Here Come The Bundles: Big Tech, Big Revenues, Good Enough Products

As I predicted many years ago, the tech titans are starting to roll up their various media services into cable TV-style bundles and push users into them.

Apple recently announced "Apple One", their first bundle. The only differences between Apple's subscription brochure and the cable companies' is that Apple's has slightly less terrible visual design and far fewer items on it:

The Ars Technica article linked above correctly identifies all the key strategic elements: Apple's revenue from devices is waning, as they both hit saturation of markets and continue to produce less-than-revolutionary products. Service and subscription revenue is one way to offset that. Additionally, many of its services have not been particularly successful -- knowledgeable people inside and outside Apple have pointed out that, historically, Apple doesn't seem to understand or "get" services.

Music is considered an exception, but this is less about Apple's "brilliant" service (which is no different than any of the other services) and more about the fact that it is a music service, tightly integrated with Apple's devices. It has finally achieved decent numbers because it's Apple's music service, and people still like music.

Bundling is an easy way to generate revenue and drive overall numbers for its various services higher.

Amazon already has an annual subscription service -- Amazon Prime. For your money, Amazon gives you faster shipping, plus a video service, a music service, and some other stuff. It's been a money machine for Amazon since it launched.

Like cable TV, part of what makes these services work for businesses is they can lump in a whole bunch of inexpensive-to-produce things people probably wouldn't buy separately and make some money on the pile. Bundling also effectively allows companies to charge more money for the services people do actually want, and does this by throwing a bunch of things they probably don't want on the table, like an infomercial ("You get the knives, you get the scissors, and you get the plates!").

For example, Amazon's big news is they are adding podcasts to Amazon Music, as a kind of micro-level implementation of bundling (adding podcasts to music) that should help their macro-level implementation (adding Amazon Music to a bunch of other things).

Podcasts aren't exactly revolutionary, but they are cheap to make, and cheap for content aggregators to add to bundles. In most cases, the podcasters themselves aren't getting paid anything (though I am sure there are exceptions, for the handful of top players), other than Amazon (or whoever) telling them "let us do this and you can reach a huge new audience!" For many podcasters, who generate revenue from advertising, a larger audience is all that matters (even if someone else is monetizing it and cutting them out of it).

So unlike music, where these companies are getting charged an arm and a leg, with podcasts, service companies scoop them up for free and are able to charge users a subscription fee for them. This is just like cable companies charging you for replicating over-the-air channels -- you could get this stuff for free, but isn't it just easier to have it on your cable box? Just pay for the free stuff! So you do.

At least in the short term, it will appear to be a good deal for the customers: "Well, I would pay $X anyhow for [music / faster shipping], so all the rest of that stuff for just a few bucks more seems like a great deal!"

But inevitably, over time, even more less-than-useful and less-than-amazing services will get added to these bundles and the price will go up. The price of the stand-alone services will also rise. Those increases will be used to offset the losses from decreased revenue coming from lower bundle rates, and will simultaneously encourage more users to get on the bundle.

The end state in a few years will be just like cable TV: the tech companies will hit the maximum amount of money people will tolerate in a monthly bill, with just enough "good stuff" against a pile of things they probably aren't using or aware of. Most people won't use most of what's in the bundle, but in aggregate, all of the services are probably getting used by someone. 

One 21st century tweak to this model: the smarter companies will facilitate add-ons of popular services to their bundles. Just like you can sign up for HBO through your cable company, you'll soon be able to sign up for HBO through Amazon or Netflix through Apple (you can already do this for some services on some platforms! Feel free to swap out different services and platforms here).

The meaner companies will make going through their bundles the only way you can access those services on their platforms, and will effectively use services that aren't theirs (such as Netflix) to help lock you in to their bundles.

This isn't necessarily bad. Successful services can effectively subsidize less-successful ones (so video keeps books alive), and the constant revenue can help both services and content creators take some modest risks to develop new services and content. Depending on the deal structure, it might even mean some of these less-popular services actually get more revenue than they might otherwise. It will certainly offer more exposure.

Bundles represent a triumph of "good enough". "Good enough" is a hallmark of subscription services, particularly media-based ones. Most people don't want to watch a specific show or movie -- they want to "watch something". Big aggregated services are great at that, and when you lump a bunch of them together, you get that effect of "eh, it's good enough, I'll buy it" across the entire bundle.

I have tried most of the components in most media companies' bundles. They're...fine. Uninspired, but totally competent. Some have made marked improvements over the last several years, evolving from "embarrassingly poor" to "OK". Others have maintained their adequacy. 

One can envision a world where the devices are more explicitly subsidized or "free" if you are willing to subscribe to particular packages, much in the way most people pay for their mobile phones as part of their service plans. Arguably Amazon already does this with its Fire tablets, which are dirt-cheap but basically designed as "buy stuff on Amazon" machines.

Obsessing over Ghosts: Pokémon Go and Twitter

Twitter has recently been in the news as people have been demanding "something" be done about harassment due to terrible things people have been tweeting about Leslie Jones. All of this is happening against the background of the sudden appearance of Pokémon Go.

Pokémon Go

Pokémon Go is an augmented reality mobile game. It launched a few weeks ago and had the desired effect: Nintendo's stock soared, and for a time made it more valuable than Sony.

The game is an astute combination of 90s nostalgia (if you're under 35, you probably really cared about Pokémon at some point), mobile phones, and the increasingly mainstream elements of virtual goods and virtual and augmented reality.

As might be expected from a highly-targeted mobile game, people are behaving badly. They're looking for imaginary creatures at inappropriate locations. They're not watching where they're going. They're doing obviously dumb things. And in our current world, not everyone can be wandering around in unusual locations without attracting attention. We haven't seen any violence associated with the game yet, but it's really just a matter of time. Much like distracted drivers, people are so intent on finding these electronic ghosts they're putting their actual lives (or at least dignity) at risk.

In the early 2000s, I did some product design work for a company that was going to sell virtual goods for avatars. It felt too early (and it was) but not long after that, young people quickly accepted the concept of virtual goods. And not long after that, somewhat predictably, people started committing crimes to get virtual goods. Some of these were 100% online scams, some were old tricks with some new twists, and a few were straight-up beatings until the user gave up their password. The Korean government had to ban trades of virtual goods for real money.

The surprising part is people are investing such effort into things exist only as ideas and bits on servers. None of it is real.

***

Twitter is [mostly] stupid

Lifting A Dreamer
(a.k.a. Twitter Fail Whale)
by Yiying Lu

Twitter is (mostly) stupid. This is not a particularly new thing to note -- others have said this before. I've said it before. But it bears repeating and dissecting.

There is nothing special about Twitter. It is a website. An email list. Instant messaging. Twitter creates no content of its own. It offers no unique functionality. Its product design is janky and impenetrable.

Even its much-tauted "community" is a mirage, or perhaps most accurately, many mirages. Who uses Twitter and for what has changed over time, both as the company pushes for larger audience and acceptance and the early adopters leave for more interesting and useful tools. 

The hashtag is a prime example of the cultural workarounds required to "use" Twitter. You know it's bad design, a racket, or both when there are entire consulting industries built on helping educate you on how to properly #DoItRight and not be a #Loser.

Worse is when normal writing is broken into a series of bite-sized chunks, posted sequentially. Reading them is akin to listening to someone give a speech after they've run a marathon, or while they're drinking half a glass of water after every sentence. It's tedious, breaks the flow of language, and is a kind of textual hand held up that says "don't interrupt, I'm not finished yet".

Twitter's 140 character limitations aren't some sort of artistic liberation. They force everyone to write in a pared-down way that strips language of nuance and style. It fosters a sophistication and pithiness on par with a bumper sticker. Then again, plenty of people think bumper stickers are funny and insightful.

When I read Twitter, I see an endless stream of "LOOK AT ME!" That's really all Twitter is: people wanting someone to pay attention to them, to acknowledge their clever quote or their clever repetition of someone else's quote.

Even my own tweets fall into this trap. I think it's a fundamental part of the form. You can't write, you can just scribble short notes.

I remain amazed that Twitter has, through sheer force of corporate will, become a place people care about. There are people (including some people I greatly respect) who take Twitter seriously, and post there regularly. There are people who feel Twitter has enabled strong cultural movements and helped revolutions. I find that scary and sad.

It's a corporate website, and not a particularly successful one. Twitter's feed of writing from the people you follow mixes in advertising, which has the effect of turning everything -- including those important messages from your cultural movement and revolution -- into grist for selling whatever stuff Twitter is monetizing. You might be fighting The Man, but if you're using Twitter, you're literally working for The Man.

***

Fear of Ghosts

I ain't afraid of no ghosts.

It is said Twitter has a harassment problem: it's easy to create anonymous accounts and send horrible things to people, or write horrible things about people that "everyone" can read.

These capabilities are actually a fundamental part of Twitter's design. The same things people are complaining about are part of why Twitter has grown into its current incarnation: It affords easy, quick, instantaneous communication across groups; and its limitations and social structure encourage people to be provocative and make big statements with the hope of getting followed, RT'ed, shared, noticed.

It should be no surprise that, like everywhere else on the Internet, anonymity + megaphone = terrible behavior.

Leslie Jones repeated some of the awful things people had written about her and identified the accounts that said these awful things, and then requested some action be taken. [Note: I think Leslie Jones is funny and talented; I have not seen the new "Ghostbusters" movie]

Harassment is not a new problem for Twitter. It's been an issue more or less since the platform launched. Why is the harassment of this one public figure (a comedic actor, no less, someone hardly unused to public abuse) such a big deal, and why now?

People have been writing awful things about other public figures on Twitter for a long time. People have been writing awful things about non-public figures, too. When you're a celebrity, part of the job is putting up with people being terrible and saying mean things. That doesn't make it hurt less (and in fact, for many celebrities, who have a deep need for affirmation, it can hurt more). However, it is indicative of Twitter's priorities and general maturity that they will take action to defend a famous person and not the ordinary people being harassed on a daily basis.

Twitter continues to have an arbitrary and weak policy regarding communications on its platform. One might argue that is OK. It's very dangerous for any communications technology to classify behavior or speech as "unacceptable". Everything is "unacceptable" to someone. You're not entitled to free speech in private venues, but Twitter is designed to feel like a public venue, and encourages people to think of it that way.

So you end up in a world where speech is curated and curtailed. "Please leave only positive feedback, or at least only say mean stuff about the people and things we don't like." With the "we" being whichever group is steering Twitter's culture at the moment. 

There's an evolution that happens quickly: groups who want to say offensive things begin speaking in code, and then the code is banned, too.

The step beyond that is getting banned from Twitter for things you said somewhere else...and then pre-emptively disallowed from joining (Should ISIS have a Twitter account? Monsanto? Fox News? Howard Stern? Rush Limbaugh? Noam Chomsky?). This sort of "bleed" and general enforcement of a corporate behavior and mindset is increasingly spreading. Say the wrong thing in the wrong place and you'll lose your job as well as your Twitter account.

I don't know how aggressively Twitter should police what its users are saying. It reminds me a little of a child's playground, where the kids keep running up to the teacher or parent and asking them to do something about the other kids being mean to them. Sometimes, that's just the way it is on the playground, and you either ignore the mean kids, fight back, or leave.

Appealing to The Man to fix it  feels strange and wrong. Worse, I think having that mindset and taking that kind of action is fundamentally disempowering -- it presupposes we cannot handle it ourselves, are not resilient, and must appeal to a "higher authority" -- and that higher authority is corporate. It is The Man. We've already lost, and lost more than the playground fight.

What seems like a better solution is what Twitter did: ban users who are being abusive. The sad thing here is the person they banned had been an abusive jerk for years. He was a legendary abusive jerk, and one whom Twitter had "verified' an account. So he was an official, verified, legendary abusive jerk. Until he made terrible racist comments about a black actress in a just-decent comedic remake of an old 80s movie. That was apparently over the line.

But everyone Twitter bans can create another account. Or have other people post their garbage. Or continue to write mean things on Tumblr or Facebook or Snapchat or Instagram or Reddit or whatever other internet service people use to communicate.

And of course, to hear the troll tell it, he was trying to prove a point, and Twitter took the bait.

Banning people for speaking their mind (as horrible as it is) means Twitter isn't a communications medium, it's just a community, and one that will enforce a mindset by exile. This is great news if you agree with how these bans happen. It's really bad news when governments, corporations, or other powerful public figures (Donald Trump? Hillary Clinton?) start demanding people get banned from Twitter for being unmutual.

It also raises questions about who gets to wield the banhammer and with what criteria. These questions have no good answers, particularly for private companies.

Finally, banning people doesn't solve the problem. Because the problem isn't the offensive speech. The problem is the people and the particular mindset that produced the speech in the first place. You can make them virtually shut up and kick them out of the clubhouse. They'll go start their own clubhouse and simmer, and the culture in each clubhouse becomes a little more insular (and stable). Banning literally and metaphorically ends the conversation, and there are only a few directions for conflict to go when words stop.

Perhaps a better solution is simply this: Remind yourself that Twitter isn't real. It doesn't exist. It's not a real place. And whatever is scrawled there does not matter one bit. That also means the praise you get on social media is as insignificant and unimportant as the hate. 

Instead of valuing, fearing, and chasing electronic ghosts, perhaps we should focus more on what's real.

***

Some of you will point out that I have at least one Twitter account. This isn't because I think it's good. In my career as a digital media expert, I am required be aware of and understand things of significance on the internet. Twitter can be fun, like Pokemon Go, but I don't play it much.

Review: The Prophet 12 Synthesizer from Dave Smith Instruments

My Dave Smith Instruments Prophet 12 arrived a while back. I haven't yet made an album with it, but have used it enough to have some opinions and thoughts.

Overall

This is the new DSI flagship. It says "this is the best of our experience and knowledge". They have taken everything they've learned from their previous synthesizers, incorporated user feedback, and improved it all.

It is easily the "best" synth they have made, and arguably the best polyphonic synthesizer available today, especially if you are someone who plays synth with your hands (as opposed to all-MIDI/computer sequencing).

It offers an incredible amount of live surface control, and several features aimed at "live performance".

Build Quality

This is one of the best-built synthesizers I have touched. The knobs are solid (and appear to be the same quality as other DSI gear) and reference the legendary Prophet-5. The buttons are firm and satisfying. The wood is nicely finished.

The synth looks great, too. The LEDs aren't as blindingly bright as the Evolver. It is less "flashy" in every sense than many other DSI synths. I suppose some people may find that a drawback. I like the more understated approach. And they did include a bit of flair with the large lighted "12" in the upper right corner.

The front panel is all silk-screened paint-on-metal, with no plastic overlay, save a small lip around the OLED screen. The plastic overlays were never popular with the synth community, which at the moment has become oddly resistant to change.  The layout and typography are also clear and attractive. And they spelled "filter" correctly this time.

Prophet-12 has an integrated power supply with a standard IEC cable - no wall wart.

The keybed feels different than the Poly Evolver - stiffer, and the keys are flatter. This may just be a function of the age of my Poly Evolver Keyboard - maybe it was stiffer when I first got it years ago. I'm not a particularly skilled piano player, and key feel isn't something I have much opinion about.

Pitch and mod wheels have grippy rubber around the outside edge. They may not look as amazing as the all-clear Poly Evolver Keyboard wheels, but they are much easier to use.

Prophet-12 also has the same kind of position and pressure sliders the Tempest has. These are fun, and I find them far more useful for performance than the standard pitch and mod wheels on most keyboards, as you can tap, slide, and/or press with precision and speed in a way that wheels don't often offer. Using the extensive modulation matrix, it is easy to assign multiple parameters to these.

The OLED screen is bright and legible without being overpowering, though like all OLED screens, it does weird things in my eyes when I look away suddenly.

Interface

DSI's interface design is logical and clean. The synth interaction is clear, easy to use and learn, deep, and most importantly, fast.

The bottom "half" of the control panel shows signal flow, from oscillators to "character" to filters to VCA to feedback to delay. The upper "half" has effects, arpeggiator, and modulation (LFOs, slots, envelopes).

Every synth parameter has a dedicated knob on the front panel. Once you turn a knob, the relevant "section" appears in the screen. This allows you to see what you're adjusting quickly. The soft knobs over the screen are also detented, so if you're having a problem getting the exact value you want with a smooth knob, you can turn a soft knob to click to the exact value. A brilliant idea.

DSI has mentioned this before, but the new modulation path assignment method is great, and I expect lots of people will agree:

• Hold the "Assign Mod Source" button
• Turn the knob controlling your Mod Source
• Hold the "Assign Mod Destination" button
• Turn the knob controlling your Mod Destination
• Set amount using "Amount" knob or soft knob on mod screen (which pops up as soon as you start doing this)

You've just assigned a modulation routing! It is incredibly intuitive and again, fast. DSI goes further by automatically assigning the first free modulation path. And you can sort the modulation path list.

Improving on Evolver, DSI offers 16 fully-configurable modulation paths plus the 8 "fixed" paths (hard-wired to the 4 LFOs and 4 envelopes). This is particularly exciting, because these make the synth semi-modular. These paths were my favorite programming feature of Evolver, and I constantly wished I had more. Now I have plenty.

You can also manage all of this with soft knobs in the menu.

Sound and Architecture

The oscillators are all-new, and all-DSP-based. There's already a ton of internet griping about this, but the Curtis chip-based DCOs of the previous DSI line had some intractable problems. Going digital solves these problems, and opens up a wider range of sonic possibilities.

The new digital oscillators have 3 modes - An "analog modeling" mode (Sawtooth, Pulse, Triangle, or Sine), a "wave shape" mode, and 3 types of noise. (the synth doesn't actually consider these specific modes, but different features are available depending on which wave you select, and it's convenient to think of them this way).

Analog modeling produces great-sounding basic shapes. These appear to be actual DSP models, and not merely single-cycle waves.  The "Slop" parameter adds some very nice liveliness to the sound at low settings, and goes all the way up to totally broken "this is why we abandoned analog" territory. The "shape" parameter allows for various deformations of the wave shapes. For example, deforming the Square shape yields pulse width modulation.

Aside from the classic analog shapes, you can choose from a variety of wave shapes. Some of the sources and character are obvious ("Tines", "Ahhh", etc.) and some less so. All are harmonically rich and interesting.

When these kinds of wave shapes are chosen, you have the ability to pick 3 different shapes - a "Left", a "Center", and a "Right". You can then modulate across the 3, and sound will smoothly transition and morph.

For example, you could pick 3 different shapes for the oscillator, then assign an LFO to that oscillator's "shape" mod parameter. This will sweep through the various shapes, back and forth. Or you could use an envelope to get motion through them. Or velocity. Or key number. Or mod wheel. Or whatever.

It's conceptually similar to the wavetables of the PPG. On the plus side, you're not limited to PPG's wavetables. You can effectively build your own, by picking a left, center, and right. On the minus side, these aren't as big (in size/length) or diverse (in selection) as PPG's wavetables.

Ultimately, this architecture allows creation of the kind of evolving digital tones the Prophet-VS was known for.

(By the way, picking the same shape for 2 or 3 of the slots still produces interesting results.)

There are 3 noise types available as well. Plus a sine sub-oscillator.

And all of that is for just one oscillator. You get four oscillators per voice. Go back and read all that again. Let it sink in. You can have 4 different wavetables per voice, each modulated differently.

Looking at what you can do with the oscillators together, Prophet 12 continues to shine. It's got analog-style exponential Frequency Modulation (FM). You can't do DX7-style linear FM on it, but you can get some very cool effects.

FM on the Prophet-12 has a deceptively simple architecture, where the oscillators are connected in a loop: O4 is modulator for carrier O3, which is also modulator for carrier O2, which is also modulator for carrier O1, which is also modulator for carrier O4.

You can use the basic sine wave shape for all the oscillators for simple tones. But you can also use any of the other shapes available as carriers or modulators. And that also means that any of the modulation parameters you use for shaping oscillators can apply to carriers or modulators. And since they're connected in a loop, you can get "feedback".

And unlike the DX synths, you also get the analog lowpass filter, the highpass filter, the delay, the feedback, etc.

There's also amplitude modulation using the same methodology. And you can use both FM and AM at the same time.

Hard sync, too, which works in the same O4 → O3 → O2 → O1 fashion. So you can hard-sync more than one oscillator, or 2 discrete pairs.

The net result is a very flexible synth, that can easily produce some beautiful/crazy digital-but-alive sounds in addition to the analog basics that are so much in vogue these days.

If all of that doesn't have you excited enough, there's a few other unique qualities to this synth. It has a resonant high pass filter. You don't see that very often in synthesizers.

It has a tuned feedback loop (like Evolver), and yes, you can do Karplus-Strong synthesis.

The "Character" section is also unique. DSI offers decimation (sample-rate reduction) and bit depth reduction ("Hack") to make the synth sound more digital and lo-fi. Turning these up a bit is a quick path to recreating PPG-style grit. There's a soft saturation "Drive" parameter. "Girth" and "Air" are smart EQ - bass and treble, respectively.

Of course, you can modulate all of that.

Standard Things

As for the "standard" stuff, you've got:

• ADSR envelopes for LPF and VCA, plus 2 envelopes as assignable modulation sources
• 4 LFOs, which can be set to sync to MIDI tempo, have slewable shapes, and can reset with keypress and have user-controlled phase start!
• An arpeggiator (which includes the ability to set up to 4 hits per note)
• Analog stereo distortion (per layer!)
• 4-tap digital delay, which has modulatable panning (aside from the obvious delay fun, you can construct flangers, choruses, and even reverb with this). A software update added a resonant lowpass filter, independent for each delay tap. Incredible.

You have 12 voices to play with per patch. You can choose to set it all to Unison, with as little or as much detune as you want.

You can set up 2 patches per program, either stacked or split (each patch gets 6 voices).

And you get storage for 396 user programs on top of the 396 "factory" programs (which are read-only).

You can even build a "playlist" of the programs you like, in order, for gigs.

So what's not to like?

Well, I have a few criticisms so far, but they are minor:

The Presets
This is largely subjective. Most people don't care for their synth presets. But I have only walked through the 396 Factory sounds a couple of times, and there are few I found immediately inspiring or useful.

That said, there are a few really great ones in there, and some that did make me sit up and start playing.

But given the preset's unwritable/unchangeable nature, I would have expected a few more basic, usable sounds somewhere, and perhaps some better organization (the Alesis Ion is still my gold standard for this, with 4 banks filled with usable sounds, and the banks consistently organized so the first 10 sounds are always basses, the next 10 leads, then 10 pads, and so forth).

I also would have expected a more standardized and comprehensive set of modulation routings. Many of the sounds do not take advantage of all of the available controllers (particularly slider pressure and aftertouch), and they don't typically use the controllers the same way when they do use them.

396 user sounds is plenty for me, but it's hard not to look at the 396 factory sounds and wish there were more I liked, especially given the considerable talent and effort that went into the batch provided.

It's expensive.

$3,000 street price. But it is difficult to think of another synthesizer offering this particular feature set at any price.

The Nord Lead 4 is similar in price, knobs, and polyphony, but it is all digital, no analog filters or distortion, and has a far more limited architecture.

There's the Waldorf Blofeld keyboard, which is perhaps a third the price of the Prophet 12, but it is also 100% digital and requires quite a bit of menu-diving or a PC editor to program it.

Moog Voyager is the only thing that remotely approaches Prophet 12's quality or cachet, but you get only one voice.

I suppose there's the John Bowen Solaris, which is even more expensive and 100% digital, but supposedly is quite nice (I haven't used one, so I can't say). It's also available in very limited quantities, and you can get a Prophet-12 right now.

It's complex and deep

This is a pro as much as a con, but this synth will require some work to get the best out of it. I'd say it's much easier than Evolver, due to some workflow improvements and the great oscillators, but I expect some users will have a hard time at first.

Conclusions: Get One!

Software synths are wonderful, but I consider most of them to be disposable. I find programming with a mouse to be tedious, and the PC, operating system, and software updates required to use them make them far less expensive and useful than you might think.

A good hardware synth will last you decades. The Prophet-12 sounds great, works great, looks great. You can use it to create the same sounds any other analog or digital 2- or 3-oscillator synth can create. You'll be happy.

Or you can create vast new sonic landscapes, the likes of which have never been heard. I'm off to explore right now.

Why Products Really Suck, Part 3

I've written a bit about Why Products Suck. I wrote about how your own team might be wrecking your product. I even wrote about how Steve Jobs may have wrecked your product (and your CEO).

But there's one party more likely to do damage to your product than anyone else: You.

That's right, the person most likely to mess up is you: the product manager/designer. You're the one in charge. You're the one with the vision, the master plan. You're the one in charge of design and guiding the team.

Unlike the developers, QA, and schedule wranglers (who all have relatively defined and tangible jobs), your work has to mostly be done in advance of the sprint. You create the plan which never survives first contact with the enemy, and then have to constantly revise it and adjust it.

You're also a human, and probably working on multiple projects. You're probably going to make mistakes, and you are most likely to result in the product going bad.

Even if you don't actually wreck it, you're the "single neck to wring", and in any decent company, you'll be held accountable.

Here's a few tips on how to avoid ruining your own thing:

• Have a vision. By that, I don't mean some airy, vague notion of what you're doing, I mean have concrete goals. Why are you building this thing? What problem is it really solving? How is it differentiated from other products in your space?
  
  Write down what your product is supposed to do for users and put that written vision or motto someplace where you can see it every day. Make sure everyone else knows what it is, too.
• ...But don't be a slave to your plan. Things change. The world changes. Adapt your plan as needed. There's no point in launching a product behind the curve, or refusing to acknowledge new information
• Collect data, but don't design by committee. You need to be aware of what your stakeholders and customers want...but great designers have a way of both understanding the real/underlying need driving most feature requests (whether from customers or management) and then synthesizing a product that solves problems while still feeling cohesive, unified, and compelling.
• Don't blindly copy. Copy with understanding and intent! You should be looking at other products, and you should not be afraid to lift or emulate models that work. If there are "standard" ways of presenting certain UI elements or tasks, you should probably use them. But you should do this with a deep understanding of how and why those elements were originally included. It is true that a valid approach is to simply "copy the market leader" (see Rdio and Spotify, Spotify and iTunes), but without understanding how the original works, you're just doing cargo cult design.
• Kill your ego. Good product managers are empathetic and are able to look past their own biases and opinions. Understand how users will perceive and use your product. You're just one user, and you almost certainly aren't paying for your product. Even if you are representative of the target demographic, your objective is to think beyond your own personal whims, preferences, and biases.
• Value your team. Unless you're a one-man shop, "your" product is actually "your team's product". And if you're like most product managers, you're not coding, you're not creating graphics. Collect input from the team members, and recognize how important they are to your success.
• Manage! Building consensus and keeping people involved does not mean letting them do whatever they want. Your job is to make hard choices with intent and meaning.

Ultimately, the product - and its success or failure - is your responsibility. You get dealt a particular hand, and you have to play it as best as you possibly can.

Make sure you're not the one who wrecks it!

Army Camo, Diablo 3, and the Failure of Big

Slate recently ran an article ("Lost In The Wilderness") about the incredible failure that is the "Universal Camouflage Pattern".

Even before the UCP was issued to soldiers, lab tests showed that it didn't perform as well as other designs. But the Army's textile researchers now say that military brass had already made up their minds in favor of the new-fangled pixelated look.

Metafilter covered it this morning:

After spending $5 billion dollars to develop the Universal Camouflage Pattern (UCP), the US Army is abandoning the grey-green pixelated camouflage because it has routinely failed to hide soldiers from view in nearly every environment it has been tried in, and considers adopting the UCP "a colossal mistake" and a "fiasco".

While it is worth reading these articles yourself, a brief summary is that the Army spent a lot of money to develop a single camouflage pattern with the intent to both better protect their soldiers and save money. They've done neither. The process was terribly flawed and the resulting product terribly flawed.

A recurring theme in the comments for both articles was a stunned disbelief that an organization as large and well-funded as the United States Army would have made such a big decision without lots of rigorous science, testing, and other safeguards to guarantee things would work, and that they would fail so spectacularly.

Blizzard Entertainment is one of the biggest video game companies in the world. These days they're mostly known for the massively multiplayer online role-playing game "World of Warcraft".

But prior to WOW, they released 2 "action RPGs", Diablo and Diablo 2. Both featured a kind of Skinner box-simple game play combined with a casino-style partial reinforcement reward system. In other words, the games were stupid simple to "play" and very compelling, scratching a gambler's itch.

Diablo 2 was extremely successful. It was also released in 2000, which is about a million years ago in the gaming world. Given how much money it made, another installment in the series was inevitable.

Diablo 3 was launched about a month ago. It has suffered from serious technical problems that have prevented gamers from playing at all, seriously crippled the game experience for users, and, most disappointingly, they've already been hacked.

The hacking is a sore point for Blizzard because Diablo 3 requires a constant internet connection in order to play. This is a big change from previous Diablo installments (and most games in general). It's somewhat akin to Microsoft Word requiring you to be online - and Microsoft's servers to be up and running - in order for you to write a document.

For many players, that's a deal-breaker, and the game has been pilloried by a certain portion of the gamer world as a result. That Blizzard has failed to keep up their end - not only has the game been hacked, but it has not even been playable - seems to justify some of their outrage.

On top of all that, some reviews of the game are sour. The gist of it is "we waited 11 years for this?" Diablo 3 isn't an unqualified refinement. Some argue it further dumbs down already simplistic gameplay. Blizzard itself has been frantically patching and rebalancing the game - in effect, rewriting it as people are playing it, after it's "done".

In the intervening 11 years, there have been several other games that have jumped in to fill the void, and many critics argue these small independent productions are far better than Diablo 3.

Diablo 3 had dozens of people working on it (40-70 at various times). Din's Curse had about 3.

Blizzard put a large team with tons of cash on this project, and spent an extremely long time developing the game. I'm sure it will be a "success" due to extensive marketing, and unlike the camouflage, won't kill anyone (though Diablo 2 arguably did). But Diablo 3 is clearly not going to meet expectations.

How could this happen?

These days I also work for a big company, and I have a new perspective on the problems with big.

One problem is assuming that a "big" company or team means every part of every project gets lots of resources. In fact, what often happens is big companies have so many different elements and such wide scope that often, the "core" of the project ends up with less resourcing than a smaller company might provide it.

In the Army's case, perhaps they had too much bureaucracy and oversight, and not enough actual research and development. In Blizzard's case, perhaps a surfeit of marketing and art and a dearth of testing.

Larger teams are also much harder to manage and coordinate. Think about trying to go to lunch. If you go by yourself, it's trivial. You walk out the door, find a place, get your food, and you're done. Now imagine trying to go to lunch with 7 of your co-workers. Is everyone ready to go? Where are we going? How long is the line? Are we eating there?

It gets exponentially more difficult to complete the same task. Even harder if you're dealing with multiple locations and time zones. Then you factor in this kind of inefficiency or challenge daily, compounded by people taking vacation, being sick, and the usual variance in human productivity.

Another element is lack of authority. Big teams and organizations frequently have multiple levels of stakeholders. Everyone can say "no" and very few people can provide a definitive, can't-be-overruled-or-challenged-yes. And those that can provide that kind of authority are often so distant they cannot make a truly informed decision, and can't or won't see the results of their decision in action - much like a general continents away from the actual conflict.

How do you deal with all that? Some suggestions:

• Reduce scope. Ironically, often bigger teams mean you can do less, and what you can do takes longer. Think about going to lunch - you need more time, and your options are actually much smaller (accommodating vegetarians and more schedules).
• Many small milestones. Break your task or project into as many short, achievable, measurable goals as possible, and keep driving the team towards the next one. This makes it easy to measure progress and helps the team stay focused on "the next important thing". This also helps...
• Create a sense of urgency/Be ready to ship frequently. Don't spend 11 years on a project. Start with a 6 month deadline. At the end, look at what you could ship and decide whether it's good enough or if you want to commit more time to polish things up...then spend the next 6 months addressing those issues only. Without that sense of deadline, people will just keep spinning and iterating, showing up for work, doing stuff, and NOT driving for a solid release.
• Know how you measure success and completion. Everyone on the team should know what will make your project "done" and "good". Check work against these unchanging criteria regularly. This prevents mission drift and keeps everyone honest.
• Have a Project Leader close to the project. Make sure at least one person on the team is responsible (meaning accountability and authority) for whether or not your thing is any good/meets the original needs. If the organization cannot put that kind of trust in the project leader, it has fundamental problems that make success highly unlikely.

These are all things that "small" organizations do inherently. Think small!

The Wreck of Hewlett-Packard

An early Hewlett-Packard Oscillator

Hewlett-Packard is sort of The Rolling Stones of Silicon Valley.

The early HP was a groundbreaking, innovative company that didn't just kick out great products, they helped create and validate a whole new way of doing business.

They were the original "garage-based start-up", a scrappy pair of guys who had some incredible hits in the early days. Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard had impeccable tech cred. They were also smart people who studied under Frederick Terman (whose father, Louis Terman, is a pioneer in gifted education).

They espoused The "HP Way", a noble and empowering mindset which many successful Silicon Valley companies still emulate.

But much like the Stones, middle- and old-age haven't been kind to HP, and they've never been the same since the founding members left.

The company went from cranking out its own innovative products to slapping a brand on mediocre-at-best Windows boxes. It has made some incredibly bad decisions over the last few years, and despite (or perhaps due to) being enormously large and recognized, HP seems locked into a long-term death spiral.

I heard today from one analyst "the company is just too big for any one person to comprehend". Yet there are other big companies that are more successful and still comprehensible.

HP used to be awesome. What happened?

Partying in 1999
HP was founded in 1935. It went public in 1957, after a long slow climb. Its early decades were somewhat unfocused, but the company managed to bang out enough success to keep going.

It missed a few great opportunities (Steve Wozniak designed the Apple I while at HP, offered it to them, and they passed), but by the mid-80s was going strong. They did manage to get on the internet very early (1986!).

The 1990s marked a big shift for HP, as they moved into consumer markets, instead of just professional tools and devices. This culminated in 1999.

1999 was a big year for HP. They spun off all of their tech businesses not directly related to computers, storage, and imaging. That spin-off (Agilent) was the largest IPO in Silicon Valley history.

They also appointed Carly Fiorina as CEO. Carly Fiorina was the first woman to lead a Fortune 20 company. Her most notable achievement at HP was the acquisition of Compaq, which helped establish HP as the largest shipper of personal computers - most of them being middling Windows boxes.

She was quite controversial and not very popular at HP, and eventually shoved out the door with a $20 million severance package. The stock price dropped 50% during her tenure, though much of that was arguably due to overall market conditions and not her leadership. Regardless, she's been called one of the worst CEOs of all time by Conde Nast Portfolio (whoever they are).

Making a Small Fortune on WebOS (out of a large one)
Once upon a time, there was a company called Palm Computing. They created something called the Palm Pilot, which was a pretty kick-ass little "personal digital assistant", or PDA. It was stylus-based and an excellent combination of (then) state-of-the-art technology and solid product design. It did what it was supposed to, reliably, and quickly displaced the paper Fil-o-fax as the weapon of choice for biz people.

It was a big hit. But like many companies (and bands), after the first big flush of success, Palm sort of lost their way and became complacent. They stopped worrying, even as other devices came after them aggressively.

In a few short years, Palm was the worst-performing PDA manufacturer on NASDAQ, despite having revitalized the category. Their stock lost 90% of its value in a single year. Many corporate shenanigans ensued, but the end result was a "new" Palm dedicated to building a new OS and new devices to compete with the now-dominant Blackberry and iPhone in the smartphone market.

The new thing would be called WebOS. The OS was highly thought-of, even if the hardware it was initially presented in was lacking.

But good reviews alone don't matter. A little over a year after WebOS launched, the struggling Palm sold to HP for over a billion dollars.

And then, in a single phone call, HP destroyed much of the value of the ecosystem. Once then-CEO Mark Hurd said HP "didn't buy Palm to be in the smartphone business", pretty much every independent developer working on the platform threw in the towel.

Without 3rd-party apps, platforms don't make sense for users, especially as Apple developers kept cranking out hit after hit.

Less than a year after the sale, HP backed out of offering OS updates to devices in the field and then turned around and announced a bunch of new devices.

6 months later, HP would announce they'd be selling their consumer devices group, and not shipping any new devices for users.

The Unstoppable TouchPad Crash-and-Burn
Despite having irreparably damaged tech faith in WebOS, HP announced the TouchPad: their "tablet" computer based around the now-irrelevant and unsupported WebOS. You may have heard how that turned out: The company launched it on July 1, 2011 and 7 weeks later, on August 18, 2011, announced they were going to discontinue it and all WebOS devices.

This was only 5 weeks after launching in the UK and other Euro countries, and only 3 days after launching in Australia.

They started blowing the inventory out at $100 (for a device that had been priced at $500 and which, by most estimates, cost over $300 to build, not including the costs of developing and designing).

Even after the company canceled the product, I kept seeing lavish TV ads appearing everywhere I went. Apparently the marketing juggernaut was unstoppable, even after the head had been cut off.

But it gets better.

Not even 2 weeks after announcing they were killing all WebOS products, HP announced it would do another production run of the TouchPad. This might be a way for HP to mend relationships with component vendors, but it sure looks like a poor business move.

Rotten at the Top
Mark Hurd was CEO for 5 years. He resigned in 2010, not because he had totally blown up WebOS or mismanaged the company. He resigned because "expense account irregularities" were uncovered and sexual harassment alleged.

Of course, a company's culture comes from the top. That doesn't just mean senior management - that also means the board of directors. If the board is wise, they choose good management and provide appropriate feedback, controls and guidelines. If the board is foolish, they let management run unsupervised, or micro-manage product details based on their own preferences and whims.

The behavior of HP's board of late is appalling. Not that long ago, HP's board engaged in activity that was not just immoral and unethical, but illegal. That should have been enough to clean house.

But the culture was set. A new HP way, I suppose. That culture is ultimately responsible for the wreck that HP's become. To give you an idea of how that negligent culture manifests, HP's board didn't even bother to interview the CEO they hired a year ago and then dismissed.

Now, the board is supposedly considering Meg Whitman as the new CEO. One hopes they'll actually talk to her this time.

Bad Products
My own experience with HP shows what happens when marketing passes innovation:

In the late 90s, I needed a fax machine, scanner, and laser printer for my recording studio and record label businesses. I went to my local Fry's electronics and purchased a multi-function HP device. It did everything I needed, it was compact, and it carried the HP brand. And it was the right price - about $400 if I remember correctly. A tiny bit more than I wanted to pay, but it seemed like a substantial investment.

Took it home, installed it. Worked great.

For about a year.

Then it stopped properly feeding paper through, either to scan or print. The roller just slid over the paper. I started trying to track down issues on HP's disaster of a website. It became clear many other users were having the same problem. HP's response was to shrug and say it wasn't built to last.

There was a class-action lawsuit. HP agreed to ship out a "fix kit" to all users who jumped through hurdles. I jumped through the hurdles. I got my fix kit. I carefully, properly installed it. It sort of worked, though not reliably. Still better than junking the thing.

About 2 years after that, Microsoft released Windows XP, a big step up from Windows 95, 98, and 2000. I upgraded. My HP device no longer worked. Back to the website.

Turns out you had to BUY a driver disc from them for about $20 in order to get XP drivers. So I bought it (since I couldn't find the drivers online anywhere). I used that device for a few more months until the toner cartridge ran out. HP charges a lot for toner and doesn't want any competition in that market.

I was happy to be rid of the device, and I vowed I'd never again purchase anything from HP.

Conclusion?
What can you say? HP is huge and profitable, for now. Companies that big achieve a kind of failure-proof critical mass. They'll be around for a long time barring complete catastrophe, but it's hard to see them ever innovating again, or ever having hits again. They're just another big, dumb, slow company.

There's worse things for a garage start-up to end up as. There's better, too.

The Collapse of BlackBerry and When To Be Nervous

Yesterday, Research In Motion, a.k.a. RIM, the company that pioneered smartphones with the BlackBerry, announced they are laying off 11% of their workforce.

Several years ago, I read Jared Diamond's totally depressing book "Collapse: How Societies Choose To Fail Or Succeed". The title says it all. Diamond offers a rather bleak analysis and looks at a number of societies which collapsed and a few which managed to survive.

One example is Easter Island.

Easter Island used to be covered with trees and forest so dense it was nearly impassable. Humans arrived and set up a society. In a few decades, they leveled the forests, and their society quickly died a gruesome, futile, bloody death. The environment still hasn't recovered from the humans. The only things that remain are the creepy statues.

One of the most powerful passages in the book is when Diamond asks "What was going through the mind of the person chopping down the last tree on Easter Island?"

Why did the people continue to destroy the very environment they needed to survive? And how and why did they keep going when it was beyond obvious?

Diamond also covers the first Viking settlers in Greenland. They starved to death, resorting to eating their horses (down to the hooves), the meager vegetation in the area, and eventually each other. All this while the native people were literally next to them pulling fish out of the water with their bare hands. See, the Vikings didn't eat seafood. Not part of their culture.

The Easter Islanders and the Vikings had one thing in common. Neither society would change their way of life - their "values", even though it they were not sustainable and obviously not appropriate for the world they inhabited. Quite literally, they chose death over changing how they lived.

I've been working on a BlackBerry application for several months. Previously, I've worked on iOS and Android, and taken a very close look at Windows Phone 7.

I hate working on the BlackBerry platform.

The tools are difficult to configure and painful to use, so much so that even finding them on BlackBerry's site took one whole day, figuring out what I needed to install them took 2 days, and in the end, I've had to resort to using a freeware 3rd-party software.

I've been reading a number of articles about RIM lately, notably http://www.bgr.com/2011/07/13/rims-inside-story-an-exclusive-look-at-the-rise-and-fall-of-the-company-that-made-smartphones-smart/ and http://mobileopportunity.blogspot.com/2010/10/whats-really-wrong-with-blackberry-and.html

They're fascinating reads, and have inspired me to write notes and memos to myself and my fellow employees.

BlackBerry is very much like the Easter Islanders and the Vikings: it chose not to acknowledge the reality it inhabited, doesn't want to change, and it is slowly collapsing as a result. If they survive, it will be as a niche player in an industry they inspired, if not created.

Things to consider:
Don't be worried when things are rough at your company - you usually know what needs to be done. The problems are often obvious: we need a feature or this piece of technology is broken/out-of-date or our marketing sucks.

The challenge is typically in the execution (more on that in the future).

Be nervous when you're on top. That's when hubris tends to rear its ugly head, and that is when you start making fatal mistakes.

Being on top is seldom something that lasts, but being there seems to blind people to that fact. Look at IBM or Xerox or Microsoft or GM or anyone. Who's next? Google? Apple? Facebook? (I'd say "all of the above").

When you're on top, especially if you're the person who brought your company there, it's hard to be objective. It's difficult politically and culturally to say "we don't know what to do next" or "we can't find any more users".

"We need to revisit our fundamental assumptions" is toughest of all. It's a fancy way of saying "we need to change who we are" or "we need to change our way of life".

Things happen. The world becomes different. Your original assumptions are no longer valid. Changing them is akin to "abandoning your identity" or "principles".

But companies ultimately have no identity or principles save making money. Anything beyond that is the result of what you choose to impose. Having a strong identity or principles will not guarantee you users, sales, or existence. And clinging to them in the face of a changing world all but guarantees you will go extinct.

By values I don't mean things like "honesty" or "making a difference". I mean things like "our products will never have a camera or MP3 player" or "8086 architecture only" or "rotary engines" or "we only do black and white".

When you find yourself wondering why the market can't see how incredible your product is, you have 2 choices:

1. Spend a ton of money in consumer marketing to "educate" them as to why they're "wrong" and your product is awesome
2. Realize you have built the wrong product. 

Choice 1 is inherently arrogant and fighting against the entire world. Very few companies and products manage to turn this type of perception around. It also costs a lot of money and all your competitors get to ride free on your expenditures. Frequently senior executives prefer to go this route because it is psychologically safer and easier than saying "we are doing it wrong".

After everything falls apart, they can blame bad execution or incompetent minions or lack of cash. These are all ways to deflect thinking about whether or not it was a sound plan in the first place.

Choice 2 is difficult. It requires some amount of risk (which can be mitigated). But I believe it is the best thing to do. Truly successful companies are asking themselves if they're doing it wrong all the time, and frequently have small research projects looking at alternatives to their core products all the time.

Adapt or die. Face reality. It's really that simple.

It's hard to believe RIM is based in a town named "Waterloo". Come ON!

The Wrong Users: Targeting, Testing, and Design

This blog post is causing a lot of hand-wringing and discussion in the product design world.

To summarize, the author was doing a test on tabbed browsing usage at a mall, and he found a man named Joe, aged 60, who claimed he'd never used a computer before. Unsurprisingly, Joe had a terrible time using Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Chrome. He was confused by the most basic operations and did not have a grasp of the fundamental metaphors in use.

The original blog post does a decent job of teasing obvious conclusions out of the experience, but all of the commentary around it and all of the coverage I've read is of the "oh my god, computers are terrible, people have failed to make good designs, can't we make them easier, the first person who figures out how to make computing culturally relevant will be a billionaire" and so forth.

I think this is all misguided and silly.

In my opinion, the author made a huge mistake and wasted 3 hours of his time working with Joe in the first place. I'm sure it was interesting from an anthropological perspective, but it didn't really help him with the problem he was trying to investigate. Joe was the wrong user to test.

One would no more expect useful feedback on tabbed browsing from someone like Joe than one would get asking questions about dashboard layout for someone who's never driven a car. And in 2011, finding someone who's never used a computer is a bit like finding someone who's never been in a car before.

I'm not saying there's absolutely nothing to be learned - there's always something to be learned - but this is a terribly inefficient way to gather data. Makes for a good blog post but not a much better product (perhaps like my own scribblings!)

The design community is also overblowing the state of computer interfaces. Let's set aside all of the tedious anecdotes about how toddlers can manipulate the iPad and other touch interfaces (toddlers can also turn the stove on, but that doesn't mean they know how to cook). Toddlers aren't the right users for these devices, either. Point is, computer interfaces have made tremendous strides in a fairly short period of time.

Computers are still not "easy" to use without prior context and education, but no sophisticated tool is. I would argue most people don't know how to properly use a hammer or knives, and training would benefit them. Clock radios are still so confusing that hotels have to put "1-2-3" instructions on them, and most guests still either use their own or arrange a wake-up call. Hell, we have to keep reminding people to lift with their knees, not their backs. Some degree of education is always important.

More importantly, when doing user testing, you must pick the right users to test. Someone who's never used a computer before is generally the wrong user to be testing. Someone fundamentally uninterested in your product is the wrong user. Even the wrong demographic is not worth talking to or considering. You're wasting your time (at best) and drawing the wrong conclusions which leads to bad design decisions (at worst).

Knowing who your users are and who you want them to be is critically important for your business and for your design. If you or your company does not have a good idea of who your desired users are, you need to figure that out or you will flail and fail. You must target and test with the "right" users.

Saying things like "it's everybody" is a sign of naivete and/or hubris - tragic flaws. It's not everybody. If you're doing software in 2011, it's people who've at least used a computer before (or whatever your product is). Probably have to have broadband or other "always-on" connectivity. Have to be interested in what your product is about.

I've worked on a number of streaming products in the music space. I always write out a list of assumptions at the start of every product describing the potential users. For example:

• Desire to listen to music beyond current solution
• Broadband connections where they listen to music
• Smartphone owner (Android or iPhone)
• Willing to pay for music
• Enough disposable income to pay regularly
• Not afraid of technology

This list may not include specific demographic information, but it's already starting to filter out significantly from "everybody". 10 years ago, the "broadband connection" item was a big filter. 3 years ago, the "smartphone owner" was a big filter. The other items are also important filters to consider.

These items can be used to start building or inferring a demographic profile. They may seem stupidly obvious, but it is extremely important to understand these to combat the "it's everybody" argument. It's not everybody. Focus on the right users.

You can make reasonable assumptions about users based on their existing knowledge and experience. If your target user is an iPhone user, it is probably safe to assume they know the basics of operating an iPhone. This also means if you hew to most existing iPhone conventions, you don't have to worry about the user understanding them.

However, it is not safe to assume they know to experiment with every arcane gesture or mystery UI element. Unlike you, the designer, the user does not spend all day experimenting with every new, trendy, weird app. They'll know how to scroll and tap. If you make your app look like the other apps the user works with, they might pick up things like pinch. But in my own testing, I've found very few users even know about "swipe to enable delete". Android users seldom hit the "menu" button unless really stuck, and they typically expect the menu options to be the same through most of the app.

Know who you're going after. Don't chase down Joe. Don't run after the wrong users.

Why Products Really Suck, Part 2

Your Team Is The Enemy
If you're like most product managers, you don't get to choose your team. You get whatever resources the company has available - engineers, QA, design, project management, and so on.

Sometimes you get a team of great people. Sometimes you get so much deadwood and burn-out cases you're afraid a spark may ignite the whole bunch.

You will almost certainly have fewer people than you'd like, and you may have fewer people than you need.

But regardless, they are your team. They are the ones who will be doing most of the actual work of creating the product.

Your job is to make sure they make the right product. And it's tricky, because without proper guidance and structure, your team is the enemy, and they will wreck your product.

Lights, Camera, Action
In many ways, Product Managers are like directors, and products are like films. The products have themes. The participants need to understand their motivation - why are they doing what they're doing? And the Product Manager needs to make it all happen.

If you don't direct them, your team will wander, literally and metaphorically. Good products come from teams that know exactly what they're building and why. Teams need to know what's important about their product - what makes it worth building? They need to know the most important use cases (things users will do with the app) and invest development effort there.

They need to know where the value in your product is coming from. Is designing a new kind of scroll bar a good time investment? (probably not, because it's not what's driving your product's value) How about a whizzy new database? (only if it's something your product relies on). Many teams wander because the individuals have their own agendas...because the product manager wasn't clear about what the team's agenda should be.

Imagine a bunch of actors on a set. They all have particular goals and takes on their characters. They may even have different acting styles. In good movies, the director works to blend everything together and pull it in service of a common goal. Gratuitous, unnecessary, or inappropriate elements are cut. The same should be true with products.

Focus
Once I worked on a software product intended for audio playback. The engineers had a very cool interface technology that allowed for some very ahead-of-its-time customization of the UI. We all thought it was neat, so we included it in the player. The code was solid, and it had minimal CPU impact...but it was a mistake.

The feature did not drive the core value proposition of the app, and actively distracted users and the company from the app's true value proposition. The sales guys were showing off that part of the product because it was visual and different. People got excited and wanted enhancements. But improving that part of the product didn't help the business. It was a huge distraction.

If you let your team drive the product, you may get a bunch of cool features and designs, but they won't cohere, and they may not drive your core value proposition.

Democracy Is Bad
On a movie set, the director makes all the decisions. Right or wrong. In most of the successful rock bands, one person makes the final decisions. Same is true of the best product teams. And that person is the product manager. YOU are responsible for whether or not it's any good.

Product management is not a democracy. Many people have opinions and perspectives, but only one person has responsibility. Some refer to the Product Manager as the "one neck to wring". The trade-off for that liability is "final cut" or final approval. Use it.

If you don't, you are not likely to end up with a great product - one that has a vision, a theme, and some bold direction. You'll get oatmeal. A bunch of things that are OK. Or you might get a bunch of stuff in a box which sort of works.

I believe the best design visions, the best products, the best art all come from single perspectives. They can be made richer via other input and may require other people to execute, but there should only be one "designer".

Don't Be A Dictator
That is not to say you should be dictatorial. You should strive to build a harmonious team. And you must listen to everyone with great care, and take their comments and concerns seriously. Build consensus where possible.

The key words are "where possible." Despite best efforts, you are going to reach a point where your team disagrees. There are many ways to drive consensus ("Fist of Five" being a good one). Don't be afraid to make a call. Just make sure you have reasons for doing it, and make sure the team understands.

Alienating your team is a fast-track to failure. You cannot succeed without them.

Fires
Most of the time, you work with grown-ups. Even if they aren't in love with the project or your decisions, they will bring their "A-game" (or at least their B-game) every day and get stuff done. But sometimes you get stuck with a bad apple.

This can be the person who simply doesn't pull their weight. It can be someone who undermines the team explicitly, by being a jerk to the team, being overly negative about the project, or who constantly argues with you about direction. This can also be someone who is talking to people in the company above you without your knowledge.

These are small fires. If you don't put them out, they can grow quickly and result in product wreckage. It might be cancellation, reduced buy-in, or just demoralization.

The first and best approach is to find out what's bothering the team member and see if you can mollify them.

But do not be afraid to request their removal from the team. Often it's best just to get them out of the picture.

Feedback
Provide lots of low-latency feedback to your team. In other words, talk to them a lot, and talk to them as the project is in motion.

Important things to do:

• Talk to all team members every work day. Not just to pester them about "are you done yet?", but ask what obstacles they're encountering. What can you do to help them succeed?
• Know your team. If you want to understand your team, get to know them. Maybe your developer is slow this week because he's having personal problems.
• Eat lunch together. Buy your team lunch every now and then. Even if the company won't expense it, you can get everyone a sandwich somewhere for not that much money. It's hard to be a jerk to someone you had a sandwich with yesterday, and everyone likes the surprise of a literal free lunch. Plus it fosters communication. And I don't mean "bring in a pizza and keep working." I mean get OUT of the office, go sit down somewhere, and relax.
• Regular reviews. Periodically review the accomplishments. Praise hard work. Look for things causing problems. This is most important early in the project and at the conclusion of the project.

This stuff may seem overly basic, but I am always surprised at how often people don't do one or more.

Up next: YOU are the reason.

Who's Wrecking Your Product?

It really does only take one person to wreck a product.

Sometimes they wreck it before it's even started. Sometimes they wreck it while it's being made. Sometimes they wreck it after it's done.

Creating a product requires many things:

• Clear vision - this includes what need it should address, why it's being built, for whom, and what the timeline should be. 
• Realistic goals - this includes the budget and resourcing as well as the expected feature set and benefits to the company bottom line
• Carefully balanced trade-offs between all of the competing elements
• Discipline 

Ultimately, the product manager is responsible for all of the above. But in many companies, product managers lack the authority to enforce those items. In others, the key decisions are either made or overridden by senior management.

Steve Jobs Wrecked Your Product

"Boom! I just wrecked your product!"

Why blame The Steve? He's legendarily, heavily, deeply involved in nearly all aspects of product creation for Apple. Mr. Jobs really does make many, many decisions. And he's frequently, annoyingly "right", in the sense that Apple's products have sold extremely well since his return from exile.

Many books have been written about Steve Jobs and Apple, dissecting them both and seeking the reason for their success. I think in both cases it comes down to one thing: discipline.

Apple seems to realize the value of restraint. Less is more, especially in software. They initially launch with a sometimes laughably small number of features...but they all work, and work well. They slowly add high-quality features over time. This approach is very similar to the "kaizen" process that Toyota uses. Developing with discipline beats rushing out a feature-complete-but-buggy 1.0 and then trying to patch it.

Steve Jobs is very good at helping decide what to leave out. He understands that good products are narratives (like, say, Pixar films). They have a central theme which must be supported and reinforced.

Steve Jobs has caused 2 major problems for everyone else, though. And both are the result of being blinded by surface and style rather than focusing on deeper critical thinking.

Steve Jobs Wrecked Your Boss
Nearly every high-level executive I can think of secretly (or not-so-secretly) wants to be Steve Jobs. They admire his panache, life story, fashion sense, reputation, and of course, massive success.

Unfortunately for many, one of their takeaways from Steve Jobs is "I need to micromanage my product team". They insist on arbitrary product reviews with no clear next steps. They make changes without a strategic or tactical understanding, of the project goals. They don't stay informed about the product constantly, and rather like the Eye of Sauron, swing in to focus on it erratically and painfully.

They change the central theme of the product. They move goalposts. They revoke previous decisions.

Steve Jobs sets clear goals at the outset: Who's the ultimate decision maker? (he is, and he stays involved) What's the theme of the product? What are the resources? And so on.

If your supervisors emulate the wrong aspects of Steve Jobs, you may be wrecked before you even start. Getting around bad management is a challenge for the best product managers. Sometimes it is clear that bad management will wreck your product. It's almost always better to ship even a flawed product than to bail out, however.

So, misunderstanding leadership lessons from Steve Jobs. What else? How about misunderstanding design!

The Cargo Cult of Steve (or, Your Company is Not Apple)

I have a kitchen timer that looks like an original iPod. Because it was designed and made when iPods were popular. It is a terrible, terrible product. And it is obvious the company that made it wanted it to look like an iPod to cash in.

While it is superficially similar to an iPod, in practice, it is the antithesis of what made the iPod popular. It takes a relatively simple product (a countdown timer) and turns it into something incredibly annoying and difficult to use.

Reasons why it's terrible? Off the top of my head:

• Button layout arbitrary and inappropriate for purpose
• Buttons are too stiff
• Inscrutable UI
• Lack of attention to detail

It feels awful to use.

I don't know the folks who created this thing, but I can imagine the meetings where they decided (or perhaps the boss demanded) to adopt the visual language of the iPod without understanding the product thinking that led to that visual language. It is cargo cult thinking.

Products get wrecked when companies decide to emulate other products' surface appearance without understanding the thinking that created that appearance in the first place.

This is different from following "industry standards", "best practices", or even "trends". Those all have their place when they are conscious decisions made with intent.

Copying Apple is a conscious decision, and the intent is clear - emulate success. But Apple's success (and design) come about because the company makes conscious decisions with intent.

Another frequently cited example is the use of 3D buttons and glossy effects. Apple doesn't make buttons glossy and 3D just because they "look cool". They do it to make the buttons stand out clearly from the rest of the flat, matte interface. Many other OS widgets (Android, Windows 7 for example) use glossy and 3D effects in a gratuitous fashion, and frequently the shiny highlight makes text less legible.

Design elements should never be gratuitous. If you're doing something for no other reason than "it looks cool", reconsider. That said, "looking cool" can add value provided you're not interfering with the rest of your product functionality.

Your boss might misunderstand Steve Jobs. Don't allow yourself or your team to misunderstand Apple and design in general. Make conscious decisions with intent. Think about what you are trying to accomplish and what would work best.

Let form follow function. Or at least make sure the form is informed by function, or you know what your trade-offs are. Innovative and exciting designs frequently spring from re-focusing on what the customer is actually trying to do, rather than merely sprucing up existing design conventions.

Don't let Steve Jobs wreck your product! Be disciplined. Make your own choices with intent.

Up next: Your Team!

Why Products Really Suck, Part 1

Image from: http://bit.ly/dM9CtS

I recently read this rather glib and uninformative article about "Why Products Suck". It got me thinking. I've made and shipped a number of products. Some won awards. Some were terrible.

I've definitely learned a few things, and I can definitely provide more insight than the above-mentioned article's key points, which were:

1. It only takes one person to make your product suck.
2. Nobody ever got fired for sucking.
3. It’s easier to suck more than suck less.
4. There are more ways to suck than to not suck.
5. Customers demand sucky products.

So I'll be doing a series of articles on making good products. First, let's look at what's wrong with this article.


First point. The author claims "It only takes one person to make your product suck." There are a number of interesting and correct directions he could take this statement. But his actual point is that you need consensus among your "team" that your primary goal should be "not sucking".

It is true that it only takes one person to wreck a product. There's a New Yorker cartoon I used to have taped to my wall that showed a guy at a desk writing on something his subordinate handed him, saying "I just need to make one change that will ruin all the work you've done."

Frequently, that person is not who you expect them to be, and they will be the subject of a future article.

I will also discuss the pros and cons of team consensus.

Second point. "Nobody ever got fired for sucking". This is sadly true, however the point as presented in the article is rather weak. The author is basically saying "you should fire bad people" without clarifying the differences between:

• appropriate and inappropriate risk
• initiative and running wild
• genuine accidents/mistakes and negligence

Good teams and good managers not only get enough rope, they sometimes get tangled up in it. Not every risk pays out, and some risks lose big. That's why they're risky. Start-ups take bigger risks than established companies, and new products take bigger risks than established ones. They have to in order to survive.

I'll discuss risk and failure as well.

Third point. "It's easier to suck more than suck less". His somewhat dippy phrasing covers the best point he makes in the article: Serve the right customer. Don't be so desperate for customers you build features that aren't core. You'll attract the wrong customers and then be beholden to them with even greater costs for getting back on track.

There will be a nice long article about discipline in product design.

Fourth point. "There are more ways to suck than not to suck." His point here is "you need to be careful with your choices and define your product clearly before you start development". This is true, but many of the examples he cites are not relevant to that point at all. There are tactical mistakes one can make. Choosing the wrong user interface widget isn't one. Good UI designers don't really have choices with too many questions if the product is well defined - in those cases, the best (or at least better) tactical choices are fairly obvious.

Strategic choices are much more difficult and much more important, and frequently glossed over in both theory and practice. I firmly believe that making great products is not particularly difficult if the environment is good and the team is competent. I'll cover that as well.

Fifth point. "Customers demand sucky products." This is a rather provocative statement, given the "customer is always right" attitude that dominates. The author's main point is , but he follows it up with a poor, or at least insufficiently specific suggestion:

Trust your instincts and the tiny set of users who use you, and resist advice from the billions of people who don’t.

Good product designers do have instincts, but those instincts are informed by experience, best practices, and lots of research.

Your current users are frequently the last people you want to be talking to about how to evolve your product. In the early stages of a product, your users are likely to be unrepresentative of the larger user demographic, unavailable in sufficient numbers to float your whole business model on, and highly demanding.

For more mature products, your users are again likely to be unrepresentative of the next tranche of users you hope to attract, and will be used to how your product works. They are likely to demand minor iterations or evolutions of features.

The short answer is "talk to people who are like the users you want to have", and the long answer will be coming in a new post soon.

Up Next: Who's wrecking your product? (Answer: Steve Jobs. Seriously).