27th
User Interface Obsession.
I saw this post from Bijan a few weeks ago and it really stuck in my mind. If you watch most VC’s you will see that they stick to very close verticals and usually crowd around the same ideas, like social networking. What was great about the below post is how you
could take webby knowledge and apply it to things like a microwave. The great thing about microwave’s is that they are huge boring market.
My landscapers are supposed to come every Tuesday, sometimes they come and sometimes they don’t. Today they did magically show up. Which made me think, imagine if a VC invested in landscaping. It is a very large market that has zero technology involved. Instead of building another youtube/facebook/twitter mashup, it would be interesting to take that same type of brain trust and see what it can do to transform the least technologically advanced businesses.
I was thinking the other day about user interfaces on non-PC devices.
For the most part they are all stuck in some frozen point in time. Or worse, they became more complicated with time.
Consider this list which serves as a tiny sample:
-consumer landline telephone
-microwave
-automobile
-payment systems/banking
-digital SLRs
-home audio/video equipment (TVs, set top box, remote control)
-home security
(I could go on and on).
There is an obvious tendancy to give us more features in each update with these products. Yet it doesn’t seem like the companies that make those products have user interface obsession.
I realize that I’m an Apple fanboy when it comes to design and user experience. And sometimes they absolutely miss the target (I happen to think iMovie 09 was a big step backwards). But for the most part they nail the user experience. Yes, I think they have great taste but it’s more than that. Its taste combined with obsession. Taste makes it sound too easy and like something you are born with or without.
Taste (alone) doesn’t give enough credit to companies that hyperfocus about their products.
I think a lot of companies don’t obsess on their user interfaces. That’s the only explanation I have for why my remote control looks like the way it does. And why there are a billion buttons on my car’s dashboard. Or why I still dont’ know how to sync the address book on our home telephone system.
They just don’t care enough.
That’s why I love startups. The best ones obsess about the user experience. They care about their products and the user interface like nobody else does and they don’t settle.
