I’m a fishing nut. Started in the mid-70s using very light tackle, I immediately caught lots of fish from the rocks at the end of my street in Dublin. I’ve been hooked ever since, and fished all over the world, and bought far more angling equipment than I needed or used (making me a “tackle tart”, as we call it). I loved that little rod, 5 foot long, fiber glass them days, with a cork handle. I still have it.
So, I’m delighted to see LRF (or Light Rock Fishing) emerge as a genre in its own right in the last few years. Influenced by fishing from kayaks, the sporting and environmental values of catch and release policies, and the technology and aesthetics of Japanese and French spinning and baitcasting rod design, LRF with its shorter, ultra lightweight rods (carbon these days), braided lines, funky colorful lures, and the marvels of small-scale precision reel engineering, has really taken off in Europe. Some of the Japanese LRF rods in particular, are really beautiful, total Ninja stuff. LRF gives you one hell of a bigger kick out of catching the same species fish that you did before. But the kit is more deadly, yet powerful too. Some huge fish have been landed on LRF gear.
Like with LRF, there’s an emotional pull in just wanting to use great and simple tools and technology that can be hard to explain. We’re inspired by something beyond functionality that aligns with positive feelings. How many of us, of a certain age, feel that we did our best writing on the Apple Mac Plus or 512K in college, for example? We come across outstanding examples of really great user experiences in the most unlikely of places too. A recent encounter with Emirates ICE inflight entertainment system had me so engaged that I interrupted the movies a few times to explore the system itself a bit more!
For me, this pull is all about smart design aimed at solving different levels of needs. It lets you meet the immediate little challenge by focusing on the essence of what you really need to do intuitively and intelligently, sure. But it’s also the invitation to do more, to a world of discoverability, to explore how you can make something really work for you in a satisfying, yet surprising way. You can push it, and yourself. And yet, you know that there is some awesome physics and thought behind the design that will let you accomplish out of the ordinary stuff if you need to.
That FUSE is the new face of Oracle Fusion Applications fits into this paradigm perfectly. Beautiful design, intuitive, intelligent, the lightweight FUSE UI is optimized for navigation and action, and guess what? It's also integrated with other optimized Fusion Applications experiences too, pivoting through the cloud. So when the whale of a task comes along there’s the power of the Fusion desktop UI version at hand to land that biggie, for example.
I’m all LRF now. It's a return to simple basics, to the excitement and discovery of being a kid fishing again. I’m done with the swinging of an 8oz weight off the end of a 13-foot beach casting rod so that it lands 150 yards away, though I’ll keep the big gun rods stored safely for when the fishing situation suits. I’m all FUSE now too, but I know another optimized experience is at my fingertips too should continuing my work need it.