Maeda's SIMPLICITY

The Song of A Tree

High atop the mountain stood a great tree.

I gave a talk at Amazon headquarters in Seattle today. For some reason I thought the company would be housed in some super high-tech campus that enacted the Amazon rainforest metaphor to the n-th degree. Perhaps it was all those times that I've passed by the Rainforest Cafe in shopping malls in the States that made me think that the receptionist would be wearing some sort of elephant helmet? Or that I would be greeted by a robotic gorilla? No such frills unfortunately.

Housed in an old building on top of a hill that is reminiscent of the opening credits for the soap opera General Hospital, Amazon is actually set in what used to be a real hospital that I drove by every day as a youth. To think that in hallways once filled with deep human drama there would be legions of computers and young minds percolating on the future of world commerce ... human spirits that are recast as ghosts within the machine.

One important point of our discussion was the challenge of presenting a customer with less choices rather than more choices as the central differentiating factor for Amazon. Of course in everyone's mind, Amazon is synonymous with more, and that anything less than more just wouldn't be Amazon in the consumer's mind. I couldn't help but notice the evergreen trees visible from the conference room window.

The advantage of living in New England versus areas with superior climates like California or Hawaii, is that we see some very dismal weather in the winter. Growing up in Washington, also called the "Evergreen State," I was used to seeing the fir trees green all year long. In contrast, during the fall in New England, the trees voluntarily shed all of their precious leaves, and all that remains by winter are just the empty branches. The barrenness of winter is accentuated by the naked trees. Nature gets a rest from her work. As a result humans miss nature's beauty even more. Fewer things are truer than the saying, "Absence makes the heart grow fonder."

Is a tree with more leaves more beautiful than a tree with fewer leaves? This question is unanswerable I think. However the one related truth is that cycles of replenishment are intrinsic to the rhythm of the natural environment. In the digital age we expect always-on, always-all, and always-now. Although attractive qualities from a human's perspective, these desires are not natural.

In the design of future electronic systems, we may want to consider the rhythm of nature as a mediating theme in interfaces. We don't like it when the computer freezes, but we have better tolerance when a disruptive snowstorm hits. Both events are out of our control, yet we only react to the seemingly understood determinism of the former.

A company that symbolizes many trees, and that is in responsible for countless trees' lives all over the earth, could probably benefit from listening closer to the song of the trees. I'll be tuning in as well ...

Jana Snyder of Kansas comments, "Your 'trees' bit reminded me of this poetic quote: I't is in winter that trees reveal what they most truly are.' (I have the author's name somewhere, but not in my brain nor close at hand.)

Posted by maeda at February 7, 2005 09:39 PM