Is your business/product helping people waste or save time?

-
Most products/services either 
  • save you time
  • help you kill it
Its been a way I've amused myself and thought it was pretty obivous. But someone got a kick out of it when I explained it to them a couple of days ago, so here goes... 

The argument is broad enough so that with some mental and verbal gymnastics it can be made to apply to anything. Think about it: almost any product or business you use either helps you do things more efficiently or helps you kill time.

Cars: save you time
TV: helps you kill it
Google: saves you time
YouTube: helps you kill it

In essence, you're job is one of these things: its that simple: you're saving people time or helping them kill it (which is just as important, because life is hard!:))

Of course, its no fun unless you unnecessarily complicate the thought experiment!
 
Everything that helps you save time can be used to help you waste it

Cars: save you time, except when you're driving to the movies to waste it
Google: saves you time, except when you're searching for YouTube videos

Similarly things that can generally used to waste time can be used to help you save it

TV: helps you kill time, except when you're watching the educational show that teaches you something quickly.
YouTube: helps you kill time, expcept when you use it to communicate or learn something that's just easier via video

The job of designers, engineers and managers involves helping you either get more efficient (faster cars, navigation in em, better search results etc.) or waste time more efficiently (think about every new feature on YouTube or record/save/remind feature on TV) etc. etc.

Can you apply this to anything you're working on? Before you waste too much time on thinking this through, I know its a silly argument, but I still enjoy it so there...:)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A short love letter to ~8 years on Google Search - 8 things I’m grateful for.

-
  After a few weeks off, I started a new gig within Google yesterday and it hit me that for the first time in almost eight years I won’t be working on some part of Google Search. Eight years ago, I told the team when I was interviewing that I was “looking for a place to call home for a while and grow there”. My experiences here more than met that need.  I used to write a regular “10 things about…” listy column for a while at a college newspaper. So in that style here’s 8 things (one for each year) I feel grateful to have experienced/learned in this time. Also, like that column which I banged out the night before it was due, this post is something that I don’t need to do, yet I feel somehow compelled to do (and so it’ll likely be longer and less crisp than it should be :-))    It actually is awesome to work on something so many people use and love, and that positively touches people’s lives. There’s a talk I give externally about Search and a line I often end up using is how the mission
Read more

Why don't you love Chocos, America?

-
Image
A few days ago I had the following conversation with a customs agent at San Francisco airport - as an Indian returning from India I get sent to the customs line even when I check "No food" on the customs form. :-) Agent: "Any food?" Me: "No" Agent: "Sure? No jira or cadipatta ? Me : "No....     well actually I do have a box of cereal." Agent: "Huh. What? Really?" Me: "Yes. Its a brand you don't get here." Agent: "Seriously. Even in the Indian stores? I've never heard that before." Me: "Ummm....yeah." I love reading local customization stories, particularly about how international chains tailor their offerings to local markets - the food industry has the best examples of these - check out this McDonald's story about the McPaneer , or how KFC is incredibly successful in China . But I seem to have missed that the customization extended to breakfast cereal. Turns out the
Read more

What might Twitter and/or Facebook have cost us if they were invented earlier (or should some things stay deliberately un-social?)

-
Image
So I was reading an ebook last week, and came across a quote that I liked. My first thought wasn't "I should write this down" , it was "I want to tweet this." My ebook reading software wasn't equipped for it, and it wasn't trivial to do so I didn't, but I expect most ebook reading software will be updated to do this in the next couple of releases and probably encourage me to as well. Why should reading be left behind? Twitter is already saving live TV . As I look back on the last week watching the Cricket World Cup , a huge part of it for me was watching my Twitter and Facebook feeds for reactions and being part of them. My parents were the only ones that actually called me during the match, but I felt connected to so many more people through FB and the Big T . Wether you're shopping, eating out, playing games, even searching ... apparently "everything gets better with social." We all have a very human, internal urge to express ours
Read more