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If your product is Great, it doesn't need to be Good (2010)

paulbuchheit.blogspot.com

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Re: If your product is Great, it doesn't need to be Good (2010)

#51

Post by torben-friis »

moring wrote: post #48
sph wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been thinking deeply about this problem. I bought a great, silent fan from Rowenta, with beautiful housing and does what it says on the tin with no fancy accessories. 3 speed + 1 very silent mode for sleep. Hey, it’s a European product, not some Chinese knockoff. At some point during design, one person must have said “you know, why not add a brilliant white light that turns on in silent mode? Wouldn’t that be…

And yet, you did buy the fan despite the bright LED (because you didn't know it was there when you bought it). Rowenta got your money, so from their perspective, they did everything right.

People don't talk enough about the effects of bright screens being cheap to keep on in urban areas.

Every drug store, bus stop and storefront in my city is painful to walk around at night.

Re: If your product is Great, it doesn't need to be Good (2010)

#52

Post by Angostura »

jonplackett wrote: post #3

Read something similar the other day about the original Walkman. The engineers wanted to add recording function, thinking it would help with sales and to only cost a negligible amount to add. Someone cleverer said no, because if you add that feature now people will be confused what it is for. If they don’t want to record audio, they’ll think the product isn’t for them.

You include it but with no mention of it. Allow recoding to be activated with an obscure undocumented button push.

Leave a subtle hong somewhere that someone clever can find out. Wait for news of the functionality to go viral and additional products to walk off the shelf bought by people who feel clever.

Re: If your product is Great, it doesn't need to be Good (2010)

#53

Post by internet_points »

ChadNauseam wrote: post #5

Apple messed up one thing about the iPad, which made me never use mine and eventually give it away. Basically, my iPad would die in a couple days if left unplugged. Because I only want to use it about once a week, that means I have to leave it plugged in all the time. Of course I or someone else inevitably wants to plug something else into that charger, so the iPad gets unplugged and forgotten about. Then, in a week…

Same here! I was so annoyed that it didn't come with an auto-powerdown function. Did they really expect people to remember to turn them off "when they plan not to use it for a few days" (I mean who plans not to use something)

Re: If your product is Great, it doesn't need to be Good (2010)

#54

Post by Elosha »

I remember the biggest "missing features" of the iPhone people asked for were MMS and OBEX, along with 3G.

I also remember Apple had cared for most missing things by the iPhone 3G respectively iOS 3. Then they improved photo quality, speed and videos until the iPhone 4 respectively iOS 4/5. Similar things can be said about the iPad 2.

After that, I've had the feeling the product didn't improve anymore, because there was nothing actually useful left to add. I've used my iPhone 4 for 10 years, while Apple enjoyed adding more complexity without true benefit, except maybe the file manager and on-device image editing.

Re: If your product is Great, it doesn't need to be Good (2010)

#55

Post by mattio »

sph wrote: post #40
jonplackett wrote: post #3

Read something similar the other day about the original Walkman. The engineers wanted to add recording function, thinking it would help with sales and to only cost a negligible amount to add. Someone cleverer said no, because if you add that feature now people will be confused what it is for. If they don’t want to record audio, they’ll think the product isn’t for them.

I have been thinking deeply about this problem. I bought a great, silent fan from Rowenta, with beautiful housing and does what it says on the tin with no fancy accessories. 3 speed + 1 very silent mode for sleep. Hey, it’s a European product, not some Chinese knockoff. At some point during design, one person must have said “you know, why not add a brilliant white light that turns on in silent mode? Wouldn’t that be…

You can buy the version without the bright light, but the marketing people made it 10 dollars more expensive x-) /s

Re: If your product is Great, it doesn't need to be Good (2010)

#56

Post by robocat »

moffkalast wrote: post #47
sph wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been thinking deeply about this problem. I bought a great, silent fan from Rowenta, with beautiful housing and does what it says on the tin with no fancy accessories. 3 speed + 1 very silent mode for sleep. Hey, it’s a European product, not some Chinese knockoff. At some point during design, one person must have said “you know, why not add a brilliant white light that turns on in silent mode? Wouldn’t that be…

There are many problems in life that a brush and some black acrylic brush-on primer can fix. This is one of those problems :)

I fixed a power wart LED today using black electrical tape, with a needle hole.

Ideally instead I need some stick-on semitransparent dark-alpha stickers to reduce brightness. Maybe I should use two polarized stickers, and rotate the second until brightness is perfect.

Are there non-linear solutions or HEV-sensitive photochromic solutions - so that LED brightness is low in the dark but bright enough in sunny conditions?

Re: If your product is Great, it doesn't need to be Good (2010)

#58

Post by Hendrikto »

ChadNauseam wrote: post #5

Apple messed up one thing about the iPad, which made me never use mine and eventually give it away. Basically, my iPad would die in a couple days if left unplugged. Because I only want to use it about once a week, that means I have to leave it plugged in all the time. Of course I or someone else inevitably wants to plug something else into that charger, so the iPad gets unplugged and forgotten about. Then, in a week…

> Basically, my iPad would die in a couple days if left unplugged.

I still have a first gen (!) iPad that still lasts for weeks on a single charge when locked. It is useless now, because there is no software support, but not because of the battery.

Re: If your product is Great, it doesn't need to be Good (2010)

#59

Post by palata »

keane wrote: post #18
Supermancho wrote: post #4

Survival bias powers these "insights", 100% of the time.

This writeup looks at a successful product with a small number of features that was thereby distinguished from a field of unsuccessful products with a large number of features. Accounting for many products, considering both successes and failures (i.e. using a wide selection of data), it argues that the distinguishing factor of less features was related to the device’s popularity. In the canonical example of survivor…

Did you read it? Where do you see mention of "a field of unsuccessful products"?

It mentions the iPad, the iPod, Gmail as successful products. It mentions "laptops" (but in the description it actually includes all desktop computers, I would say) as unsuccessful products.

I wouldn't call desktop computers or even just laptops "unsuccessful products". Would you?

Re: If your product is Great, it doesn't need to be Good (2010)

#60

Post by ijk »

lukan wrote: post #45
sph wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been thinking deeply about this problem. I bought a great, silent fan from Rowenta, with beautiful housing and does what it says on the tin with no fancy accessories. 3 speed + 1 very silent mode for sleep. Hey, it’s a European product, not some Chinese knockoff. At some point during design, one person must have said “you know, why not add a brilliant white light that turns on in silent mode? Wouldn’t that be…

That bright LED's became so cheap to allow putting them everywhere certainly had downsides. There are many devices now where I have to tape over to enjoy a dark sleeping place.

Back when red LEDs were the new cheap lighting option everything was great: red doesn't affect noght vision as much and at least for me it doesn't seem to prevent sleeping on the same way that the bright white LEDs do.
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