Early
adopters

Early
Majority

Late
Majority

Laggards

migration

• Figure 2. The Rogers model of innovation

November + December 2009

interactions

through which a given design direction gets selected. There are many good examples of design and usability practices that have been used to foster a natural selection of ideas. An example is the Nokia “Ringo phone” (also called the “bimbo phone,” as a humorous way of expressing that anyone could use it), an early concept that evolved into the “navigation key” concept and allowed the diffusion of easy-to-use mobile phones within a large majority of users. Another example is the BlackBerry system, which makes it easy to read, manage, and send email from a mobile device. RIM wanted to enable email outside of a computer and worked persistently to eliminate any barriers in the configuration of the email system on mobiles and to enable easy typing through advanced interaction tools and keyboards.

BlackBerrys were initially conceived for professional profiles and are now also spreading out of this initial market target, because other communities of users are “naturally selecting” the idea of using email while mobile. Anytime new directions are selected, they can spread very quickly based on cultural grounds. The natural selection of ideas and directions allows for the reduction of accidental variations within a given culture; it is therefore quite easy to support this evolutionary force by creating the conditions that allow the reinforcing of desired behaviors and choices.

Migration is the meshing of behaviors and attitudes that can lead to a change of values or new differentiations within communities. However, its main effect is to reduce differences among heterogeneous groups and cultures

(see the BlackBerry example). Multicultural societies result from migration processes.

In these groups, migration produces a reduction of inter-cultural differences by merging two cultures into a new, distinctive group. Migration can also exert contrasting pressures to the preexisting natural selection forces.

Finally, drift is the mechanism in which populations tend to move toward genetic uniformity over time. In the evolution of cultures it can be considered a barrier to the entrance of new values within a given cultural system. Drift plays a big role in monocultures and in authoritarian societies. However, it can have both negative and positive consequences, depending on whether an internal or external perspective is assumed. An example of drift in HCI is Microsoft’s early Internet