivability and adapt accordingly.

As we are proclaiming our rightful place in our relations with our institutions and states, user centricity exceeds by far preserving the relations between us and our governing offices. The earth is shaking in some countries, others are in the process of very significant shifts and others will follow if leaders fail to read the writings on the wall. We, citizens, in many countries, in many different ways, are claiming an affordable human centered life, demanding new orders, values and regulations that adhere to the people’s voice and needs in new pacts tailored around us and for us.

The next series of posts will be dedicated to citizen centered or Wecentered as part of a shifting paradigm in the relations between states, institutions and us, in view of the changing cultures, values and structures.

 In a user centric world, while the digital “e” is already naturally taken for granted, the shift to the user centered  “I” is reshaping relations and the power balance between users and providers. From building product identities, such as Apple’s  Iphone, Ipad,… through marketing campaigns that emphasize the product/service direct benefits  to the user, and up to tailored personalized offerings and information strings around personal interests –  all create a real user centered digital world that reframes traditional values and assumptions on provider – user paradigms,  be it with commercial entities, information organizations or egovernment systems.

The internet today is truly personal. It’s about the individual “I”.  The self sovereignty and natural sense of entitlement of users is expressed  by their intrinsic motivations to get what is most relevant to them, anywhere, anytime, and speak up their mind and wishes. This is the source of users’ power, that puts them in the driver’s seat in their web based interactions.  It creates personalized fragmentations that force providers to dedicate more extensive efforts to target, reach and satisfy their potential users, and even greater efforts to preserve their loyalty without using captivity methods that immediately bounce back as they only motivate users to reject the offering or provider.

Taking an Icentered approach, customers clearly specify what they would wish to have, evangelize  what they find useful, annoying, and bring up ideas for product/service improvement and better suitability to users’ needs. Mostly, such expressions of needs, wants, dissatisfaction or praise are independent, targeting their own social networks. Furthermore, users seek to trust those they interact with. They express their degree of faith and demand transparency, ethics and engagement from their providers.

Therefore, the voice of the user should become a compass to providers in defining new systems and crystallizing their offerings, relations and even corporate identity.  In a user centered world, listening to that independent  voice of the customer, is priceless not only in usability design, but in defining, acting upon and creating brand identities and conducting an engaging dialog with customers.  All this translates to relevance, usability and increased user satisfaction from both the product/service and its supplier.

User centricity is gradually maturing from a being a term coined as a lip service from the Petri dish of digital marketing CRM culture, to become fundamental in digital relationship. User centric systems, tailoring offerings and information strings to specific user demands, giving users independent access options to endless choice in a long tail economic model, personally modified offerings that the digital economy empowers, create a new power balance.

In a way, users’ powers of selection and expression liberate providers from taking all the responsibility on what to offer, and turns users into real partners to the whole process – from design, manufacturing, marketing and up through very transparent user satisfaction feedback.

Providers try to humanify their offerings, give it personalities. But even this is not always enough, as we, users, want more from our providers than just get our attention with their offerings, because it’s relevant. We want to trust them, identify with what they stand for. In the new digital marketing discourse, users own the conversations, manipulations are rejected and social media empower immediate feedback. A new discourse, attitudes and power balance will reframe the current paradigm to create a more balanced, trustworthy digital sphere.

The  2011 Edelman trust barometer main findings show a shift to new and different pillars of trust that make us trust companies.

In the past a company was trustworthy if it had a stable and firm business control- a top-down grip on its business and markets, a reliable marketing flow, financial stability and growth.

The trust crises in the last decade strengthened skepticism and shook traditional trust pillars. Corporations can no longer adopt a hard management style through rigid goal seeking and build trust just by making money, protecting the brand and the information flow.

The new trust barometer transcends board room valuation charts. It puts transparency first. Trust is invoked by seeing shared values, a new level of transparency, authenticity, connectivity and connectedness everywhere. It calls for reframing corporate goals in terms of engagement, purpose, and involvement in the good of the larger public as part of a greater social responsibility as trust invokers.

Gaining trust, according to this trust barometer, is a protective measure for corporations today,  as corporates no longer control conversations, good or bad are exposed, condemned or praised instantly and virally evangelized. Therefore corporates’ sustainability lies in practicing what it preaches. Its test lies in its transparency, and its credibility is achieved by the involvement and representation of the corporation through its highest officials as committed to these goals.

This 21^st century spirit and state of public sentiment towards corporates, calls for new management paradigms, new sets of values, new pacts with all parties involved in the food and value chains, more humanizing business culture and ethics.  

The survival of the fittest definitely will take a softer approach, as corporates’ sustainability will be translated in humanizing their business.

Adapting to 21st century emerging business culture means embracing softer attitudes that evoke trust, authenticity and humanization of corporate identity – feminine qualities. This observation is not a feminist declaration or an editorial in an Elle edition.  The new reality is that the business world needs to reframe its discourse to a softer, more fluid one, that usually is not associated with traditional masculine management archetypes.  

The internet is forcing a new marketing discourse. As users increasingly own conversations and the death of customer loyalty is a click away, companies need to replace transaction based policies and devise a deeper relationship with their clients, have to be more attentive, flexible and open.   It means embracing ethical accelerators: transparency, openness, and accountability. It requires a change of mindset to softer more collaborative, conversational, attentive, trust building mechanisms.

Men and women speak different languages and symbolize different archetypes. Men need all the assessments tangible before they start building business processes based on top down hierarchical trees of conditions, risks, time lines and  effort invested,  men like single tasking or defined parallel tasking.  

John Hagel, in a Ted Bay area speech  talked about differentiating between male and female management archetypes. He claims that technology has opened up opportunities but created an increasing competitive pressure that demanded a hard, closed fist management style, semantics of war,  based on  masculine metaphors , rational analysis, aggressive and ruthless conquering of markets, with no room for any vulnerability. As long as this mindset prevailed, there was no room for an alternative semantic discourse.

Feminine archetypes are based on notions of long term, sustained relationships, not transactions, on story like communications style, around expressiveness, images, telling and learning. A style that is not analytic by nature, but based on emotions, vulnerability, and sharing.  Women tend to flourish in chaotic situations; their chaotic patterns and intuitive thinking frame an archetype much more suitable for the conversational nature of the web and the mindset of the social web. Women build their assessments on aggregated information gathering patterns in all sorts of informal distributed ways. Such adaptivity has become a redefining business strategy trait.

Therefore, as environments became more dynamic, siloed rigid attitudes are being reshaped by adaptivity, agility, crowdsourcing, grssrooting, coopetition…. These new  business world dynamics call for a different set of archetypes, more fluid and adaptive.

Blurring gender defined arenas exceeds management skills archetypes and becomes a dominant trend that will influence and reshape many gender based dichotomies.  Faith Popcorn, the trend predictions futurist, predicts a new revolution for 2011-  the end of gender –En-Gen. EnGen era which is neither male nor female. Women are becoming more influential and men are turning more sensitive. Mars and Venus are coming closer. Emotional needs, gender based values and stereotypical behaviors are becoming more blurred. This will influence all levels of interactions, brand building and marketing discourse.

Therefore as businesses are required to adapt to new business cultures that  foster corporate ecology of open, more transparent, authentic  and humane business practices to assure a 21^st century competitive edge, the  feminine archetype will prevail as part of the semiotics of a reshaping business new world.

A bunch of guys at Google had a wonderful idea. Let’s create a series of videos that will help our parents to use the web. They  launched a site that empowers people to teach their grown up parents how to use the web. It is a great step in helping older people to overcome their technophobia.

Age related digital divide is one of the things that makes older people, and even late boomers, feel inadequate. What seems to many elementary, creates a paralyzing situation for elders at the most fundamental web based usage situations. Managing on their own, through a simplified adapted process of guidance that does not embarrass them in front of their children and grandchildren, not only answers their need to know, but provides a handle  to confront the issue on their own, at their pace, without being pressured by their slow and hesitant learning curve. Knowing that those guides are there, always at reach and they can revisit if they forget, makes seniors confident. Mastering things that to digital natives is intuitive, gives older people a sense of belonging and a feeling of being included in the digital society.

The joy of a grandmother that can press the Like button,  be updated on her grandchildren’s status through Facebook, find her way through Google, chat on Skype and send emails, is not to be taken for granted.

Giving these tools to teach the elderly is a great service to both children and parents.

On the functional level the videos, a spontaneous amateur production,  are not fully adapted to the needs and pace of the older population. The screenshots are blurred, not everybody has a Mac and the young presenters’ talk is not always coherent, yet –  it’s a grassroot initiative and an admirable one. Chapeau for their resourcefulness, awareness to the importance of enhancing the mature population to be more digitally savvy in an a simplistic and intuitive way and contribution to a softer digital based bonding between generations.

And on the same level, an equally admirable initiative at Google is a beautiful book that teaches young children about the internet – 20 things I learnt about browsers and the web. An elementary readers’ digest about the web, TCPIP, cookies, HTML, cloud computing….  I am sure much older children will be equally happy to learn about the what and why around the web and not just take its existence for granted.

These two initiatives, borne from an inclusive attitude,  connect the dots for digital immigrants and digital newbies.  This contribution to  facilitate, familiarize and bond  young and old to what is increasingly growing to become a natural part of our life fabric,  is another step in adapting our web to make it a real web of life.

Disclaimer: I am also a  partner at Senior-Touch, a company that focuses on bringing 3^rd age needs and usability into the process of developing products, services and bridging age related digital divide.

In a ubiquitous world, who needs siloed fences?

Cloud computing begins to emerge as the infrastructure of choice not just for crunching very complex computation challenges, scaling up storage or managing distributed financial transactions. Commercial cloud services, social cloud based networks, open public clouds will evolve to serve in real time any business or data process, not just for big data centers, but as a direct  infrastructure for web applications aimed for the end user market. It is the best suited infrastructure on which the vision of a contextualized icentered web paradigm can materialize.

The real value of the cloud exceeds by far the financial benefits of not having to invest huge sums in IT infrastructure or scaling up. It lies in the array of on demand based applications that can revolutionize many businesses through Saas offerings. When computation and connectivity are pervasive, commoditized, perceived as a basic utility like electricity or water,  when terms like ubiquitous, always-on, real-time, dynamic, instantaneous, pervasive will be at the heart of all  information services, it would become natural to develop an open ended approach to data retrieval.

The fragmentation and distribution of information and interaction sources in siloed sites of distinct providers is counterproductive to our interests as users, namely facilitation through simple, intuitive, adaptive modes of interaction and the ability to reorganize data flows in personal or topical strings, according to individual needs or interests. Imagine being able to organize ad-hoc strings across sites or social networks, a social graph around an event, a prismatic view of a news item, comparative and informative shopping queries, personalized search related results, open ended work information queries  – all individually rearranged, according to the personal context, relevance, history or predictive forecasting for each of us.

The cloud as an on-demand service infrastructure is robust more than any siloed data center of an individual company. It empowers mashing up the infrastructure and the applications that run on it and the creation of data strings across distributed sites. It will allow the creation of new kinds of user bound services that will exceed siloed sites, and empower more sophisticated mobile applications.

 From an icentered point of view – where will my data reside? In the cloud, dispersed in all the sites I interact with and harmonized under the umbrella of my inclusive profile. The ubiquitous nature of the cloud will allow accessibility through all media and sites, agnostic to the origin of the data’s residence. When I can access everything from everywhere, storing materials, retrieving them, collaborating, sharing and creating food chains around them, will become a non-issue. Localization loses its meaning for both data retrieval and the whereabouts of the user or device storage and computation limitations.

 The big shift from push to pull mode, as analyzed  by David Siegel, automatically shifts the wheel from content providers  who put their offerings out there, to the users who actively pull, agnostic to where what they pull resides.  Once companies adjust their businesses to the pull mode, empower account and profile portability, harmonized contextualization can start to take place.

Once data referencing schemes and tagging systems enable to pull any data and contextualize that around a personalized scheme, there is very little difference between pull of services, content and products and pulling of personal data, creation of new food chains and building companies that pull, reorganize and capitalize on the pulled data on our behalf. Data stream services will extract relevance based context strings for a specific query/service/offering. Contextualization processes, delivered by business process software through a cloud based delivery mechanism need contextualization platforms and applications – but all these cannot develop without a ubiquitous, open ended, flowing infrastructure that empowers portability and accessibility through any smart device everywhere.

Once my data and interactions reside in the cloud, I, the user, become free to access my personal files, connectivity and content, consuming files from any point – fully materializing John Gage’s vision of “the network is the computer”. New kinds of providers will emerge, giants wars over hegemony of the clouds infrastructure and providers of new food chains and services. It will truly facilitate an Itom  based new long tail models based on data aggregated from different dispersed sources, and facilitate new personalized services.

It will empower an icentered culture, since the ubiquitous infrastructure available through clouds is bound to enhance new generations of web services, using pay-per-use models that will empower individuals to do things that previously only corporates could offer, due to high costs of storage, retrieval and data manipulation. More people will be equipped with more tools, a larger portion of our life will become digital, unique individual needs, personalized eco systems will ”float” in clouds.

At the same time, cloud computing brings with it privacy apprehensions that need to be addressed.  The fact that everything is always-on, available and accessible does not mean that it is automatically exposable as well. Pervasiveness and total publicy do not automatically go hand in hand. Total availability and manipulation of data from wherever, whenever and however still must leave me, the user, in control over what to expose to whom, when, in what context and in return for what.  The non tangible conceptualization of an ether like cloud out there does not provide the mental security of a sealed data center whose owners are accountable for retrieval breaches from their data storage facilities.  

Therefore cloud service providers should be accountable for their protection levels of data stored in their clouds in the same way that banks are accountable for the security and safety of assets put in their trust.

“You know you’ve achieved perfection in design, not when you have nothing more to add, but when you have nothing more to take away.”  Antoine de Saint- Exupery

A disclosure note: I am also a partner in  Senior-Touch, a 3^rd age expert house

Digital offerings for a netizens’ oriented world are primarily designed from a web based lifestyle that suits the Net generation, for whom the order of the day is apps, gadgets, tools and more revolutions.

 The Net generation is confident, empowered, self-reliant, attuned to the digital culture of choices, sharing, visual signs, high speed, their connectivity and the way they process information is different, it’s natural, intuitive, flowing. It’s a generation that is eager for changes – to make changes and to dynamically adapt to changes as they come their way.  

 The older generations, the digital immigrants of various levels and ages are more hesitant, tend to stick to what they are familiar with and used to, their web lifestyle stems from the level of adoption of communication platforms and tools that suit their lifestyle. They use cell phones but get lost with smart phones, use email but in the social media scene appear as rigid elephants on a swinging dancing floor.

 The digital embarrassment line does not divide just between old and young. There’s even a micro generations’ gap where 3-4 years apart age wise create a totally different technological experience. 19 years old  seem outdated to 16 years old, at the age of 20 the ability to digitally multitask is much smaller than at the age of 15.  A research note written by a 15 years old on his generations’ media consumption caused a stir in the market, a thought provoking insight on what works and doesn’t work for teen agers’ digital interactions as it proved contrary to what adult experts assume –  how they use their computers for music, Twitter is not hot, online ads don’t work, TV is hardly an option, they watch TV only on demand and mostly via the web

Apple unveils the  ipad – the best way to experience the web , they say. A big stir all over. Digital ink is spilt over the good and bad of the ipad, the revolution to come, the flops, the technology challenges, lack of Flash, USB, memory limitations….. all the geeks, experts and intuitive users dance the waggle dance. All for Netizens.

Ethan Nicholas, a guest writer in Techcrunch – made a completely different point.

Why my Mom’s next computer is going to be an ipad. He says:

 The iPad is a computer for people who don’t like computers. People who don’t like the idea of upgrading their 3D drivers, or adjusting their screen resolution, or installing new memory. Who don’t understand why their computer gets slower and slower the longer they own it, who have 25 icons in their system tray and have to wait ten minutes for their system to boot up every day.

For what most of these people need a computer for, the iPad is perfect. It doesn’t do as many things as a “real” computer does, but the things it does do it does in a way even non-tech-savvy people can figure out, and there are far fewer ways to screw it up. So if you have managed to convince yourself that the iPad is a useless, locked-up DRM-laden failure of a ‘computer’ before even touching one, I have two words for you:

My mom

My mother is a lovely lady in her sixties who is… well, “not computer savvy” is probably a good way to put it. I regularly have to figure out why her computer is running incredibly slowly, or why it won’t print, or any of the million other random things that happen when people who don’t live and breathe computers sit down at one daily.

The iPad is perfect for her. It does exactly what she needs. It will let her watch movies and listen to music and read books on long flights. It will make using a computer fun instead of an annoying chore……

And you know what? There are millions upon millions of people just like her out there. They outnumber us. And they finally have a chance to become productive, self-sufficient computer users instead of constantly asking family members to fix their computers or, even worse, keeping the Geek Squad in business.

No, the iPad isn’t for everyone. But I’m going to go on record as saying that, for non-computer-geeks everywhere, the iPad is going to redefine computing.

 

Exactly. It is this capturing of a universal user experience that will make the ipad a  digital savior. It will transform the experience in means more intuitive and familiar, as a universal design product, sexy for all-  so people at all age and usability sophistication level  feel included – part of the global digital town square. The ipad provides a “black box with a very lively façade”  older people will not be intimidated by it as a computer, touch will facilitate familiarization and accommodate declining finger dexrticity.

Digital literacy and digital proficiency are not to be taken for granted.  We live in an age where for the first time in history there will be more old people than young. Life longevity brings with it mature life style needs and styles and an urge to remain part of the global society.

A web that is for all should be made of offerings that weave humanity into user designs of the services, tools, apps and gadgets that empower the dynamic digital lifestyle. An inclusive design should compassionately consider the capabilities and contingencies of those not so savvy, without patronizing them in an attitude of “for the XXX challenged”.

A user friendly product, service, application or GUI  that is nice to have to a Net Gen savvy, is a must have to people who are immigrants into the digital world and for whom it would never be intuitive. It is an age of customization, personalization, usability and features’ adaptation – but not everybody can do it.

Older people are technophobes. It excludes them from digital advances. They tend to give up on offerings with which they feel uncomfortable, and many times refrain from using technologies, where accessibility and usability are not usually adapted to their perceptual, motor and cognitive pace of reaction.

 Their desire for a total user experience is shadowed by the fear of not being able to properly apply the necessary skills or not be able to interact with the application in a timely manner. They would rather give up on the potential, in order not to feel inferior.

There’s a psychological catch as well. Whereas all through history the skills, knowledge and authority were transferred from the old to the young, in the digital world  many times even  young children master skills that older people can hardly relate to, if at all. 

Digital literacy means new capabilities, a language of the information world that youngsters speak fluently. Services that to them are natural, communication platforms, instant messaging, e-commerce, consulting e-maps, sophisticated search, locations, peers, scheduling and much more, are totally unfamiliar to a population that can make good use of the quality of life enhancing capabilities that new technologies bring.

A whole new universal and inclusive user friendly approach to self-activation and interaction with digital devices and services is called for.  One that will facilitate, simplify and connects us all under the umbrella of a web of life that suits each of us personally.

This is an open request to authors and publishers – when you release a new book – please make an e-reader version available immediately as well.

Times are changing. There’s an overpour of new books every hour. I, your customer, want my book here and now.

Please indulge me.

The digital world will create a new future  for books. Their digitization will empower new formats, marketing and availability. The future of books is eBooks. E-readers will dramatize the concept of conventional books and will create new long tail marketing schemes. That will  happen in a gradual process.

But right now, till all the troops are aligned, and the chasms are crossed, we, readers, are ready now, on the single book level.

 It is such fun, when you are waiting for a new book to be published – to have it in your hands to read the minute it’s out.

In our flat world this immediacy is possible by replacing shipment with download, if it is not in a bookstore next to me. The future of books is e-readers of sorts.

 Please enhance the adoption curve by connecting it with the spontaneity of an instant gratification.

I am a book lover. I grew up on the scent of a “fresh” book straight from the printer’s warehouse. But today’s globalization and digitalization offer new kinds of instant gratification and new modes of being intoxicated by the ability to read your favorite author or update on your favorite subject on the dot.

It is part of the new digital belonging – being able to be part of a global conversation around the publishing of a new book and the conversations around it,   -

I am not going to go into the commercial considerations of a proprietary edition like the kindle or general eBook options, but either way, the benefits are huge:

• There’s an increasing return cycle – the more books will come out in an eBook version – the more publishers and authors will make it a mainstream application
• No paper… saves so many rainforests.
• Makes reading a more intuitive and comfortable experience
• Product versioning – good for marketers.
• The future of book marketing
• And maybe the most important – one more happy customer.

So next time I am being notified that the book I was waiting for was published – please make it available for me however and whenever I want it.

How can you find a needle in the web’s haystack?

Endless availability (content, services, and social platforms) makes it difficult to sort out the noise. Using the web as an integral part of how we live – a web of life, overwhelms; world flattening is not without a price.

Information glut… a flood of web socializing platforms… makes attention our scarcest resource.

24 hours a day and no attention to spare.

Wealth of information creates scarcity of attention. How can I filter out the clutter, gate out irelevance  and optimize my ROA (return on attention)?

 Managing an attention economy in this monsoon of digital interactions is a major impasse for taking the evolving web experience into the next level.

 Personal relevance impasse – personal relevance is an anchor for making personal sense out of all the digital information and communication overpoud.  For enabling  a reasonable ROA ,what I interact with must be in my context, relevant to me, answering my needs, relevant to what I happen to be doing right now, in relation to my past activities, my social relations, my commercial relations… Today my relevance is balkanized in siloed sites, behind walled gardens of providers who struggle to keep me captive, as a means for their profit making mechanisms.

Privacy impasse – To have it in my context, I must expose private information. We were  led to believe that it is a necessary evil, which is for our own good.  I don’t like exposing, and even if I do, I must depend today on one sided privacy and trust management policies of providers. Do I trust them? Do they abuse this trust? Do they walk the walk or just talk the talk? Is there a real way for me to find out?

Portability impasse – Even with my limited trust, the relevant experience I can be provided with, is at best segmented and confined to the walled garden of a specific provider. And what about all the others? I cannot freely move between providers taking my accumulating context with me at my service wherever I go. What good is my profile in Amazon when I google a question? When change is the only constant, any rigid profile I might have with any provider, becomes obsolete the minute I leave the site. My versatile dynamics exceed by far any gated provider or community.

Adaptivity impasse- My freedom is furthered burdened by lack of spontaneity and intuitiveness. When I choose to go elsewhere, whenever I need to interact with something new, I need to learn how to operate it all anew. For my benefit they should be adapting to me, to my way of doing things. Why should I have to learn anew how to send mail for each mail system  and not have the system learn my  sending  mail habits?

These four elements limit today my ability to have a flowing web experience that will turn the web into “my web of life” and promise us, users,  a manageable attention economy.