KnownSense

Product design: Go beyond the normal.

I’ll tell you a story. 15 years ago, I used to be a writer. One of my first bosses would catch me if I did shoddy work and ask me to spend more time on my stories. I never knew how he did it. Until one day he told me that he just searches for double spaces in my copy. Yeah, double spaces, like this “  .” Ok, so I learned the fact the if you don’t pay attention to the very last little detail of your product, no matter how strong your product, it still feels half finished and potential customers will delay clicking “buy.” Anybody in sales will tell you that a delayed sale is a lost sale or at least a sale with increased costs. As a start-up, you don’t need that happening.

Even the big guys make mistakes. A lot of product companies are suddenly getting things wrong. Shorter product cycles, the extended nature of the supply chain and partner credit across large manufacturing keeps new products coming out faster and faster. Risk is increasingly spread out to suppliers and in some cases, customers. It’s the nature of the market today, failing often, succeeding once and scaling up the success. Some companies seem to succeed by failing, often at the cost of the customer and others make sure they never fail the customer.

Some good case studies would include:

• -Tata motors for the Nano failure, and a whole lack of attention to detail.
• -LinkedIn for their half assed attempts at selling you a premium account.

Let’s look at both for vicarious reasons.

The Tata Nano: There was hype, there was pride, there was waiting, and filling forms in triplicate but there were not many sales. Puzzling! Didn’t make sense to me either. Was it the shape? It was not remarkable looking. It did look like a little bar of used sunlight soap though. Was it the interior? Nothing stand-out there either. I didn’t understand it until until I heard it. It was so un-car like when I heard it for the first time, I really didn’t understand how a product manager could approve it in the first place. It’s an auto-rickshaw in disguise. This attitude just exemplifies the Tata story for me till date. Test it on the customer, and see if it works. It truly is the people’s car. This is why you typically don’t see huge queues outside Tata showrooms for their first time launches of home stable vehicles. Meanwhile I feel sad for the suppliers and the retooling they will have to do.

The LinkedIn Premium account. Everyday they keep restricting you even more. So finally one day, you end up upgrading to a paid account, and then suddenly you don’t see what you paid for. No visual indicators, no indicators to show you the premium features on the main screens. Nothing. You end up thinking it’s a waste of money and un-subscribe and then you miss little things, and you have no idea what it is. I only wish they could highlight the damn premium features for paid users.

The exception: The one company you won’t see making mistakes like this is probably Apple. Unfair comparison, I know, but I can’t help it. Apple’s launches are so pixel perfect that minor problems end up being big news stories. When you have a CEO who practices his presentations for a week and lavishes his attention to detail, you have products that make customers queue outside.

Meanwhile, our Tata Nano is dying a slow death, in the sidelines. The sad lonely death of a promise un-met. Similarly, I see far too many start-ups with muggy design, chopped up photos, smudged graphics, silly interface mistakes and a lack of attention to detail that makes it seem like it’s temporary. It just seems like they are passing the risk to you, the potential customer.

What do you think? What other case studies do you think are relevant? What little things do you notice? Do you have quick tests for quality as well?