The previous article generated a fair bit of feedback, and some of it is misunderstanding the core point that I’m trying to get across. Much of the discussion turned around Word, more than the other components so I’m going to try and clear up a few things.
I’m not trying to say that Word is doomed or that it has no viable use cases going forward. The observation is that Word was the default tool for many people for many jobs, and was often the driving factor for computer purchases. The reflection is more to do with the general public rather than its use in business.
The environment has changed immensely and the general purpose tool of Word has given way to various tools that are hired for specific jobs to be done.
Some examples of tasks that we used to hire Word for and some examples of modern replacements:
The Christmas letter. An annual communication that used to be typed in Word, printed, stuffed in envelopes and mailed. This was followed up by a split workflow with the document also being sent as an attachment to the relatives that had email. Today’s version of the Christmas letter might just be an email with pictures included or even more frequently, a longer Facebook post than usual. Again, the changing nature of communications means that this annual ritual has also been replaced with a more fluid day-to-day diffusion of information by various means.
The venerable Journal or Diary. Many people used Word to maintain a written history over time, perhaps in a single big file or in multiple files named by date. On the public side of things, we now have Facebook and blogs, and on the private side of things we have excellent tools like Day One that go considerably further in serving the job to be done which is as much keeping the diary as it is enjoying it.
Notes. People are discovering keeping general notes in Word is overkill and are moving to tools like Simplenote, Evernote, OneNote, or even just the built in Notes apps offered by their platform.
Screenwriters and authors now have more options that you can shake a stick at, starting with Markdown editors of varying levels of complexity to purpose built editors like Scrivener.
Then there’s the school report. When I hear and read about projects like Frasier Spears’ one-to-one program and where students go beyond typing a report, but assemble multimedia projects and present their reports I’m amazed. The job to be done is to teach students how to research, synthesize and present their findings, and Word as the tool and the container is no longer sufficient, unlike many of the other jobs that Word can be replaced with smaller light weight tools.
Changes to the environnment
Other points that are driving this trend are the changing consumption habits concerning software. Historically, software was expensive, relatively difficult to acquire, potentially difficult to install. On top of all that we (the technologically advanced) frequently pointed out the risk factor of installing software and educated average users that they should be very careful. All of this added to the reticence to use anything but the standard preloaded Office suite of tools.
This is complement of the “if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail”. A PC sold with Office, coupled with the general lack of motivation to install other software leads us to using Office as a hammer for all of the jobs we have at hand. But if buying, installing and learning new software is friction-free, we are much more like to go looking for that left-handed 13mm ratchet wrench that is perfectly suited for the job.
This is a transformative change where the market for software is no longer primarily selling to corporate purchasers, but directly selling to the end user who uses a different set of criteria for making a purchasing decision. The creation of a high volume direct sales channel with the App Store, Google Play and the like has enabled the possibility of much lower cost software which leads to much more experimentation since the risk is minimized.
The decision process for buying Acorn at $50 vs Photoshop at $700 is completely different. On the Office front, Microsoft offers a discounted version Office for business users to install on their personal computers, but there is still the huge gap as they have no version for the growing (non-Windows) tablet market.