Thinking back to when I was a kid growing up, technology served a purpose. Those were the days when – even as a geek by nature – I was focused more on what the technology could do. Televisions played Sesame Street or Winnie the Pooh. The home security system kept us safe. And the computer was to communicate (email) with Grandma in Chicago. Even as I grew up, a network was only valuable for playing games online with friends. They were strictly tools to accomplish a task.
By the time I was in college I was a full-blown nerd. I loved everything techy and geeky. And to be honest, I loved it all because they were techy and geeky. I could tell you the spec sheet of every TV on the market. I could tell you the codename of every processor in every laptop available. And I drove people nuts explaining the megapixel count of all the newest digital cameras. I was first and foremost a nerd.
As I continued down this path, I started to realize how quickly friends and family would glaze over. No surprise, you probably skimmed through the last few sentences for the exact same reason. It doesn’t matter! Nobody cared about the specs or features or details. But it became clearer to me that when I started explaining to my friends that those specs on a graphics card meant that games they previously couldn’t play would now work, I’d piqued their interest.
This phenomenon expanded further and further to a point in college when I started having friends and family members ask which computer, TV, audio system, cellphone, or camera they should purchase and I was taken back by how the conversation went. I’ll summarize:
Them – “Hey, what TV should I buy?”
Me – “What do you watch the most and what’s your budget?”
Them – *They respond with some list of activities and a price point.”
Me – *I name two competitive models that fit their requirements”
Them – “OK, thanks.” *They start walking away*.
Me – “Don’t you want to know why that’s the one you should pick?”
Them – “Nope. You know what you’re talking about and I trust you.”
That’s it… that’s all that happened.
I’m aware that with most of these people I have 20+ year relationships and there are various other factors, but the interactions began to open my eyes. These people were purchasing a tool that would help them accomplish a task and it didn’t really matter how it did it, just that it could and they could use it.
The realization was that they didn’t want extra features, complex configurations, or the pinnacle of the technology because they probably weren’t going to get any value out of it. The most effective tool or piece of technology to them was the one that was the easiest to use and accomplished the specific task most efficiently. This understanding was something I continued developing over the next 20 years or so and that brings us to today.
Being able to see the forest from the trees is an important ability in the realm of technology. With products coming out daily that add feature here and there, it’s more and more difficult to understand what you need and will get value out of versus what excites the geeks.
When we set out to create Davinci Technology Solutions this understanding was put at our core. We care deeply about people using the technology rather then buying it and it sits on a shelf, or paid features going unused. We believe the key to technology is its ease of use and simplicity to understand.
If you share this belief and feel your organization or your own workflow could benefit from some simplicity and a more streamlined approach, we eagerly await to talk to you.
Let us take care of the technology so you can get back to whatever your version of watching Winnie the Pooh is.