Buzz Pressure

There are still seats available for ExperienceTech!2008 hosted by MaRS & IDC. I’m doing a panel moderated by Stuart MacDonald of Expedia.ca and now TripHarbor fame, Leila Boujnane of Idee and the venerable David Crow.

We did a little pre-conf/pre-panel meeting Friday evening. Stuart, Leila and David were all gathered at MaRS and I phoned in while I chased my son on his bike around our neighbourhood until my BlackBerry ran out of juice and forced me to be confined to our porch.  In any case, if our conversation is any indicator of our panel, I think you won’t want to miss it. We’re going pretty much unscripted and hope to rely on the audience to drive the conversation with Stuart playing ring master keeping Leila, David and myself in line.

Even if we suck, there’s lots of other interesting speakers at ExperienceTech. Grover Righter is sharing tips on growing and exiting with less capital. Grover is rumoured to be a kick-ass speaker and a general force to be reckoned with . Tom Kelley of IDEO is talking about innovation and there are even other panels if you dare risk missing ours.

Like I said, not too late to register.

Carm (my wife) found possibly the most tragic, cautionary example of why you need to be market driven. For the benefit of those non-Canadians or non-caffeinated reading this posting: every year Tim Hortons (think Duncan Donuts) runs a contest called “Roll up the Rim“. The contest runs for a couple of weeks or until Tim Hortons runs out of cups.

Most Canadians gnaw at their cup to make the rim malleable enough to discover that they have to “play again”. Mr. Kind, the inventor of the “Rimroller” obviously was unhappy chewing away on his cup like some caffeine crazed freak trying to get every ounce out of his coffee, or more correctly every millilitre for us Canuckleheads.

Actually when I think of Mr. Kind, I imagine a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches — a sort of Curious George character. Clearly Mr. Kind is far too dignified to gnaw his way to disappointment and Roll up the Rim defeat. But you know you missed the mark when your sole distribution channel has taken pity on you and is only stocking your product because they feel so darn bad:

Paul Kind, had plowed a ton of time and capital into bringing the product to the point where it was ready to market. So, while Lee Valley is clearly not the most appropriate retailer of this product, we could only stand by for so long watching Mr. Kind work hard to sell this product without success.

Ouch. So other then the fact that Mr. Kind wasn’t very successful what else can we learn from this tragic story? That Lee Valley will pick up your crap if you’re unsuccessful? Um no but yeah they do seem to be reinforcing bad behaviour but you have to applaud their support.

Ok yeah the title was a clue. I have a feeling if Mr. Kind spent a little time with the market he would’ve discovered that while his invention is novel, his design elegant if not decidedly brown, it isn’t a “must have” product with a compelling, overt user benefit. Note: reducing cup gnaw is apparently not overt.

I’m sure this invention was justified throughout its development because I bet Mr. Kind has rolled up a rim or two in his time. Man that sounds dirty. But it is that “I’m the market” point that is probably the biggest learning here. It is really easy to say you are your market but the second you become inventor you’re no longer your market. Mr. Kind’s market is scarfing crappy coffee and downing sugary fat. They’re not taking risks, developing an invention. Hopefully the cost of tuition for this little learning wasn’t too much for Mr. Kind.

The good news is that it was free for all of us — unless in a moment of sympathy and weakness you popped for a Rim Roller. Now get out there and talk to your market, your fans and more importantly your critics.

Of course you can’t expect the market to tell you exactly what they want. They haven’t a clue but they know what they like when they see it and they know where it hurts. Now run along and invent and refine products that make your users’ world a better place.

John Battelle posted an article near and dear to my heart entitled “The Power of Power Searchers“.

“What I do wonder is whether Google et al are creating products for ME, or for my mother. This data would argue that they should be for me.”

I’ve had many a heated discussion on what user segment a given product should be focused. At times, I think I’ve been right and I definitely know I’ve been wrong.

I’ve always been jaded/inspired by the Kai’s Power Tools approach. KPT had a stunning feature of awesomeness for power users. After you had applied KPT filters enough, you’d ‘earn’ more filters. These filters weren’t just greyed out, they were completely invisible to noobs. Most interestingly, I never saw the whole user apprenticeship model mentioned anywhere.

Of course, I never read manuals and it could have been featured prominently, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t based on the reactions of delight I heard from other users. It was sort of a secret society of the KPT Power Users. We made the Skull and Bones look like a bunch of gossipy fools. You’d see some crappy luminosity effect applied in someone’s Persuasion presentation and there’d be a few smug glances exchanged in the room, as if we were all thinking “Guess who just bought KPT!?”

Ok, so back to the point- KPT might have struck a balance but probably would’ve really alienated first time users deemed not worthy of some of the more interesting effects if it hadn’t been such a small segment of users and in a pre-blog era.

I’ve railed against adding wizards in one of my products because it was a sovereign application - I wasn’t going to punish the users who live day in and out in my app by burdening them with hand holding. That said, I wanted to ease the transition for the novice and make them productive ASAP.

The challenge with wizards and other performance support models is that you force the user to admit that he’s an idiot and I’ve yet to meet a user who feels he’s anything but absolutely and completely right. And they’re unanimous in that.

You can’t be everything to everybody. Don’t design apps for your Mom unless you’re chasing that lucrative ‘Mom’ market. Design for the segment that will gain the most utility from your application and also support your business/revenue needs. It’s pretty simple really.

Do I think Google missed the mark? Hmmmm, I don’t think that it is that simple. As someone pointed out in the comments of the Battelle article, power users do not click ads. Heck, I have enough Firefox extensions that obliterate ads  that I can’t remember the last time I saw a Google Ad. So taking my advice, they’re completely correct in not designing for me. I also can derive utility from Google -  the advanced page appeals to my need for 50 knobs to tweak. Where I do not  think they’ve done well in meeting my needs (and it is all about me) is in Google Apps. That said, they’ve made it pretty clear they’re not designing for me.

All right I give up — well done Google.

37 Signals has a post today where they poo-poo personas

We don’t use personas. We use ourselves. I believe personas lead to a false sense of understanding at the deepest, most critical levels.

Every product we build is a product we build for ourselves to solve our own problems. We recognize our problems aren’t unique. In fact, our problems are probably a lot like your problems. So we bundle up the solutions to our problems in the form of web-based software and offer them for sale.

So I buy in that you can/should build software that scratches an itch. I also can understand why it is powerful when it’s your itch but are they really saying we can only build software for ourselves? Note to self: good thing I consume a lot of RSS.

Seriously though, a lot of useful software would never have been built if this were the case. However, I suppose you could argue that there’s a lot of software built that shouldn’t have been.
I wonder what my former colleague Robert Barlow-Busch thinks. Bobby, what say ye?

I’ve been thinking a lot about product
strategy lately. Probably because I seem to always find myself wrangling product roadmaps, either creating them or executing on them. I also wanted to make sure people knew that I’m not always fretting about the state of VC.

In the shower this morning (where I do my best thinking) I was refining a blog posting idea and then Matt Linderman of 37signals somewhat beat me to the punch. Oh well that’s not going to stop me.

I enjoyed the case studies in Matt’s post, particularly the reminder of the hysteria when Apple dumped the floppy. I remember those days especially the people who felt they legitimately had been snubbed by Apple because of their “investment” in floppy technology. Ah you mean the dusty disks on your shelf, half of which have the drive shutter splintering off? Good times.

Well before the 37signals post I was thinking about revolutionary/disruptive technologies product introductions in particular thinking back to a couple of companies and technologies I have been involved with. I was also thinking about companies I admire.

The one commonality that seems to exist within the results of the exhaustive polling of myself (I can be relentless) is that you really don’t get to be revolutionary until you earn your customer’s trust and respect. At least that’s my theory. The same seems to be true in Matt’s examples, although I don’t think that was his message. Apple had a loyal fan base and some serious products out the door before they dumped the floppy. Southwest’s price point and overall experience (for better or for worse) appeals to its fan base.

I also agree with Matt (and everyone else) that great brands are polarizing. What can I say, I’m an amiable person. Guy Kawasaki has a nice example where he shows a Scion and in typical deadpan Guy-style says “so now you’re either thinking ‘cool I want one’ or ‘why did Toyota hire a failed Volvo designer?’” But I’m sticking with my theory that you need overt benefit for your users first. You need to “do something” for the folks you polarized in a good way, otherwise it’s just art.

I once took a product to some early beta sites. This product had a huge agenda and value proposition. The idea came from domain experts who had written a massive spec and we engaged them in many a whiteboard session where we seemed to get smarter and smarter. I love the smell of a whiteboard in the morning. This product was, in our minds, nothing short of an earth shattering solution. Like nothing else these users had ever seen, or thought about. The kind of stuff that made people weep (in a good way) and result in children being named after you in gratitude for your contribution to humanity. Ok maybe not but it definitely had some kickass aspects.

Well as we demo’d to those beta users they politely nodded and oohed and ahed in all the right places. But when the rubber hit the road they had some immediate pain they needed remedied first. In fact I don’t think they could even digest what we were offering they were so distracted by their pain. Worse, some even denied that what we were doing was possible. I remember one person taking me task during a Q&A session at a conference in a room of about 300 people, effectively calling me a charlatan.

Flash forward a year or two later where we showed our (now) customers we could solve their problems and deliver value to them. Now they were willing to come soak up the delicious scent of our whiteboard markers. They took a chance and most (not all) were better for it.

Some of you who know me, know that I did some design school time. I went to school in Florence (Firenze) Italy and I learned a lot about the business of architecture. I see many similarities in the businesses of architecture and technology. In architecture you prove yourself on a drab 3 story box for corporate drones delivering value along the way. In software you prove yourself on a drab 3-tier architecture for corporate drones delivering value along the way. Ok you don’t have to build for corporate drones but you get my point. Gradually, if you continue to deliver value, you earn the right to build bigger and better stuff. Ah yes immortality through monuments is every architect’s dream, and that includes software architects.

Filippo Brunelleschi was the quintessential architect of the Renaissance. He cut his teeth first with the Ospedale degli Innocenti (where I used to play soccer in the piazza) and made some prominent benefactors proud. The projects kept rolling in and by the time Brunelleschi was asked to the design the Duomo no one was saying “Hey Filippo are you really sure you want it so stripy?!?!”

Earn the right to be radical and good things will happen.