Revised Value Models: Properties and relationships

Value Model: Concepts / Properties:
(percentages represent how often the concept was found in consumers' experiences with 3G mobile phones; N=75,000 words).

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Value Model: Concepts / Relationships:

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Comments gratefully accepted....

Community vs Function: value dimensions contesting

'Monks', Apple loving fans, put off a Windows user, who prefers an inferior product 'I know Windows is awful' to being part of their community.

Good value leads to recommendations, but recommendations steal time and push one community's perspective onto outsiders, who may prefer to be outside, not inside that community.

Guardian writer, Charlie Brooker, explores his feelings towards the Mac evangelists, and towards Windows here. And covered on Fortune's Apple 2.0 blog here. Emotions sometimes trumps reason, so better products do not always make better sales (in the short term at least).

Simplicity: a value dimension

Da Vinci, 500 years ago said,
"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication."

Simplicity is one of twelve value dimensions.

Who says value can't sell t-shirts. Buy t-shirt at link above ($18). Is the t-shirt good value? Did the price change your attitude? Stronger/weaker, positive/negative?

Attitude has two dimensions - strong/weak, positive/negative. New information creates a value assessment which shifts attitude. Attitude also endures, until new relevant information comes along.

Value model: 2D or 3D?

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Which number of dimensions do you prefer? The value concepts have been scaled in 2D so the relative size of circles relates to the relative frequency of the value concepts in the transcript data (first 2000 data points). In the 3D graph, the size of the spheres relative to each other shows relative frequency of concepts to each other, and to the unit cube (which shows 100%). Which do you prefer? I think the 2D version is simpler but less evocative. The 2D version shows a greater disparity between the central value concept and the lesser non-core concepts. Both are accurate in their own degree of dimensions.

Youtube monetises free value

When the videos are free, but you can download the tune from iTunes, it looks like a win win.

Now you only have to find some music you like.....

France searches for value replacement for GDP

The French Government has released a report on how to improve GDP to include wider social benefit, which I argue is a need to measure value. The report can be found here (pdf 3.2Mb), and the project home here. The Project Group is called “The Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress”.

See the Economist article here. My comment on the Economist article - a value summary is below.

The Economist says "GDP was designed to measure only the value of goods and services produced in a country, and it does not even do that precisely". The problem with GDP is that value measured is only monetary, and does not include subjective value measures. Measuring innovation faces similar challenges, because an Innovation adds value - monetary and non-monetary. And value includes as your commenter's note: time, service, and your article mentions, protecting the environment, happiness. I am currently writing my PhD on Value and Innovation, from a subjective perspective, and note that defining value as a problem goes back to Aristotle. Aristotle states the problem as how does a builder and shoe maker come to an agreement on a fair exchange, given they are so different. Yet we do. We act on value all the time. Every time we choose something to buy, or give our support to, we are making value decisions. Value is complex, multi-dimensional, personal, contextual, dynamic, social and personal. No wonder a simple measure is not yet at hand (especially if Aristotle couldn't come up with one). Price and GDP are an estimate of value, but I look forward to a time when we solve our value measurement problem. I hope to write a book on the history of value, and examine how our ideas about value changed through the ages, and why are we interested in value now. See my blog on value at http://www.valman.blogspot.com for my findings to date, including my twelve dimensions of value, and value model of consumer behaviour.

Apple: 'great' 'amazing' - but variety spices life

Some commentators of the latest Apple iPod presentation noted too much repetition of their strongly positive value language:

- easy, great, amazing, incredible.

But one clever character edited their video and left just these adjectives in. Pretty entertaining.

Amazing is one thing, but we value variety (newness) as well as amazing.
Apple will likely have to rescript their presentations now, or become the butt of this joke.

500 Human Values

Humanity Quest has a portal of 500 Human Values. I reformatted the list into columns so you can read them more easily here - What do you value?

A few examples from S: shyness, sarcasm, sin, sincerity, sadness, snobbery.

And some great other models of visualing sustainability here. I guess there are about 100-150 models on this page. Wow!

The Value of Information

Interesting link from publishers - http://informationarchitects.jp/the-value-of-information/

They identify five dimensions of information value:
- monetary
- artistic
- academic/scientific
- practical eg maps, manuals
- entertaining

therefore you should be prepared to pay.....?

Yes, information has value, but it depends on the context and the individual, need etc etc etc.
Interesting though....

Worse is better, Less is more

1.The Economist (When less is more 14.08.09) and Wired Magazine (The good enough revolution: when cheap and simple is just fine 24.08.09) have recent articles showing consumers preferring less to more - where less means less function and lower price, rather than high price and high quality.

Wired cites MP3, Skype, Google text ads and Flip handycams as examples.

The Economist cites the Eee PC, and Flip cam corder.

A Value interpretation: - do more for less $$: get 80% function at 20% price. New value dimensions offer new value elements, superseding old.

Examples:

- Wikipedia: (new) 24/7 convenience, good enough > (old) big, leather, reliability

- iPhone apps: (new) small, cheap, portable, easy, good enough > heavy, big, feature laden laptops, desktops

Summary: Power, price, potential, convenience > size, weight, function, brand.

2.The Economist also cites a 1991 paper on Lisp programming which focuses on simplicity from the MIT/Stanford style of design: simplicity, correctness, consistency, completeness.

A great quote, which could have something to say about PhD complexity....

The big complex system scenario goes like this:

First, the right thing needs to be designed. Then its implementation needs to be designed. Finally it is implemented. Because it is the right thing, it has nearly 100% of desired functionality, and implementation simplicity was never a concern so it takes a long time to implement. It is large and complex. It requires complex tools to use properly. The last 20% takes 80% of the effort, and so the right thing takes a long time to get out, and it only runs satisfactorily on the most sophisticated hardware.

The diamond-like jewel scenario goes like this:

The right thing takes forever to design, but it is quite small at every point along the way. To implement it to run fast is either impossible or beyond the capabilities of most implementors.

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The right thing is frequently a monolithic piece of software, but for no reason other than that the right thing is often designed monolithically. That is, this characteristic is a happenstance.

The lesson to be learned from this is that it is often undesirable to go for the right thing first. It is better to get half of the right thing available so that it spreads like a virus. Once people are hooked on it, take the time to improve it to 90% of the right thing.

Gabriel, R.P. 1991 Lisp: Good News, Bad News, How to Win Big, http://dreamsongs.com/WIB.html, viewed 01.09.09

Substitute PhD for software, and you have an indictment of the high quality, but very slow.... PhD process. ouch!