Built to Fail: What Google, Ideo, and 37signals have in common

Post by GHFigs » Mon, Jul 13, 2009, 8:24 PM UTC

marcusbooster wrote: post #3

sriramk wrote: post #2

The standout there is Apple. Apple builds great products, doesn't do focus groups. They probably do multiple iterations but without large betas, the audience of those iterations is probably very limited. Their releases are not cheap - once you announce a new iPhone, you cannot change the hardware before release so you really need to get it right. The soonest you can update it is a year or so. Most of all,Apple is the…

Doesn't do focus groups on products designed and designed again from the bottom to the top? They even say so in their jobs faq: Apple hires quality assurance engineers for internal product testing...We also create focus groups to provide feedback on our products. http://www.apple.com/jobs/us/pro/inside/questions.html

Post by rms » Mon, Jul 13, 2009, 9:21 PM UTC

Semiapies wrote: post #20

sriramk wrote: post #2

The standout there is Apple. Apple builds great products, doesn't do focus groups. They probably do multiple iterations but without large betas, the audience of those iterations is probably very limited. Their releases are not cheap - once you announce a new iPhone, you cannot change the hardware before release so you really need to get it right. The soonest you can update it is a year or so. Most of all,Apple is the…

The downside of the "great man" setup is that Apple was not at all impressive without Steve Jobs at the helm. Uninspiring to outright bad Mac models, Microsoft putting out a superior OS for a time, etc. To be glib, with Jobs, you get the Wired "Evil Genius" cover story on Apple - and without Jobs, you get the old "Pray" cover story on Apple.

Post by jimmyjazz14 » Mon, Jul 13, 2009, 11:59 PM UTC

Post by grinich » Tue, Jul 14, 2009, 3:32 AM UTC

sriramk wrote: post #15

marcusbooster wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "We don’t do focus groups" statement from that article is referring to how Apple decides what products to build, not how they are built.

You're probably correct. I doubt that even Jobs and Ive are superhuman enough to build the right product at the beginning. I do wonder how they do this with their culture of secrecy. Any focus group they run must be quite small or they must be splitting up their focus group tests. For example, I remember reading a story about someone testing out the iPhone UI alone in a contraption in a box as opposed to the real har…

Post by ahoyhere » Tue, Jul 14, 2009, 8:13 AM UTC

rimantas wrote: post #19

Where all these companies just put there for their names? Article just doesn't make sense. There is the talk by Jason from 37signals, where he specifically talks how he does not get this obsession with failing: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1798-jasons-talk-at-big-o...