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Who values your product and do you value them?
We have reached the most critical point on a project I'm working on. After a few months we think we know enough about the domain and application to build a product road map that will take us to the first public release. The proof of concept is complete. The design team has created a remarkable, genera changing product. Additionally, the system is designed around real users we have been able to talk to and get feedback from. We have put together an unbelievably good development team and built a backlog of stories with estimates. We have been here before. Putting together a design and backlog of stories is something we have done countless times...
The easy part is over. Now the hard part begins.
Our research and user feedback tells us we have multiple potentialcustomer groups we can build the system for. On one hand this is great news. We have a number of potential markets to choose from. On the other, we don't have an infinite amount of time and money to build it for all of these groups. We have to commit and go all in with one group. Right now, these are just some of the questions we are asking ourselves now:
- What customer group do we value the most?
- What features do they value the most?
- How expensive is it to build the ultimate product for each group?
- What is the minimum viable product we can build for each group?
- Which group is most likely to give feedback and partner with us to help refine our product?
- How much feedback is this group likely to give you?
- Are we missing some market window by passing on one group v.s. another?
This is a critical point in the product's design. Whichever user group we choose will be our customers. Or another way of saying it: They will be our ONLY customers. Other customer groups aren't likely to be interested because we aren't building any features for them yet.
When designing a product do you consider what customer groups you are including and excluding? Are you going to be happy with that choice for the foreseeable future?
Where the iPad will take over: 15 examples
There's still a lot of internet chatter about why you'd want a tablet anyway. I think there's a big space between the laptop and the iphone, and that in particular, the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch will take over from a lot of purpose built devices that deliver specific high value functionality. Here are a few examples:
1. The daily commute. It's a simple matter of ergonomics here. I will use the iPad, sold with a cheap data plan when I'm sitting down on the El, rather than the iphone. Because it has a bigger screen, and it's already connected. I won't use my laptop, because it doesn't come with a data plan (or only an expensive one that I won't buy), and it's pretty uncomfortable to use in a cramped row of seats. I'll use it instead of a laptop because the form factor works much better, and because I will have bought the data plan bundled with the iPad.
2. The eBook reader. I'll use it instead of a Kindle because it will be good enough (or better), and I can do a lot more than read with it. My guess is there will be more people that read on the tablet than who buy a dedicated reader. (Just as there are more people who do photo sharing on facebook than on flickr.)
3. In the Kitchen. If I'm in a situation where a sealed, mess resistant device with a big screen is a big advantage (like a kitchen) then I will use the tablet. I will prefer it to the iPhone because it's bigger and I can look at it while I'm doing something else, and I will prefer it to a laptop because the keyboard will not get gunked up. There are already devices retailing around $300 to store and retrieve your recipes in the kitchen - an iPad with the right recipe app will run rings around that.
Continue reading »
Topics: apple tablet, iPad, iPhone, Mobile, purpose, purpose built devices, tablet
Single Purpose Devices vs. Flexible Platforms and Functional Cases
A few weeks ago, I wrote about the Skype Video Phone, part of a trend towards trading needless complexity for simplicity and ease of use. It's also on the wrong side of another trend: The trend away from single purpose mobile devices to flexible mobile platforms.
For a while there was a trend towards more and more purpose built digital products, from ebook readers to portable picture frames and pocket size digital cameras, all the way to to digital recipe readers ($299) and tablet pcs with tough cases, handles and barcode scanners for the medical industry.
The iPhone, the iPod Touch and the soon to be launched iPad signal a reverse of that trend. Apple has designed and built flexible platforms that combine the ease of use and simplicity that single purpose devices with the flexibility of general purpose devices, and that is proving to be a compelling value proposition.
On the iPad, for example, you can easily get as good or better a recipe reader experience as you would with the demy digital recipe reader, a better digital picture frame or slide show experience than with a digital picture frame, likely as good or better of an ebook reader experience, and likely as good or better of a bar code scanning medical tablet experience.
How is that last possible, when the iPad does not come with a bar code scanner? The solution will likely be through peripherals built into functional cases. As an example, take a look at the digital checkout devices like Apple's own EasyPay touch (used at Apple's retail stores), Verifone and Morphie - that combine a magnetic card reader, a bar code scanner and a battery in a case for an iPod touch.
Continue reading »
Topics: ease of use, iPad, iPhone, Kindle, Mobile, purpose built devices, simplicity
How Would Steve Jobs Pitch YOUR Product?
It's no accident that Steve Jobs is arguably the ultimate technology pitch-man. He's worked with some of the best designers, ad agencies and creative people on the planet even since the early days of Apple. But how would he pitch your idea? It's a fun question to ask and I found a book that just might have the answer. While browsing in a discount brick-and-mortar bookstore I came across "The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs" by Carmine Gallo of Businessweek.com. There was one copy on the shelf and it immediately caught my attention. As I flipped through the pages, I was impressed with the many "how-to" pieces of wisdom. For example, you'll see how answering four simple questions can yield a powerful elevator speech. You'll see how to use high impact words, tight headlines and key numbers to get your point across in a way that seems effortless. While I think the book is a "must have on your desk" for product managers and marketers, I also think it's a great reference for designers to think about what makes a design more marketable and enticing to the customer.
Topics: apple, keynote, marketing, presentation, product manager, Steve Jobs
iPad: How big is the space between laptops and iPhones?
Laptops are a strange, inefficient tradeoff between an iPhone’s portability and a desktop’s capabilities. They don’t satisfy either need extremely well, but they’re much closer to desktops than they are to iPhones. The usefulness and portability gap between a laptop and an iPhone is staggeringly vast ... Ergonomics are awful unless you effectively turn them into desktops with stands and external peripherals. But they can do nearly any computing task that desktops can do, and they’re able to replace desktops for many people.
- Marco Arment, “The Tablet” and gadget portability theory"
One of Steve Jobs slides during the iPad announcement last week showed an iPhone, a macbook, and a space in between with a question mark. Was there room for a third device between a laptop and an iPhone?
If it's a small space, suitable for a few niche products like the Kindle, then the iPad hullabaloo is much ado about nothing. If the space is big, and eats into laptop market share, then this becomes a major turning point in how we interact with computers.
Apple is betting that the space is big, and that the future of computing will look a lot more like the iPhone than the Laptop. Let's think about what that means: If Apple's tablet, like it's smartphone, and it's music player before that, becomes the preferred and dominant device of it's kind, and that device starts displacing the preferred computing device of the current time (the laptop, which in turn replace the previous preferred computing device (the desktop computer), a market for which they currently only have 8.8% (although 91% of laptops above $1000) then they win really big.
Why would you replace your laptop (with it's bigger screen and it's moderately comfortable keyboard) with a tablet?
Both are portable, but a tablet is more portable, and more usable while on the go.
To realistically use a laptop, you need a large surface, enough room in front of you, and preferably a seat. Otherwise, you look like this.
A seat on the subway or in economy class on a plane is too cramped and uncomfortable for most people. You need at least some time.
For the times when you need a keyboard - when you're writing an email, or a document, or a presentation, or developing software - you can set your tablet up in a work environment, just like you do with your laptop - docked, or at least connected to a large display, a wireless keyboard and a wireless mouse. You can take the last two with you when you go home, or to a coffee shop, or your in laws house.
Those rare situations where you really need that full keyboard in that cramped setting without a work surface, you can either make do with the onscreen keyboard, or find yourself a flat work surface when you need a laptop.
Of course some people will not be able to do without even in those rare circumstances, like this fellow on a plane, or like those who cannot do without their blackberry, and those people will not switch (at least not right away.) The same way that many people bought desktops for a long time, and then eventually switched to laptops when the computing power difference and cost difference no longer outweighed the convenience factor.
But for the rest of the world (and I'm betting that's a much larger audience,) having a multifunction, always connected, portable computing device that I can use like a desktop or in truly portable fashion will be clearly preferable.
At that point, you've introduced a serious disruption to the personal computing market. People who don't buy your laptops but buy your iphones and ipods, now will have another reason to buy a device from you, that's a replacement for their current laptop (likely not a mac, but a windows box.) If that happens, Apple will have won not just the current battle, but the war with Microsoft and IBM that they fought and lost 40 years ago. If it happens, that's the business story of our time.
iPad: Instant Reaction to Apple’s Tablet Event
I just finished looking at a couple of live blogs on Apple's big iPad event, flipping back and forth between Macworld and Ubergizmo's coverage.
While initial reaction has been all over the map, mine is overwhelmingly positive. I think they hit a grand slam.
Here's why:
1. There are lots of reasons why a tablet is a better mobile device than a laptop or a netbook.
2. The price is right (Starts at $499, goes to $829)
3. The data plans are right (Wifi, 3G $14.95 to $29.95 for data plan coverage from AT&T, use at all wifi hotspots, no contract.)
4. iWork for $30. Web browsing, photos, vidoes, reading, games, email, word processing, spreadsheets and presentations - that's 95% of what 90% of people do with a computer.
5. Dock and Keyboard. Use it like a desktop, if you must.
6. iPhone and iPod Touch software works on it now, the SDK (iPhone OS) and emulator are released the same day, and units will ship in 60 days. That means iPhone developers like us will be pushing out new versions of those 100,000 apps as well as brand new apps out there as fast as we can design and code.
7. The app store model makes installing new apps a one click affair. I don't get any "Honey, can you help me" shouts from my wife with the iPhone, and I wont get them with the iPad either (especially since it doesn't have a camera;-)
In short, this is great news for those people yearning to trade away technical complexity for vastly increased simplicity and ease of use.
Sure there are things that a lot of people (smart, tech savvy analysts and developers all) will bemoan* and think are missing, but the same thing could be said of the iPhone. It's Apple's way (only release it if it kicks ass and makes them money) it works, and it will work here as well.
* I of course was hoping for front facing video camera for video phone support.
Topics: apple, apple tablet, iPad, iPhone, iPhone SDK, tablet, touch, touch screen
Apple Earnings Call: 90% of iPhone Apps Approved within 2 Weeks
Anther interesting item from yesterday's earnings call:
Over 90% of iPhone apps are approved within 14 days of submission.
Given over 100,000 apps in the store from a wide variety of developers (from amateurs to experts) and a wide variety of topics, that's actually pretty good. Apple claims that most rejections are actually for bugs in code, which makes sense given the wide disparity in development quality and test coverage.*
* For example, are you testing your software for ipod touch as well? You should - applications have been rejected for working on the iPhone, but not the iPod touch.
Topics: ap store, iPhone, ipod touch, Testing
Apple’s Earnings Call: Enterprise iPhone Adoption Growth
Macworld’s Coverage of Apple’s Quarterly Results and Finance Call had some interesting news on continued enterprise iPhone adoption:
- The iPhone is ranked #1 in customer satisfaction in J.D. Powers' survey.
- Corporate clients have doubled.
- 70% of Fortune 100 are actively piloting or deploying iPhone. About 50% of FT 100 are doing the same.
Not bad given that Apple has only been in this business for 2.5 years.
This certainly jibes with a lot of what we are seeing from our customers, that the iPhone is the first choice for mobile application development and the first choice among consumers and corporate customers when given a chance. It also validates our recommendations from last year on which mobile platform to develop for.
Let's see what tomorrow's big announcement brings.
Topics: enterprise iphone development, iPhone
Why would you use a tablet instead of a laptop? (In Pictures)
As an answer to those asking why we need a tablet anyway, there's a very funny set of pictures and comments at WTF Is Wrong with Laptop Users in the Media. The author went through the first 400 images (out of 28,886) he got on a search at Getty Images of "Using a laptop" and compiled the highlights. My favorites:
Now ask yourself, in which of those pictures would (a sealed, always on, always connected) tablet make more sense?
In all of them (although the beach one still seems like a bad idea.)
Topics: apple tablet, iPad, laptop, tablet
Sanity Amid the Tablet Hype
As January 26th, the rumored date for Apple's rumored tablet unveiling draws near, the hype and anti-hype keeps getting more and more over the top:
Five Ways Apple's Tablet May Change the World
The world doesn't need an Apple tablet, or any other
and the inevitable
3 Reasons A Microsoft-HP Tablet PC Would Trump Apple
If you want to keep up to date on the rumors, Gizmodo has a regularly updated run-down here.
There are a couple of places that have more informed speculation and insightful commentary - I'd recommend these three in particular:
Antacid Tablet by ars technica's John Siracusa:
... There's also the popular notion that Apple has to do something entirely new or totally amazing in order for the tablet to succeed. After all, tablets have been tried before, with dismal results. It seems absurd to some people that Apple can succeed simply by using existing technologies and software techniques in the right combination. And yet that's exactly what Apple has done with all of its most recent hit products—and what I predict Apple will do with the tablet. ...
So how will an Apple tablet distinguish itself without any headline technological marvels? It'll do so by leveraging all of Apple's strategic strengths. Now you're expecting me to say something about tight hardware/software integration, user experience, or "design," but I'm talking about even more obvious factors:
• Customers - Apple has over 100 million credit-card-bearing customer accounts thanks to the success of iTunes.
• Developers - Over 125,000 developers have put over 100,000 iPhone OS applications up for sale on the App Store. Then there are the Mac OS X developers (though of course there's some overlap). Apple's got developers ready and able to come at the tablet from both directions.
• Relationships - Apple has lucrative and successful relationships with the most important content owners in the music and movie businesses.These are Apple's most important assets when it comes to the tablet, and you can bet your bottom dollar that Apple will lean heavily on them. This, combined with Apple's traditional strength in design and user experience, is what will distinguish Apple's tablet in the market. It will provide an easy way for people to find, purchase, and consume all kinds of media and applications right from the device. It's that simple.
Thoughts on what an Apple tablet should be – or not by Andy Ihnatko
Apple always asks themselves simple and stupid questions like “How will this device be used?” and “Will this be used by human beings with, I mean, arms and hands and fingers?” and stuff like that.
The iPhone UI isn’t a desktop user interface where a pen takes the place of a mouse ... which is the model that previous smartphones followed. It was designed to be held in one hand and tapped with your thumb. Occasionally you’d use the index finger of the right hand to key things in.
You want to try to figure out the UI of the RAT? Go get yourself a comic book, or any other rectangle that measures roughly 10” on the diagonal. Hold it as though you’re reading what’s on the surface.
You see the problem? Your fingers get in the way. Think about how big that surface is, too. That’s a lot of acreage to scan, looking for the right buttons to push.
While you’ve got it in your hands, imagine that it’s a sheet of thin steel. That’s heavy, isn’t it? Hard to hold up for long periods of time.
Think about how a user interface would have to incorporate those observations. Now imagine that you’ve been doing this experiment for four years and not four minutes.
That’s a very long list of observations. If you didn’t come up with a workable solution, don’t worry: I think Apple has.
and
The Tablet by Daring Fireball's John Gruber.
... The way Apple made one device [the iPhone] that did a credible job of all these widely-varying features was by making it a general-purpose computer with minimal specificity in the hardware and maximal specificity in the software. And, now, through the App Store and third-party developers, it does much more: serving as everything from a game player to a medical device.
Do I think The Tablet is an e-reader? A video player? A web browser? A document viewer? It’s not a matter of or but rather and. I say it is all of these things. It’s a computer.
And so in answer to my central question, regarding why buy The Tablet if you already have an iPhone and a MacBook, my best guess is that ultimately, The Tablet is something you’ll buy instead of a MacBook.
Gruber's a bit more gung ho than Ihnatko or Siracusa, but they both make a pretty compelling case that something very interesting is about to happen over the next year.
Topics: apple tablet, iPad, iPhone
Trading Away Technical Complexities for Vastly Increased Simplicity and Ease of Use
... it's hard not to think about how much easier some people's lives would be (hi Mom and Dad) if they could trade technical complexities they don't care about for vastly increased simplicity and ease of use.
My parents were technically savvy enough (with a little help from their sons) to start using Skype video in their mid seventies, prompted by the arrival of grandkids halfway across the country. But for them, it was always a cumbersome affair:
1. Arrange a time to have the video call.
2. Move the laptop to the dining room.
3. Call on the telephone to tell me that they're using Skype on the computer.
4. Initiate the Skype phone call.
Needless to say, this did not happen all that often.
This past Christmas my brother got them a Skype Video Phone. They set it up with a little help from us, and when we told them to just treat it like the telephone, they got the idea. Now, they are making video calls much more frequently - not just to the grandkids, but to our cousins in Switzerland and South Africa.
They traded complexity for simplicity and ease of use, and though the skype video phone will not end up being a success on the level of the iPhone, it's already brought my parents a lot of joy, and is part of a trend towards more simplicity and ease of use. It's one major reason the iPhone is as successful as it is.
Now imagine that simplicity and ease of use in a multipurpose, always on device with a bigger screen. My parents wouldn't need the skype video phone, they'd just have that as an app on their tablet.
Prediction: The Teens will be the Decade of Mobile
I've made my fair share of predictions, and this may seem to be a layup, but I think it's a prediction worth making anyway: mobile devices and applications will transform business and every day life in the next decade.
Why does this seem like such a layup? Well, look at the iPhone and the ecosystem of applications and companies springing up around it. Android and Blackberry are trying to jump in on the business and everybody and their brother is cooking up a connected mobile device. And yes, that's obvious. Mobile devices are going to increase in importance in 2010 and if you don't already have an iPhone app cooking to complement your other online channels, you're behind the times.
But if you're just thinking that more iPhone applications are going to be the end of it, you're in for a rude awakening. Businesses have just started consolidating after the disruptive years of the 90's and aught's, with the transformative effects of the web largely digested by the marketplace (the newspaper industry is still thrashing but will soon succumb). A new disruptive decade is dawning that may see the passing or fundamental transformation of industries as varied as telecom, credit card and broadcast television/cable. Prepare to take your business through a roller coaster ride every bit as challenging as the web revolution. Continue reading »
Topics: iPhone, Mobile, Predictions
Why the Behemoths Can’t Innovate
In some past posts I've looked at some of the cultural, organizational and process issues on why large companies find it hard to innovate with new, quality software. Today I want to take that process a step further and look at why established players have such a hard time innovating in general.
First two anecdotes, where I will combine the topics of Susan Boyle, chess and the Kindle. First, chess and the Kindle.
So I now am the proud owner of two Kindles, the small format Kindle 2 and the large format DX. It's great for reading novels, less so for reading reference books where you jump around a lot (even setting and using bookmarks in a small 30 page PDF is a pain). There are two areas where the Kindle falls short: there are very few chess books for it and there are even fever German language books. Hopefully that will change with the advent of the international Kindles and soon amazon.de will start selling ebooks.
Topics: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders, chess, Innovation, Susan Boyle
More Newspaper Industry Musings
There's a good article over at the Guardian entitled Memories of a Paywall Pioneer by former Salon.com managing editor Scott Rosenberg. He reflects on Salon's experiences with various subscription and advertising strategies and muses on how Rupert Murdoch's move to charge for content is likely to play out. I especially like this succinct formulation of the bad business strategy being followed by "old media":
I start with the assumption that internet-based media will gradually come to dominate news distribution and consumption over the next, say, quarter-century. TV and print won't vanish but they will steadily lose readers, influence and revenue. They ought to be using their "legacy" revenue to fund the expansion of their online presence and experiments; instead, they seem today to be eager to squeeze their online operations for revenue to subsidize the old newsroom. It's the same kind of short-term thinking that has already allowed so many newcomers and interlopers to seize their readers and advertisers.
His point that once readers get it in their heads that your site is "closed" to them, they hardly ever come back, should give Rupert pause.
Topics: newspapers
Your SDLC or Your Product – You Decide
…or the telephone game
Last weekend I was watching a movie with my kids. In the movie there was a chain of monkeys that needed to pass on the message from one character to one on the other side of the chain. The message went something like, “Don’t throw us over the wall. There must be another way. We will all be killed.” As it went through the chain and the receiver heard, “Throw us over the wall. It’s the only way. Banana.” The scenario seems ridiculous, but its roughly equivalent to how many companies approach software product design. Often times companies don’t realize they are creating a product at all. They think they are just running a project and focus only on delivery of that project as if it is the only artifact of their work.
The problem stems from the fact that when organizations reach a sufficiently large size they must focus on consistency of delivery and efficiently using people’s time. For large organizations this is part of the mix that makes up their competitive advantage. However, the sheer size and number of moving parts required to enable clocklike consistent delivery leads to the most knowledgeable people about the customer never directly speak to the people responsible for building the product. Or translated into a traditional SDLC, the definition/high level design team isn’t communicating with the build team. In my experience they are usually two different groups of people. I’ll give you an example:
A while back, I was leading a software development team creating a product to be used by all 170,000 of my customer’s employees on a daily basis. They happened to have a team of user experience designers and wanted to take on the “big picture” part of the design themselves. This company could afford the best and the brightest talent - and was able to attract them. Individually the folks on this team were talented and knew their craft well. I actually learned a lot just from my brief time with them. However, once we got the design in hand it was obvious that the usability team’s artifacts weren’t going to work for the project. They didn’t meet the end user’s needs nor were they implementable within the time we had available for the project. The client’s design team literately spent months of time showing users lo-fi prototypes, running focus groups, and understanding usage statistics from similar applications. But, the simplicity the end users craved didn’t match the complexity of the business rules required. Upon further investigation the customer’s design team never was given a business level view of the problem to be solved. We tried to merge the business requirements with good usability, but ultimately the franken-design didn’t work. We had to throw out the big picture design and use them as ”guidelines” instead. Clearly it was a waste of talent and a haphazard way to build a product.
In hindsight the design team should have been presented the complex business rules so that their design could incorporate them from the beginning. However, the customer’s SDLC only allowed the design team to be engaged in the definition/high design phase of the project. Once we got to the design phase they were hard to find. By the time we got into the build phase the development team was simply a distraction from other work for these designers. A better model would have kept the designers on the project as each piece is built. I’m not suggesting full dedication to the team – 40 hours a week. That would be nice, but that’s not likely possible in most organizations. I’m suggesting a small time commitment over a long period of time.
Most of the time projects are actually building products. If you are building a product, but focusing SDLC metrics and efficiency, keep in mind that your phases are likely making walls around teams and causing ineffective communication between them. As Matt from 37Signals points out, “Inefficiencies are what make you special.”
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Blogroll
Recent
- Teamicide
- Who values your product and do you value them?
- Optimizing has_role? in acl9
- Pathfinder’s Mike Laurence wins Hack-a-thon for iPhone app
- Pathfinder sponsors the midVentures25
- Pathfinder sponsoring Day of Mobile in Chicago
- Refactoring versus Rewriting
- Storytelling in Design
- Remembered: Claude Shannon
- mort_calc gem: Rails Mortgage Calculation Gem