Breaking the fundamentals

Marketers and advertisers get a bad reputation because they continually break the fundamentals of design. This morning I was reading a post about how Facebook is calling out “local search” in its IOS app. As I was reading the article a Facebook Recommend widget pops up, blocking the very content I was attempting to read.

This is yet another case of interruptive marketing. Not only is this annoying, but I could not actually finish the article. I gave up, and instead of potentially linking to it because it is good content I’m now linking to it because it is annoying.

What do I mean about breaking the fundamentals? I mean that marketers and advertisers are ruining the very basic activities they’re trying to hitch a ride with. In this case, they’re trying to increase my “engagement” on their site by directing my attention to some recommended content. But they’re directing my attention much too early, before I’ve even had a chance to read the content I came to read. The activity I’m trying to do is to read the article. The activity the site should want me to complete is to read the article, for then I will be ready to do something else (like dig deeper on the site or read a related article). Instead, what they’ve done is discredit themselves and frustrated me. A horrible outcome for them.

So let’s state it plainly: the purpose of an article page is to read the article. It’s not to show an advertisement. It’s not to get a click. It’s not to create a lead. It’s not to read related or recommended items. It’s to read the damn article! Once that core activity is complete then we can think about doing something else, but not before.

I think this sort of thing happens because nobody really believes they’re building relationships with readers. They can’t see people reading and getting frustrated, so they start to focus too much on their immediate goals at the expense of their readers’. It’s too bad, if people just honored the very basic interaction they are asking people to have with their content, they might just build the relationship they’re looking for.

Marketing and product design are the same thing.

Or so said Seth Godin recently when he visited a Boston startup called Intelligently and gave a great hour long chat on startups, products, and marketing. I have been a fan of Seth’s for a decade or so, and this statement really resonated with me for several reasons.

First, it makes my work make sense. I do product design all day (interfaces, screens, flows, etc) but I also obsess over things like product positioning, communicating the value of your product, and how to sell your product online. These are sometimes called “marketing”, but to me all of those things are just part of the overall user experience…if the experience is the product then all of those interactions are crucial as well. I call this progression the Usage Lifecycle.

Second, it buckets similar problems together. The problem of knowing what product to build is something that both product designers and marketers need to understand intimately in order to do their jobs…the designers in order to design the product and the marketer in order to share the story. Both designers and marketers then need to continue to focus on that problem so they know how to proceed…is the product and its story resonating with people or not?

So watch the video to see the master in action. The section about marketing and product design being the same thing comes in at 60:56 and is a response to a question (asked by Tara Dimaggio of Wordstream) about aligning marketing and product design. Here is full transcript of that section.

“See-monkey marketing (ads in the comics that take a product that isn’t anything and try to get us to think it’s something) is over. I would have the people in the marketing department work physically in proximity with the other people and one day a week actually work on product design. And I would have the product design people spend one day a week making sales calls. The product and the marketing are the same thing. And any organization that is splitting them apart is making a huge mistake. Selling is selling…I’ll buy that. But marketing and product design are the same thing.”

Weekend reading: Disruption vs. Innovation

The first, What “Disrupt” Really Means, by Andy Rachleff makes the point that its usually business models that are disruptive, not products. And contrary to Clayton Christensen’s definition of disruptive (low-cost, low-margin, low-quality) Rachleff suggests there is such a thing as “high-end” disruption, when a company like Uber offers a competing service that is more convenient, but more expensive than its taxi alternative.

The second, Stop Re-inventing Disruption, a response of sorts by Maxwell Wessel, argues that Rachleff’s idea of a high-end disruption doesn’t make sense. Disruption is a low-end, low-quality, low margin affair, and explains why incumbents get beat even though they are intelligent, well aware, and have capital to spend. The disruption happens because these companies consciously choose not to compete on the low-end because their business has evolved into a high-margin one.

Wessel also makes the distinction between disruption and innovation, which do seem to be used interchangeably sometimes. Innovation is simply making a better product, while disruption is a longer process…upending industries with low-end products that slowly eat away at the incumbents. He says that most of the examples of Rachleff’s are simply classic disruption done more quickly…as the pace of the world increases so does the pace of disruption.

Both authors make the point that some products are simply better, not necessarily disruptive. Wessel argues the iPhone was simply better than the phones it replaced…it wasn’t disruptive in the Clayton Christensen/Innovator’s Dilemma sense of the word. This is where the term “disruptive” becomes problematic…obviously the iPhone completely changed the game within the mobile industry. It’s disruptive in the normal sense of the word…

At any rate, I’m not sure that whether something is “disruptive” is much of an issue on the level of product design, but it is interesting to note that for some products to succeed they don’t necessarily have to be higher quality than the alternative. They might just be cheaper, or offer some functionality that the incumbents cannot (like Google Docs collaboration features). Even though they aren’t higher quality, they still find a foothold in the marketplace. As existing products add feature after feature over time, the opportunity for disruption increases.

What you should really copy from Apple

Datapoint: In my professional career I’ve worked with companies of all sizes and every single one of them wants to be more like Apple. Hell, in all of my work I want to be more like Apple.

So…Horace Dediu asks…why doesn’t anybody copy Apple?

Dediu makes a very important distinction: the distinction between copying a product and copying the product development process. Obviously every company in every industry that Apple competes in is copying their products to some extent. All phones are now like the iPhone. All tablets are now like the iPad. All laptops are now like Macbooks. All product marketing is now like Apple’s product marketing. Etc.

But that’s only copying the end result. And that’s not the same as copying the product development process that produces such results. I think it is safe to assume that most companies hope it is sufficient to copy the end result and not the process. (their behaviors suggests as much)

But as Michael Dell, Steve Balmer, and whoever runs Nokia, Toshiba, Blackberry, Rokio, Palm, HTC, etc, have found out, simply copying someone else’s product is not a viable long-term strategy. Even if you can copy a product like an iPhone, you haven’t even come close to catching up. You’ve caught up to two years before Apple released the product when they were actually designing the device. In total you’re about three years late.

So if everyone wants to be more like Apple, why don’t they? Dediu offers several reasons:

• Apple is not to be imitated because it’s not worth copying. I.e. Apple is not a successful company.
• Apple is successful but Apple cannot be copied because its success is a magical process involving sorcery.

I don’t like either of these explanations and neither does Dediu. So he offers a third possibility…that Apple is simply better than they’re letting on. I think this is right…and it’s reasonable given that nobody ever seems to know exactly what goes on out there in Cupertino.

Compare Apple’s excellence to Lebron James. Imagine being an NBA rookie who has been hailed as a prodigy all your life and you’ve been showered with praise since the day you could dunk. Now imagine lining up against Lebron James, who just recently went on one of the most amazing scoring stretches ever. You just became second fiddle and will stay second fiddle as long as Lebron is in the league. There is no satisfying way to explain how good Lebron is. Is it natural skill? Is it hard work? Is it competition? Is it luck? Yes. The answer is yes. And the same goes for Apple…they excel at everything.

The difference is that you can’t just copy Lebron James. You can’t just throw down 30 plus points every night. So in basketball there is a very clear ceiling to your talent…it is impossible to the “product” of those better than you. In electronics, however, it seems possible to copy a product like the iPhone. So that’s what everyone does, hoping to replicate the phenomenal market success that Apple has had. But you know what? I bet if you looked a little more closely, nobody is really, truly, faithfully copying Apple at all…they’re copying some version of Apple that exists in their heads. That’s why nobody has built an ecosystem that is as good as Apple’s yet.

What people should copy, instead, is Apple’s unwavering commitment to product quality. Apple’s commitment to quality has been clear since 1997, when Jobs came back to lead the company. Jobs said it again and again. Tim Cook is now saying it. That’s the key to Apple’s success…that they take a completely different approach from all the other companies who put profits first. Jobs started with the idea that quality products will find buyers, and so put quality above all else. Later (years and years later) Jobs looks like a genius that everyone wants to emulate.

But here’s the thing. If you compete on quality, your product will necessarily be different from others. You’ll find your own way, your own path through the markets you compete in. To be better than Apple you must look away from Apple, and instead find your inspiration from your customers, the world, or someplace else. That’s why copying is so deadly…it kills your enthusiasm for invention and the thrill of making something new while distracting you from what’s important. Copying not only signals a lack of imagination, it’s the symptom of bigger problems.

For companies that don’t have the ability to compete on quality, they end up copying someone else who does.

Labels always win.

We’ve been using Layervault at HubSpot for a week or so now. It’s a beautiful app, and has a lot of really nice UI touches. The first thing you notice when using the app is that it’s a good example of a flat UI…and the team has written about their thoughts on that.

And while I applaud the minimalist aesthetic and the push toward eliminating elements from the interface (something good designers continuously do) I believe they’ve gone one step too far…they’ve removed labels from their navigation bar. Here is what it looks like:

I have used this UI now for a week and I still have do a double-take each time I want to navigate. I’m not learning what the icons mean. The folder icon represents “projects”, which I can usually remember (but I think I remember it because it’s simply the first and default option). The second icon, a factory, is actually a link to the “Manage” screen, where you manage people and projects. This trips me up every time. (there isn’t hover text either…I find myself looking at the URL in the status bar to confirm where I’m going).

My guess is that in an attempt to be as minimal as possible the designers removed every single thing except what they deemed truly necessary. This should be applauded! (and in general the design is excellent…I’m simply mentioning this because I noticed it right now) However, I think labels should be kept around in almost all cases as they turn guesses into clear decisions. Nothing says “manage” like “manage”. In other words, in the battle of clarity between icons and labels, labels always win.