When Domo announced the #domosocial experiment, I was a little surprised. I thought to myself, “Doesn’t everyone already use Facebook and Twitter?” Why do we need to encourage more of that? Then I realized that perhaps this isn’t just about using more products — perhaps this is about something bigger.
For thousands of years people have done their best to live in a world where things are done inefficiently. In the early days societies like the Chinese and Egyptians have communicated using pictographs. Along came the Phoenicians who invented a phonetic alphabet that made written communication significantly easier. You no longer had to learn so many pictographs, instead you could spend your time focusing on communicating rather than remembering.
A few years ago we had many different kinds of cell phones that came in all sorts of shapes and sizes. They had buttons everywhere. However, it was difficult to do much more than talk on them. Apple identified these experiences as a problem and revolutionized how we use cell phones with the iPhone.
Even today, with the explosion of social sites and activities, there are lots of ways to do things. Every site and application does things differently. Sometimes it’s good, and sometimes it isn’t. Everyone wants to create the best application possible. However, you have to know what’s out there in order to be the best. You need to know what’s broken so you can fix it.
Like many companies Domo wants to create the best product out there. In order to do that, the entire company has to know what’s out there. They need to know what’s broken. They need to know what works. It doesn’t matter if their job is to define the product, design it, build it, or anything else. Everyone contributes in their own way. When everyone can recognize a bad experience they can help improve it.
Domo’s social experiment is simply an opportunity to help foster that kind of understand throughout the company. By having everyone use a wide variety of products that they normally wouldn’t use; they’ll gain experiences they normally wouldn’t gain. With these experiences they’ll make the Domo platform the best in the industry.