The Value Proposition

 
 

The two device categories we have been calling the personal computer and the smart phone are evolving and merging into a new category. For convenience in this discussion we’ll call this device category

HAND-EYE-EAR DIRECT (HEED)


At this early state of the evolution the purest expression of the HEED category is the Apple iPad.


HEED devices have their own application style. Compared to typical personal computer applications, HEED applications are graphic and interactive without requiring precise user gestures, and are not heavily dependent on text input.


HEED applications are attractive because they are well matched to the way our brains work. However, the devices as presently conceived limit the power of many users to build applications for themselves, because the application-building process departs grossly from the way our brains work.



There is no way to build a large range of high-value quick-turnaround HEED applications that a user who is not a programmer can understand. Until that exists tool-building by users will be limited, the HEED category will not reach its potential to empower its users, and its rate of penetration into business will be limited.


A powerful broad-spectrum development approach that is accessible to nonprogrammers will open up opportunities to build applications in the large middle ground between highly skilled programmers and end users.


  1. •If you are a consultant or system integrator, you see new business opportunities for offerings that you can rapidly prototype, demonstrate, and deliver, for example, walk-around order-entry and inventory systems with databases behind them.

  2. •If you are a business manager who sees an opportunity to capture data at the point it appears, you try out your concept with a department member rather than committing to an IT project.

  3. •If you are a power user, you now have the construction tool you have been looking for.


On offer here are the means for users in this large middle ground to build their own HEED applications:

  1. 1.a radically simpler and more intuitive way to think about the internals of these applications, and

  2. 2.a graphical WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) way to build them.



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This site is at http://heed.melconway.com . It can be read at three levels:


  1. 1.Executive summary: Read Value, Offer, Contact.

  2. 2.What is the technology? Add Think, Build. Reading and following the links in the smaller italicized paragraphs at the end adds a lot more detail.

  3. 3.What makes it so different? Add Rationale.