- Pre-release “blogger-bashers” are terrible predictors of a product’s success
- David Pogue: “Every now and then, a couple of messages come in that really irk me. These messages tell me how wrong I am about something I reviewed, which is fine — but they come from people who have never even tried the product. It was that way with the iPhone, in the time after it was announced but before it was available. “This will be the biggest flop since the Cube,” went the critics. “No removable battery? Nobody will touch this thing.” Etc. The blogs were full of this stuff. As it turns out, they were massively, humiliatingly wrong. Four million iPhones were sold in the first 200 days. Its sales surpassed Treos, Windows Mobile phones — everybody but BlackBerry. So what’s the lesson here? Simple enough: those vocal pre-release blogger-bashers are terrible predictors of a product’s success or failure.”
- Cordell Ratzlaff discusses ux management at Cisco
- “One of my pet peeves is with the specialized labels that have evolved within our profession. We have user interface designers, usability engineers, user experience specialists, visual designers, interaction designers, etc. The distinction between these many roles is fuzzy and confusing to those both inside and outside the design profession…I encourage designers to get as broad a range of experience as possible. Design products for as many markets, demographics, product types, and technology platforms as you can. Don’t be afraid to take on tasks outside your traditional role. The best designers I know are good at many facets of design. It certainly doesn’t hurt to know about branding, marketing, business models, and technology as well.”
- How to disagree
- “If we’re all going to be disagreeing more, we should be careful to do it well. What does it mean to disagree well? Most readers can tell the difference between mere name-calling and a carefully reasoned refutation, but I think it would help to put names on the intermediate stages. So here’s an attempt at a disagreement hierarchy…”
- Sign up forms must die
- “When planning a customer’s initial experience for your web service, think about how you can avoid sign-up forms in favor of gradual engagement.”
- JetBlue on Twitter
- “I learned that Morgan is behind JetBlue’s tweets, and not a bot, and that Morgan is very well informed on social media ethics and aware that corporate use of Twitter can be tricky. I am impressed that Morgan was watching Twitter closely enough to sense an issue, responded quickly, apologized, and removed the two of us from @JetBlue’s list. This served as a demonstration of the company’s active participation in the Twitter conversation, its willingness to course-correct, and of the new speed of social media with which corporations have to contend.”
- Maslow's hierarchy of needs
- “The higher needs in this hierarchy only come into focus when the lower needs in the pyramid are satisfied. Once an individual has moved upwards to the next level, needs in the lower level will no longer be prioritized. If a lower set of needs is no longer being met, the individual will temporarily re-prioritize those needs by focusing attention on the unfulfilled needs, but will not permanently regress to the lower level. For instance, a businessman (at the esteem level) who is diagnosed with cancer will spend a great deal of time concentrating on his health (physiological needs), but will continue to value his work performance (esteem needs) and will likely return to work during periods of remission.”
- Earth Hour shows how difficult it is to get even a tiny cut in energy consumption
- “Earth Hour, hysterically promoted by The Age, the Sydney Morning Herald, the ABC, SBS, Sky News and the federal and state governments, resulted in no significant fall in power usage…The organisers will say never mind, this was about raising awareness (although not of raising awareness of the facts). But here’s the awareness it should raise: how difficult it is to get even a tiny cut in just electricity use for one lousy hour, in a country responsible for just 1.5 per cent of the world’s emissions.”
- Asaph Microblog
- “Over the past few weeks I developed Asaph – a small blogging system, that allows you to instantly post links and images directly from any page on the web. This makes Asaph the most fun to use application if you want to collect and show all the cool things you found elsewhere. Asaph is not a full blown blog and it does not aim to be one – it just does this one task, but it’s pretty good at it.”
- “Thriving Office” audio
- “Thriving Office contains the sounds of voices, phones, computers, and much more. One 39-minute track is ‘Busy’ and the other is ‘Very Busy’. Click below to hear a sample and then start benefiting from this exciting new product!”
Rying
on 07 Apr 08...even getting feedback from people who has tried your product is not always useful. I have seen too many focus groups turn great ideas into average, dull, political correct, and just plain boring products. So sometimes it does pay – not to listen :-)
Peter Urban
on 07 Apr 08The blogosphere (especially the part of it that focuses on tech, gadgets, web 2.0 etc) consists of a group of people that in many cases doesn’t reflect the rest of the population. On one hand they are easier to address and communicate with since they are always on the hunt for news and they usually ‘get’ the tech stuff instantly. On the other hand though they tend to see things through their tech / web insider tinted glasses, often ignoring everyday people’s needs, opinions and experience while hastily shaping their opinion one the the latest thing before moving on to the next hot news. Sometimes it takes a bit more time and trying the thing in real life and to wait until after habits have adapted to the new way of doing things before one can make a call if something works or not.
For instance Michael Reichmann has build one of (if not the) most resourceful sites on photography (technique, equipment etc.) by taking the time to experience new equipment and then to describe the user experience to the readers instead of just going by tech specs and lab results. He pretty much covered the transition from film to digital over the last years and continues to report on latest developments, industry insights etc. It takes time end effort though to be that thorough and so he posts just a few times per week instead of the blogging ‘standard’ of several posts a day. I guess every area is different but this is a good example to me that taking the time and going trough the extra effort can make a lot of sense and even pay back in terms of reader loyalty and general interest in one’s opinion.
In terms of “how to disagree” I generally find that disagreement can be very effective and rewarding if the parties involved manage to take the emotions out of it. I never get it when people become aggressive over discussing a new phone, operating system, camera equipment or whatever – just baffles me.
Thanks to 37s for the good post.
Patrick Dubroy
on 07 Apr 08I recently ran across a cool book called Universal Principles of Design. Inspired by Maslow’s famous psychology theory, the authors proposed a Hierarchy of Needs for design:
Definitely an interesting way to think about design.
I also wrote about what I think a hierarchy of needs for code would look like.
Tim Wilson
on 07 Apr 08I would recommend caution reading the Earth Hour Blog Entry. It is written by Andrew Bolt. He is a conservative commentator, who often makes outrageous statements which are generally based in fact, but these facts are often over simplified or over exaggerated in order to prove his point. ie. based on previous comments he has made, he would made up his mind before writing the article, then looked for anything to back it up.
Sam Leibowitz
on 08 Apr 08Reminds me o fthis gem from Slashdot, which probably ought to be enshrined next to “640k should be enough for anyone”.
Jay
on 09 Apr 08Kind of funny to see the David Pogue quote about pre-release product bashing from people who have never used a product… On the same blog that DHH posted his “terrible” comments about the pre-release Instinct. :)
anon
on 11 Apr 08beat me to it Jay ;)
This discussion is closed.