Reference points

When you encounter something for the first time you have no reference point. The thing you encounter establishes itself as the reference point. Anything similar encountered afterward, although “new,” is seen in relation to that first thing, the reference point.

For example, the first dog you see becomes a reference point for “dog.” If it’s a boxer, that’s your idea of dog. If you later encounter a springer spaniel or a wolf or coyote – anything canine – you have that first dog as a reference point.

I thought about this as I read an interview with CBC’s Terry O’Reilly. (It’s an interview done by Mark Dykeman at Broadcasting Brain.) There is a passing reference in it about when he began in advertising: “Edited radio by razor blade …”

I worked in radio too and did a lot of work editing that way. The reason it resonated with me is that it triggered the idea of analog vs. digital. I worked with sound back when everything was analog. That established my reference point. When digital came along, I found it awkward (and still do). However, had I started from the beginning with digital – had that been my reference point – I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t feel awkward to me but just the way to work with sound. What happens when you encounter something where you have a reference point is that you go back to it trying to understand the new thing in terms of the original.

I’m not sure this would be true of anyone else but for me the difference between analog and digital is the difference between thinking of sound as something aural (analog) as opposed to visual (digital). Editing in analog, I was always tuned into the rhythms and the beat and edited based on that. Similar to a DJ in a club using vinyl discs and cuing them to beats, often I would edit that way: cuing the vinyl, hitting "Record" on a beat as I let the disc spin. (It may have been called a slip cue).

With digital, while listening to the music for beats and off beats, it is more about seeing the visual representation – the graph of the audio – and identifying visually where those beats and off beats are. I work with digital audio rarely so it is quite likely I simply don’t know enough about working with it. My point is really this: the analog experience affects my digital experience of audio.

I think this notion of an established reference point as opposed to no reference point is an important one since it can affect a great many things, including products and services. As an example, when word processing programs first started coming out, as a growing number of people started using them, you could do almost anything creating those programs because there were no similar word processing programs that had established themselves as reference points. Now, however, when Microsoft makes changes to a program like Word, they often encounter a hue and cry and it’s because most people aren’t starting from square one. They have experienced word processing and have reference points – expectations of how they work, where functions are and so on.

I think when you are bringing out something new, you have to consider just how “new” it is. Speaking very broadly, you can say everything has some reference point. But some things are more new than others. You have to know what that “new” thing resonates with, whether expectations exist of what it should do and either address those in the development or through  how you communicate with your target audience (or both).

And that is the tangent my mind took after reading the interview. It's a worthwhile interview to read though my post here is unrelated except to the extent it sparked my rambling.