GMail and Google Now were also prototyped in one day, as was Linux. The hard part is the years of refinement that come after that.
I guess the lesson to take is that big working systems are built on small working systems. You don't get a big system by envisioning the final result, finding someone to fund you, and getting lots of people to build it for you. You take the smallest possible first step, see if it works, and then learn from it and expand it.
What does 'prototyped in one day' mean in the context of Gmail? Was it just the UI (arguably the most important part in this case) or was it a minimal but functional POP3/SMTP/IMAP client?
I'm not doubting you claim, just wondering about the scope of it.
Paul Buchheit has more details in his Founders at Work interview, but basically the first version of GMail was a Perl script that grabbed his e-mail inbox and stuffed it into the Groups indexing engine, so that other people could search his e-mail. Version 2 was to let it search over their inbox instead of his, and Version 3 added the ability to send e-mail.
So it wasn't a "prototype of Gmail" so much as a hack that got people starting to think about storing mail on google technology stack.
It's really funny, that this is the story of the the beginning of Gmail, when the part of Gmail that caught the whole world's attention was the AJAX web UI. I had always assumed Bucheit was a DHTML whiz. Storing and indexing mail already was rather old hat.
Wait, is this a part of Gmail? "other people could search his e-mail." o_O
>So it wasn't a "prototype of Gmail" so much as a hack that got people starting to think about storing mail on google technology stack.
That's the very definition of a prototype. Prototype != early version of a product. For one, it's often written in another stack, to make it easier to iterate. Second, it's more often than not, thrown away on the road to the actual product code.
>Wait, is this a part of Gmail? "other people could search his e-mail." o_O
Well, maybe not people, but their Ad serving service can surely search your email.
I agree it's funny - for me at least, the search is the least interesting part of gmail. The search is crap. Which is to say, it is just as crappy as the search in all the desktop clients or other mail services I've used.
Right!
The app I am working on with a friend of mine was prototyped within 30-40 minutes at a coffee shop on a note book(it wasn't napkin and I keep a notebook in my day pack). We have not completed it yet. 1+ yr passed by and neither have we had to add much to the original idea and look/interface.
Because it was sth that we always wanted to use ourselves. It was a need that we felt. Okay, this should be like this and that like that. But working on it is tough! Because then comes the dirty little details. Making it happen usually too tough. Many give up, we might as well!
> ... we actually discovered something pretty fundamental that never been discovered about glasses, period
This is how companies get patents on obvious things. They didn't discover this.
I've been wearing glasses for nearly 30 years and have known for most of that that you can press down behind your ears and the weight seems to all disappear. Your ears don't notice it much, but your nose does.
Seems a bit of a bother to use chopsticks and the fishing line contraption. Since it's to test what the user experience is just get another person to watch the users gestures and click or touch the computer that's powering the display to translate those gestures in to pre defined actions. Would let you test all sorts of crazy things.
Interesting point about glasses in general. I wonder if there would be a market for small weights that attach to the arms behind the ears to make glasses feel lighter.
Interesting thing here: Google Glass could end up proving to be a really influential product, one that changes a lot of social patterns and app design.
This article seems to suggest that the core UX work could be replicated in a day, just by having normal engineers playing with clay and having a rough idea of what they want.
So, it seems to me, we must ask ourselves: how could you possibly justify patents for such a thing, given how simple it is to come up with?
>how could you possibly justify patents for such a thing, given how simple it is to come up with //
Patents are awarded on novel inventions. An argument goes that if a particular invention were so simple then why hasn't anyone done it already? Motivation, ability, recompense?
One response is the right-place, right-time, etc.. That's basically the answer that everything would be invented at some point.
However the patent system has an answer to that too - the disclosure of the invention is key to gaining the limited monopoly. Earlier disclosure, as the premise goes, is beneficial to the people of the state granting the monopoly. Thus even if the invention is simple - provided it's not "obvious" [in the domain specific meaning of the term] - then the reward is still being provided for a benefit.
But we then look at the fact that, for something that can take a single day to come up with, do we really think a limited monopoly of five or ten years is worth granting?
I think not. In fact, I think that the culture of hacking which has done so much good for this world pretty much demands immediate and unfettered access to the opportunity to play with these ideas.
That's the theory. In reality, how many patents are "high quality"? And how many people actually read them to find ideas, rather than to find ways to work around obstacles?
Sorry to go off topic, but interesting to see "subscribe via feedly" instead of Reader and "Notify me..." via email done through MailChimp (RSS to Newsletter) instead of Feedburner. Still makes me sad but good to see alternatives starting to be put out there.
My last chopsticks prototype was a "ultra-lightweight" tone-arm for an old turntable back in college, haha. I think it yielded significantly less useful results than this. Good ingenuity!
If you can prototype something in one day, that version is so brain dead as to not be any benefit as far as lessons leaned. That said, the "prototype" will still have promotional value.
I think the idea here is that by creating and using some simple physical models they were able to learn things that they wouldn't have thought about if they had kept everything in their heads. Even making a virtual model wouldn't have given them the user-experience information that they were looking for.
that is something I must learn. (/does a Mae-Pae beard curl) lol.
Anyways on a serious note, I for some reason, feel that though google glass would be a hit product, the concept is still lacking something important. I don't know what, but for some reason, I don't see myself, sticking to it, beyond a certain period of time.
The Attention aspect is being overlooked as well, no matter how good it can make our life, it would still require a lot of attention from me, like a heavy mental application of sorts.
I guess the lesson to take is that big working systems are built on small working systems. You don't get a big system by envisioning the final result, finding someone to fund you, and getting lots of people to build it for you. You take the smallest possible first step, see if it works, and then learn from it and expand it.