In a previous post titled "The Elephant in the Room" I described my emotional journey and a milestone event for me where in order to allow our company and product to continue to build momentum both in product maturity and accelerating momentum towards market acceptance and entry, I needed put my ego aside and be satisfied with the artistic and utilitarian nature of the MAKO product.
I think that fundamentally this is the manifistation of a philosophy I termed "Low Friction Innovaton", which has been a product design and development approach I have been developing and refining over 20 years of cumulative experiences as a special operations end user/practioner and SOF technologist. I'm learning that it's no longer theoretical or a fantasy - It works.
This has been difficult for me to describe to others and I accept that, for me, the best way for me to describe it to people is to simply demonstrate it.
MAKO is one of my fullest expressions (to date) of this design (and now product) philosophy.
Another incredibly subtle but very important attribute of this approach is that in the case of the MAKO system, in describing MAKO to people while in operation (or to people passing by) it is incredibly non-threatening and unobtrusive. Ironically, this was a key reason I struggled with describing MAKO to people because it wasn't "splashy" and didn't "jolt" or make someone do a double take. (Not counting very early prototypes that were - well - early prototypes...) It was at it's core an elegantly simple, high performance balloon flying on a string. Responses I've seen evoked have ranged from "wow, that's cool!' to "eh." to "so what?"
I get that now and am absolutely ok and centered with this. Because, frankly in everything I do, my ultimate goal is to deliver utilitarian art that has a positive impact. It's starting to happen. The visceral responses come when people see what they can do with the product.
An example is a brief video clip from some aerial imagery from MAKO on a quiet Sunday Morning in late spring in San Diego. This video clip has an audio recording of the sounds from MAKO while in flight.
Again, it's subtle - but when you watch the video, listen to the audio.
What do you hear?
Cheers,
John
