I just receive a spam (since it is commercial and unsolicited) from The New York Venture Summit starting with the following:
"Due to popular demand, we have decided to extend the opportunity for companies to submit their executive summaries as well as “Early Bird” registration until Wednesday, May 23rd. Don’t miss this opportunity!"
This is a conference, which means it has limited inventory. If it is being so successful, I'd assume that their inventory is sold out and the message would say "we are sorry, but we cannot accomodate any other company at this moment".
Most Sunday nights I watch Iron Chef, a TV show on the Food TV where two chefs cook many dishes in just one hour. The caveat is they only know the main ingredient before the countdown starts. The show has four in-house chefs that are the “Iron Chefs” and each night one of them “battles” a challenger, also a renowned chef.
Last Sunday was the Garbanzo Beans battle. Mario Batali (the Iron Chef) battled out Richard Blais. A group of judges score each dish based on platting, originality and taste, each of these criteria being worth 5, 5 and 10 points, respectively. The Iron Chefs win 80% of the time and pretty much every time the score is decided on the taste criterion.
This time was no different, Mario Batali won with a good overall margin because his dishes tasted much better, and hence, it scored greater on tasting. Every single time I watched this show, the defining factor has been taste. Not originality, not platting, but taste. This time, Mario Batali originality was not great and his platting was not even good.
It’s the taste stupid!
What this has to do with software and Web 2.0? Let’s start by the battle score criteria and convert that into the software world. Originality is the equivalent of Innovation, Platting is the equivalent of User Interface and Taste is the equivalent of Functionality.
Now, functionality will beat Innovation and User Interface every single time. Make no mistake, people use your software or a site with a purpose. If that purpose cannot get accomplished, everything else doesn’t matter.
Another great analogy is video games. People buy them for the “gameability”, not because of the graphics or the controller that detects if you are upside down. A better looking graphic is always more pleasing and a neat controller is always a piece of conversation and a ticket to be on the “in-crowd”. But if the game doesn’t deliver, everything else doesn’t matter.
On the Web 2.0 world of today there is a lot of emphasis in beauty and innovation on user experience.
Having beautiful pixels is easily achievable. It is just a matter of hiring the right designer (or being one). That is probably why this has been the selling point of many Web 2.0 companies (“your blog/wiki will look beautiful if you use our service”).
Innovation is always great, as long it is useful. It doesn’t matter if you are the first to do a service that nobody cares or uses.
On Web 2.0, a lot of the innovation effort is being applied to User Experience, which is one of those very powerful things that can really distinguish what you do, or make you the joke of the day.
There is a deep connection between User Experience and Functionality. Trying to serve Lasagna on a champagne glass might ruin both, but eating Sushi with chopsticks works just right. Also, a bad Lasagna will taste bad on a plate or on a champagne glass.
There are two core lessons that I want to emphasize.
First, if you are building any kind of software, site or just a single feature you must start by focusing on the functionality (what), get it right, then figure out the user experience (how) and last do the pixel beautification. If you really focus on your customer that is the only way to do it and you’re probably already doing it. If you focus on your competition, you’re probably doing the opposite, by focusing on how to make your thing look better, then how to change the experience and last how to add new functionality – that is a loser method!
The second lesson, which might not be so clear from the lines above, is that you should not waste your time rethinking (innovating) the User Experience if you are not an expert. Why redesign scrollbars? Why use vertical tabs on the side if every other software uses horizontal? Just use what has been proven out there, copy it and focus on your core skill/differentiator. If you are building a speech recognition engine, focus on getting the accuracy to 99.9%, not on how to make sure the UI looks pretty. You can always fix the UI later, but the hard stuff is always hard.
One last note on this topic: Investors have a hard time looking beyond the book cover. It is mostly a time-constraint (or brain-constraint) issue, so, if you’re looking for external capital make sure that you have a pretty and compelling UI.
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January, 2008