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Almost every company that has a product to sell either hires an outside firm or has employees on staff to conduct Market Research for them. When I was growing up in College Park, MD, there used to be a company in Beltway Plaza that constantly tried to get shoppers to give them "just 10 minutes of your time" to answer a bunch of questions. Sometimes the questions were about ads and sometimes they were about products that you actually got to test. I loved doing the taste tests! You would think that, by now, MR is more of a science and less of an art, but that really doesn't seem to be the case.
The biggest MR blunder of all time has got to be the New Coke fiasco. It's so far ahead of the rest of the pack that the other contestants are starting to think that coming in second is winning. Sort of like a PGA event when Tiger is on his game. The powers that be decided to scrap the one of the most successful and secret recipes in the history of food for something that tasted a heck of a lot like it's major competitors product. Doh! In the end, they made the correct decision and brought back the original recipe as 'Classic', but not before enduring a PR nightmare the likes of which I may never see again.
Another recent 'say what' was when Burger King came out with a new french fry that they claimed was better than McDonald's fries. Boy, were they ever wrong on that one. Sure it was better than their old product, but it didn't come close to the fries from the Golden Arches. Are any of you old enough to remember the Ford Edsel? It was everything customers asked for and nothing they were willing to pay for. And do I even need to bring up IBM's 2 lane product path?
The reason that blunders like this happen isn't because the companies don't talk to their customers, ignore what their customers tell them, or just don't care. And it's not because customers weren't being truthful, either with the company or themselves. It's all due to this one simple fact:
The people doing the market research didn't ask the right questions!
MR is also extremely important in the software world, but we refer to it as requirements gathering and user group testing. This is the place where we separate the designers from the programmers and something I think the Notes developers, as a whole, are very good at doing. It's not something that colleges spend a great deal of time on and it is definitely the one set of skills that can make or break a new hire. It is also the one thing that CANNOT be outsourced to off-shore, cheap labor.
The reason I bring this up is a comment from Colette when she was trying to use our trial of Office 2007. She said it took her 5 minutes to find the print menu item and can't understand why Microsoft felt it necessary to change from the menu and icons that the rest of Windows apps use. Although she is by no means a techie, she is savvy enough on a PC that her coworkers look to her first for 'Hey Joe' support. If she couldn't find it, how can MS expect my technically challenged parents or a regular corporate user to find it without significant retraining? And after spending a bunch of time and money on the training, are the user's any better prepared to do their daily jobs than they were when using Office 2003? At the end of the day, what's the ROI? I would have thought that products like Bob and Clippy might have taught MS a thing or two, but I guess not. Add to that the major headaches caused by Vista and MS is really starting to look like the long lost twin of IBM in the 80's.
In recent years, this is one area where IBM/Lotus and specifically Mary Beth Raven hav e done great job of getting feedback on the changes they were thinking of implementing and additional changes that they might not have even thought about. The Notes 8.0.1 Client is the proof in the pudding that having the right people ask the right questions to the right customers can yield a very good end result. Now if they can pull off the Domino Designer 8.5 in Eclipse, the future for Lotus professionals and the Lotus platform will continue to shine bright.
So what do you think, is the Office 'Ribbon' Microsoft's version of New Coke?
Discussion for this entry is now closed.
Created 2/27/2008 2:56:41 PM email | website
I've been using/teaching Excel from the first release in 1985. The toolbar (and menus) we're 'familiar' with has bloated with each release. Most people couldn't find a tool-needle in the haystack. I agree, you'll curse MS Excel 2007 for the first couple of weeks, but you'll grow to love the ribbons, as they really group the most used items together. You'll get the same work done as before, but faster !
No, I don't get paid by MS (on the contrary), but this time I truly believe they did it right.
Created 2/27/2008 8:48:05 PM email | website
There's a sharp learning curve for 2007 PRECISELY because she already knew so much about 2003. Abandon assumptions and approach the product as if it were on a Mac. Things will happen a whole lot faster.
I love the Notes 8 UI innovations. But they didn't go far enough. The Ribbon is forward thinking in a big way. MS might have done more to help users with the transition, but the end result? No way.... Ribbon is tops.
Created 2/28/2008 1:04:06 PM email | website
While I understand both of your points, the new ribbon interface does the one thing to millions of Office users that it shouldn't do. It makes them think!
And here is a counter point to the whole training point of view:
Users never read manuals but start using the software immediately. They are motivated to get started and to get their immediate task done: they don't care about the system as such and don't want to spend time up front on getting established, set up, or going through learning packages.
The "paradox of the active user" is a paradox because users would save time in the long term by learning more about the system. But that's not how people behave in the real world, so we cannot allow engineers to build products for an idealized rational user when real humans are irrational. We must design for the way users actually behave.
That is from Atwood's article entitled "Every User Lies". { Link }
You and I both know that a trained user is a more productive user, but how many users really get trained?
Created 2/28/2008 4:59:40 PM email |
Of all the abominations that comprise Office 2007, MS's claim that they just gave users what they wanted (based on the collection of usage data, which a lot of power users and IT managers justifiably *disabled*) is the worst. How many people, if asked in 2003 how they'd like the program improved, would have said "take away the menus, then move everything around, and vastly reduce my customization options."
(That last one was a real forehead-slapper. Power users crave keyboard shortcuts; 2007 hands you the Quick [sic] Access Toolbar and assigns its own shortcuts, which for some sick reason are chosen to be the most difficult to reach.)
Nobody would expect to sell a car with all the controls in unconventional places and labeled differently. MS has underestimated the learning curve and its negative effect on productivity And yes, I *did* try it for 3 weeks and I'm the go-to person in my firm for time-saving tips in Word & Excel, including tons of specialized macros, a lot of which don't work properly in 2007.
MS is catering to novices and dismissing the needs of experienced users. At a writer's cafe some months back I overheard the resident airhead scowl "Who needs f***ing menus anyway? I never use em!"
Just because a majority of consumers don't use the fancy stuff is no reason to hide & mangle it for those who do.