Now that’s how it’s done

There is so much that could be said about something like http://wave.google.com.  I don’t know that I could really say much that would be profound by comparison to the thousands of posts, reviews, and other commentary that’s available.  However there is one quick point I want to identify.  The unique thing to me about Wave, is not all the neat things that you can do with it, but more to the point…How it was designed.  Basically Google wave encompasses the realization of a team not saying “what can we do with what we have”, but more accurately “what do we need to be able to do”.  Computers are are slowly moving toward that world; where the designers are finally realizing that the computer is a tool we should shape to meet our needs rather than adapting our behavior to work with the tool.  This is the kind of thinking that really inspires me, and yet at the same time can often make me feel sheepish.  It’s that kind of inspired thinking that’s truly impressive.  Design for hat’s needed, and not just what’s the easy way to do something.  Sometimes, it really is worth doing the “right” thing; time to market becomes less important if your competitor’s tools are profoundly superior and redesigning to keep up is often even harder than doing it right the first time.