The latest much ado about nothing on the Internet: Blogger Joshua Blankenship has written a pot-calling-the-kettle-black diatribe against Dustin Curtis's apparent lack of humility in criticizingAmericanAirlines. He seems to think that Dustin should be a little more humble in his criticisms of such a large, immovable corporation whose complexity seemingly exceeds that of a very good designer.
I call bullshit.
A humble designer is one who affects no change indeed. Designers should be less humble. When engineers or business guys or management or *anyone* makes a product lousier, they should get up and shout, and raise hell. Designers should NOT 'know their place.' Because if the powers that be keep their power, then we will continue to live in a barely working cesspool of compromises and bad experiences. Apple wins because the guy who cares the most about user experience happens to run the show. And last I checked, humble wasn’t really a word you could use to describe him.
I would love to be a fly on the wall at Apple sometime. I'd love to hear what they *really* say behind closed doors. "OK guys, lets really get rid of all the ding dongs..."
Google’s dependence on hardware and carrier partners puts the final
product out of their control — and into the control of companies
whose histories have shown them to be incompetent at design and
hostile to users.
Windows Mobile was a failed experiment in relying on hardware vendors, partners, and carriers to build a great consumer device. There were too many cooks in the kitchen. There were too many integration points.
Case in point: Bug fixes from the field. To get a device to market, there was the core device team, then a mobile operator/commercialization team, and finally the carrier's support / deployment team. There was no shared database of bugs. No shared responsibility. When schedules were stretched thin and the device was failing even simple tasks, it was too easy to point fingers. Oh, that's the carrier team's fault. That's the OS team's fault. That's the commercialization team's fault. Hardware's fault. Nobody took the reins to ensure a quality product was being created.
The Palm Pre team is doing it right. Google would do well to take note here. Building cool techie platform toys that let you create nifty Powerpoint decks is all well and good. But it's all a huge waste until there's a satisfied user using your awesome phone that works great.
It comes down to responsibility. Someone has to be responsible. If you're creating a device, and you want it to succeed, it better be you and your team.
John Gruber of Daring Fireball spoke at MacWorld recently and gave a brilliant talk called "The Auteur Theory of Design" -- about lessons we as creators of tech products can learn from the film making world.
The quality of any collaborative creative endeavor tends to approach the level of taste of whoever is in charge... whoever has final cut.
John Gruber
Final cut is the last say as to whether or not to ship. And this cuts to the core of how good design and great experience gets delivered in tech. THE FINAL CUT. Someone has final say for when a project is done and ready to go. At Apple, final cut is owned by Steve Jobs, and much has been made of the tyrannical brilliance and attention he pays to the details of the products they create. Final cut is what matters, because the person who makes the final cut can either ensure brilliance or ensure failure. The leader with bad taste / poor design sensibility will absolutely salt out the great work of brilliant teams. They'll add random crap to something that might already be quite good. Or will allow bad stuff to ship. Or, most likely, force a product out to market when it's not ready. A blind adherence to meeting release dates, for instance, can essentially assure the death of quality in a product. That's why adding product managers or project managers to an already failing project often is like a bucket of gasoline for a man on fire. In an ideal world, product managers and technology execs should be great designers who can identify and create amazing user experiences. They need to be user experience auteurs, because PMs and execs are de facto in charge when it comes to making final call on when to ship the product. They're the last line of defense against bad taste and bad design. Unfortunately, like Plato's mythical philosopher/kings, auteur studio exec is a rare breed, and the UX designer / tech exec is rarer still. Gruber closes his talk with an exhortation to the auteur within. Sometimes on teams, final cut isn't something someone will give you. But when you know you're right, sometimes you have to take it.
You're in a room with 10 other people who seem to agree on something, but you hold the opposite view. Do you say something? Or do you just go along with the others?
Neuroscientists have experimentally confirmed that the brain reacts to disagreements with the larger group in a similar manner to punishment. Groupthink exists, and exists on a massive scale. This makes more and more sense in the mass media age where we consume the same media (NY Times, TechCrunch, and Hacker News for me) and read the same forums and talk about all the same ideas. While the Internet revolution has brought many more voices to the foreground and reduced the role of traditional media (1000 channels on TV instead of 5, 1 million blogs instead of 1 local newspaper), this effect still plays out heavily throughout society. Whenever there is a crowd, there will be group consensus. The CNN article mentions that groupthink will overwhelm even obviously correct thinking: "The most famous experiments in the field were conducted by Solomon Asch in the 1950s. He found that many people gave incorrect answers about matching lines printed on cards, echoing the incorrect answers of the actors in the room." This is significant for entrepreneurs. Apple was absolutely on to something when it said: Think Different. Why think different? Because the masses are wrong. (In fact, the masses are asses. =) ) And this is why many startups and entrepreneurs are perceived to be pursuing inane, crazy or irrelevant ideas. Prevailing wisdom isn't, and it takes a crazy dreamer to ignore the massive and overwhelming tidal wave of group think.
The reviews are in, and they're not good. On the Apple.com product page
itself, there are reports of major failures, which is especially
pronounced for a device that a) costs $100, b) was 3 months late to
market. The new MacBooks and MacBook Pros all now support
mini-displayport, which is a different standard entirely and require
adapters to the DVI and Dual DVI standard used by existing monitors.
Here's what people are seeing:
Flaky performance
Flicker, sporadic issues...
Doesn't Work with Gateway 30" Extreme Monitor
significant drop in frame rate
Very Disappointing
This is on top of 37signals's recent post "Every
Mac
I've owned has failed." I know of many Macbook Pros, including
my own and my brother's, have significant fan noise/overheating issues
that are chronically problematic.
What is it about Apple that makes their software so good but their
hardware just a disaster? Is it a legitimate problem, or is it just
that the computers are so close to perfect that any imperfection causes
us to judge it far more harshly than computers that are inferior?
We hold Apple to a higher standard. I'd venture to say Every Vista
Machine ANYONE has ever owned has failed, big time. And that's far
worse.
It's been over a month since the new Macbook Pros were released, and in that month, we've been waiting with bated breath for word on the new ship date.
Thus far, thorough Google Searches have revealed basically zero information about when this thing may finally arrive. Until then, we remain without our 30 inch monitors. Poor us, I know. But you know, when you work with computers for a living, a 30" monitor just makes sense. It's kind of like a good samurai needs a good sword, right? These are the tools of our trade, and a monitor is the #1 productivity boost you can have.
@days.each do |day|
if day.items.shipped?(:dual_dvi_adapter)
self.rejoice!
else
self.gnash_teeth(:amount=>:a_lot)
self.whine!
self.whine!
self.whine!
end
end
Very solidly constructed, no bend or give. Trackpad changes are unnoticeable. But it looks cool! Hate black keys on silver, but I do like the new chiclet keyboard. The top lid is very very thin. Glossy screen is no big deal, mostly unnoticable. I dislike displayport for the sheer fact that I have to pay $100 extra dual link dvi cable. Also who needs another connector?
My old MacBook Pro had crazy fan issues and it takes 5 days to repair. They said I have to drop it off in Palo Alto for warranty repairs this week. And i needed a printer ($100 rebate), plus I can't live without a machine for 5 days. I'm going to NYC next week, so it's a bit of a perfect storm to pick up this new beautiful machine on the first day. I do love a new computer. It's a red letter day.
During economic down times, we kind of ignore the rest of the world, and out-innovate the rest of the industry. While they're cutting costs and bracing for impact, we're increasing our lead. Our philosophy has always been to pay attention to the top line, and the bottom line will follow. This has seemed to work out pretty well for us.
