Sender

We need experts who take care of this. Experts who stop coding and start communicating. Who could that be? Well, there is more than one group that can benefit from professional marketing. Open Source Software needs it. Creative Commons, too. And even for the whole bunch of people out there, commonly referred to as ‘hackers’, a better definition of what a hacker is and does would come in handy. Somewhere in these groups, we have to find our communicators, to start broadcasting the message. But wait? What message?

Message

On the 23rd Chaos Communication Congress (23C3), I learned about Valerie Hoh’s vision in her lecture Why OpenSource Needs Professional Marketing:

We would [Open Source Software] to be recognized by everyone and make sure that those who are concerned – computer users of this world – at least have an idea, what FOSS is, what free operating systems and free desktops are, and what advantages that kind of software can give them. We want everybody to see what good FOSS can do for them.

That’s the big picture. A big picture is good for us to better understand what we’d like to achieve. But the people we want to address don’t care about a big picture. They need small, tangible pieces of information. Or even better: emotion. Just like good marketing works (as far as I know). Great, this leaves us with two problems:
First, we’re all tech people. Tech people don’t care about marketing. And marketing people don’t care about tech. If you know exceptions from this rule (or if you even consider yourself to BE one), you should start acting now and get in touch!
Second, if we had a gun, who should we start at shooting? Good marketing always carefully defines a target. If the target is large, you hardly miss, but there won’t be any effect. If the target is small, you can affect it adversely, but hitting it becomes really hard. So who’s our target?

Receiver

If we want to influence, we need to better understand who we want to influence. We have to put our source code away for a moment and start listening. What are your requirements? What would you like to achieve? How do you think, customer? We have to understand our users. And this time it’s not your coding colleague, you’re talking to. It’s the kind of guy that asks questions like “What is a ‘[server|operating system|browser]‘?” (Better prepare for worst case)
There is hope! Something’s happening: Corinna Habets aka palas brought usability to the hacker crowd in her 23C3 lecture How To Design A Decent User Interface. One of her key arguments is:

For average users the UI practically _is_ the application (i.e. as much as we may wish to, they don’t care whether it’s programmed well, only if they can use it)

Although usability is not marketing, it is an important change in the mindset of how to treat the average user. And good marketing can join in right where usability gets focused.
The main challenge for our communicators will be leaving the comfort zone and start to build rapport with the average user. With those people who in general don’t read our blogs, don’t attend our conferences but still use our products. So how can we reach them?

Medium

Do we need lots of money to get open source software into television or big newspapers (or pick any other expensive media here)? Well, there certainly is an opportunity in this approach. But I don’t think it’s necessary. Even the marketing sector has a slight feeling of uncertainty, if above-the-line media is the best tool to do marketing with. They’re not telling anyone, but they’re looking for something more effective.
Have you heard what’s going on in the marketing space, recently? I read about blog marketing, viral marketing, guerrilla marketing. Hey, they’re using our tools and technologies! Maybe they’re not that far away from our thoughts and principles? Is there a common ground, we can start from?
If there’s one industry which I believe comes next in the evolution of free culture to turn free, it probably is – considering the conversion of journalism as already completed – marketing. Individuals create their own blogs, podcasts and videos. Popular platforms like YouTube provide the infrastructure to distribute that content. This can and already is used for marketing purposes.

Communicate!

Looks like all we need for professional marketing is available for reasonable cost: little money and a lot of work. Just as we’re used to in the Open Source world.
So if you’re…

• a software developer, creating open source software
• a content creator, believing in free culture
• a marketing professional, interested in open source

there’s an opportunity for you to take: Get in touch with each other and tell this world something about freedom!

1. Saving

Nearly every big app has a save button. Why? Why isn’t the application responsible to make sure that the current version of my document in memory is always in sync with the version on disk? We only believe saving is an important task because we’re used to malfunctions that simply shouldn’t happen.
I’m just typing this into WriteRoom, which doesn’t have a save button. And I really don’t miss it.

2. Versioning

After reading #1 you might come up with an argument like: “What if I want to restore an old version of my document?” This is a good point. And using a save button to accomplish this is a hack that shouldn’t be necessary. Every good application can undo/redo your actions. And a really good application like Eclipse even gives you a good interface to restore older versions of your documents.

3. Applying

One reason why I love Mac OS is that it gets setting preferences right. In Windows after changing a configuration option I always wondered why the hell I have to click on an OK button. If I change the option, you can be pretty sure that I would like to see it changed immediately. I might change my mind after seeing the difference. But I’m certainly not going to change my mind while the mouse pointer moves from changing the option to an OK button. I’m about to write another paragraph about the importance of an “Apply” button, but I guess you got my point already.
The system preferences in Mac OS X all change options immediately. There are no OK buttons. And again it’s a button I don’t miss.

4. Connecting

Ok, this one needs the right infrastructure. I’m looking forward to a world where network access is available everywhere and you don’t have to bother with configurations or settings. Your computer is just online whenever you want it to be. In fact, we already live in such a world with WiFi hotspots or mobile network access nearly everywhere.
There are already some applications that try to find the best connection alternative (Ethernet, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPRS, etc.) available. The problem today is that we have to define “best” in terms of either speed or cost.

5. Compressing

When moving data from A to B, we can save a lot of bandwidth and therefore time using compression algorithms. Still, we deal with ZIPs, RARs, DMGs, etc. ourselves. We compress it before sending it, we decompress it after downloading it. When I send some file somewhere, you can be sure you’re doing nothing wrong if you automatically compress it using some loss-less compression algorithm the recipient can decompress.
Safari automatically decompresses downloaded ZIP files. Very handy.

6. Encrypting

This is very similar to compression in #5. Encryption will only become a widely used practice, if it becomes transparent.
The common operating systems all offer some functionality to transparently encrypt your data. But this is still not default. Again, performance can’t be an issue here. Talking about moving data again, messaging apps like Skype transparently encrypt your messages in the background by default.

7. Converting

Do you also hate it when you download music (legally, of course) and the downloaded file is encoded in a format your mobile player doesn’t understand? I perfectly understand that it’s neither possible to build a player that accepts all formats nor is it possible to make everyone use a single standard encoding format. But why not making the applications that download the file and that transfer it to the device agreeing on a format they both understand, and transparently convert it?
This crappy DRM stuff of course makes this even more complicated if not impossible. But we – the users – already knew in the beginning, that DRM and usability are pointing in two entirely different directions.

These seven examples show how transparency could make using our computers much simpler. Do you have additional ideas what should become transparent? Please leave a comment and let us know!

Design is important.

To some users functionality might be everything. Such users surely can do without eye candy. In the Linux world this attitude seems to be very common. But if Linux wants to broaden its user base, Linux developers have to consider design as an important factor. Obviously some developers finally jumped on the bandwagon. Which I really believe is great. But there is an aftertaste.
I think it’s save to say that Mac OS X has been leading the pack in showing what’s possible. Windows Vista and Linux clearly reproduce some of the features of OS X. That’s fine. They try to do it in a different way, they try to add something new, they try to create something even better. That’s exactly how good optimization works: take the already well designed parts and develop them further. But what sounds like a simple concept can get out of control very fast.
Some expert developers start to blow the design factor out of all proportions. They understood that Linux needs a better appearance, and with their expert knowledge about the graphic libraries they show the audience what’s technically possible. Think about wobbling windows and turning 3D cube desktops. Then they ask: “Doesn’t this look so much greater than Apple’s effects?”
If you’ve seen XGL in action, you have to admit – even as a hardcore Apple fan – the effects are impressive. And yes, they leave Apple behind. But while the graphics gurus are busy showing their impressive capabilities, and the techies praise the results, the standard user leans back and asks “Why?”

Beauty contest.

When Steve Jobs presented Spaces as one of the new features of Leopard at Apple’s WWDC 2006, he earned mixed reactions. Spaces finally integrates virtual desktops into Mac OS and allows you to comfortably switch between them. A feature Linux distributions had built-in for years and third party software offering virtual desktops for Windows and OS X has been available for quite some time.
The visual effect while switching from one virtual desktop (aka ‘Space’) to another is a simple animation: the screen gently slides into the direction of the Space you’ve selected. This is a beautiful effect, but honestly, it isn’t going to blow anyone away. Least of all if you’ve just experienced XGL in action. XGL with its impressive rotating 3D cube desktops clearly wins the beauty contest.
But are we in a beauty contest here?

More than eye candy.

There’s another aspect which makes the difference between good visual effects and great visual effects: Great visual effects are more than just eye candy. And this is where Mac OS still excels Linux, Vista and every spinning 3D cube around. Great visual effects tell a user what’s happening. And they can do it in a much better way than any status bar or dialog box can.
When switching between Spaces in Leopard, the sliding animation tells the user: Your desktop is bigger than your screen. I’m showing you only a portion of your screen. And with the strike of a key, you can move the currently visible portion to another part of the desktop.
The visual effect puts the user’s action into a bigger context. It tells a story. It intuitively explains Spaces better than any paragraph in a user manual could ever do. And this is what separates the beautiful from the well-designed. I wonder how intuitively a spinning 3D cube or wobbling windows feel to the average user? And what story do they tell?
Apple’s designers know how to use visual effects for effective communication. This starts with the shaking login box after a failed login attempt. It continues with the zooming out effect for Expose, giving you a bird’s eye view of your apps – literally. And it reaches the latest climax with another new feature of Leopard: Time Machine. I’ve never seen a better way of telling a non-techie what a backup is, and what it can do for you.

Conclusion.

If you’re a developer keen to test the limits of visual effects in operating systems, I suggest: keep going! Bring beauty to the desktop! It’s great. We need it. Linux needs it. But tell a story with your effects. Help us understand what your application does. And please stop wasting time for this mine’s-more-beautiful-than-yours-game.
Who do you like more: Someone who wins a beauty contest? Or someone who can tell a story?
For me it’s quite simple: I’d like to have…
…both.