Yesterday I came across an online video of a talk Bill Buxton gave last year for the Alberta Ingenuity Fund/ Alberta Ingenuity Centre, entitled What if Leopold Didn’t Have a Piano? Wow! I’ve listened to it several times now, and I’m still gleaning pithy insights. (I’ll follow up with more insights from Bill Buxton in future posts.)

The title refers to Leopold Mozart. Buxton follows up by (jokingly) asking if Wolfgang Amadeus might have ended up being the best butcher in Salsburg. He then goes on to posit that the piano was important, but not sufficient, to create the genius that was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Neither was his father being a music teacher, or the music hall in Salzburg, or the many other things that contributed to shaping the young Mozart. Each of them alone was not sufficient. But, together they provided the environment, or ecology, in which the genius of Mozart could develop. They did not guarantee it, but did allow it.

Go to Bill Buxton’s site and scroll down to the Online Talks section. His link will take you to the page on the Alberta Ingenuity Fund site where you can get the video stream. While you are at Buxton’s site check out a few of the other links. This little, unassuming, one page site is a gold mine. I’m sure there was much rejoicing in Redmond last year when Buxton agreed to be Principal Researcher for Microsoft.

One of the many insights I like from the What if Leopold Didn’t Have a Piano? talk deals with the importance of getting the right context. Buxton said that we focus too much on problem solving, and not enough on problem setting. We always want to get the design right — even without knowing if we’ve got the right design. Read that again if you have to. The distinction is very important. I’ve seen all too many projects that had slick interfaces, or beautiful designs, fail because they didn’t address the right problem. Their design was very nice, but it was the wrong design.

Before getting too excited with your next great design, step back for a minute and take in the ecology of the design. Who will use it, and why? How does it fit with other tools or information sources?  Sure, it is a great design, but is it the right one?