Good. I appreciate your articles, even if I don't always agree. This article makes many good points. Talking about personal vehicles, the problem that the auto/EV industry today has, is their product is NOT actually functionally equivalent to ICE vehicles, and for most of the harried middle class, EVs have LOWER utility than ICE cars. Whish is why the middle class is not yet buying them en masse.
Tata Motors hoped the tiny Nano would be for India what the Model T was for the USA. They succeeded in designing and building the most inexpensive new car in the world.
...which is exactly why it flopped.
The company overlooked an important factor: newly middle-class Indians saw new cars as status symbols and didn't want the stigma of owning a "cheap" vehicle. They were willing to save up or pay a bit more to get a larger (and presumably safer) car instead.
There's a lesson there about being one of the first countries to have an emerging middle class, and one which is only building up one now.
Dan (if I may be so familiar!), as you so often do, you have very clearly laid out your thesis and made clear to me your thoughts. Put another way, it seems to me that your writing resembles Henry Ford's flivver process insofar as you seem to have your conclusion (i.e. the goal) firmly in mind throughout the process of writing your column.
Commenting much too much today, but I just want to add a plug for Dan's earlier book "Risk" which was the subject of my career, as well. (In my case, the less-terrifying risks like water mains breaking, but, same math.)
That had me reading Barry Glassner's "Culture of Fear", very much on the same topic as Dan's "Risk", the risks we over-fear, the more-serious ones we miss. I'm glad to see the field got an update, just as I retired. I'll be picking that up before I get to Dan's new planning book!
Because, apropos to today, knowing what is the real risk (and not) is, is to know what the the real customer need is!
Tight focus on the original goal works when you know what you want, and what you need.
My own career worked better when I was constantly experimenting - finding out the new technology can do X, showing that around, getting buy-in. We frequently discovered things we didn't think our new tools could do. People had little time for our modifying their work-situation, they really favoured "computerizations" (a near-dead word now, no? In the 80s-00s, everything was "computerized", now we just rewrite) that were quick and easy.
When senior managers started an IT project, they would crank up this huge Stage I to just find out what the goal was - and everybody would ask for everything, they had no idea what was best automated, what was best left manual, to provide the user with more control.
These things were always impossible to explain without thousands of words of dull detail our our bureaucracy and what it did, but I've discovered a great metaphor: the Segway. Brilliant, jaw-dropping engineering. I'm sure the clear goal at the outset was a device you just stepped on, and it whizzed away because you unconsciously leaned the way you wanted to go, balancing itself with its five gyroscopes, sensing your weight shifts. Steve Jobs was as impressed as he was by the G4, said we'd redesign cities around it.
And it cost thousands! And sold as well as the G4. There IS a market for these things, as sports cars can tell you - it's just not a big market.
Compare the Segway to the scooters that took ten more years to show up. They don't automate balancing the scooter, it just falls over, like bikes always have. They don't automate steering to your learning, you have to control it like all previous two-wheel vehicles. And it cost less than 10% of a Segway.
But you'll have to show me the minutes to convince me there was any planning-meeting about a minimal e-scooter for the Common Man that invented them in a boardroom before anybody picked up a soldering iron. It seems very much like what two guys in a garage in Dayton, Ohio might come up with as they said "How can we make ourselves a little scooter for the least parts? Just 'automate' the wheels moving!"
My worst projects turned out like the Segway, the software hard to use because it was overcomplicated, trying to do too much. All of those were designed at length, with 3-ring-binders for the five project stages. My best projects were just me and one or two clients, huddled together in a tight, exploration/development loop, finding out what I could do for them with minimal resources, and stopping when "most of their most-tedious" steps had been automated. e-Scooter sized projects!
I would concede that my "exploratory IT" is not to be used after "R" stage of "R&D", for products to be mass-manufactured for large markets.
But, then again - the Segway was very clearly planned, I'm sure, as was Ford's Edsel.
Another way to think of it is an example we use in the book: We don't build bridges in order to have bridges. We build bridges because they enable something we value. That something is the goal. The bridge is merely the means to the goal.
Roy, I love experimentation and discovery, but I don't see it at all as contradictory to zeroing in on a goal. In fact, I'm a big fan of design thinking, which is all about looking at customers (or whoever you're interested in) without preconceptions so you can see things you otherwise wouldn't see and develop ideas that otherwise wouldn't occur. That stage should actually come *before* asking "why are we doing this project" if, in fact, you don't already know what you need to know. I didn't write about it here because Henry Ford was very well informed about ordinary people, which is why he understood that their leisure time was increasing. And that this changed things.
On the Segway, I must disagree: The Segway is a classic example of people falling in love with the technology then trying to figure out a way to sell it to customers. Remember: "It's a super cool toy" is NOT a goal. "Help disabled people get around" (for example) is a goal -- that is, a statement of the problem you will solve or the way you will otherwise make people's lives better. "Give city core residents a more efficient way off getting around" is a goal. (Or whatever.) "Jaw-dropping engineering" is most definitely not a goal. Which goes some way to explaining why it failed.
Yes, I've been thinking along those lines this whole time, and wishing I could revise. In my case, the "tight customer focus" came *automatically* from having (nearly all) the actual customers in the little room, so I could take that for granted, and be dismissive of the planning process.
My example came from misunderstanding you a bit - thinking that "having a clear plan at the outset" prevented you from a bad product, when you can have a clear plan for a very bad one (Edsel).
Your whole point is that the plan must not be just clear, but correct, know the customer's actual needs...which the customer often does not. My customers were as often-tricked by "coool" as I was - and that "tight redesign loop" often threw stuff out that "over-automated".
We're not in much disagreement here - at issue is whether the design is really effective, or just keeeewwwwl looking. And knowing which is which.
I don't think that Dean Kamen was trying to sell hi-tech and beauty with the Segway; and I don't think his wheelchair history misled him into overdesigning the Segway for more than the needs of commuters: he thought there was a real market for simple operation, that people would pay for a complex product that was mindless to operate.
That came from the Apple design esthetic of "it just works", technology useful without conscious thought. That customers would really love that, as they did with so many Apple products. Kamen thought he was meeting a *need* for "simplicity". Mac buyers that I know don't see the "it just works" as a nice-to-have, or status feature; they need it, or wouldn't use a computer at all.
As it turned out, the customers wanted the cheapness of a simple product that was "complex" to operate. (Humans think balancing is not complex, but it is. Very.)
In my case, the customers and I would explore together what was really needed, separate it from what was merely wanted. (Cue: predictable Rolling Stones clip.) What was different with my experience, is that by the time we had figured out what we needed, it was also half-built, and the rest was done in a week. My "planning" process was very overlapped with development.
So, my lesson for today is about knowing your customer, and their needs, not just their own love of Kewl in focus-groups. I think love of kewl can be held up for a long list of ridicule.
Hey, there's our project for the commenters today: everybody name a product that is the opposite of a Model T and a Bird Scooter: a technology-driven, customer-annoying mess.
I dibs "The Metaverse", because I want to keep score by how much they wasted. $12B!
Good. I appreciate your articles, even if I don't always agree. This article makes many good points. Talking about personal vehicles, the problem that the auto/EV industry today has, is their product is NOT actually functionally equivalent to ICE vehicles, and for most of the harried middle class, EVs have LOWER utility than ICE cars. Whish is why the middle class is not yet buying them en masse.
Tata Motors hoped the tiny Nano would be for India what the Model T was for the USA. They succeeded in designing and building the most inexpensive new car in the world.
...which is exactly why it flopped.
The company overlooked an important factor: newly middle-class Indians saw new cars as status symbols and didn't want the stigma of owning a "cheap" vehicle. They were willing to save up or pay a bit more to get a larger (and presumably safer) car instead.
There's a lesson there about being one of the first countries to have an emerging middle class, and one which is only building up one now.
Dan (if I may be so familiar!), as you so often do, you have very clearly laid out your thesis and made clear to me your thoughts. Put another way, it seems to me that your writing resembles Henry Ford's flivver process insofar as you seem to have your conclusion (i.e. the goal) firmly in mind throughout the process of writing your column.
Again, Sir, well done!
Commenting much too much today, but I just want to add a plug for Dan's earlier book "Risk" which was the subject of my career, as well. (In my case, the less-terrifying risks like water mains breaking, but, same math.)
That had me reading Barry Glassner's "Culture of Fear", very much on the same topic as Dan's "Risk", the risks we over-fear, the more-serious ones we miss. I'm glad to see the field got an update, just as I retired. I'll be picking that up before I get to Dan's new planning book!
Because, apropos to today, knowing what is the real risk (and not) is, is to know what the the real customer need is!
Tight focus on the original goal works when you know what you want, and what you need.
My own career worked better when I was constantly experimenting - finding out the new technology can do X, showing that around, getting buy-in. We frequently discovered things we didn't think our new tools could do. People had little time for our modifying their work-situation, they really favoured "computerizations" (a near-dead word now, no? In the 80s-00s, everything was "computerized", now we just rewrite) that were quick and easy.
When senior managers started an IT project, they would crank up this huge Stage I to just find out what the goal was - and everybody would ask for everything, they had no idea what was best automated, what was best left manual, to provide the user with more control.
These things were always impossible to explain without thousands of words of dull detail our our bureaucracy and what it did, but I've discovered a great metaphor: the Segway. Brilliant, jaw-dropping engineering. I'm sure the clear goal at the outset was a device you just stepped on, and it whizzed away because you unconsciously leaned the way you wanted to go, balancing itself with its five gyroscopes, sensing your weight shifts. Steve Jobs was as impressed as he was by the G4, said we'd redesign cities around it.
And it cost thousands! And sold as well as the G4. There IS a market for these things, as sports cars can tell you - it's just not a big market.
Compare the Segway to the scooters that took ten more years to show up. They don't automate balancing the scooter, it just falls over, like bikes always have. They don't automate steering to your learning, you have to control it like all previous two-wheel vehicles. And it cost less than 10% of a Segway.
But you'll have to show me the minutes to convince me there was any planning-meeting about a minimal e-scooter for the Common Man that invented them in a boardroom before anybody picked up a soldering iron. It seems very much like what two guys in a garage in Dayton, Ohio might come up with as they said "How can we make ourselves a little scooter for the least parts? Just 'automate' the wheels moving!"
My worst projects turned out like the Segway, the software hard to use because it was overcomplicated, trying to do too much. All of those were designed at length, with 3-ring-binders for the five project stages. My best projects were just me and one or two clients, huddled together in a tight, exploration/development loop, finding out what I could do for them with minimal resources, and stopping when "most of their most-tedious" steps had been automated. e-Scooter sized projects!
I would concede that my "exploratory IT" is not to be used after "R" stage of "R&D", for products to be mass-manufactured for large markets.
But, then again - the Segway was very clearly planned, I'm sure, as was Ford's Edsel.
Another way to think of it is an example we use in the book: We don't build bridges in order to have bridges. We build bridges because they enable something we value. That something is the goal. The bridge is merely the means to the goal.
Roy, I love experimentation and discovery, but I don't see it at all as contradictory to zeroing in on a goal. In fact, I'm a big fan of design thinking, which is all about looking at customers (or whoever you're interested in) without preconceptions so you can see things you otherwise wouldn't see and develop ideas that otherwise wouldn't occur. That stage should actually come *before* asking "why are we doing this project" if, in fact, you don't already know what you need to know. I didn't write about it here because Henry Ford was very well informed about ordinary people, which is why he understood that their leisure time was increasing. And that this changed things.
On the Segway, I must disagree: The Segway is a classic example of people falling in love with the technology then trying to figure out a way to sell it to customers. Remember: "It's a super cool toy" is NOT a goal. "Help disabled people get around" (for example) is a goal -- that is, a statement of the problem you will solve or the way you will otherwise make people's lives better. "Give city core residents a more efficient way off getting around" is a goal. (Or whatever.) "Jaw-dropping engineering" is most definitely not a goal. Which goes some way to explaining why it failed.
Yes, I've been thinking along those lines this whole time, and wishing I could revise. In my case, the "tight customer focus" came *automatically* from having (nearly all) the actual customers in the little room, so I could take that for granted, and be dismissive of the planning process.
My example came from misunderstanding you a bit - thinking that "having a clear plan at the outset" prevented you from a bad product, when you can have a clear plan for a very bad one (Edsel).
Your whole point is that the plan must not be just clear, but correct, know the customer's actual needs...which the customer often does not. My customers were as often-tricked by "coool" as I was - and that "tight redesign loop" often threw stuff out that "over-automated".
We're not in much disagreement here - at issue is whether the design is really effective, or just keeeewwwwl looking. And knowing which is which.
I don't think that Dean Kamen was trying to sell hi-tech and beauty with the Segway; and I don't think his wheelchair history misled him into overdesigning the Segway for more than the needs of commuters: he thought there was a real market for simple operation, that people would pay for a complex product that was mindless to operate.
That came from the Apple design esthetic of "it just works", technology useful without conscious thought. That customers would really love that, as they did with so many Apple products. Kamen thought he was meeting a *need* for "simplicity". Mac buyers that I know don't see the "it just works" as a nice-to-have, or status feature; they need it, or wouldn't use a computer at all.
As it turned out, the customers wanted the cheapness of a simple product that was "complex" to operate. (Humans think balancing is not complex, but it is. Very.)
In my case, the customers and I would explore together what was really needed, separate it from what was merely wanted. (Cue: predictable Rolling Stones clip.) What was different with my experience, is that by the time we had figured out what we needed, it was also half-built, and the rest was done in a week. My "planning" process was very overlapped with development.
So, my lesson for today is about knowing your customer, and their needs, not just their own love of Kewl in focus-groups. I think love of kewl can be held up for a long list of ridicule.
Hey, there's our project for the commenters today: everybody name a product that is the opposite of a Model T and a Bird Scooter: a technology-driven, customer-annoying mess.
I dibs "The Metaverse", because I want to keep score by how much they wasted. $12B!