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We’ve all heard the saying “the customer is always right”, it stems from the fact that the customer has money and never argue with a potential paying customer. Based on Apple’s latest earnings, I’m starting to rethink that age old quote. Apple announced a record $46.33 billion in revenue, of which 73% came from iPhone’s and iPad’s. The iPhone and iPad were created completely in-house with zero customer interaction or focus groups. One of Steve Jobs quotes about product developement:

It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.

Can’t really argue with Steve. Customers are really good at asking for incremental improvements. At MProfit we field 100′s of request a month and many are useful but most are not. Most are requests for a single feature to help that person but of course that’s not how a customer spins it. They usually tell us “if you add XYZ feature you will get 1000′s of new customers.” However, companies don’t grow exponentially by adding one feature here or another there, it’s about completely flipping the mindset and getting many more new customers in the door.

One of my favorite quotes in regards to product development supposedly came from Henry Ford:

If I’d asked my customers what they wanted, they’d have said a faster horse

The car industry for the past 50 years has been stuck in this add one feature here or increase gas mileage by 5% sort of mentality. Innovation has been slow and hence General Motors, Toyota and Volkswagen each have taken turns for the top spot for most number of cars sold every year for the past 3-4 years. As a consumer, I would ask for a 500hp car that gets 50 miles a gallon, which is what Henry Ford was getting at.

Companies big or small need to think about innovation on a much larger scale and not get trapped in a feature war.  It’s tactical thinking vs strategic thinking, but many people forgo the strategic thinking because it sounds too dreamy/fluffy and doesn’t bring in revenue right now. However, Apple has shown it really pays to think different and essentially tell it’s customer to buzz off because they don’t know any better. And yet I still come back to Apple…genius.

Sadly this blog past has been in draft mode for over 6 months and since then it seems everyone is coming out of the woodwork to say the same thing – user interface (UI) design isn’t everything. Lately, it’s been a beauty pageant of sorts when a new product comes out, everyone says “wow, looks great and the interface is awesome” then the next question is “what the fuck does it do?” and that’s the problem.

Something might look beautiful but if it has no real purpose…who cares how great it looks. You’ve heard this same story before in the context of dating, “he is really good looking but talking to a door knob is more fun” or “she is a California dime but absolutely dumb as a rock.” Instead of focusing on the needs of a customer, many startups are spending way too much time on packaging (user interface, funding sources, PR, etc…).  A great example of this is Color.com, it received a ton of press because it was funded by Sequioa for $41 million and when the application was released people were clueless about its usage. Since then they have gone back to the drawing board for version 2.

Some of the comments from the web that really got me to think about this user interface debate:

@erickschonfeld For social apps design matters very little. It's all about being where your homies are at. Most were on FSQ.

December 5, 2011 11:52 pm via Twitter for MacReplyRetweetFavorite

@Percival

Sean Percival

Design and user experience is the new intellectual property. --Ron Conway #sus11

October 30, 2011 5:50 am via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@garrytan

Garry Tan

Ron Conway is a legend in the VC space and you can’t really argue with his track record but I disagree with his comments. Not only that, but I’m pretty sure you can’t have IP rights to the way something looks.

Design is becoming a competitive advantage for startups http://t.co/j5Or9Wd8

December 5, 2011 4:00 am via BufferReplyRetweetFavorite

@sahilparikh

Sahil Parikh

Design might be a competitive advantage if there are many players in the same space, but it really depends on the category. Facebook had a pathetic website when it launched in 2004 when compared to Friendster. But people gravitated towards Facebook because it served a social utility, gradually over time the Facebook interface got more polished.

An example of an interface that is absolutely horrible to look at is Tally – an accounting software for the Indian markets. Most people still use the MS-DOS version and it’s reported it has 90% of the market in India. Why does it dominate the market? Because it does one thing really well – calculate numbers.

Steve’s demise was bound to happen, but knowing what he had done in the past I figured he could dodge another bullet. Starting a company, getting kicked out and then coming back and kicking ass. In between all that drama he started a couple more companies and in the process became the largest shareholder in Disney.

While most of us fail to leave a mark on anything this guy left his mark on many markets – personal computing (Macintosh), animation (Pixar), music (iPod & iTunes), phones (iPhone) and mobile computing (iPad). I mean what the f!@#$…brilliant.

I remember when I saw my first Apple Computer and first NeXT computer, I was blown away by the interface. At that time, I was hacking away on an IBM PC with a 1200 baud Hayes modem while screwing around with MS-DOS commands.  The Macintosh user interface just seemed so natural to use…simplicity.

P.S. The title of this post was going to be just a placeholder till I finished the post. However, the draft title says it all.

That feeling you get when you come back from vacation is reality smacking you in the face. There are two parts to it, the first part is you are no longer on vacation experiencing new things and new places. The second part is more sinister, it’s when you start plugging back into the grid – email, RSS, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, voicemail, to-do’s, etc…

Some people just declare email bankruptcy once they come back from vacation and figure if something was that important the person will email again. There are many startups and even Google is trying to prioritize your email for you and present what is believes are the most important emails to respond to. Luckily, I’ve been able to tame email using a ton of filters so I don’t have to go down the path of declaring email bankruptcy.

However, what smacks me in the face when I get back from vacation is my RSS feeds. RSS feeds allow you to track the content of various websites into a single location so you don’t have to visit 10-15 websites on a daily basis. I use Google Reader to aggregate the information that easily tops over 400 new pieces of content on a daily basis. If I take a 3-4 day vacation my RSS feeds would easily top 1600 articles, there is no way I’m going to scan 1600 titles in Google Reader…hence RSS bankruptcy.

When I got back from my most recent vacation I decided I needed to really tame my RSS feeds. For me, I like reading articles but I’ve come to realize many of the articles that I read are just worthless and a waste of time. I believe I read these type of articles for two reasons: it diverts me from work that I should be doing and second I gain knowledge about a particular subject. The problem is if you waste 15 minutes reading garbage you won’t get time to read another article that might actually be useful. Coincidentally, my friend Sahil sent me a link saying that “keeping up with RSS is poisonous.” I would completely agree with the article.

So what did I do? I nuked about 75% of the RSS feeds I had and started following those particular websites on Twitter. Secondly, I started following several new people that seem to send out useful articles via Twitter. The idea is I might miss a particular tweet from
Engadget when it first comes out, but if the article is really useful it will get re-tweeted many times and then I can read it. You kinda have to have faith in the people you follow and truly believe in the wisdom of crowds. Twitter has now become my curated personal news aggregator.

So what were the big news stories when I was on vacation for 3 weeks? Two seem to stick out 1. Google buying Motorola Mobility and 2. The VC funding misadventures of Rand Fishkin at SEOmoz. The second story was heavily re-tweeted and even Sahil sent me a link to the story. Using my old method I would have seen story #1 pop-up in my RSS feed but story #2 would have been buried…and story #2 is actually a GREAT read if you are looking for VC funding.

I’m sure while on vacation, I missed out on thousands of stories. Let me guess there were several Top 10 articles on how to grow traffic, effectively use Facebook for your company, maximize your Google ad spend, etc…all noise to be honest. It’s the fear of missing out that drives people to track everything and read everything. The article I’m really looking for is how to score a 2012 Lamborghini Aventador since it has a 3 year waiting list.

Lexus LFA dashboard

During the late 90′s all the rage on the internet was with portals. The concept was simple, you select the type of information you wanted  - news sources you like, stock quotes for your holdings or local weather information. Then the portal would magically aggregate all the information in a single location.

If portal 1.0 was about external information (news, weather, etc..) then portal 2.0 is about your information. Portal 2.0 or what I’m calling The Personal Dashboard is the next step, where you can quickly glance at various parts of your life in a single location. Parts of your life would include friends (Facebook), work colleagues (LinkedIn), personal finance (Mint.com), health, cars, fashion, etc…

Social Dashboard
Since many websites are opening up their data stream via an easy to use API (application programming interface) the ability to create a centralized dashboard is not that far fetched. For the social piece of your dashboard you would have a mix of Facebook, LinkedIn and/or Twitter in your social news feed similar to how the individual streams look now, but it would be an aggregated summary. For the full blown feed you would have to go to the respective sites to get your daily dose of empty calories better known as social networking.

Personal Finance Dashboard
Yes, Mint.com does a lot of the financial data aggregation but two things: first it’s on their site, I want to see that data stream appear on my dashboard. More importantly I would like to weave Mint.com with all my other financial data streams. Suppose I have Google Wallet, I would want that to appear as well.  For me personal finance is broken down into 2 categories: short term (expense tracking) and long term (portfolio management). Since all my financial feeds are in one location, I would want to get real advice and/or offers based on how I spend on my short term or daily expenses.  If I constantly spend on cafe lattes at The Coffee Bean (which I do everyday in Nariman Point), it would be nice if they kick out an offer for 50% off on a new product they are introducing. Or if I suddenly stop visiting for 2 weeks, they kick out an offer for 20% off on my next visit. This would be completely automated without having to signup for some dumb-ass daily deal site (Hi Groupon!).

On the portfolio management side, it would only present offers in two cases: the product saves me money or makes me money. If there is a better performing CD/FD it would alert me to it. If I can save on brokerage, then it would notify me…but only if I really trade a lot and it would specifically show me a cost comparison based on my accounts details. Consumers would love this, but of course established companies would hate this level of transparency. However, there are new players such as BankSimple.com who might be able to make a difference.

Health Dashboard
Personally, the area of health is what got me started to think about the Personal Dashboard concept. There is a growing trend around the idea of the quantified self –  capturing details such as heart rate, blood pressure and many more data points to learn about your health in real time.  Gary Wolf gave a TED talk about the topic. When you talk about big markets, the health care industry is one of the biggest at 16% of the US GDP and a large chunk going to hospital care. There has to be a better way for people to track their own health and make adjustments in real-time to improve their health. There are several devices available today that offer a glimpse into the future.

Fitbit is the size of a money clip and tracks physical activities, calories burned, steps taken, distance traveled and sleep patterns. At a $100 a pop, this should be mandatory for anyone with a BMI over 30. Another gadget is Basis which is like the Fitbit but also tracks your heart rate. Of course, Apple is also planning to gate crash this party with their products based recent patent filings.

Gadgets are one piece, the other is data aggregation and several companies such as Microsoft HealthVault and RunKeeper have started to support the above gadgets on their platform. Once again these are islands of data and should be part of an overall personal dashboard. These services should interact with each other and kick out real-time advice based on my physical condition or let me know if my sleep cycle for the one week period is normal for my age group, etc… Or I should be able to export my data to a PDF to show my doctor that I have indeed been sleeping 7 hours a day and working out every other day. By tracking certain metrics it lends itself for people to correct their behavior if they are serious about it.

Summary
I’ve touched on 3 areas but there can be many more depending on the lifestyle of the individual. Such as a car dashboard that tracks the vitals of the cars you own – mileage, fuel tank, tire pressure, etc…then it could send a reminder for when the next servicing is due. (Yes the irony, a dashboard of a dashboard!)

The Personal Dashboard might seem like an idealistic view of how our lives should be simplified, but I firmly believe it’s where things are moving to. Currently, all this data is housed in disconnected data stacks but eventually there will be a meta aggregator of all these bits of data we are creating on a minute by minute basis.

The above article was syndicated on VCCircle.com.