There's a battle rumbling over the horizon. Two players have already come into view and others prepare in the shadows. The question is are they trying to take the right hill?

Quite a bit of effort and some media have been focused on the purpose-built eReader market with Sony's Reader ($199 - http://bit.ly/nGxOa) and Amazon's Kindle ($299 - http://bit.ly/xpGj1). The idea is that today's digital world makes carrying, buying and receiving a larger collection of books infinitely easier, "affordable" (once you have the device) and convenient. Bored while waiting for a plane? Buy and download a book and start reading it right now. Finished your last book? Start reading another in your digital collection without missing a beat. The story of Chris Anderson's "long tail" theory that made Amazon such a hit as an online bookstore also seems to lend support for the concept. That is, virtual shelf space on the Internet makes it possible to inventory and deliver a far wider range of titles than a brick and mortar store could offer. So you can serve a much wider range of tastes. With digital books, this becomes even more true. There is virtually no storage issue. So a huge number of titles could easily be offered by vendors, puchased virtually online anywhere and stored by the user without overflowing either's shelves.

Wow. This is a simplistic view.

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How often have you seen a prototype design offered without really exploring carefully to whom it speaks, how they will actually use it and what they will expect from it? Instead, many prototypes are based on what I would call "prespectations" (preconceived expectations) of what will be desired without probing behind the overt. Often we get so familiar with something that we can’t separate what we “know” from what is really happening in the market. We get so used to filtering information through our own lenses that we can miss new opportunities to better serve our audiences or to attack a new opportunity. How can we achieve knowing without showing? Understand what users want before they even know it themselves. If you show them a proposed design without underlying understanding, then they may unconsciously "lie" about what they truly need.

A few years ago, two colleagues of mine and I had the pleasure of spending a few hours alone with Tom Kelley, General Manager of IDEO and brother to founder David Kelley. Tom wrote a fascinating book called "Ten Faces of Innovation" and he was working with us to rethink innovation. He asked us to develop our ability to "see with new eyes". He called this "Vuja De". It's the sense that you have never seen something before in your life. Quite the opposite of Deja Vu. This is at the core of their process of innovation. Over the years I have worked with IDEO more than most people can afford to do in a career (6 projects at various levels - online video twice, photos, communications, networking, and home media) and it has been an honor each time. They have been the top design firm in the world and featured on the cover of Time Magazine's issue on innovation. Their process includes design ethnography followed by top notch creative thinking to derive what are called "frameworks" (maps of understanding) that turn into concepts and eventually into design prototypes.

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