Blackfriars' Marketing: Behind the scenes: why Apple's customer base is so loyal and enthusiastic

Blackfriars' Marketing: Behind the scenes: why Apple's customer base is so loyal and enthusiastic The obvious side to Apple's customer satisfaction lies in their attention to detail in every facet of product development. All their products are designed, at every stage, with the customer clearly in mind and each product is tailored to make it as easy to use as possible for the customer, regardless of how technically savvy or not they may be. The less obvious side involves two keywords: freedom and choice. In The Tyranny of Too Much, we explain how too much choice is a problem, a significant problem even. Recapitulating, too many options to choose from will increase our expectations and decrease our satisfaction with the choice we've made. Barry Schwartz's book, The Paradox of Choice, explains it in great detail and is well worth a read. This presents a problem for businesses, because it means that to satisfy customers they ought to give them less to choose from; however, our western society is so focused on offering choice that this almost certainly seems like a poor business decision. After all, choice is — for better or worse — transparently linked to freedom, and freedom is what today's society is all about. But the fact of the matter is that less choice, and consequently less freedom, is what actually liberates us as customers because it gives us greater satisfaction. Apple is one of the very few companies that get this — and yet, they get chided for it much more so than praised. via Good Morning Silicon valley

The Science and Art of User Experience at Google - Google Video

The Science and Art of User Experience at Google - Google Video

Apple TV Has Landed

"In the end, these early attempts to bridge the gulf between computer and TV perfectly reinforce the conventional wisdom about Apple: Apple TV offers a gracious, delightful experience — but requires fidelity to Apple’s walled garden. Its rivals, meanwhile, offer many more features — but they’re piled into bulkier boxes with much less concern for refinement, logic or simplicity. Put another way, these machines aren’t direct competitors at all; they’re aimed at different kinds of people. Microsoft’s young male gamers probably couldn’t care less that they can’t change the slide-show speed, and Netgear’s box “is for people who are more experienced,” according to a representative. “This is not for the random person.” Apple, on the other hand, is going for everybody else, random people included (at least those with HDTV sets). And that, perhaps, is Apple TV’s real significance. To paraphrase the old Macintosh advertisement, it’s a computer-to-TV bridge for the rest of us."

David Pogue, "Apple TV Has Landed," New York Times, 22 Mar 2007,www.nytimes.com/2007/03/22/technology/22pogue.html.

failure can be a good thing

Companies like Dogster that constantly examine user data - especially the discouraging stuff - are finding the information increasingly vital online. 'Instead of working on a feature for months trying to get it perfect,' Rheingold says, 'we'll work on something for two weeks and then spend two or three days listening to users and fine-tuning it.'

Tom McNichol, "A Startup's Best Friend? Failure," Business 2.0, 1 Mar 2007, money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2007/03/01/8401031.

Design Decisions: Campfire transcript browser redesign - (37signals)

Design Decisions: Campfire transcript browser redesign - (37signals): "We confused enthusiasm with priority."

In defense of simplicity

"Connoisseurs of anything discern between trash and class. They know that understatement is class’s hallmark: it’s a product, person or design that knows it has substance, and does not need to go far out of its way to prove itself: its core is good. This is part of what drives the lust for Apple’s aesthetics. The trash, the wanna-be, the knock-off has to parade distractions, buttons, gadgets, and modes to compensate for its lack of core design integrity."

Berkun blog » Blog Archive » In defense of simplicity

without letting people know how complicated the problem was

“We try to solve very complicated problems without letting people know how complicated the problem was,” he shrugs. “That’s the appropriate thing.” " ...

“I remember coming across this remarkable product. It was easy to use, and you could do little things like change the noise when you made a mistake,” he grins. “It sounds small, but at the time that was remarkable. I went from feeling stupid to feeling empowered – I somehow connected to the people that made it. The object testified to the care that went into it.”

Soon after graduating, Ive was to make ever closer contact with Apple and his mentor Steve Jobs through Tangerine. They were clearly impressed, and by 1992 he’d moved in with them in San Francisco. Six years later he was turning their fortunes around with the first iMac. Then the well-trodden tale begins: not only did it shift two million units in its first year, it made its beige boxy rivals look moribund and so last millennium.

It’s no coincidence that it was tender loving care and attention to detail that first attracted Ive to the brand that’s now synonymous with his career – the difference between superficial differentiation for its own sake and genuine investment in a better and more innovative product. From hidden horseshoe feet to the celebrated iPod one-touch navigation, his design team pours time and resources into getting it right.

Nick Carson, "Jonathan Ive," ncarson.wordpress.com, 12 Dec 2006 via Signal vs Noise

A prototype should be an invitation to play.

“A prototype should be an invitation to play."

Michael Schrage, Serious Play - Quoted by Carolyn Snyder in a UIE Virtual Seminar 6 Feb 2007

Simplicity: The Distribution of Complexity

A user interface solution that thoughtfully places complexity on the system side, rather than the user side, is typically referred to as “simple.” To get to such a solution, the design team will need to deal with issues of complexity, rather than leaving it to the end-user of the resulting product.

Rob Tannen, "Simplicity: The Distribution of Complexity," Boxes and Arrows, 30 Jan 2007, www.boxesandarrows.com/view/simplicity-the:

Hybridizing Java

Hybridizing Java: "Various fixes have been attempted for Java over the years, but I think the basic issue is that whoever is trying to solve the installation problem is someone who has a more inward technical focus rather than what’s really needed: an outward user-experience focus. For example, I was stymied by early Linux distributions because of the challenge of installation. About once a year, I would try to install Linux, and it would immediately start asking me questions. Only a hard-core Linux geek would know the answers to these questions. I couldn’t even fake my way through, so I would give up and try again the next year. Then Red Hat came along (at least, I think they were the first to focus on the installation experience) and set it up to install Linux without asking questions, or at least to give me reasonable defaults. That’s when Linux started becoming popular (more recently, Ubuntu seems to have taken the lead in solving the Linux friendliness problem)."