Tag Archives: Adoption

Adobe Open Screen Project – reality check.

Posted on by Scott Barnes
2

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Despite what some folks in the Adobe community think, I’m actually still a big fan of Flash and what it represents. I do however hold Adobe up to a much higher standard than I did with Microsoft, as for me they have shown endless amounts of potential but have in my opinion squandered through either in-fighting or misalignment with the rest of the industry.

I’ve read a many a post on the “Open Screen Project” and whilst the concept of putting Flash Runtime on multiple devices etc is quite an appealing concept, I just don’t see them pulling it off beyond a few million units here and there. It’s a reality check that I think a lot of the Adobe staff need to take a step back and review.

Putting Flash on the iPhone or vNext desktop device is the easy part and I don’t think a lot of companies are realistically against that idea on it’s own. They would be typically skeptical of the technical dependency when you start too look beyond the “Open” PR spin and start focus on the tooling and ecosystem surrounding it.

Adobe just don’t have the developer numbers to support a sophisticated ecosystem it requires. There are a lot of exceptionally talented programmers in the Adobe community, some of which are fighting well above their weight – these however aren’t the majority. Adobe needs more of a groundswell of developers, ones that typically hail from either .NET, PHP or JAVA as their previous breeding ground. To date, they haven’t yielded that as fast as they should/could.

Adobe have been plagued with getting their community to move from ActionScript 1.0 and 2.0 over to ActionScript 3.0 and for the past 2-3 years that’s been a campaign of there’s in motion (i.e. being a little more aggressive in ensuring future roadmaps lock the next generation of ActionScript etc into place, essentially what I call a “duress adoption”). They’ve also recently started picking up on the reality that Microsoft fears daily, PHP has become the 800lb gorilla. There are quite a groundswell of PHP developers out there who don’t typically favor Adobe or Microsoft in a lot of ways and are more than happy to punch out solutions built in a HTML/CSS/JavaScript sandbox.

So why me, someone with little PHP experience? I’ve always felt like evangelism is about growing your developer community and developer relations is about helping the community you have – Ryan Stewart, Adobe Evangelist.

Adobe needs to court these folks and fast, as if they can get these folks to switch gears into the Adobe community lifestyle, they in turn and increase there developer base in a much more significant way than they have in the past by pounding at the Java and/or .NET developer doors.

Assuming they fix the Developer base, they next need to convince OEM manufacturers that their tooling isn’t the liability in this equation. I say that, as whilst its fun and 10x more productive to build Flash based solutions via Adobe specific tooling, this in turn creates effectively a liability in around the concept of being “”Open”. It’s not really Open, its more of a half-hatched Open concept, as producing a SWF outside Adobe tooling is actually not a likely thing to occur in the industry. The reason being is, whilst you can technically make your own SWF, you are still required to fall into line with Adobe’s roadmap and vision of where it all heads.

Implementing software which creates SWF files has always been permitted, on the condition that the resulting files render "error free in the latest publicly available version of Adobe Flash Player." – Wikipedia.com

Point is, that whilst their intentions are righteous and feel open, you have to face reality that this is just shifting the boundaries on a total lock-in and instead of declaring the Runtime and File Format as completely locked, its really the tooling story behind it is where the money tree begins. After all, Adobe aren’t in this business for free, they have shareholders and a $3billion+ fiscal profit expectation to meet.

The tooling component to this equation is really the bottleneck as could you imagine what would happen if say ActionScript 3.0 and Flash were solutions that a Visual Studio .NET developer could write inside the said tooling? It would have a huge impact on both sides of the isle roadmaps that’s for sure.

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Silverlight is creating a mutant designer who can code.

Posted on by Scott Barnes
25

I look over the past 3-4 years in around the RIA industry and just chuckle at times to myself. I say this with all the appropriate levels of respect attached.

The reason I chuckle is that prior to Microsoft i was laser focused on getting developers to adopt Adobe Flex as we had an abundance of Designers in the Adobe community but less developers. Once I joined Microsoft, I was then focused on getting designers to join the Microsoft ranks as we had an abundance of developers.

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Today, nothing really has changed much. As when I was a Product Manager for Silverlight, I think we last announced there was around half a million (there about) Silverlight developers, which for a product that’s roughly 20+ months old, is about 4:1 on Flex Developers give or take. Yet, before we all start whooping and high fiving one another about the success of SIlverlight over Adobe’s products, they would have about 5x as many designers in their ranks compared to Silverlight which would have probably a design audience measured in thousands and not hundreds of thousands.

I’m yet to see any evidence that this stand-off is likely to change radically in the next 2-5 years either, except there seems to be a change in the wind that I was hopeful would happen but skeptical at the same time. It turns out Silverlight is igniting a lot of design passion within the ranks of the Silverlight developer community – meaning, I am seeing some interesting signs of developers wanting to learn “design” albeit also “user experience”.

Can they design though?

Everyone can design, as when you were children you were told to draw a house with clouds, you did so and sure it made your parents happy enough to put it on the family fridge, but is it a realistic house that can withstand the elements such as a sun with eyes?…no.. but you designed. As you began to age towards adulthood for some reason you stopped drawing. The passion in a nutshell, was depreciated from within you.

Designers however kept it alive and continued to learn new techniques and slowly over time mastered ways to explore the concept of design more. That’s why they see things differently in the world than most and can bend your ear on the subject in ways you think they are likely smoking crack.

Today, lets face it, the design audience isn’t exactly pounding down the Microsoft Expression door, this in turn has created a discipline that needs to be filled and as such more and more developers are stepping up to fill it. They will in turn need guidance and better techniques on how to pull off the design part and it will take some time for them to master this art form. In the process I think this will also be a more vibrant unbiased beacon for the design audience to flock towards as in order for the developer audience to fill such a position, they will seek out more designers for help. As the design audience begins to help them, they will in turn also begin the journey of understanding what’s before them and hopefully it will stick.

Thus as Yoda would say:

“the cycle it will, repeat itself it may”.

Point is, at some point we will have a displaced audience that sit between the words design and develop they in turn will be the influencers on why Silverlight should be adopted. Today’s developer is tomorrows designer, so we who consider themselves of the design lineage need to show kindness and patience towards these folks. As they in turn will also show us faster and more efficient techniques to also carry out interactive design.

Next time you hear a developer say “I can’t design” correct them and say “You mean you haven’t the passion to try design” as this is a more correct response.

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What does a potential Silverlight Adoption Lifecycle look like?

Posted on by Scott Barnes
Reply

I’ve been working in this industry since i left high school back in 1995, and I often think about my journey to date and how I’ve adopted a technology. I then as a Product Manager on the Silverlight Team constantly try and put myself in you, the adoptee’s shoes. I’m constantly thinking about what it takes for you to adopt and what are the motivational events that have impacted you along your journey.

The below is my own personal experience / observation of the industry in general. It doesn’t stop at Silverlight either as prior to Microsoft I watched folks do the same with Macromedia Flash and then Macromedia Flex.

Not to mention AJAX and so on, even HTML! – yes, I watched the birth of HTML unfold into what is now a commercial entity known as oxygen ;) .

The Adoption Curve.

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Contact. You’ve found the word Silverlight fly past your senses, you’ve not pinned down what it is but its the talk of the town

Awareness. You just finished reading something about it and have a somewhat bit of knowledge in and around what it’s capable of doing.

Understanding. You just finished a tutorial, training session or brown bag, overall you’ve got what we commonly call a “basic” understanding of the product.

Evaluation. You’re now writing a quick prototype of a project you’ve thought about making in Silverlight. You’re still unsure, but the product has captured your interest levels.

Trial Usage. You’ve built a first draft of your Silverlight solution, and you’re essentially shopping it around for feedback and help you up sell / include this into your peer’s technology radar.

Adoption.You’ve built your Silverlight solution and are ready to deploy, you’ve troubleshooted your way through learning the product and are now what we would call an “Adoptee”.

Institutionalization Your solution is in play, you’re now thinking about the next release or next project, you’re well on your way to success and have either a positive or negative feeling towards the brand.

The Learning Curve.

I’ve often thought about the whole competitive story around what it takes to adopt a technology. I know I’ve personally learnt more technologies than i thought my long-term memory could contain, but none the less they are there, crammed deep within the dark matter of which i call my brain (Java, PHP, C#, ActionScript, Flex, XAML, XSD, Maya, VRML etc).

The reason I do think about the competitive nature of technology is that in many ways when you read a Flash vs. Silverlight style post (insert Apple vs. Microsoft etc) it at times reads as if that technologists are easily conned into adopting a technology they’ve never used before.

In that the x number of years they’ve spent nurturing their chosen technology could easily be diverted to the new shiny toy that they have before them.

I put it to you that, folks aren’t that easily swayed, that often its simply a case of a number of factors. They are:

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Boredom.You’ve been using X technology for the past N years. You’re essentially peeked in terms of all that you want – not can – learn from the said technology. It’s time you explored your horizons and shop around for what’s the latest & greatest, that or research an old technology simply because of the nostalgic geeky cool flavor it brings to your technology palette.

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Goldrush.You’ve seen how much others are making off the Y-Technology and you’re keen to get some of that action. You are motivated my greed, but that’s ok, as in the end getting a leg up in life is fair game. You typically would of probably ignored this technology in the past, but all the other kids are doing it, so you’re essentially force fitting yourself to the adoption.

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Duress.You didn’t want to adopt, but you’re forced to due to a project you’re working on or about to. You start off in a negative state, in a duress state. You’re constantly trying to marry your existing skills over to this new technology but are finding it a rough road to follow. Eventually you figure it out and have an overall negative / positive emotion around the technology. It’s at this point you decide to either continue to pursue the adoption or abandon and retreat back to your preferred X-Technology of choice.

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Curiosity.You’re neither bored or motivated by gold / project. You’re simply one of those people who love to explore no matter what the technology. To you, technology is about the art of creation and problem solving and you tinker with them like someone explores a music library – all music is good, it just depends on the listener.

Summary.

There are different motivational reasons as to why someone adopts. There is no one fits all approach, and given in today’s IT environment there are so many moving parts to keep track of, it’s not an easy thing anymore.

In the old days, I remember learning Delphi vs Visual Basic. I choose Delphi simply because I couldn’t grok the VB way of code, to me the Delphi seemed more natural. Delphi didn’t get the uptake as much as VB did, so what happened?

Companies like Adobe, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Sun etc all have an offering to provide you all. The main mission overall is to highlight the technologies strength, divert from the weakness and encourage you to at least get as far as the Understanding stage in the life cycle. From there its entirely up to you, as that’s where the freedom of choice really kicks in (there is only so much a company can market).

It’s from here that you decide based on merit and personal experience (aka Time vs. Commitment) and ultimately this is the true test for these companies. As for us in Silverlight this is where if were to take a pulse at your confidence level, you’d tell us data that I’d rate as pure signal. As this ultimately for us is the tipping point of success vs. failure for the product as its our job to make sure you understand what the product is, ensure it’s easy to learn and lastly reassure you that you’re not alone – as nobody likes to actually bleed when it comes to bleeding edge adoption.

Is that all?

Next Post, how the human mind absorbs the adoption lifecycle, lets dig into cognitive science. The new fad i like to call “Cognitive Load Theory”, as once you fully understand how the human mind works and ways to seed information in both short-term and long-term memory, it gets really interesting… well for me anyway.

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