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I Saw The Sign - More Lessons from The Social Network

I wrote yesterday about the movie, The Social Network, and a few lessons I observed about turning ideas into reality. Today, I'd like to extrapolate a finer point from the movie and talk about a principle I first observed in the world of design.

Shortly after the movie hit theaters, an article on CNN talked about how people's perceptions of the website, Facebook, have been changing. (CNN: Facebook movie may be changing opinions about site.) The article points to a study that shows an increasingly positive perception of Facebook among young people, while the perception of older people may have dropped off since the release of the movie.

I believe one of the driving factors behind this phenomenon is what designers call "a conceptual model". A conceptual model, like an allegory or parable, is really just an analogy comparing something unfamiliar with some familiar. It is a way to help people connect with something new by showing the similarities to something well established.

We see conceptual models at work all the time in computers. We call the main screen on our computers the "desktop" and we refer to electronic documents as "files". The concept of "windows" is a way to help people understand multiple self-contained views of information. We refer to a summary or collection of key information as a "dashboard", borrowing the term from our cars.

Watch the following clip from the movie, The Social Network, and you'll instantly recognize one of the "conceptual models" on which the website, Facebook, was founded.

When I saw this movie in the theater, this particular scene created a stirring among the crowd as friends turned to each other, whispering, and giving each other a knowing look. As Mark, in the movie, ran back to his dorm room to implement his new idea, the audience understood, some perhaps for the first time, a conceptual model for a Facebook feature many of them probably hadn't given much thought.

When innovation and design are built on a strong conceptual model, and when people can clearly make the connection between the two, the design itself seems obvious. People look at the simplicity and elegance of the design and say, "why didn't I think of that?"

The same principles can be applied to innovations within organizations, not just product design. The key, however, is to recognize what is common in the human experience and find a way to apply these insights in a productive way. Trying to change human behavior is an uphill battle, but finding a conceptual model with which people can identify will change the equation.

The conceptual model presented in this movie for the "Relationship Status" feature of Facebook is clearly geared toward people in the dating scene, so it is no surprise that this didn't resonate with an older generation. What is most amazing to me, however, is how a simple conceptual model, presented in a movie that (perhaps unfairly) portrays Facebook as a tool for socially dysfunctional people, can increase the positive perceptions of the product without even trying.

If there were a Facebook page for conceptual models, I would definitely "like" it.

(Disclaimer: While there are many things I enjoyed about the movie, The Social Network, I cannot offer an unqualified recommendation of the film. It is rated PG-13 for a reason. Also, I do not claim that the scenes in the movie are factually correct accounts, only that the events as portrayed in the movie illustrate certain points.)

Let's Write It - Lessons from The Social Network

For whatever the movie, The Social Network, claims about itself, or whatever discussion it has generated about the veracity of its depiction of the beginnings of the website, Facebook, I found the film to be inspiring. Despite the obvious flaws of many of the characters, there are a few lessons I took away from the movie, and I hope these ideas inspire you as well.

In one of the early scenes, Mark is working on a late night coding binge just to occupy his mind with "an idea" after his girlfriend dumped him. The idea turns out to be the uncouth concept of ranking his female classmates based solely on their school photos, but let's leave that aside for now. In the following clip, Mark's roommate comes into his dorm room to supply the missing piece of the puzzle for Mark's new website.

The thing that struck me most when I first saw this scene was how immediately Mark dove into his idea, coding well into the night to create what just hours early was merely "an idea". There was no gestational period for the idea, no time of contemplation or planning or dreaming. He just did it. At the end of this clip, did you notice what Mark said? "Let's write it." That was it. There's the idea. Now, let's do it. (In this case, a gestational period would have been good, considering his "idea" was born of personal rejection and large amounts of beer, but you get the point.)

I've got lots of ideas. Some of them are great, and some of them are mediocre. But all of them are failures if they never see the light of day. What was remarkable about the depiction of Mark in The Social Network is that he attacked ideas without abandon and made dreams a reality. 

Later in the movie, Mark defended himself against claims that he stole the idea for Facebook by telling his accusers, "If you were the inventors of Facebook, you would have invented Facebook!" As funny as this sounds, the element of truth is this: Unless you make it happen, your idea is worthless. (I'm not an Intellectual Property lawyer, and I realize ideas have value, but that really only reinforces my point. Unless an idea becomes reality, it's value is only theoretical, and any claim or lawsuit would be worthless.)

The other thing to note is this: Mark's night of coding brought an idea into reality, but if the story stopped there, it wouldn't be remarkable. What made the story great was the fact that Mark didn't stop there.

That idea that is sitting there in the back of your head, waiting to be released, is probably not your best idea. It's just the one holding up all the other traffic. Get it out, and get on with what's next, because that's where the success lies.

In many ways, this blog is my idea, limited by execution. And this post? This post is my "Let's write it" cry. I could rewrite it later, but I probably won't. I'll simply crank it out and move on because my best ideas are yet to come. I've just got to get this one out of the way first.

(Disclaimer: While there are many things I enjoyed about the movie, The Social Network, I cannot offer an unqualified recommendation of the film. It is rated PG-13 for a reason. Also, I do not claim that the scenes in the movie are factually correct accounts, only that the events as portrayed in the movie illustrate certain points.)