One cost engineers and product managers don't consider

Post by joseph_cooney » Thu, Jun 20, 2013, 11:42 PM UTC

bithive123 wrote: post #58

nhashem wrote: post #15

For years, the two things that most frustrated me to hear from product managers were "how hard would it be..." and "can't you just..." It took me quite a while to figure out why I had such a strong, visceral reaction to these phrases. Oh, man. When it comes to my natural reaction to this, the words 'strong and visceral' doesn't even do justice. It took me a really long time to understand why I had such a deep-seated…

I've had some luck defusing these kinds of remarks by calmly but firmly stating that "with though simplifying assumptions, anything is trivial". YMMV.

Post by smartician » Fri, Jun 21, 2013, 12:20 AM UTC

RyJones wrote: post #59

RyanZAG wrote: post #4

Good article, makes an important point about complexity. Just want to add one extra thought though: he or she will run reports against the usage data to find out whether a given feature is often used. That data can then be run past the product managers who can help decide whether it's sensible to just drop the feature. It's important to be careful here, and it's one of the traps that is very easy to fall into (see Gn…

We hit this at MSN: we removed the "print" button from all articles. Result? Engagement in Japan fell. Why? Apparently, printing out a sheaf of articles to peruse on the train is (or was) a thing. Solution? Re-enabled the "print" button in Japan; everyone else was saved from downloaded the unused-in-market "print" button, lowering PLT. Please keep in mind I'm talking about stuff from about five years ago when you run…

Post by charlieok » Fri, Jun 21, 2013, 12:39 AM UTC

nhashem wrote: post #15

For years, the two things that most frustrated me to hear from product managers were "how hard would it be..." and "can't you just..." It took me quite a while to figure out why I had such a strong, visceral reaction to these phrases. Oh, man. When it comes to my natural reaction to this, the words 'strong and visceral' doesn't even do justice. It took me a really long time to understand why I had such a deep-seated…

Post by LordHumungous » Fri, Jun 21, 2013, 1:55 AM UTC

mikeschinkel wrote: post #54

I've frequently heard designers, developers and VPs of Engineering -- which I'll collectively call "builders" -- argue that a product should have fewer features and thus should be "simple." But I honestly can't remember reading once when a user has said they want fewer features. Users want it to easy , yes, but they also want the features that make their lives, well, easier; see how that works? Whenever I hear builde…

Post by acjohnson55 » Fri, Jun 21, 2013, 2:18 AM UTC

roryokane wrote: post #57

acjohnson55 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how I feel about Apple deeming unimportant my Home, End, PgUp, PgDn, and front-delete keys.

Just in case you’re not aware: the Fn key, in conjunction with the arrow keys or the delete key, let you type those keys. Though that’s certainly not as convenient as having dedicated keys. Also, you can remap different keys to those keys with the free software KeyRemap4MacBook ( https://pqrs.org/macosx/keyremap4macbook/index.html.en ). For instance, you can remap \ to be forward-delete and Fn+\ to be typing ‘\’.