This is not yet another post about the Beijing Summer Olympics and its technologies. This post will focus in one thing and one thing only: THE EXPERIENCE CONTINUUM, and for such I will use the Olympics to illustrate my points.
Let's face it: this thing is bigger than just its technologies!
Just before the games started, a myriad of articles, posts and rants went around the web about what technologies were in use by what broadcaster and what technology was winning the medal of ubiquity across devices.
I wondered, - uh that's interesting?!
I waited.
Days passed by and the rants continued on what technology was best 'cause it had or not millions of an install base already around the world and for sure was THE WAY to enjoy the games.
Others talked about how one technology was in use for live streaming and a different one for Video-On-Demand, and another one for written content.
Others plainly didn't talk and became automatic winners.
I thought to meself - it's funny that nobody seems to focus in the big picture. They go nuts on details that at the end probably are not the key factors people will define their experiences by, who's the winner and who could came closer.
I waited for someone to focus on such experience. That such a thing that enables content to shine under these technologies! The platform.
They didn't come... oh wait... here is one!
Experience: the source
It's past mid-2008. We measure stuff by how cool or simple its experience is. How we interact with the content at hand and how we get what we want... sometimes not what we need... but that's the point, isn't it?... sometimes!
The iPhone lacks a big pile of features that its siblings from Nokia and WinMo-based devices have had for years, yet we still make hours of lines to get one.
Isn't the Wii a similar example?
We have came to a point in time where we ought to deliver the best experience to our customer's content, to our own content. Such task is accomplished by the selection of certain technologies, the right measure of mix between them and, the experience that surrounds them.
The Olympics, probably better than any other content generator this year, was an opportunity to excel the experience of content delivery, discovery and entertainment education.
You got to get to the source of the experience and build upon. Sometimes in the most ridiculous way, sometimes in the most strategic one... but it's that what keeps the experience from been an extension of the reality and not just another way for the same.
Experience: the soul
Experience is not only the new black!... it is the new differentiation foundation that defines who gets to keep playing the game and who sadly moves down.
Amen, technology is nowadays as ubiquitous as it could have been in the last decade, yet we still build monolithic experiences based on single source technologies and we think that's the way.
Just as Mark Cuban wrote earlier on a blog post titled "The Platform is the Message",
If programmers understand that people will watch different programs on different platforms, we can stop playing the game of trying to replace TV.
He wrote commenting on the Olympics' impact of the Internet over TV broadcasting. I'd say his approach applies just as well to today's content experiences. We should stop at trying replacing the desktop and yet focus on empowering better experiences across the message.
We need to understand that different platforms have different missions and the experience should be designed to make the most of it, not just replicating 100% of ones functionality for the sake of doing so, but implementing those that fit natural under the scenario in question.
Experience: the continuum
Back in March at MIX 08, Microsoft's Ray Ozzie talked about how a continuum of user experiences can be a powerful lever to differentiate the products and services we offer via the Web, and how technologies will organically sync to enable such experiences across the different platforms. (check out the keynote here)
Adobe with its Open Screen Project is pushing for making the Flash platform an ubiquitous delivery foundation across a myriad of devices, just as they currently are for the Desktop Browser. Microsoft has had its part porting the .NET framework wherever the different flavors of Windows are enabled, and now we see Google, Nokia and Apple joining the arena as well.
This is the part of enabling!
By looking at these companies' strategies I can assure that we as developers, designers and technologist have at our disposal a great wave of possibilities to extent the experiences of our products and customers. But it is as well our responsibility to excel on the possibilities and deliver the best of to all universes tailoring our solutions to the different components of our own experience hub.
Enabling such continuum means we need to put in use the best suited technology for each scenario, such technology can be the same across the board or it might not; hence the very focus should come at its collaborative execution of the chosen ones with a general, yet powerful infrastructure... say a cloud infrastructure... say a powerful mesh of services behind that powers the best of experiences to the user, wherever he needs to have access to it.
The NBC Olympics Experience
I was lucky enough to watch closely the development of one of the key pillars of the NBC Olympics Experience: the Silverlight HD Video Player. This, I think, was a real hit for Microsoft, NBC and Schematic; who teamed to work with a really talented set of people to create an immersive experience of a never ending source of videos, information and sports!
NBC added to its live broadcasting services an online strategy set to change the course of sports covering and online video delivery for the years to come.
This video experience was just one in a set of developments that NBC had planned to use such mission.
NBCOlympics.com was set to be the main portal. Here technologies such as Flash, Silverlight, XHTML and AJAX lived and enable a mash up of information, widgets, ads, news... content! All suited in the best manner possible.
For an end user there is not recognition or importance on what is enabled by who or what... they just go in and enjoy of the media that has been prepared by a team of journalists, producers and more for them to consume in the best manner. It just works!
From this site you can launch the video player, widgets, dig in to news, articles and more, all maintaining the great continuum of the experience in and out the desktop and the TV.
Such experience was also extended by a Media Center Application called NBC On the Go, that enabled a more personalized video experience delivered to those with a Media Center-enabled computer and within the geo-locking boundaries of the U.S.
Mobile you say? Why then point your iPhone or any other mobile browser to NBCOlympics.com and you will get your own mobile summarized experience. Tailored to the constrains of the majority of such devices; yet maintaining its mission to communicate.
The experience was ONE across the different properties and enabled by different technologies!
One more thing...
Not all is perfect and as such one has to be open to the realities of the business. NBC has been praised for the technology means it put on demand for people to access the content they made available and whenever they wanted to make it available - here is where they missed the ball.
And with this we just add a final variable to the experience equation:
there is just so much as what technology can do to support the vision of a company, the rest... well it comes to the strategy of the business behind it... without it any great effort and technology will go unseen and direct to the bottom of the memoirs.
A continuum experience is set to be the reality of a lot of business; with access to the diversity of connected devices today, it is already natural for us to expect availability of our services across them all; it is our responsibility to make the most out of them!
Peace!
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