Learn, Make, Learn
Learn, Make, Learn is two product geeks sharing qualitative & quantitative perspectives to help you make, better. Hosted by Ernest Kim and Joachim Groeger.
Learn, Make, Learn
Toolbox: Raymond Loewy & the MAYA Principle
Ernest & Joachim go deep on Raymond Loewy’s MAYA Principle: what it is & why it matters, with real world examples of MAYA in action, and what can happen when product teams fail to take the principle to heart.
FOLLOW-UPS – 01:00
Toolbox: How “Jobs To Be Done” Can Help You Make, Better
Fortis Marinemaster
A BRIEF INTRO TO RAYMOND LOEWY – 06:04
MoMA on Raymond Loewy
60 Minutes: Raymond Loewy, Father of Industrial Design
LOEWY’S MAYA PRINCIPLE – 09:07
The MAYA Principle in Design
The iPhone only exists because Steve Jobs ‘hated this guy at Microsoft’
Phil Knight: Shoe Dog
How One Designer Saved Tesla From Bankruptcy TWICE
IS MAYA INHERENTLY CONSERVATIVE? – 19:36
Apple and the MAYA Principle
Remembering Apple’s Newton, 30 years on
MUST BE ROOTED IN EMPATHY & COMPASSION – 24:44
Raymond Loewy and the Skylab Window
APPLICATIONS BEYOND PRODUCT – 28:20
The Secret Tesla Motors Master Plan (via Wayback Machine)
BMW Is a Surprise Winner in Electric Vehicles (paywall)
Goodbye to the BMW i3—an Icon of the 21st Century (paywall)
The Newton Messagepad was Well Ahead of its Time
General Magic documentary
Intellectual Distance, Novelty, and Resource Allocation in Science
RECOMMENDATIONS – 42:48
Patrick McGee: Apple in China
Hidden Forces podcast: Patrick McGee
EBL rechargeable AA batteries (link to Wirecutter review)
CLOSING – 49:34
****
Rant, rave or otherwise via email at LearnMakeLearn@gmail.com or on Threads @LearnMakeLearnShow.
CREDITS
Theme: Vendla / Today Is a Good Day / courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com
Drum hit: PREL / Musical Element 85 / courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com
Hello and welcome to Learn Make Learn where we share qualitative and quantitative perspectives on products to help you make better. name is Ernest Kim and I'm joined by my friend and co-host Joachim Groeger. Hey, Joachim, how's it going?
Joachim:I'm good. I'm just coming off a two week vacation, so I am in a very happy place. Well actually like relaxed place, but now I have to get back to work, so I don't know how I feel about that anymore, but yeah, it's nice. The sun is out here in Seattle, so that's good. Yeah. How about you, Ernest?
Ernest:yeah. Yeah. Good, good On my end, actually, um, my wife is away, uh, as of today visiting her parents. So, uh, I'm living the bachelor life, at least, uh, for the next week and a half. Uh, me and the cats,
Joachim:You and the cats? Yeah. Wait, are the, are the cats all boys as well?
Ernest:Oh no. Two boys and one girl.
Joachim:Okay. So kind of a bro fest, but not completely.
Ernest:Yeah. it is. Yeah. Well. to today's episode. This is actually episode 28, and, uh, today we're gonna bring you our second toolbox episode. Our first was way back in episode three, where we discussed the jobs to be done approach to customer centric product and service innovation. just as a refresher, the idea behind these toolbox episodes is to highlight tools that we hope will help you in your day-to-day work of making products. Today our focus is the Maya principle, was an approach to, uh, graphic and product design established by Raymond Loewy, who's broadly considered the figure most responsible for establishing industrial design as a commercial profession. But before we dive into Maya, we wanted to share a follow up to our previous episode. You wanna dive into that?
Joachim:Well, last time we were talking about watches and a friend and listener had to brag about his watch that he had just acquired. Uh, and, uh, so I said, well, I'll give it a, I'll give it a shout out. So it's, uh, watched by the company Fortis, F-O-R-T-I-S, which has been around for, well, well over a hundred years. They were founded in 1912 or so. Their history is kind of interesting. They've always been viewed as a lower end budget friendly, uh, watch manufacturer. But, um, there's some interesting heritage there. So well, first self winding wristwatch was made by Fortis. Yeah. So, um, the company was founded by Walter Vogt. Uh, and then he set up production with John Harwood, who was the inventor of the automatic wristwatch. And then he then released this Harwood Automatic, which was the first self winding wristwatch, uh, which was introduced in 1926 at Basel World.
Ernest:Wow.
Joachim:and, uh, yeah, so, which is crazy. I, I didn't, I didn't realize, I don't think it's something that they, they play up very much. Um. And they also were one of the first manufacturers to work on getting waterproof, uh, wristwatches. So, so a lot of firsts from this company. Um, they also were one of the first companies that were thinking about watches that could stand up to extreme weather conditions, temperature fluctuations with their space matters. Uh, the watch was tested by people on the space program, the US Space program, and then since 1994, they've been the official, uh, watch for the Russian Federal Space Agency. Um, so also kind of a interesting connection to space, kind of like Omega with their speed masters. Um, so I, I just didn't, I didn't know about this, but unfortunately they went bankrupt, uh, in the late two thou. Oh, well, late 2010s. So about almost 10 years ago in 2017, they were basically. Done. And the company was then taken over by a private investor, uh, yup. Philip, JUPP Philip. And he was just a fan of the brand and, uh, clearly as a man of some means, and was able to buy up the company and, uh, renamed it for his watches ag as opposed to forties for the, you know, turning a little bit more international. And they've relaunched the, their watches. And so my friend has a Marinemaster, which is of course everything with masters. Always gonna be loaded with stuff. But the watch he showed me is a diving watch, very subtle, very tastefully done, uh, wears nicely on the wrist and I was really impressed with the finishing on it. It's a pretty impressive, uh, piece of equipment and it's about$3,200. It's a really it functional tool watch and one that you could have as your everyday. If you want something that's more elevated than just a Casio or something like that, this is definitely a watch. That's great. So I think the brand is very interesting. Uh, I would, we'll put a link into the website. The Marine Master is one of many of their line of watches. They also, of course make pilots watches that are really interesting. So there's heritage there and very interesting clean design. So that aesthetic is very much just trying to be. Tool watches that are not flashy, uh, very wearable and very usable. And yeah, I rate the aesthetic is, is a pretty, pretty cool watch when I was holding it in my hand. So yeah. For as a follow up to our watches and wonders discussion about the excesses of luxury, which is exactly what my firm was talking about, it's like, well, I've got, here's a watch for you that's not excessive, overpriced,
Ernest:Yeah,
Joachim:very wearable and very smart looking. So yeah, Fortis,
Ernest:that's great. I, I've only seen images, but it looks great in pictures. I, I, Fortis has been a bit of a blind spot for me, so
Joachim:same.
Ernest:with it. So, um, it was great to see that I.
Joachim:Yeah. Shout out to Ben. Thank you for sharing.
Ernest:That's awesome. Alright, well now let's get into the Maya principle. uh, with a quick background around the man behind it. Raymond Loewy, born in Paris in 1893. Loewy immigrated to New York in uh, 1919. And in a career that spanned decades, he would come to be known as the man who shaped America and the father of industrial design. am quoting here from a brief biography from the Museum of Modern Art in New York. And, uh, we'll include a link to the full version in the show notes. But, uh, here's their biography. So quote, firm Raymond Loewy Associates, was associated with a steady stream of US design icons, including the cold spot refrigerator. Lucky Strike cigarette packaging, Greyhound Buses, Studebaker Cars, Coca-Cola dispensers, radios, sewing machines, and Rosenthal Dinnerware, well as corporate graphics for Exxon Shell and the US Postal Service. This range testified to the potential impact of industrial design on the daily lives of millions and its power as a commercial tool. Loewy understood how essential package design and branding could be in the success of a product or an organization. In this respect, one of his most potent designs was for John f Kennedy's Air Force One, which began flying in 1962. His modern and elegant design of the plane's delivery transformed this particular Boeing 7 0 7 into an important element of the Kennedy Administration's global brand. just a quick side note here for me, Loewy's livery continues to define the appearance of Air Force One to this day. All right. Now going back to MoMA's biography in his late career, Loewy was again at the heart of the American establishment as a consultant to nasa his firm produced more than 3000 designs for space related products Uh, at the same time, despite intense rivalry between the American and Soviet Union superpowers during the height of the Cold War, Loewy also designed prototypes for a range of industrial products at the request of the Soviet State. The episode demonstrates that as far as industrial design was concerned, the Iron Curtain was more permeable than the political rhetoric of the time would have us believe. And, and I wanted to share that'cause Low as influential as he was, you know, called it the father of, uh, industrial design, I think is not as well known these days as some other figures like Dieter Rams or, um, you know, more modern figures. Certainly, like everyone talks about Johnny Ives.
Joachim:Oh yeah.
Ernest:Uh, had you heard of Loewy at all?
Joachim:I had heard of the Maya principle in passing, but uh, and then of course as you started naming the things you designed, like yes, intimately familiar with all these things, but not the name.
Ernest:Right,
Joachim:not the name. Yeah.
Ernest:Uh, now speaking of that, so in addition to a link to this, uh, biography, I just, uh, quoted, also provide a link to a, a wonderful 60 minutes segment from 1979 provides visuals of many of Loewy's most iconic designs and also features an extended interview with the man he was still alive at the time. so, uh, that's definitely a fun watch. Uh, now as I noted in the intro, the thing we're focusing on today is the idea that was at the core of Loewy's approach to design, which he called the MAYA Principle. explain it, I'm gonna reference an article from a digital design agency called Visions. They do a nice job of, uh, providing a synopsis. Alright, so quote from the sleek design of the Greyhound bus to the iconic Coca-Cola bottle, Loewy's work epitomized innovation, intertwined with familiarity. Central to his philosophy was the MAYA principle. Most advanced yet acceptable. concept that has since guided designers and marketers in creating products that push boundaries while remaining accessible to the public. At its core, the MAYA principle is about striking a delicate balance between novelty and recognition. As explained by Derek Thompson in his book, hit Makers, are drawn to innovations, but also crave a sense of familiarity. Loewy believed that successful designs seamlessly blend innovation with elements that resonate with the consumer's existing experiences. Take Apple's iPhone, for instance. its groundbreaking capabilities, apple introduced it as a phone, leveraging familiarity to ease consumers into a revolutionary new device. Each subsequent model brought incremental changes, maintaining the balance between advancement and acceptability. By contrast, Google Glass with its ambitious technology, struggled to gain acceptance due to its intrusive and unfamiliar design. The lesson here, being ahead of the curve doesn't guarantee success if consumers aren't ready for the leap for product designers and marketers Applying the Maya principle involves strategic steps, understanding the audience's, familiarity with the product, introducing innovations gradually, and framing new features within the context of user experiences and needs unquote. Now, uh, I thought their reference to the iPhone was a really interesting one in that, you know, it might seem now that introducing Multitouch in the iPhone was just. patently obvious, right? But within Apple, the concept was actually originally developed for a tablet style computing device. What would eventually come to market as the iPad, but at least as the story goes well into the program, which was code named Project Purple, Steve Jobs recognized that Multitouch technology was a huge departure from existing modes of human computer interaction and therefore had to be introduced in a product that would be essential to cons customers' lives, you know, that they'd get straight away. And so, uh, the Project Purple Team shifted their focus to a phone form factor and then the rest of the history. So just to a point, I think buttressing, the vision team's highlighting of the iPhone as being a good example here, um, of kind of easing people, giving them that acceptable form factors for something that was otherwise very, very innovative. Um, you know, what might seem patently obvious in hindsight really was very much an example of the, my principle in action. Um. You know, ironically, I think you could make the argument that the failure of Apple's Vision Pro, their, um, extended reality headset is rooted in the company's failure to apply the Mya principle. Uh, and then by contrast, I'd say you could argue that meta by leveraging people's famili familiarity with existing eyewear form factors, specifically Ray Van Sunglasses has found much greater success in the still nascent spatial computing space. now, you know, that's all in the tech world. I can also set an example here from the world of footwear. Um, and this is something we've actually highlighted in the past, but I think it's worth touching on again, because it's so germane to topic. It comes from an anecdote that Phil Knight shared in his memoir, shoe Dog that was published back in 2016, now I'm quoting Phil Knight here, a former aerospace engineer. M. Frank Rudy came into the office with his partner Bob Bogart, and pitched their crazy idea, air into a running shoe. It sounded like something out of a comic book, but Rudy was persistent. Finally, I agreed to stuff one of his air souls into my own shoes and go for a run. Six miles later, I was convinced and Rudy began working on prototypes for what became the Nike Air. In late 1978, we launched the Tailwind, shiny silver shoe stuffed full of a dozen innovations, including Rudy's patented aerosols. We hyped this thing to the heavens with, with a splashy ad campaign and dreams of something that would eclipse even the waffle trainer. In a matter of weeks, the dream turned to dust. The tailwind was a disaster. Customers were returning the shoes to stores complaining that they fell apart. A shoe autopsy revealed the problem. Bits of metal in that silver paint acted like razor blades on the shoe's upper shredding the fabric. Half of the first generation of tailwinds ended up in the recycling bins. We were devastated, but we'd also learned a valuable lesson. Don't put 12 innovations into one shoe. just too much for a shoe to carry and too much for a design team to pull off, unquote. And I, I think there's an important point to highlight here that's a bit of a build on Loewy's core, Maya principle. Way Lowe talked about Maya was always from a consumer's point of view, right? What's gonna be the most advanced yet accept acceptable product for your customers. in this anecdote, Phil Knight highlights the extension of Maya that speaks to the people making the product right? The people behind the product. Knight says, don't put 12 innovations into one shoe. And I've heard him simplify this even further as just saying, don't try to reinvent the upper and the midsole at the same time. Right. You know, do one or the other, not both. And in the case of the original tailwind, the core innovation was the air. So unit within the midsole. So focus on that and let the upper be that more approachable, more acceptable thing, both for your customers and for the team, creating the product. So I think, um, you know, the learning here is that the buyer principle can apply to the way you plan your products, both from a consumer proposition perspective and from an internal kind of planning perspective position your teams for success. Um, so Joachim, you had mentioned that you had heard of the My principal before.
Joachim:Yeah, I didn't realize that I had heard it before. So I will add a link to this YouTube video that I'm gonna reference now, the channel is Design theory. I don't know if you've encountered this one, Ernest. It's a very good channel. It's run by John Ello, who's an industrial designer. And the video that I watched years ago was how a designer saved Tesla from bankruptcy twice. Um, and it's about Fon Holsen, the car designer, exterior and interior car designer for Tesla. Um, and if you look at, this is all about the model, the initial version, the first electric car that Tesla was gonna make. Um, and it's a super interesting design problem because Tesla had no lineage, so there was nothing they could lean on. The nine 11 from Pasha is the nine 11. That's, that's very rigid and tells you how this thing is supposed to look. If you're BMW, you're gonna have a kidney grill. I mean, many manufacturers can lean on their history to initiate a design process and get going. And then again they, it's baked into their lineage. The Maya principle, like this is something that, you know, and then we're gonna tweak it.. And so Tesla didn't have any of that and so it's, the video walks us through how he initially looked at other cars that were already on the road and then built off of those for their familiarity. And he initially looked at Aston Martin cars from the mid two thousands. So if you look at an Aston Martin next to a Model S, the lineage is very, very clear. Um, but of course, the Model S has been stretched out and conceit, you know, actually up to seven people, I think, right, with a little rear bench that they can add to it. So they were able to reference something that's this two-seater sports car expanded to a sedan. So very, very clever design that relied on some familiarity. People had seen the Aston Martins. I mean, James Bond drove once, so there was already etched in everyone's consciousness. Plus he actually did have a grill on the front of the car. If you recall, the first version of the Model S actually had that little oval. So the car still had a face, which is what design, you know, car designers talk about the cars having faces. And so this car had a little face. Um, but of course, in later iterations everyone knows the model S well now we're gonna do the model three, which is kind of a shrunk down s and we're gonna lose the grill'cause we don't need the grill.
Ernest:Right.
Joachim:Uh, so again, you're able to iterate through these various things like the grill completely unnecessary, just there to make you feel familiar to it. So again, I, I was very struck by that whole thing and I didn't realize Loy was of course, the originator of this Maya principle. So very interesting. And I think electric cars are a good domain right now to see the Maya principle in action because to a certain extent, these cars have to point to the future. They have to be futuristic, but they can't be too crazy futuristic because people are not ready for all of that. Um, and again, I think we're gonna, people are gonna think we're like Korean car manufacturer fanboy, but I feel like Hyundai has really, they did it in a very similar way where they took a, a very familiar shape in their hatchback and then they said, that's gonna be what the electric car looks like. But it has this hyper futuristic feel to it with the pixel, pixel kind of grid of brake lights. And the front lights look different. Everything is much more modern feeling, but it has this very familiar hatchback shape to it. Um. It points to the future. It references the past in just the right way that it's familiar. I think once you know about the Maya principle, you start realizing like, so many of the products that we encounter are variations on this theme of something that's familiar, but it is new. Um, and therefore it makes it easier for us to consume and, and adopt. However, part of me is also thinking there's a kind of conservatism inherent in that, right? That, that bothers me to a certain extent. And, uh. I think it, you know, when you start reading about the Maya principle, apple gets referenced a lot because they talk about how the iPhone was this revolutionary product in a very well legible and well understood form factor, the phone. And it also referenced many products that they'd already been making in the form of the iPods. So they've, you know, they were already on a journey of making rectangular, thin, rectangular things with screens. Um, so, you know, here's the phone. It makes sense. You're almost there. So people like that, and then they always in the same breath say, and then the Newton was a total disaster. And that's why you should have to, you should adhere to the Maya principle'cause the mutant was just so out there and no one understood what it was. And, and therefore it failed. And I found that overly simplistic. So I think the Newton could have been a success. I think it was just, there were so many other factors there. So just for. For completeness, you know the Newton is so everyone understands the Newton was Apple's attempt to make a personal digital assistant. Which is a phrase that the, uh, CEO Scully actually coined himself. Like PDA was his, uh, his, uh, acronym that he came up with to describe the Newton. Um, and it had to fit in his pocket was kind of like the, and the industrial designers brief and all of these things. The thing that's interesting about the development of his, you realize like this is a great product. Like it's actually a really, really great product. It had an open ecosystem that allowed people to create apps for it, uh, that they could code in c plus plus natively. Um, you could beam those programs via infrared into the computer, uh, into the Newton Wifi. The protocol that we rely on now for wireless internet didn't exist. It was gonna get released in 97, so they were ahead there. They're working within these tight constraints without the wifi that we take for granted today. Um, but they were really pushing the boundaries. I think what the undoing of that product was was not. The lack of Maya principle, because if you look at the design of it, it's very, the form factor is kind of unusual because it's exactly like a foam type of thing. We didn't have flat phones like that, but there's a lot of skew, amorphic UX elements in that very recognizable contacts calendar type setting. Um, you know, word documents. All of the usual stuff they, you could already do on your desktop computer. They just had to shove in other stuff in there. So, like the hand, uh, the hand recognition pieces was not ready. Um, would've been great if it could have worked. Um. So why did they shove everything in there? And I think maybe that's the, that is the Maya principle. It's not that the thing was too ahead of its time. It was the Phil Night Maya principle. You shoved too much stuff in at once. And not only that, you shoved everything into one product. You did it on a timeline that was absolutely impossible to hit the goal that you had set for yourself. So it turns out I didn't know this, that the, the development of the Newton put so much pressure on people that they were having mental health issues. This is so bad. Yeah, it was pretty bad. So I think, uh, I think it's kind of a lazy thing to say, like the Newton is the failure of the, you know, the traditional Maya principle is just too, mar too new and too crazy, and the iPhone was just perfect. I think it's more the Nike and Maya principle at work. Too many innovations, too much stuff happening. Um, all of those things are totally legible and understandable, like hand having your handwriting be recognized and converted into, uh, typed content. I think everyone would've understood that we know how to write with, that's not crazy. And, uh, they had to also innovate on processor technology. Uh, it's probably the only piece of the Newton that has persisted, which is this chip architecture from ARM that they still rely on to this day that still persists. So they built that relationship then. Um, so yeah, I think there's a, there's a lot of nuance and subtlety to the Maya principle. I feel like it's not just this conservative thing like iteratively moving through something. I like what you were saying, earnest, that it's more this from the designers and a capacity perspective that you should be asking yourself. Wait a minute, can we actually pull all of this off? Or is this something that we could actually phase?
Ernest:Right.
Joachim:And I wonder to what extent if they had given up on the Newton with the stylus, if they'd said no stylist, but maybe a small keyboard or something along those lines, it would've been much more successful. But I do think it, it does come back to the capacity of, the producer, which is strange because the Maya principle is always positioned in this very consumer centric way. Um, however, again, reversing what I just said. So I was reading about Loewy and, um, one of the last projects he worked on was the space station
Ernest:Mm-hmm.
Joachim:for nasa. So for the space station, he was tasked with designing the internals of this place. And of course it had to be somewhat familiar. So exactly that, Maya, like you're obviously in orbit around the earth. This is completely out of the ordinary. So how do you create an environment that is still. Understandable and legible to a human being that they feel reasonably comfortable despite being in zero gravity. So that very human-centric view of making it acceptable but very, very crazy and out there literally in outer space is very interesting. The thing that he insisted on that I think is really, really powerful and I think is the perfect summary of the principle, is that he insisted that they put a viewing portal
Ernest:Hmm.
Joachim:that looked down on earth for the astronauts. And that is just probably, I don't know, the most consequential and powerful thing you could do for the mental health of these people is to tether them visually back to earth where they're from, and give them some sense of familiarity of what it is, where they are and what they're doing, and that they are human. Um, so. That to me is like, that's the human-centric version of my principle, I think is really great. Like that compassion and empathy for the person that's hurtling around the earth and there's no good reason to have a viewing portal other than it makes you feel better that this, the person inside of this capsule will feel good about being there and know that they're doing this for the people down there spinning around on the globe. So, yeah.
Ernest:Oh, that's such a great point. I'm so glad you brought that up because. Fundamental to Maya, you know, it, it, it stands for most advanced yet acceptable. So to be able to achieve that, you have to understand your customer at,
Joachim:Yeah,
Ernest:at a intimate level. And that's such a great point that he understood as a human, you would have this need to have a connection back to your home.
Joachim:yeah.
Ernest:Uh, and so I'm sure that was a very challenging engineering problem to solve of a viewport, a window. Right. Uh, but that's amazing that he had that, that level of understanding of the human condition to recognize that that was essential.
Joachim:Yeah. I, I think to me that embodies the, that principle. It's, it's not that it is a conservative principle, it's a very human-centric principle. Like, I think you can, I think it's okay to challenge your customers and your, the people around you. I mean, art is, does that, right? Art is all about challenging someone. You're using materials that someone is familiar with and things that they've seen in some context, in another context. But you're gonna challenge them to do something, but you're doing that because you are still trying to get into their head. So, and to get into someone's head requires empathy and compassion, all these things. And I feel like when I've seen descriptions of the Maya principle, it's been very either so focused on just being iterative changes, so it becomes very bland and not informative. It doesn't get at the thing that is, it's fundamentally about the humanity of it. And then I think what you are adding to this Es is the, the capacities feature that I think that is really, really essential to the other side of it. It's both pieces that have to come to play that, yeah.
Ernest:You know, one added layer, I think, um, that your point about Tesla made me think of is can also help in terms of. Um, more of like your long-term product planning in that, you know, for example, um, Tesla, their first product was actually their first Roadster, which was actually a, just a re-matched lotus or re-engineered lotus, uh, with, um, electric underpinnings instead of an ice, um, engine. you know, as you mentioned, as crazy as Musk is at the time, he was very clever about recognizing kind of this what would be the most advanced, yet acceptable version of an electric car that he could bring to market. And at that point it was actually something very impractical. You know, it was a toy, but for his audience, he understood his audience and that's what his audience was looking for. That was the thing that would be acceptable for his audience, given the state of the technology at the time. I think that. a really, I think it was a very, you know, again, in hindsight it seems very obvious, but at the time it was a very clever thing to do, um, to recognize that that was the right product for the audience at the time, knowing that eventually he wanted to take that know how and put it into the model S, which would get to a little bit more scale and then take that knowhow and put it into the three, which gets to even more scale, right? So it can be a way to help guide your longer term product planning and vision as well, by, know, kind of defining this evolution, in, in a way that's fundamentally in what your customer is looking for and what's gonna be acceptable to them, and helping you build from that. Um, another thing that your Tesla example made me think of is that right around the same time that the Model S eventually came to market. also introduced their first big EVs in the form of the I three and the I eight, were very much the car example of the tailwind with, you know, way too many things going on at once. and the products were hugely un unsuccessful. It was, I mean. Kind of close to the point of taking the whole company down because BMW is actually not that big of a company and they made a huge bet on these products. And both of them were huge failures. and you know, by contrast you see the Model S, which just to your point, looked like a car, looked like a beautiful car, you know? And even to the point of having a full grill, you know, to give people that accessible, um, acceptable entry point into an EV experience. and you could see to BMW's credit, they learned from that. And now, you know, they're back on the front foot of the EV space. They're actually one of the leading in that space now, and it's based on basically making EVs that look like their ice cars and vice versa.
Joachim:Yeah, I mean that's, they, they look, it's very hard to tell when, when you're looking at the internal combustion engines or the electric ones. So, yeah, that, that's kind of I, and back to my point, I like of taking a risk and, and pushing things. I do. The I threes are so advanced,
Ernest:Yeah.
Joachim:there's so much going on in there and yeah, they looked funky and I think they must have thought they could get away with it because SMART existed, right? That had a funky, weird shape and this was just a smarter version of that. But it obviously. They just forgot what people wanted out of it. I don't know. It's something about, it just didn't quite hit the mark, but it, you know, it's still a great design.
Ernest:I know I still, I still love them. I still every so often think, oh, you know, there's good deals to be had on the use. I threes,
Joachim:Yeah,
Ernest:because yeah, it's still remarkable technology. The carbon fiber reframe. It's, uh, and oh man, my, actually my car, my mini Cooper SE is built on that fundamental EV architecture that was established in the
Joachim:of course. Yeah.
Ernest:so I'm personally still benefiting from it. Uh, it's just that they missed on the yet acceptable part of
Joachim:Yeah.
Ernest:principle.
Joachim:Yeah.
Ernest:one last thing I'll mention, you mentioned the Newton. I actually still have an original Newton,
Joachim:Whoa. Whoa.
Ernest:it, it, I'm guessing, I haven't broken it out in ages. I'm guessing the battery's probably leaked, so it's probably broken at this point, but it's still does things that computers don't do today. Like you could write in the like notes app that was kind of at the core of the operating system lunch with Joachim at, uh, on
Joachim:Hmm.
Ernest:and it would, you know, if it was able to actually translate your writing,
Joachim:Yeah.
Ernest:understand what you meant. So it would actually then put a meeting, in your calendar for Tuesday at 12:00 PM
Joachim:Oh, wow.
Ernest:and then cite, if you were in my contacts, it would include a link to your entry. In my contacts, it's, it would automatically do all that.
Joachim:Wow.
Ernest:it's so freaking cool, you know?
Joachim:That is so cool. Oh my goodness. Wow.
Ernest:away that we still, our phones still don't really do that today. So,
Joachim:Yeah.
Ernest:but in a, you know, it is in a way also an illustration of just, they tried to do too much, you
Joachim:Yeah. It's very impressive now in hindsight. Yeah.
Ernest:um, you know, they needed to just get the input mechanism right.
Joachim:Yeah.
Ernest:Um, to start with and then layer on these other super cool features on top of it. But, uh, yeah, it was a incredible device. And to your point, I do think. From a hardware perspective, it was very much that, uh, Maya device, right?
Joachim:Yeah.
Ernest:it, it felt like a notepad
Joachim:Yes.
Ernest:and you interacted with it like a notepad. Um, and so one last thing I'll mention is I'll include a link in the show notes to this as well. There's a fantastic documentary, I think it's called General Magic, that talks about this device that followed the Newton called the General Magic. A lot of the folks who made it came from the Newton team, and they made this device that actually, um, a lot of the things that now are, uh, part of modern day, um, smartphones. So they were way ahead of their time. Again, another huge failure, but, um, it, it, I, it's a really interesting documentary, kind of that, that gives you some interesting lessons too, as to why it was a failure. And a lot has to do with just trying to do too much, um, as well. But, uh, uh, uh, a lot of the things you mentioned definitely brought up some, interesting thoughts on my end as well.
Joachim:Yeah, I, there's so much stuff that is making me think about Tesla again, and then the Newton as well. So I was, as I was doing more reading about Maya, um, I, I, I will find the, we will link to this original article, but some researchers who are in business schools who talk a lot about innovation, they're trying to understand the innovation process. And so there's this paper called Looking Across and Looking Beyond the Knowledge Frontier, intellectual Distance, novelty, and Resource Allocation in Science, long title. But basically it's, it's an experiment. Um, they gathered about, I think, um, like. Evaluators and proposals for scientific research. So the evaluators are all researchers and the proposals are scientific projects. So this is supposed to mimic kind of the how the National Science Foundation deals with grant applications and so on. So you, they had two, like over 2000 evaluator and proposal pairs. So different combinations of an evaluator and a proposal. And basically what they find at the end of this is, oh, they basically ask each evaluator to give a score to say, do you think this is, you know, a 10 out of 10 or a one out of 10? What they find is that there's a specific pattern in the data that suggests two things. If a person is a researcher in the area that they are evaluating, they will give harsher scores than someone who's not. So that could just be like, they know more subtlety or they're just more gatekeeping. Right. That's it's not clear. Can't really ask them. They won't tell you the truth. The other thing that was interesting is, so, yeah, so distance to that subject is related to this final score, uh, but also kind of the novelty. If something is very novel, they would also give it a very low score, so it would be negatively correlated, which is really interesting in science, like that the scientists would not value the novelty in and of itself. And novelty, of course, you know, how do you codify novelty and all those things, but let's just take it all for granted that they have a reasonable metric for it. And yeah, so you can, and if you look at science, it does kind of progress in these very small things. And if you listen to the speeches of current Nobel Prize winner, a lot of them will tell you, I wouldn't be able to do this kind of research today because everyone is so incremental in it. I would, I sit so far outside of the current disciplines, there's no way for me to do this. The Maya principle is taking advantage of something in the human mind, which is familiarity means it's easy for me to access and easy for me to want to do, use this thing or engage with something. Um, but, taken too far becomes a bias where you start potentially there is a chance that if something is too novel, uh, you just dismiss it out of hand because you say this is so different from everything else, so therefore it must not be good, which is a danger. Right. So I feel like another piece in the toolkit is also just that keeping in mind, like, I think we'll catch ourselves when we hear an idea that almost sounds like an idea. We could have come up with ourselves and we go like, Ooh, I really like that idea. You know, there's a, there's an element of that kind of, ah, that's kind of something I was thinking about and therefore.
Ernest:Right.
Joachim:It's a good idea. Um, but I think we should also be embracing kind of like the anti Maya for when we're evaluating new ideas because that evaluation process is still so early in the process. Like you should just be very open to things. And then the question is now back to the Maya principle, how do I bridge the gap to the other person? What is it that I need to do to make them understand this thing? So I feel like that's the other broader piece of the picture that makes Maya work in your favor, which is you might have come up with something massively groundbreaking that is very, very different from everything else. The Maya principle's. Not telling you don't do that. It's telling you keep in mind that the person on the other end is subject to that need to be involved with something familiar. So I need to bring you along with a journey. Broken down into these stages and. You kind of know where this is going. There's a kind of inevitability to where they're going because they already have this extreme endpoint in mind that they want to go to, and they're gonna just bring people on for that journey. So I feel like that's another way to interpret the Maya principle, which is there are gaps when you're innovating, but you need to bring someone along for the journey so they can learn and adapt to that thing as it's being developed. And don't talk down to them. Bring them along to the journey, which I think comes back to the compassion thing again, and the empathy of, of a designer with their customers and the people at the end of the day. Yeah.
Ernest:I, I love that. That's such a great. An important point to make. In a way, I feel like maybe the, uh, the guidance is to, to think about applying Maya at specific points your overall product creation process. Like, you know, we're talking about, it could potentially be useful if you're at the early stages of planning your product, uh, portfolio and you the cadence of, uh, the way you're updating your products.
Joachim:Yeah.
Ernest:then in terms of when you're developing sort of those fundamental technologies that underpin those products, leave that open, right? Don't, don't kind of put these too many filters on that because you have to allow those ideas to flourish, right?
Joachim:Yeah.
Ernest:aren't you were thinking. then when you're starting to get close to the market. You know, then maybe it's the time to apply it again. And, you know, really based on that deep understanding of your customer, what's gonna make this, um, uh, approachable for them and acceptable for them so that, um, they have an entry point to it. Uh, and, and it's, it's something that they can see fitting into their lives as well. I think that's a way to end our conversation about Maya, our, or, uh, most advanced, yet acceptable, the Maya principle that, um, was created by Raymond Loewy. Um, and, but, you know, really ending with your point, Heim, that it's fundamentally rooted in an intimate understanding of your customer's needs. I thought your example of the, the Space Station was just such a great example of that. but hopefully this is something that you can apply in your, uh, kind of day-to-day of creating products. Um, and, you know, we'd love to hear what you think about our perspectives on this. If you have any questions, if you have any thoughts or follow ups or corrections, please do get in touch with us at Learn Make learn@gmail.com or on threads at Learn, make, learn show, all one word. All right, now let's move on to our recommendations of the week and, um, I can get us started
Joachim:Sounds good.
Ernest:okay. Uh, I have a book I'd like to recommend. I'm still pretty early on in reading it, but it's, it's really been phenomenal. So I feel, uh, pretty safe recommending it. called Apple in China, and it's by, um, a journalist named Patrick McGee. And I was turned onto it by Ben Thompson of the, uh, of Straty, of, he runs a website as well as a popular podcast, he's someone who's perspective I really, uh, respect and he described it as the best book about Apple ever written, one of the best books about China ever written and one of the best books about tech period. So that convinced me to, to it, uh, to get started on it, and it has been phenomenal. and, you know, lest you think it's just sort of a, a celebration of Apple. I'll read, uh, the conclusion to the book's synopsis from its publisher, which I believe is Simon and Chu. So, uh, quote, apple and China is the sometimes disturbing and always revelatory story of how an outspoken, proud company that once praised Revels and troublemakers the company that encouraged us all to think different into passively cooperating with a belligerent regime that increasingly controls its f its fate unquote. it's definitely not, uh, a flattering account, uh, but it is stunning. Uh, some of the stats in the forward. the scale of Apple's operation in China. It's just, it's mind boggling. You just can't even wrap your head around, the scale of Apple's operation and, and the impact that they've had, uh, on China and you know, now as a consequence that China is having on the world. um, I think it's absolutely worth read if you have any interest in, um, apple certainly, but also just any interest in technology and in the impact of technology on societies. So Apple and China by Patrick McGee.
Joachim:The podcast that I follow very regularly called Hidden Forces, uh, featured Patrick Bickie recently. So we'll link to that as well. Great interview. Yeah. Uh, great, great chat. Really, really interesting. And again, through the perspective of geopolitics technology, the broader implications of what it means for Apple to be. Who they are right now and with whom they work. So yeah, fascinating stuff. So yeah, before we started recording, Ernest asked me, do you have a recommendation? And I couldn't remember for the life of me what it was, which is also why Ernest went first on the recommendation thing. So everyone, you're getting the little BBTS here. So it's actually rechargeable batteries from a company called EBL, echo, Bravo, Lima, EBL,
Ernest:Huh?
Joachim:and they sell, Nickel, metal hydride, rechargeable batteries. Um, and I think if you know, you know, back in the day, think back to when you were. Using like aa, AA batteries that were rechargeable, they would not last for very long at all. I mean, they were terrible batteries. They wouldn't hold a damn charge and they would always run out and take forever to charge. Um, and recently I was, um, I've been trying to move some of my music equipment to more battery power because I just want fewer cables. And in fact, my audio interface uses four AA batteries. And so I plugged in just Duracell batteries and of course, I mean it drained them in no time because it's a very power hungry beast with microphone, preamps and all kinds of crazy stuff going on. And I felt so foolish, like throwing away those batteries and then grabbing another pack. So I thought, what is the state of, uh, rechargeable batteries? And it turns out EBL is a very good manufacturer. They have their own chargers and they provide. All kinds aa, AA, nine volt block batteries and various classes as well from more like entry level ones. I use the EBL 1100, which are just really great and uh, charge pretty quickly. The charger that matches it, of course, has been designed with those batteries in mind. Treats them with care, doesn't charge them super fast. So like the whole charging cycle, um, the way the power gets fed into the batteries is optimized for those batteries. And they last a really great long time. And I've just been slowly expanding the batteries that I, I'm replacing with those. I mean, uh, TV remote batteries with AAA haven't had to change them in at least a year now. I, I mean, remotes don't use Ven very much either. And so just knowing that I can recharge this later on and, and get another year out of it is very powerful. So I recommend this, like if you are in your house, and I mean, I have small children that have battery powered toys as well. That's also another reason to use these. But if you is finding yourself using disposable batteries for, for various tasks, try an EBL set. They sell them as packages with charges and like about 10 batteries, and they're just a very high quality rechargeable batteries. So I would fully recommend those. And you always need batteries. So yeah,
Ernest:That's so interesting. Do you know how they get around the memory effect that nickel metal hydride batteries used to have?
Joachim:I think, I don't know how they got around most of it. I don't even know if they have gotten around it. I think it's just a much more delayed part of it. I think they just have a, a better life, life cycle than old versions of it. I'm not sure what it is. I do think that their charger is treating the battery with greater respect. So I feel like that's the, that's the secret source, I think because now we have small enough microprocesses to be able to regulate those things actively and monitor multiple signals at the same time. I was just looking full disclosure, wire cutter I think is where I found these. And then, um, and I just, you know, I, I just picked that top pick and only got like the battery and the charger and just thought I'll give it a try and see what happens. And I've now accumulated, I think I've got 30 of these, like, and I'm using them in various settings from very high draining, uh, environments such as my audio interface. And I can get a good, yeah, I mean, if I run that thing full blast. 10, 12 hours out of it, which is very surprising. Yeah. And that comes from recharging them over and over again. And I'm not very careful, you know, sometimes I just train them to death and then they come back up, it's fine. So, so far so good. I've not had to replace any of them. They're holding their charge reasonably well, so I would yeah, get a, get a small pack. You can get them in packs of four as well if you don't wanna fully commit. Um, but yeah, I'm actually all in right now. I've got everything. Yeah.
Ernest:that's a great, super useful recommendation. Thanks for that one.
Joachim:Yeah, absolutely guys.
Ernest:All right, well, I think that does it for us. Thank you so much for joining us here at Learn Make Learn, and as I mentioned earlier, we want to hear from you. you have any thoughts on anything we discussed or recommended this week? If so, what's your perspective? Or maybe there's a product or service you'd love to hear us focus on through the lens of product marketing, whether it's a request, a question, or an observation. Please do share your thoughts with us at Learn Make learn@gmail.com or on threads at Learn Make, learn Show, all one word. Thanks for listening and we hope you'll join us for the next Learn. Make, learn.
