Good Design *Still* Evades Microsoft
French analyst and researcher Andreas Pfeiffer recently reported that Microsoft’s new Vista OS is a step backward from XP. While Microsoft has worked hard to give a new look to its OS, it clearly went the wrong direction from a design standpoint. This brings me back to what Adam Smith preached back in the 1700s: specialization is the most effective way to go. Here’s what I mean.
Microsoft has employed gazillions of tech gurus from around the world to build software. Now, it’s debatable how well they do that, but everything still comes down to the design. Design is the bottleneck. If a user is lost in the program, it does not matter at all what the program can do; the user can’t access the power or the features. Time and again software companies hire out the guys that can build features but get little design help to make those features accessible. Microsoft, the world’s biggest software manufacturer, is at a loss of design expertise.
Take their rival, Apple. Apple employs as many industrial and graphic designers as they do programmers. And the result is that people know how to use the product right out of the box. There is always the learning curve, but no one can doubt the fluidity of using an Apple product as compared to a Microsoft product.
The principle? When building applications, web applications or any other, we need to spend as much time, if not more, in fleshing out the design. And the more Microsoft neglects to do this, the more frustrated users will become and the greater advantage they hand over to Apple and other competitors.
Star Rating Made Easy
So the latest craze in Web 2.0 circles is making snazzy Ajax-driven star raters. Some sites have some great looking star raters (e.g. Youtube, I4GiveU, Digg).
But getting these to work nicely can be a pit. For the easy PHP development environment, here are some resources to make it a piece of cake.
- CakePHP Ajax star rating helper
- Masuga Design has a sweet out-of-the-box script that is a cinch to install.
Hope these help, and if you’ve found better, post a comment and let me know!
Looking for Attractive Online Markets
Thanks to Michael Porter’s five forces model, we can better understand how attractive a market is. Unfortunately, many internet entrepreneurs just dive into projects assuming that the market is ripe for the picking without consulting this or other effective frameworks.
The other day, I discussed a web site idea with a friend. He wanted to sell sports products online. Here’s how the five forces model helped us understand that it probably would be a bad idea.
Potential Entrants
What is the threat of new entrants into the market? Well, with almost anything online, the threat is going to be higher than usual because of the relatively low barriers to entry: just buy a good domain name, host the thing, and you’re off—for less than 50 bucks, most of the time. So selling sports gear online will not be immune from lots of potential entrants. Favorable? No.
Suppliers
How much bargaining power do suppliers bear? Sports gear has many suppliers. Because of the high volume of athletic equipment, their bargaining power is somewhat average. Favorable? More or less.
Substitutes
What is the threat of substitute products or services? Again, with the web being so agile, there actually is a greater threat of possible substitute websites out there. Already, a user can go to some pretty big online retailers and get their products there. The best bet is to go for a highly specialized market, say boxing equipment websites, etc. Still, there does exist the possibility of many thousands of substitute products online. Favorable? No.
Buyers
How much bargaining power do buyers have? Lots of bargaining power. They are just a click away from going elsewhere, so your price will be compared for sure. Supply/demand for online retail fluctuates with big promotions from the big boys. For a start up, buyers probably are going to go elsewhere unless you have a ridiculously low price. Favorable? No.
Competition
What rivalry exists among present competitors? Huge rivalry, huge competition. Already some significant leaders exist making this one unfavorable for sure. It will surely be an uphill battle to build a successful sports equipment web site.
Overall
You can see that the five forces model shows that it’s highly unlikely that a start up web site will go far on little capital for this particular market. Too bad web developers just take the dive off the board without this simple tool for gauging the market difficulty.
