Subject to Change

prostoalex writes "Most companies would call themselves innovative and would claim they're delivering an above-average service to their customers. Yet, their customers opinions might differ. If you drill a company on their innovation practices, they would probably mention two approaches they employ: 1. Their research department meets with target groups, compiles presentations for the upper management, which then occasionally hands those reports over to the development department. 2. Their research or marketing department comes up with competitive matrix of the products available from competition. In a meeting then, executives see that their product is missing a feature, and hence the development department is assigned the task of adding 'an Internet-enabled installer' to the product, since everybody else offers them, thereby creating market expectations." Read on for the rest of Alex's review.

Subject to change
author	Peter Merholz, Todd Wilkens, Brandon Schauer, David Verba
pages	186
publisher	O'Reilly
rating	7
reviewer	Alex Moskalyuk
ISBN	9780596516833
summary	Creating great products and services for an uncertain world

Subject to Change is a book, written by four Adaptive Path veterans describing new approaches to product development and innovation. Who are they to have the authority over the subject? Adaptive Path is a consulting shop helping large and small companies with product design, Web design and industrial design. They're perhaps mostly known to the general public for coining the term AJAX, and articulating the idea of building dynamic Web sites with asynchronous data retrieval, but they certainly didn't invent the technology. Their design experience is behind many products we use today, but due to licensing agreements they're not always at liberty to disclose their customers.

So what do Adaptive Path designers advocate?

Making the design emotional. While the idea itself is not new, this is something that product manufacturers have to face sooner or later. Early Kodak cameras did not succeed because of superior technical qualities or ease of film development — they managed to cross this emotional barrier, where people who previously thought "This is too complicated" after getting a glimpse of the ad or product demo thought "Even I might be able to enjoy this."

Understand people's needs outside of your company-approved usability testing guides. Two great examples provided by the book are Adaptive Path's own usability study of Epinions.com — product review and comparison shopping site. When a woman showed up for usability test with her newborn baby, she was frequently distracted by baby's needs during the test. Bad test candidate? Vice versa. Adaptive Path learned how confusing it could be for someone who needs to get away from the comparison shopping process to come back and quickly realize where they were in the process. Another example has to deal with babies as well — after watching new mothers use the diaper wipes at their homes, Kimberly-Clark researchers redesigned their diaper wipe container to be easily accessible with just one hand.

Make the whole system coherent, not just patch new interfaces throughout product holes. Financial companies and banks certainly suffer from a desire by single group to innovate the others out. My own example — I go to Fidelity Web site, and upon login offered to also check my NetBenefits(SM) or check out the FullView(R). Now, there might be customers who think in those terms, but I surely did not log in to check NetBenefits(SM) or do FullView(R) or check out mySmart Cash Account (SM), I just wanted to find out how my investments were doing. A simple graph would do. Yet my options from Fidelity are either downloading quarterly PDF account statements, and then punching the numbers to create a graph, or going to Account Positions page, where I can view the graphs for every single stock and bond I own for any time value except the time span that I need — from the day I bought the security to today. This is not a rant on Fidelity Investments in general, this is just another example of different groups within the company handling such things as stocks, bonds, retirement planning, cash investments, quarterly account reports, and Web site design. Each group probably doesn't think highly of the existing user interface, and hence the desire to introduce that new simple interface, call it a different name, and expect the customers to get on with a program and use it.

The authors provide a lot of good case studies for design successes and failures to support their point. Case studies are borrowed from outside literature or told in first person — Adaptive Path's customer names are changed to be KeyboardCo or FinanceCo to protect the innocent. The book explores several different permutations of design and relevance:

When design is great, and product is relevant, market success is a given. The example is Apple iPod series. Somewhat less known example is Google Calendar, that outgrew Yahoo! Calendar and MSN Calendar, even though all 3 calendars are tied into Web-based e-mails, and Yahoo! and Hotmail both have market shares multiple of Gmail's.

When design is great, but product is not relevant, market success will be extremely hard to achieve. Segway scooter and Apple G4 Cube come to mind.

When design is bad, but product is relevant, market success will quickly turn into failure as competitors copy the product and invest in design. Diamond Rio, the pioneer of digital music player industry, learned a hard lesson that way.

When design is bad, and the product is irrelevant, it's possible it will never even come out in the market. Adaptive Path's own example of KeyboardCo wanting to implement a downloadable music service right on the keyboard is a good example of this.

Overall the book is informative and inspirational, albeit a bit dry. Chapter 7, dedicated to describing agile approach in software development, seems to be out of place. Maybe it's because I am a software engineer, and have familiarized myself on various development methodologies, the chapter was old news to me, or maybe it's the idea that you're being sold one specific methodology, instead of implementing dozens of small improvements within the product development process, that threw me off.

On page 162 the authors claim "Google and Yahoo!, once technology companies, are now media players, and their advertising-based business models mean they compete more with Los Angeles and New York than their Silicon Valley brethren." Now, I don't see how being a media company leads one to compete with a US municipality. Maybe they meant "New York [Times|Post] and Los Angeles [Times]", in which case it's time to look for another proofreader. But to be fair, I haven't noticed any glaring errors or omissions in the title.

Subject to Change is a good book to read if you're into product development or design. If you're staying abreast of the industry trends, most of it is probably not going to be big news to you, nevertheless, it's a good collection of case studies and a summary of rules relevant for modern-day product development.

You can purchase Subject to Change from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Seems fairly obvious

Is it just me, or is there a lot of "well, yeah, duh!" reaction to the approaches this book seems to suggest?

Re:Seems fairly obvious

A lot of what a consultant says is Obvious. But coming from an Expert will be listened to when coming from an employee it won't.

It's the nature of how people filter information, if it comes from an authority they will give it greater value, regardless of it's inherent value.

What a coincidence...

Didn't we just talk about rogue game programmers leaving stiff companies because of their lack of innovation?

Re:

A lot of what a consultant says is Obvious. But coming from an Expert will be listened to when coming from an employee it won't.

I couldn't agree more. A good example of this is the use of FOSS. I've sang that song to mgmt countless times, in which is always goes unheard...but as soon as our company's business consultant says that we should use FOSS software, all of a sudden mgmt is scrambling to implement it...*sigh*.

Re:

See, The Art of War [wikipedia.org].

That said, this book is probably tripe.

Re:

Is it just me, or is there a lot of "well, yeah, duh!" reaction to the approaches this book seems to suggest?

Some of it is also a tautology. When is a product successful? When it is relevant. But how do you know if a product is relevant? You see if it's successful.

But let's not confuse PHBs with words like "tautology."

Re:

Most executives that I've met have only a tenuous grasp of the obvious.

it is called metonymy

and their advertising-based business models mean they compete more with Los Angeles and New York than their Silicon Valley brethren

People often use "Silicon Valley" to mean "technology companies," and you have no trouble understanding that they mean the latter as opposed to some geographical region. The same is true of New York and Los Angeles in the above. "New York" alludes to big business (think: New York Stock Exchange), and Los Angeles to big media (think: Hollywood).

No offense, but you shouldn't be writing book reviews if you can't parse the writing.

Re:

"New York" alludes to big business (think: New York Stock Exchange)...

I think here it refers to the traditional advertising business (usually metonymized as "Madison Avenue").

Re:

So, you're saying he should have read what was *meant*, as opposed to what was *written*? I don't know why more people don't do that. /me rolls eyes

Re:it is called metonymy

Happy to help. The reason is illiteracy. Figurative speech and writing is quite common, and people who insist on seeing only the "literal" meaning (a nebulous concept to anyone who has studied language from any perspective) are basically illiterate. Roll your eyes all you like, the quoted material contained a perfectly fine (and very pedestrian) use of figurative writing, and the reviewer inexplicably tried to read it literally. I personally think it was just a bit of brainlock, but I could be wrong.

Re:

Well, using the name of a city in place of the types of businesses a city has is a bit of synecdoche. It's clear enough to a native speaker, and there is context in the particular sentence to boot. However, it's quite possible someone other than a native speaker of English could miss the subtlety. Perhaps someone with such difficulty should reconsider calling for additional proofreading, though.

Re:it is called metonymy

It's pretty clear. He's saying that Google and Yahoo!, while once primarily technology companies, are now primarily advertising companies. As advertising companies, they now compete more with the advertising companies in NY and LA (traditional advertising strongholds) than they do with the more technology-oriented companies located in the Bay Area.

So, in other words, be like Apple

I think product teams tend to have an inferiority complex that is fed by the worst marketing invention ever: the feature matrix on the back of the box. Not enough product teams care about anything else.

Right here, on this company?

"If you drill a company ..."
Drill here, drill now.

NY and LA

"Now, I don't see how being a media company leads one to compete with a US municipality. Maybe they meant "New York [Times|Post] and Los Angeles [Times]"

perhaps they are referring to the fact that NYC and LA are the centers of the advertising and media industries.

how is school going?

Sounds like somebody has gotten through their first year of business school, and is on a high where they think they know stuff that others don't.

So most companies are like Lake Woebegone...

... where all the children are above average.

KeyboardCo

When design is bad, and the product is irrelevant, it's possible it will never even come out in the market. Adaptive Path's own example of KeyboardCo wanting to implement a downloadable music service right on the keyboard is a good example of this.

It's not clear from the review whether "KeyboardCo" is in the business of selling digital pianos, or QWERTY computer peripherals. If the latter, then yes, K-Co's idea was patently absurd.

If the former, it sounds like it just might work [yamaha.com].

Some thoughts

First, a firm has to make money. At some point during the first years the firm has decide what the so-called core business is that will generate a profit. For google, that is advertising. The search technology is there to get clicks for advertising, just like the stories in a newspaper is there to get people to read the ads in the newspaper. This is why the newspaper are so pissed of at Google. It is not so much a copyright thing as a stealing advertising thing.

Honestly if this was a major point in the book, then the authors have missed the whole deal, and are certainly part of the problem, A business has to provide a service that the public will directly or indirectly pay for, while the customers who create the profit are those that need to be served. Additionally, restrictive models create short term firms.

So, where are these people not part fo the solution. First, kodak, like so many other companies, in business to sell consumables. Not really an optics firm like Nikon. Consumables go, they fall with it. But they succeeded not by making things emotional, but by focusing on customers needs rather than being a slave to the tech. Kodaks fall was forestalled by several years with the introduction of the arguably inferior advantix film, that gave people the simplicity they want with enough quality.

This then leads to usability. Even now Kodak focuses more on usability, leaving the whiz bang stuff to others. So does Apple. The Old G4 cases had handles. The on switch is up front or on the keyboard, so you don't have to look around. But usability is a compromise, and like the G4, people were no so concerned about that usability issue to buy it instead of cheap PC.

So product design is about meeting customers needs and profitability. These are not always the same thing. My bank now puts in interstitials and other adverts when I am logged into my account. These have not only security implications, but reduce the usability of the site. However, the site needs to make a profit, and I have a free account, so this is what they do. Every design issue costs money, not only to build, but also ancillary earning opportunities. The person using the service is not always the primary customer, i.e. profit generating entity.

The dot com boom shows that no product, no matter how cool or well designed, hangs around if a profit is not earned. Buzz word compliance, like AJAX, is not enough. Apple, or Kodak, or Sony, hangs around because it finds good compromises in design. The same holds for MS, though I think if they don't get a bit schizophrenic about the core business they may have issues.

"Innovation"

The buzzword of the day for business school crowd, guess it's catching up with "leadership" - the vague, abstract, nebulous, infinitely debatable notions that the intellectually weak and dishonest obsess over. Ok, I'll stop the rant here.

How about scratching the itches and fixing the bugs? Just by doing these you may come across many small but significant enlightenments, instead of trying to "think out of the box" and to "innovate". This bit is a suggestion, not a rant.

Cough *bs* Cough

"When design is great, and product is relevant, market success is a given."

Whoa. Is that why Windows took over the world? I'm sure there are thousands of great, relevant products that did not see the light of day because the creators/distributors of those products did not have good market access; whether it be financial where-with-all to promote a product, entrenched competition, monopolies or what-not.

"Build it and they will come" usually fails. 9/10 companies fail. I'm sure this applies to products, that je ne sais quoi about a great product that you really need but just don't want it enough.

Saying Rio made the market and iPod took it because of the design obviates the incredible marketting campaign Apple had that still sticks in people's memory (siloutted dancing headphone

Re:

Whoa. Is that why Windows took over the world?

Pretty much. Compare Windows to its competition when it took over the world, not its competition after.

R&D Department(s)?

Separate research and development departments? And then there's customer engineering, maintenance, etc., etc.

The successful firms I've worked for rotated everyone through these tasks. Some of us had multiple responsibilities at one time. That way, new technologies, customer requirements, bug fixes and everything had an equal probability of propagating through the design/build cycle.

Woe to the pure research geeks who tossed an incomplete idea over the wall and figured that tech support would deal with its shortcomings. Odds are next week, they'd be handling the irate customers. And we had no time for an engineer who didn't want to go down to the shop or out in the field with a construction crew to solve a problem.

Re:

Or "How I spent $50,000 on an MBA and all I got was this lousy t-shirt."