We sent an email to all our subscribers on Thursday which, from the replies, might have confused a few people.
Quite understandably, some of you, even though you’re pleased to hear another Matter box is coming, are wondering why you didn’t get the first edition.
Matter is published like a magazine (in limited numbers), so they all go out at the same time. The pilot edition went out to a very limited audience (944) in February. The next (which is really the first) edition–which was originally planned for the summer–is coming in October. A bit longer than anticipated.
The problem would seem to be semantic. I think we confused people by not making clear the distinction between the pilot edition–which had already gone out and was no longer available–and the first edition, which was (and is still) yet to come.
The Americans faced this problem with Hurricanes; it was difficult to keep track of various storms by date and location and much easier when they were given names. This problem only became evident after years of suffering numerous storms. We’ve managed it with one box.
Maybe to reduce the confusion, maybe we’d better give the next one a name.
Picture by Petroleumjelliffe reproduced under a Creative Commons licence.
An interesting article appeared in the New York Times last Sunday about Adobe sending its software engineers off to classes to learn how to make things with their hands. It’s amusing to think of grown-up–and probably highly-paid programmers spending a day up to their arms in glue, beads and lolly-sticks.
As the NYT points out, it’s not just computer software that’s now created in a digital environment. Almost every product is conceived at some point on a computer. Cars, phones and electronics may never reach a physical form until they’re prototyped prior to manufacturing.
In his book, Traffic, Tom Vanderbilt describes a series of experiments that look into the skills involved in driving, which involved using computers to drive cars through a series of landscapes (off-road and then urban). The computers could distinguish a stationery car from a traffic island–both are objects, but this judgment is a long way from the subtle distinctions we make several times a minute driving down any urban street-‘is that person standing by the side of the road about to cross the street?’
This will improve, but will technology ever really be able to read the vital clues we see in people, objects and situations?
We’ve become very adept at seeing motivation and intent in the subtlest of details that the creators inject in objects, environments and behaviour through their very involvement. If we’re going to replace people in the design and creation process, then we risk losing a vital human communication.
This isn’t peripheral either. Companys that understand this interface (e.g. Apple) succeed. But, as technology is applied in more and more creative processes, it’s fascinating to think it might help us to understand and appreciate a set of subtle, intuitive skills we’ve hitherto taken for granted.
Image: Bob Murata/Adobe / New York Times
Matter is a new channel. It challenges all sorts of accepted wisdom about advertising and communications. The idea was so new there wasn’t much to point at to say whether it would work or not.
The first question was whether there’d be any interest in it. The original concept was to create Matter boxes for specific audiences we could identify with existing data. While we knew we people would like it when they got it, we didn’t believe we could get lots of people (who weren’t graphic designers) to voluntarily sign up to get Matter. We were wrong.
We ran the pilot edition earlier this year to test the concept and see how people reacted to it. We sent out 944 boxes and within two weeks, 20,000 people had signed up for the next edition and our initial plans were redundant. (There’s 30,000 of you now).
We knew we wanted to create different Matter editions tailored for different audiences, but we needed to know who was within our (now all-subscriber) audience.
So, before we make more targeted boxes, we’re sending the next edition to everyone who’s subscribed (even if you’re not the young male it’s notionally aimed at). To help us make better boxes geared for different people, we’re asking a few more questions about what people do and what they like. If you’re already a subscriber, it’d be really helpful if you could go back into your profile and answer the questions (you’ll need to log-in with your user name and password to get to your profile).
Creating a new channel is very exciting because we have a completely clean sheet of paper, but it also means there’s a lot to do. So, to make it better (and easier), Matter is now part of Royal Mail who’ll bring their huge network and considerable resources, leaving me free to concentrate on creating great boxes people will like getting.
We’ll detail the ups and downs of developing Matter here, along with anything else we think you might be interested in hearing about. More soon…
Picture of a Golf Ball Rocket reproduced with thanks under Creative Commons Licence from Juvetson
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