By Wayne Bovier
From the current issue of the Harvard Business Review to Tom Peter's Circle of
Innovation, it's apparent that to survive in today's business world, you must innovate or
be destroyed. This goes for start-ups and, especially, for large corporations.
However, innovation does not translate well into every aspect of business; if you
believe that every aspect of your business must be truly innovative, then failure is
right around the corner. eWorld and PointCast are two examples of cutting-edge companies
who introduced innovative consumer products that ultimately failed. In light of the
popular innovative theories to date, how could failure occur if each offering was
truly innovative?
It takes more than an innovative product offering to make a company successful. The
measure-of-success for an innovative product is the number of users and rate of growth;
to achieve both, it's more important to be useful than it is to be cool. Too much
innovation in a product offering is truly a bad thing.
Case 1: eWorld
Around 1994 when the Web was still in its infancy and proprietary online networks ruled
the day, Apple constructed and launched what seemed to be a killer product - eWorld.
eWorld competed directly against AOL, CompuServe, and MSN, and compared to those services
eWorld was an excellently designed and built product.
Through the balance of form and function, the human interface group at Apple did a
fantastic job creating an online world that organized people into communities. As one
Mac enthusiast said:
"In the face of America Online's chaos, CompuServe's multiple and separate forums,
and the complete anarchy of the Internet, eWorld stood out as well organized and
navigable." (MacUser - http://ng.netgate.net/~bobber/eworld.html)
eWorld was designed to bridge the gap between computer nerd-dom and Main Street, and
nothing was going to stop it. What more could a young, cutting-edge business expect -
except to be out of business by March 31, 1996!? How could this happen, and, certainly,
what does this have to do with 2nd and 3rd generation Internet start-ups?
Apple did not design in the medium. Period. Yes, they did do a good job constructing an
interface that was easy to understand and use, but they did not understand the limitations
of being online.
As a subscriber of eWorld, I loved the UI the first time I used it. Compared to the other
services available, eWorld was able to personalize my experience and make it friendly. I knew
what to do and where to go and I felt good.
After a couple of months however, I hated the download time even more, and that's considering
I had a blazingly fast modem for the time - 9600 bds. At times, I waited for minutes when
moving from area to area, and in the end, I, along with thousands of others, sacrificed the
simple interface for faster information.
The eWorld interface development team overlooked the simple and basic need of the user -
the ability quickly
access information and nimbly navigate through the community. User convenience is "the"
determining success factor for online applications. Until time becomes a non-factor online,
quality will always take a backseat to convenience.
Case 2: PointCast
The fall of PointCast is another example of a company who failed to understand the complete
user environment. They built a product which encouraged inefficiencies through distractions
for business professionals and failed to understand and address the burdensome system
requirements on corporations. Consequently, PointCast
was purchased by idealab! for $7 million in 1999 ... three years after News Corp offered
them a cool $450 million.
PointCast's first user mistake was they built the perfect procrastination product for their
core audience - the business professional. Through a visually *loud* screen saver, PointCast
constantly bombarded and distracted workers with information and with advertisements that
greatly reduced their productivity.
The second mistake, and the proverbial last nail in the coffin, was their inability to reduce
the download burden on corporate systems. PointCast automatically connected every 5 minutes
to retrieve the latest advertisements and information. Corporate networks could not handle
the demand for bandwidth and, ultimately, most mandated a no-PointCast policy.
Fully understanding the technical impact on your users is vital to building a successful
innovative product. Simply put, PointCast's technology infrastructure did not and could
not address and support the basic needs of the corporate business professional - too much
panache and not enough plain. The technology infrastructure and support system is an often
overlooked but critical User Interface component that can easily decide the fate of a company.
The Point
For innovative start-up companies, moving from early adopters to Main Street is difficult enough by
itself, but saddle that learning curve with a demanding user interface application and the
ingredients are enough to doom your corporation.
"Innovative software is seductively easy to get people to use... (however), it only rarely
reaches a very high cruising altitude... Even if the software is genuinely and obviously
useful, many people resist it to the end... For each user, a few pieces of software are
incredibly important, but the rest is fluff. Most users know this intuitively." (Nathaniel
Bornstein, Programming As If People Mattered)
It is impossible to build a usable product without considering the technical limitations of
the medium. Without understanding the user environment, your ability to attract and retain
a solid user base will be greatly reduced. Whether you are designing for a Palm Pilot or a
Voice Browser, the User Interface you construct must fit perfectly within the technical
constraints of the medium, or else users will take notice.
Today's best designers not only understand the underlying technology and the user's needs,
but they know how to successfully balance both. Alan Cooper puts it best when he writes in
The Inmates Are Running The Asylum,
"When the interaction designer has accomplished something really good, users won't even notice
it...Many visual designers think that good design is cool, and occasionally it is, but no matter
how cool your interface is, less of it would be better."
Technology, a.k.a. software, is increasingly determining the nature of relationships and
experiences customers have with a company, its products and services, and its operations.
As a result, positive technology experiences become ever more critical for customer acquisition
and retention.
Whether building the killer app or defining a new market, the message should be clear:
innovate only where necessary, avoid being overly creative, and be aware of
the technical limitations facing your product. Corporations that successfully balance
innovation with standard, usable feature-sets will set themselves apart from the pack and
greatly increase their survival rate.
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