Review: Connected by Design by Barry Wacksman and Chris Stutzman
Connected by Design: 7 Principles of Business Transformation Through Functional Integration by Barry Wacksman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I work in an organisation that reveres user centered design driving the end result of consumer grade applications. This thought process has manifested in the rapid acceleration of application development in the realm of disruption given organisations feel the need to be agile and to get products to the market as soon as possible. Connected by Design centres around the concept of functional integration in that you built your solutions an capabilities in order to be functionally integrated. Using Apple as a case study in how they have taken an iPod and functionally integrated that capability into a iPhone, App Store, iCloud etc. Essentially organisations need to leverage functional integration to increase adoption, user experience and ultimately to maintain customer stickiness. This book provides countless examples of how this integration has taken place and how best to approach this in your organisation. Very interesting read!
Three key takeaways from the book:
1. There are ten leading contexts in being able to leverage functional integration: information, transaction, participation, conversation, application, location, diversion, aggregation/distribution, visualisation, gamification and interruption
2. The never ending challenge of functional integration is looking for new value/synergies. The best way is to master digital contexts in this era.
3. The key KPI for functionality integration ecosystems are usage and the frequency of usage
