Of slippers and innovation…
I’m not into slippers - never have been, never wanted to be. And I’ve always been pretty sure that if I did possess some slippers, I’d never wear them.
However, two things happened just before Christmas that inspired me to buy a pair: firstly it got really cold, especially in the attic office I use on my working from home days; and secondly I found myself in a shoe shop buying some new boots, and started to wonder, just hypothetically, if I were to buy slippers what the most important attributes would be…
This is how my thinking went:
- If I’m going to wear slippers at all I need to be able to put them on in an instant.
- They are called “slippers” after all, so that shouldn’t be too much of a problem.
- However, they do need to *stay* on - I don’t want to have to crunch my toes up just to keep them on my feet when I walk, so those that don’t have uppers that go round the heel are no good.
- Equally, they don’t need to perform like trainers, but I do need to be able to walk down stairs without risking death.
So it appeared that there is a fine balance between ease of slipping in to them and their ability to stay on my feet, and that getting this balance right was the crucial factor in determining whether I became a habitual slipper-wearer or soon reverted to type…
And then a solution occurred to me: buy some slippers that enclose the whole foot but two sizes bigger than I normally wear! That way they should surround my feet enough to stay on, but have a large enough opening for me to be able to shuffle my feet into them without having to sit down, bend down or hop on one foot for a bit.
I looked through the racks, found a suitable pair, tried them on, did some shuttle runs up and down the isle without serious injury. And bought them.
Over the next few days three things happened:
- Firstly, I felt very pleased with my new slippers and my superb insight.
- Secondly, it took just three days for me to forget to put them on when I got up.
- Thirdly, my wife *hated* them and kept making jokes about pipes!
So just after Christmas she bought me some new ones…
Massive furry monster feet ones.
And she loves them, and my little sons love them, and I love them because they love them. And because those slippers turn me into a big friendly monster each morning.
Yes I have to use my hands to put them on, but I definitely don’t forget they exist, even in the fuzzy-headed mornings - my reptilian ‘scared of monsters’ brain sees to that. And sure they are treacherous and clumsy, but they are also very warm and if anything safer as they stop me even thinking I could run anywhere…
And so I’ve been wearing them every day for the last ten days…
Now I am not the kind of person who has to draw a ‘life lesson’ from everything, but the whole slipper episode did remind me of a few innovationy things:
It made me think about ‘emotional design’ and how important a role it plays in adoption - and brought to mind Donald Norman’s book amongst other things.
It made me think of how right Scott Page probably is about the importance of diversity in expanding and prioritising the attributes that are being evaluated in a design.
And it also made me think of the biggest innovation tenet of all: “fail fast and move on” - so, if anyone fancies a pair of rather dull size 11 corduroy slippers…?
