Oooh... shiny!

It is said that Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  What one finds as a crafted masterpiece, another sees as a big pile of junk.  Well this past month I've had a bit of a revelation.  Technology value is also in the eye of the beholder.  Having spent a majority of my career in IT and Tech Marketing trying to understand the science behind value  (Utility and Warranty to the ITIL geeks in the house), I go back to a presentation I did 2 years ago where I proposed a third value point, aesthetics.  Well a few recent events have confirmed my belief that the way something looks and engages the physical senses (sight and touch in particular) heavily influence the value perception.

Example 1: New phones for the family.
Recently we made a trip to Best Buy, where my wife, 2 older children and I picked out super cool Android Smartphones.

    Upon arriving home the family was all excited about the shiny new phones... until I had to go and put stop to the joy.  "Guys, the phones are going back!", you would have thought I had just shot the family dog (if we had one).   Stared down with looks of trying to figure out whether I was joking or brave enough to take on a revolt, my Ludite wife chimed in "Why, what's wrong?".
    No Bars!  That's right, not a single carrier signal in my house.  No one even noticed that their new new shiny phones actually work as phones.  As cool and feature rich these phones were, I had to introduce my family to the value point of Warranty, specifically availability.  Happily, Best Buy took the phones all back, no questions and we were able to get on a carrier with a great signal.  However, no simple phone for the former Ludite, she had to have the iPhone now that she got a taste of coolness.  :)

Example 2:  Recent release of SMAK
A week and a half ago, we released two major features our Alpha testers were screaming for:
A) A message counter on each of the life mode tabs, so you could see which aspect of your life needed attention.
B) A simpler easier way to assign your active relationships into your life mode categories (work, home, friends, etc...)

Right after we released these new features, we were all so excited about the new look and feel and the great new features that we didn't realize that the system was starting to crawl to its knees.  So time for another lesson on the value point of Warranty, this time on performance.  Yet, despite the performance issue, no one wanted to take out the new shiny alerting feature.  What? You can not go to market as the best productivity enhancement tool since the wheel, if your technology crawls, it's just that simple.  Yet, the crowd spoke clearly, we want Shiny and Fast, and Usable.

Needless to say, my revelation is this.  Regardless of all the science and market research on Value creation, excitement does not come from functionality (utility) and performance (warranty) alone.  Utility and Warranty maintain excitement and the emotional attachment to the technology which influences perceptions and prejudices people use to measure on-going value.  However, if you really want to get people excited enough that they want to become advocates for your success, you better make it a great user experience, simple, tasteful and crisp.

Expect some real upgrades on SMAK's User Interface over the next few weeks.  Also, check out our latest video:

I'll take Triangles over Circles anyday

I've been inundated over the past few weeks with emails, DM's and messsages.  "Hey, is Google+ like SMAK".  Yes, Google+ has some very similar features of SMAK, and we are pretty disappointed we were not out of private Alpha so that people could compare the two.  What can I say...   well, here is what I can say.  Here are just a few reasons why we didn't release:

Security and Privacy - Google+ launched and quickly realized that people didn't like it when you stuck 20 of your connections in the "Annoying" circle.  So, of course they shutdown log-ins and scrambled for a fix.
Usability - The most popular question on Google+ so far is "why am I here?" followed by "where is everybody?".
Intelligence -  So far Google+ makes a lot recommendations of people you should connect with.  Too bad you don't know any of them.  Really, do you need to be managing 500 new avatars?
CASH  & Klout -  Google has a lot of both.  They can afford to make mistakes.

So the long and short is, hang with us!  We are working hard to bring you a solution that will work not only with Google+, but all of your already invested relationship networks.  We don't you wasting time, being frustrated or feeling exposed by a new tool.   Your security, ssage and already established network is our biggest focus.  And unlike Google, we can't afford to make a mistake.

Well, if for nothing else Google+ validated that we like to drag and drop our friends avatars around.  It sort of makes us feel like puppet masters.

I really do like some of the features.  I just see it making my life even more complicated, and yet another channel to check.

How do you feel about it?  Would love to hear your comments.

PS: don't forget to register for SMAK www.mysmak.com

User failure - it can't just be me

I'm really not trying to be a complicated guy.  While I carry a lot on my plate (CEO of a startup, On the board of Co.'s, father of 4, co-host of wildly successful podcast, avid volunteer and church leader,..)  OK, I bit off more than I can chew...   I'm a soon to be 39yr old Generation X over-achiever, what can I say.    I really thought I could do more with technology.  I believed the hype that I could have it all, an engaged and endearing family, a loyal and supportive staff, an enriched and enlightened media following... yeah FAT CHANCE.  The reality is most of the time I just have a bunch of people waiting for me to show up... physically or mentaly.

While I'm partly to blame, technology has some accountability in this mess.  There is one hype I've encountered and I hope revealing it here will spare you from the same:

Apple Hype - Advanced mobile technology makes it easier to stay informed.
This is a joke...  Here is just one small example.  I used to listen to podcasts by downloading them on to my $50 Sansa MP3 player.  Taking 10 minutes at the beginning of the week I would judiciously read show notes and determine which are downloaded.  (list of the podcasts I listen to below)

So not wanting to spend this 10 minutes, I spent $800 on a fancy iPad since I had already configured iTunes to download my shows automatically.    My hope of setting up a scheduled set of podcast downloads on my mac that would sync to my iPad has turned out to be a big ha ha on me.
1) iTunes podcasts  on  your mac don't sync automatically with your iPad.  (yup, that's a period right there)
2) iPad does not give you a sort order a playlist schedule.  Like everone who listens to industry related podcasts you want to listen in date order from oldest to current.  No such capability on iPad.
3) Can not automatically remove pdocasts... so the list grows and fills your disk up. (I'm sure this was on puposed)

Now I end up spending at least an hour of my time a week downloading and clearing podcasts, switching and sorting them, creating temporary play lists... I listen and learn less and waste more time, total and utter FAILURE on Apples part..

How in the world did  Apple product managers not see this gaping whole in their product design and usability?  Oh wait!  They did... it was a major flaw on the iPod.   Yet, with all the user feedback and frustration, they release it to the iPad

So moral of the story:  listen to your customer and respond.  If the product fa
ils, the user expereince is bad, I don't care how cool the window looks when I can't do simple functions.

My podcast list:
(ITSM weekly podcasts (US, ROW and Antipodean), This week in Tech (TWIT, TNT, & The Social Hour) & The next web daily