Pogue on product design
March 20th, 2008 by marc
The New York Times always entertaining consumer technology columnist David Pogue has a post today I loved. He reviews the Flip, a stripped-down, bare-bones, one-button camcorder which has taken 13% of the camcorder market in no time.
He attributes this product’s amazing stickiness to its being able to be used in places and ways a traditional camcorder can’t, and to its simple appropriateness.
A quote:
“Funny story: years ago, Jeff Hawkins, founder of Palm, decided to develop the Graffiti handwriting-recognition alphabet for the original touch-screen Pilot. Since no technology can recognize everyone’s handwriting, he reasoned, he’d design a special block-letter alphabet that gives you 100 percent accuracy — if you form your letters his way.
His employees thought it was a terrible idea. Make customers relearn the alphabet?
But Hawkins, a brain scientist, knew something about people: if you’re successful at something the first time you try, you fall instantly in love with it. And sure enough: people fell in love the first time they wrote on a Pilot with the special alphabet and saw their letters turn into perfectly typed text.
That’s how it is with devices like the Flip. They’re so simple, mastery is immediate, and so is your sense of pride and happiness., citing Jeff Hawkins the inventor of Graffiti, the handwritten characters used in the Palm, and how is a person succeeds with something the first time they try they fall in love with it.”
Great lesson: make your users first experience of doing something successful and they will start out motivated to use your product.