Business Trapping Factors
Noticed the keyboard on your computer?
The keys are laid out in the following order:
QWERTYUIOP
ASDFGHJKL
ZXCVBNM
You’ll place your fingers on the “Home Row”, which is the 2nd row. From there, your fingers travel up to the 1st row or down to the 3rd row or remain on the 2nd row to find the right key to type.
Almost 100% of the computers in the world have this QWERTY-Style keyboard which has remained practically unchanged since it was introduced more than 140 years ago in 1874 for the typewriter.
If you’ve learned how to be a reasonably proficient typist using this keyboard, you will be unlikely to want to switch to another keyboard with a different layout even if that other layout enables you to type 50% quicker.
There is such a keyboard layout and it’s called the Dvorak keyboard. It was invented in 1932 by August Dvorak and his team after almost 20 years in development starting in 1914.
Here’s how the keys are laid out on this board:
PYFGCRL
AOEUIDHTNS
QJKXBMWVZ
With a Dvorak keyboard, you can type 5,000 words on the Home Row alone! Compare that to the QWERTY keyboard that gives you a mere 300 words or so.
When you don’t have to move your fingers up to the 1st row or down to the 3rd row to type the letters, you’ve saved a lot of finger movements. In the process you multiply your typing speed significantly.
You also make less spelling errors, which makes you even more productive.
The world’s fastest typist in 1985, Barbara Blackburn, could type 212 words per minute on a Dvorak keyboard!
Now it’s likely that you’ll gain a faster typing speed with a Dvorak layout, if you’re trained to use it.
If you deal with words for a living - like an author, copywriter, or a data entry person - you’ll be able to potentially double your output in the same duration of time.
This means more money for you in the same amount of time with less effort.
The question then is, why are the vast majority of the population still using the QWERTY keyboard?
Because of the Trapping factor that I discussed in my previous post on Entrapment.
The QWERTY keyboard had a long headstart over the Dvorak keyboard. While it wasn’t the greatest layout to use, it was the only common layout for a long time.
Typing schools taught the QWERTY keyboard. Thousands, and later millions, of typists were trained to use it.
With almost everybody on earth using a QWERTY keyboard, there’s really no reason for computer manufacturers to provide you with a different keyboard layout so that you can type faster.
The benefit to you is that you can go to any typewriter or computer and immediately start typing without any need to familiarize yourself with the keyboard’s layout first.
In addition, you probably didn’t know of the existence of the Dvorak keyboard in the first place.
But even if you do, the simple thought that you’ll need to re-train your brain to type using a Dvorak keyboard is probably putting you off from even attempting to do so.
This is because you remember very clearly that it took you many, many hours to master the QWERTY keyboard in the first place.
The Trapping Factor here is the TIME and EFFORT needed to re-train yourself to a new keyboard layout.
It may only take you a few extra hours to do the re-training, but those few extra hours are a few extra hours too many for just about all of us.
We have many things to fit within our hours nowadays, and re-training simply isn’t one of them.
August Dvorak died in 1975. He complained bitterly:
“I’m tired of trying to do something worthwhile for the human race. They simply don’t want to change!”
Learn from the wisdom of Dvorak right there.
Does this mean that you should never compete with business that have trapping factors already in their favor in operation?
Yes, if you’re competing based on your product being “better”.
We don’t care if it’s better in this case because we’ve trapped ourselves by refusing to re-train our brains for this purpose. It’s just too painful to even think about it.
No, if you’re competing with that business using another wonderful new advantage that business does not have.
Overwhelm us with that new advantage so that we’ll want to change to get it.
Or give us many more wanted advantages beyond the main benefits of the product that not switching will deny us.
Today, there is one possible angle for the Dvorak keyboard for it to have a good chance to doing exactly that.
But first, let’s check out a modern example of the QWERTY keyboard:
Microsoft’s Office Suite
(discussed in my previous post on Entrapment).
Once the masses have been trained on Microsoft’s word processor, spreadsheet and e-mail programs (to name a few), they’re simply unwilling to learn how to use a new word processor, spreadsheet or e-mail.
There’s simply no need to do so unless there are many features the masses want that Microsoft’s Office Suite is not serving.
As you probably know, Microsoft’s programs are so bloated with features that we’re only using maybe 20% of them - so this isn’t a weakness that its competitors can exploit.
The longer Microsoft remains unchallenged, the more trapped we all are.
OpenOffice, Sun Microsystem’s Office Suite which is free, is challenging Microsoft’s dominance.
But it is hardly causing a ripple and most people don’t use it because of the need to re-train themselves to use a new interface and menu.
Thus when you want to challenge Microsoft, don’t do it on its own turf.
Challenge Microsoft where it hurts - in areas where it has no dominance or is weak in - and gain market share this way.
This will give you a much better chance.
Nobody could quite figure out how to do this since the 1980s.
However, due to some recent technological advances, there is at last a semblance of a breakthrough.
And of course the Internet has something to do with it.
With the Internet and the emergence of the World Wide Web plus some exciting new development in web-based software, new advantages were created where none had existed before.
Leading the charge in shooting huge holes in Microsoft’s Trapping Mechanism is Yahoo and Google, both giant Internet compaines.
Note the following:
Yahoo is the No.1 Internet Portal in the world.
Google is the No.1 Internet Search Engine in the world.
Yahoo is part of your life because it provides you with lots of services that you can use for free. Check your e-mail, weather, read the news, scan the movie reviews, look for forums, use the calendar, notepad and a zillion other things.
Google is part of your life because you start with it to search for information. Because its search results are very accurate, you continue to use it every single day over Yahoo and Microsoft’s own MSN Search.
Now that they “have a foot in our doors” with their dominance in areas where Microsoft doesn’t have, they can mount a serious challenge to Microsoft in getting us to switch over to their version of an Office Suite.
The battle for control in the Office Suite market is very important because they’re the most basic programs used by the majority of the masses on their computers.
Bill Gates became the richest man and Microsoft the biggest software company in the world doing just that.
Now here’s where it gets interesting.
Yahoo takes the “familiar” route in its challenge.
It is starting with its webmail program.
All you need to do to access it is to go to its web site at www.mail.yahoo.com and log in to use it for free.
With Microsoft’s Outlook e-mail program, you’ll need to have access to your own computer that has a copy of this program installed to check, send and reply your e-mail.
However, there is a Trapping Mechanism in Microsoft’s favor.
You see, web-based programs have a major weakness. To execute something (checking for new e-mails, or replying to an e-mail), the web page you’re looking at needs to be refreshed or reloaded in your browser to show the new screen or information.
This slows down things considerably and adds to your frustration if you’re used to using Microsoft’s Outlook as your e-mail program. Installed programs like it usually perform much faster since the processing activity happens on your own computer where you’re the only user.
Because of this, I have stuck to using Outlook for years even though it fills up my computer’s hard disk with downloaded e-mails, or I lose all of them eventually when my hard disk finally crashes which it is bound to do one day.
However, with the recent rise of AJAX technology, a webmail program can now perform and respond almost as fast as a program installed on a computer!
When this happens, this Trapping Mechanism (speed) in favor of Microsoft’s programs is no longer a factor!
You’ve got to see and use it to believe the beauty of this major advancement in web-based software.
But Yahoo isn’t through yet.
Yahoo has now designed its new webmail program to look almost exactly like Microsoft’s Outlook program in terms of look and feel.
Check it out below and see how familiar it looks!
Since Yahoo’s web mail program is very similar in look and feel to Microsoft’s, there is very little re-training to do for users used to Outlook. Thus Microsoft’s Trapping Mechanism in “familiarity” much valued by its users in no longer a factor in preventing Yahoo from targeting its users, and getting them to switch over!
Yahoo’s new webmail program is in Beta testing right now. But now that you know what they’re doing - you’ll need to switch your normal HTML Yahoo webmail over to this new version (even if it’s in Beta) because the AJAX technology is way too cool to miss out on!
And what about Google?
It too is riding on AJAX technology to create fast-response web-based programs. It too started with its own version of webmail, called GMail.
However, unlike Yahoo which designed its webmail based on Outlook’s look and feel, GMail designed its webmail around its strongest trait, which is ultra-fast search.
If you’ve ever used Outlook’s Search function to look for an e-mail in your Outlook program, you’ll find it to be painfully slow - sometimes taking up to a few minutes to do so depending on how many e-mails you have downloaded previously.
Google’s advantage in search technology for the web is not only in the very accurate results it brings back in response to your query, but it does it blazingly fast as well - usually within a split second.
If you use GMail to search for your e-mails there, you’ll usually find very relevant results very, very quickly.
Since Google isn’t a real fan of Microsoft (and most of us aren’t), it didn’t take the “familiar” route like Yahoo.
It’s betting that its huge e-mail storage capacity (close to 3GB currently), ultra-fast search feature and other cool and useful features like “Conversations” (where replies to an e-mail are automatically grouped together for you) will win over users trapped in Microsoft’s programs.
It also ensures that the new interface is as easy to learn as possible. You’ll be up to speed with the basic features of GMail within minutes (instead of hours or days). This makes it easy for you to switch over.
Google is taking the “overwhelming you with other advantages route” to get you to re-train yourself because it’s going to be worth it to do so. In any case, it’ll only take a few extra minutes to do so, so this isn’t a real problem to begin with!
And with AJAX technology, you’ll see your e-mails the instant they arrive in your mailbox. You get the feeling it’s even faster than Outlook which has to log into your mail server to check it before downloading it into your computer.
As for the other Microsoft Program like the spreadsheet, Google has its own called Google Spreadsheets. It has also acquired Writely, the web alternative to Microsoft’s Word program.
Both of Google’s web programs also use AJAX technology for speed.
In addition, both exploit Microsoft’s weakness in its computer-installed software - that of collaboration.
It’s very easy to share a document done in Google Spreadsheet or Writely as they can be access online by anybody with the right password. The creator of those documents simply assigns others to share it by e-mailing them the password to access it.
With collaboration, teams of people can change/amend/edit a document as and when necessary and have access to the new document and all their older versions.
With Microsoft’s installed on the user’s computer programs, this isn’t easily done apart from e-mailing every team member the actual document. Keeping track of all changes/amendments/edits will be harder and is very much unorganized.
If that’s not enough - when you use the Collaboration feature, you’re helping Google spread the use of its web-based programs for free!
Google and Yahoo’s web-based software are also free to use. They make money from selling advertising space within the programs.
The free factor is yet another advantage over Microsoft which charges for its Office Suite.
But not to be outdone, Microsoft recognizes the threat and danger coming from Google and Yahoo. It has in the works its own web-based versions of its computer-installed software, as part of their pre-empting strategy, called Office Live.
With its own web-based software in place where the money is made through advertising space and subscriptions for more advanced features, Microsoft is safeguarding its interests should its computer-installed software business ever suffer a major a hit from Google and Yahoo.
But there’s a factor that Microsoft can’t shake off that may just cause a revolution to go the other way.
The anti-Microsoft sentiment among many of its customers around the world.
We love to hate Microsoft because of its inferior products we were forced to use for many, many years.
I could tell you another horror story with its FrontPage program for building web pages when it first came out many years ago, but I’ll spare you the agony.
In any case, the competition between the top 3 800-pound gorillas is a mouth-watering one. The next few years will be a very exciting years indeed.
Getting back to the Dvorak keyboard.
Knowing what you know now, just what angle can it use to give it a better chance of succeeding in getting people to switch over from the QWERTY keyboard, in today’s climate?
Here’s the other advantage in its design:
Because your fingers travel less all over the keyboard when you’re typing with it, you can also prevent “Repetitive Strain Injuries” (RSI) or “Carpal Tunnel Syndrome”.
This is a very painful condition where your hands and arms really hurt after some long hours on a normal keyboard over a period of months or years. They could hurt so bad that you wouldn’t be able to use your hands for anything else, with complete rest being the cure.
This isn’t a “better because it’s faster” advantage which has been proven to fail (the need to be faster on a keyboard may not be desirable if the typist is already very fast with his current keyboard to begin with), but you’ll want it because “it prevents the, or cures your, RSI or Carpal Tunnel Syndrome that a QWERTY keyboard causes“.
Focusing on this single advantage gives a much bigger reason for users to switch over (for health reasons).
This will also get more free publicity in the media as well since it’ll benefit the media’s viewers/readers more significantly than simply getting the typing done faster.
Plus there are probably millions of people by now with this condition all over the world that would require relief from pain other than taking drugs. If re-training for a few hours or days on a Dvorak keyboard can help them type normally again without pain for the rest of their lives, they’re more likely do it than for the other reason of speed alone.
Does this make senze to you?
How would you apply the principles above to your own business against your competitors who have strong Trapping Mechanisms in place?
Still using the “I’m better than them” angle?
More mind-busting stuff in my next post!
Warm Regards,
Sen Ze
P.S. You can link to this post with the following URL:
http://www.SenZe.com/business-blog/microsoft/business-trapping-factors.htm
