Japan: We're losing to Apple, and here's why
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Japan: We're losing to Apple, and here's why
1–10 of 81 posts
Re: Japan: We're losing to Apple, and here's why
#2He says the problem is design by focus groups. Consumers know exactly what they want, but when a company produces it, they go buy something else more interesting. I've tried using focus groups back in the last century. It doesnt produce anything useful, except when you are looking for flaws in your product.
Re: Japan: We're losing to Apple, and here's why
#3He says the problem is design by focus groups. Consumers know exactly what they want, but when a company produces it, they go buy something else more interesting. I've tried using focus groups back in the last century. It doesnt produce anything useful, except when you are looking for flaws in your product.
Nonsense - if it wasn't for focus groups we wouldn't have been able to launch our new car with improved whip holder!
Re: Japan: We're losing to Apple, and here's why
#4This reminds me of Malcolm Gladwell's piece about New Coke in Blink.
Re: Japan: We're losing to Apple, and here's why
#5Fairly mundane observations.
I liked his point that today's Japanese executives are all corporate drones, salarymen that worked their way up through the system and aren't going to boldly design anything.
Re: Japan: We're losing to Apple, and here's why
#6What Apple has executed is actualy mass luxury. Its goods are perceived as high value objects, where status is more important than breadth of functionality (more on this later).
Perception is very important. For instance, a discount store would stack up items and use cheap-looking layout to create the perception that they are cost cutters.
Similarly, a luxury item should be perceived as objet d' art where functionality is clear and straighforward.
Viewed from this perspective, an iPod isn't about inbuilt graphic equalizers. It is about frictionless and effortless getting-music-into-your-hands ease. I remembered that even the Queen wanted an iPod. It is obvious one would know how to use one.
It is the same with the iPhone. The less the engineers talk about dual-core, split antenna, the more they focus on how users interact with their devices. Even the app store is actually a luxury bling. It signals all the things are are potentially available "at your service" without actually cluttering up your device.
Re: Japan: We're losing to Apple, and here's why
#7He says the problem is design by focus groups. Consumers know exactly what they want, but when a company produces it, they go buy something else more interesting. I've tried using focus groups back in the last century. It doesnt produce anything useful, except when you are looking for flaws in your product.
The problem is that so often users will express their desires not in the most distilled form, they will typically express them in the form of some unimplemented solution that they have arrived at via a process of mental satisficing. They don't know how to design software, or hardware, and they damned sure don't know how it works either. But they sure as hell know that if your product would "just" do this one little thing it would help them out.
The problem, of course, is that you then end up delegating design to people who lack the expertise. You can end up implementing ridiculous features if you just implement suggestions uncritically. For example, if you sell a sports car that people think should be more powerful they could express that by saying it should have a bigger engine, even though there are many ways to approach that problem (EFI programming, turbo chargers, lighter frame, different gear box, etc.) If you end up doing this a lot you end up with a big ball of mud design-wise as everyone's disparate needs and half-thought-out solutions collides with each other.
It takes a lot of effort to take the needs of customers and distill it down into a core set of functions and then tie those functions together in an elegant manner in a cohesive and highly useful design.
If you look at a lot of the "also ran" products from any given genre you will notice a trend towards a chaotic implementation of a laundry list of features whereas the market leaders tend to present a more elegant and cohesive design, even sometimes at the expensive of a handful of features.
Re: Japan: We're losing to Apple, and here's why
#8He says the problem is design by focus groups. Consumers know exactly what they want, but when a company produces it, they go buy something else more interesting. I've tried using focus groups back in the last century. It doesnt produce anything useful, except when you are looking for flaws in your product.
Surely because what a person claims they want often varies drastically from what they actually want.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/malcolm_gladwell_on_spagh...
Re: Japan: We're losing to Apple, and here's why
#9Fairly mundane observations. I liked his point that today's Japanese executives are all corporate drones, salarymen that worked their way up through the system and aren't going to boldly design anything.
That's really not fair. Some of them are competent foreigners that get thrown out when they expose yakuza cronyism.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020365880457663...
Re: Japan: We're losing to Apple, and here's why
#10This reminds me of Malcolm Gladwell's piece about New Coke in Blink.
Should be required reading for marketeers one would think.