The Novelty Curve

Something tells me that this visual shouldn't require additional explanation.  :-)

Comments

[Tyler C Hellard]

Now map all your favorite (and not-so-favorite) toys, sites and apps to this graph.

[Paula Thornton]

[no criticisms intended -- such brilliant simplicity] Sacrificing the beauty of its simplicity, it lacks a velocity dimension. The rate on either side may vary considerably. On the down side, it would be influenced by what was available to take its place and/or draw attention in other ways (e.g. catestrophic events).

It would also be influenced by how high the top of the adoption curve is...much as we all hate it, MS Word is too entrenched for ready abandonment (and I've been ready since 1985).

[Kevin Donaldson]

When I saw this, the 'time' dimension seems to be missing? The goal would be to make the curve higher and stretch wider, and in the best case keep it flat once it crests or have another product hit the market as the first starts to trend down.

The other interesting thing that came to mind, when looking at this, is the that 'novelty' sometimes/often has nothing to do with utility, and depending on what you are selling, knowing this can be important.

[Alex Rainert]

Sadly I feel like I'm near the final dot in regards to how I feel about my Nintendo Wii. Where are the games?!

[Ginger Johnson]

sigh...this is so true on so many levels, in so many areas of life. Is there a curve that goes the other way, in the reverse? gcj

[German]

An interesting fact is when you're telling all your friends, some of them may start the Novelty Curve again.

By the way, great blog!

[Sam]

I think time is captured quite well in "What was I thinking" it just varies based on the individual and product. Clear Pepsi(took about a week) vs shag carpet (my uncle still hasn't changed his basement)

[Chas]

The most intriguing section of that curve is between "telling all my friends" and "I haven't used it in a couple weeks" as that where a person may accept the novelty's utility and adopt it. Of course then it would cease being a novelty ;-)

[-challis]

...should read novelty curve for useless products & services.

-c

[Mario Vellandi]

Hey buddy, did you take a class in Economics in a previous life? X/Y coordinate graphs are always fun.

[Staci L]

This curve definitley explains my life. I'm glad to see that I'm not alone in loosing interest in something I think is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

[Paul J. Thomas]

Oddly enough this seems to apply to nearly everything I can think of...

[BJ101]

that's depressing. but true.

[Flo Mariñez]

Absolutely brilliant! people tend to merge away from the simple response and totally over analyze situations.... Common sense... not so common! thank you for putting it out there!

[Tim Peter]

Hi David,
It's not that I disagree - this behavior does occur. But, yours is an incomplete picture. You're showing the first part of a technology-adoption curve (look it up on Wikipedia). I think "early adopters" follow your pattern. But useful technologies - I'm looking at you, Twitter - survive as folks farther down the adoption food chain get on board. Nice visual, though.

[Tim Peter]

BTW, the "look it up on Wikipedia" reads snarky after I saw it here. I meant to point folks to it via a link and didn't remove the parenthetical comment when the link got removed. My bad.

[Tom O'Brien]

This is a good one - I'm going to use it - with full attribution of course!

Tom O'B
http://humanvoice.wordpress.com

[Bruce Klopfenstein]

(Picking myself up off the floor.)

Man! There is so much great stuff here! How do you expect a curious emerging new media professor to get his work done?

Incredibly impressive.

Dr. Bruce C. Klopfenstein, Ph.D.
Director, University of Georgia Membership in the New Media Consortium and Professor of Emerging New Media

[Misha Cornes]

It's Twitter!

[Ann]

rock on David. Once again you've distilled a complex subject into a singular graphical element.