The Stupid Shoe Analogy
Monday, November 16, 2009
“To really understand your users, you have to walk in their shoes.” Yeah, yeah…
The shoe analogy has got to be the oldest and most tired business cliché of our time. Everybody heeds it, but customer service and user experience generally sucks, doesn’t it? Products fail all the time. Honestly, I have nothing to say about walking in your customers’ shoes, or eating your own dog food, or walking in the shoes of your dog, or any variation of the above, that you haven’t already heard. Yes, you should do it. It will open your eyes and possibly depress you, but you should do it. You know that.
Maybe there’s a different way to think about the shoe analogy that is a little more insightful and more specifically germane to agile development. I’ve worked for companies who invest significant time and resources on defining, scoping, designing, building and launching products that aim to serve an eager market. It might be fair to describe these efforts as user-centered or customer-focused, because a great deal of study, market research and customer advisory board interaction goes into the process. Tremendous planning and logistics are required to prepare the organization for the launch of the new product and to tell the market that finally the product they’ve been waiting for is here. Sometimes the organization is prepared and the market rewards them by adopting the service, making it a success. But on as many occasions I’ve seen the organization stumble and the market respond with indifference.
It’s beyond me to know why some of these efforts succeed while so many others fail. Is it luck? Timing? Key contributions by particularly gifted individuals? Perhaps some or all of these factors are causal, or perhaps none of them are. In the last 10 years, I’ve typically been involved in a different sort of effort that involves focusing on a small but very concrete target with a well-understood use case and delivering a product that just barely satisfies the requirements. Obviously the solution has to be complete enough to make it a differentiator for the early adopters, but the first and subsequent releases usually involve some amount of pain and discomfort (for both me and my customers). But without a lot of fanfare, we have a shoe that basically fits.
What happens next can be at times tumultuous and instructive, painful and rewarding. You will either develop the skills that lead to transparency, commitment, agility and trust, or you will suffer and fail. I’ve frequently done the former while thinking I was doing the latter. By being transparent about what your product does and does not do, committing to stay close to your customer to feel where the fit is poor, and being agile enough to deliver improvements quickly and repeatedly, you develop trust. And when your customer comes to trust you, they give you permission to fix what’s broken and deliver to them new solutions to new problems. Your offering grows, and while your competitors are conferring with their customer advisory boards, you are on to the 2.0 release.
So my take on the shoe analogy is to make a shoe that basically fits a particular foot. Feel where the pain is and shape the shoe while you are walking. Become sensitive enough to know where the blisters will form before they actually do, and adjust as necessary. Shaping shoes is not as glamorous as talking about them or deciding what trends will be in fashion next season, but that’s what we do.
Posted byDavid Rowley at 9:31 AM 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: Software Dev, startup stuff
Has Over-The-Air Delivery of Audio and Video Changed the Definition of Downloadable Media?
Monday, May 04, 2009
Posted this on the Association for Downloadable Media's website. Reposting here.
Last year, the advent of the iPhone was heralded as the beginning of a new age for mobile content delivery. Bloggers, analysts, and industry insiders urged publishers to quickly adopt a mobile strategy, deliver their content in iPhone-ized web pages and iPhone apps, and follow consumers as they flocked to this platform. According to recent reports, that was good advice. AdMob reported in February that the iPhone generated a third of the global smartphone traffic, and half the traffic in the US. But consumers also view digital media on their Blackberry Curves, Pearls, Storms and Bolds—not to mention the up-and-coming Android phones. As the number of platforms that support over-the-air delivery of high quality audio and video grows, how does this impact the way publishers think about downloadable media?
For a long time, we’ve struggled to make the distinction between “downloads”, “progressive downloads” and “streams”. In the mind of the consumer, it’s all a bit of a mixed stew. Consumers select media to watch or listen to, and it starts playing sooner or later. They may play that content while connected to the internet (via wi-fi or a cellular network), or perhaps they’ve saved it to play on a non-connected device. More and more, the device they carry with them allows access to live media delivered on demand. Is this still downloadable media?
Rather than characterizing the content you develop based on the method of delivery to the consumer, your focus should (obviously) be on the quality of the content itself, and then delivering it in a way that is compatible with consumer habits. As consumers expect to find more rich content on demand from their smartphone, it behooves publishers to make it available that way. Assumptions made about the delivery method (for example, assuming all content will be delivered to iPods via iTunes) may impact the systems you have in place for monetization. It’s probably time to revisit those assumptions in light of the growing trend for over-the-air streamed delivery.
If the world were made only of iPhones and iPod Touches, accommodating direct delivery of media would be rather straightforward. Despite the success of these devices, the universe of video-capable smartphones is still a rather (and increasingly) fragmented space. The video formats, encoders, resolutions, and even delivery protocols vary across devices and carriers. Reaching these disparate platforms does not necessarily require an on-deck solution with every carrier, but there are dimensions to this problem that don’t exist in delivery and playback on the desktop, the iPod, or iPhone. Emerging solutions exist that simplify this problem for publishers, and depending on your monetization strategy (for example, direct ad sales and trafficking vs. an ad network) and the level of control you wish to have over distribution, there may be a system that works in conjunction with the methods you’ve used for “traditional” downloadable media.
If you haven’t done so already, it’s probably time to start thinking beyond the iTunes/iPod-centric notion of downloadable media distribution. And if you’ve just extended your thinking to the iPhone/Touch, there may be opportunities you’re missing on other video-capable devices. Vendors will endeavor to address the publisher’s need to deliver content to consumers where ever they can, while making this process as simple as delivering content to the desktop browser. Successful publishers will know the constraints and opportunities created by this expanding universe of playback environments, and leverage these solutions to their benefit.
Posted byDavid Rowley at 12:16 PM 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: Digital Media, Kiptronic
Answering the call, building better engines
Thursday, January 22, 2009
As we enter a time of new leadership in the White House and a renewed sense of service and participatory democracy, and as we face fiscal challenges that most of us have not seen in our lifetimes, I’m sure I am not alone in wondering how best to contribute to the effort of recovery and forward progress. There are many opportunities for social service, and in as much as consumption drives the economy, ways in which we choose to spend and invest our money that will have the potential to trickle up and infuse the market with the cash and resources it has lost over the past twelve months. Like every citizen who feels a certain call to action, I will contribute in these ways as best I can. But personally, I think the most influence I have to make a positive contribution is based on my ability to help build a prosperous business.
To me, creating a successful business is a matter of leveraging the skills and know-how of a small group of people to deliver a service that provides value worth more than the investment to build it. In my current situation, it is a matter of providing a service to customers that allows them to effectively serve their constituents and provide offerings that lead to monetization and profit. Specifically, it’s a matter of letting publishers provide appealing inventory to advertisers, and helping them deliver an engaging experience to consumers so they want to spend their time enjoying that content (which drives the former). If my business allows publishers to do this in a more efficient manner than they could without my service (or that they could with a competing service), or if it allows them to offer a better and more interesting kind of product, then my business will be successful. It’s simple, really—but not easy.
If the law of conservation of energy can be metaphorically applied to the business value chain, somehow value must be preserved in this ecosystem. If you think of a business as an engine that takes in value and generates greater value, you must account for that discrepancy in the system. The ability of the engine to generate value is based on the capabilities of the people who make it up and their ability to innovate and develop technology to make their internal processes efficient. No matter how great the output of this engine, if it costs more to run than the value it produces, it will soon run out of fuel. And in these times, you either need a very large gas tank or a very efficient engine. My experience is that it has become difficult to fill a large tank, particularly if you can’t show that your engine has the potential for excellent mileage.
As someone responsible for building, tuning and running the engine, I have only a few big levers I can operate to make this work.
- Build a team that has the right makeup to execute effectively and efficiently. That’s not just a matter of hiring smart people; it’s a matter of finding the right combination of people who will optimally serve the needs of the business. The needs of each business varies, and the needs of a single business will change as the environment changes, so there is no single formula for doing this well.
- Make sure the team is working on the right thing. Since the efficient engine will excel, lost cycles are like a leaky gasket. One could argue that this type of thinking leads to safe bets that attempt to minimize risk, and this leads to a lack of creativity and innovation. I suppose this could be the case, but even planning for exploration and risk-taking has to be done efficiently, and you have to be smart about where you place your bets.
- Make sure that the processes we use to build and operate our system are as efficient as possible. This sounds like a platitude, and I suppose it is, but the real complexity of this has to do with optimizing for the situation and the resources available. There are certain things I know I can’t do because I don’t have the expertise or resources in-house, and the cost of attaining those things vs. the operational lift they provide does not warrant the investment right now. Again, this influences who is on the team—the combination of their capabilities must be able to implement the processes that deliver overall efficiency for your current situation. As the situation changes, the calculus for obtaining those efficiencies also changes.
Assuming I can build an engine that is tuned for the current situation and successfully delivers more value than it burns, and thinking back to the conservation of energy, where does the extra value come from? Expanding on the metaphor, while energy in a closed system is conserved, it can change form. I would suggest that in our tuned engine exists potential energy which, based on the innovation, knowledge, and abilities of the team, is turned into kinetic energy. That potential energy comes from the investment made by the business and members of the team to acquire, hone, and coordinate their skills.
Our new president has asked us to become involved in implementing the changes necessary for us to prosper as a nation. I am committed to doing so by helping build organizations that deliver value and prosperity to both the businesses they serve, and also to the members of the team who make up the engine. I realize that I might not be successful in all of my attempts at doing this, but it’s perhaps the most impactful thing I can do. My other endeavor will be to raise my children in such a way that lets them build their pool of potential energy so that it can be transformed into a state that directly serves the world in which they live.
Posted byDavid Rowley at 2:18 PM 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: startup stuff
