4 ms·
The really interesting takeaway from this article for me was that product executives make many decisions based on simple intuition, industry experience, and "I'
by vkb 11y ago
The really interesting takeaway from this article for me was that product executives make many decisions based on simple intuition, industry experience, and "I've heard it worked over there."
There are numerous mentions of failed product roll-outs(News Feed as a failure at first, Paper, etc.) But the key quote is here, when they talk about the meeting: "Cox agrees. 'My intuition, which we could prove wrong, is people just want more stuff.'
I'm sure that Facebook uses data to back up some of its assertions; after all, they did mine comments to come up with the most common reactions. But how many people's entire internet experience (i.e. consumption of news through the News Feed) is impacted just by some senior guy in a room going, "This sounds right to me," and everyone scrambling to work on what he proposes?
- notatoad 11y agoFacebook trialled this feature on smaller markets before the large rollout it's getting now. Data has its place, but you can only user-test things after they're already built, and you can't build everything. At some point, somebody has to make a gut decision on what's worth sending to user testing.
- pcurve 11y ago"But how many people's entire internet experience (i.e. consumption of news through the News Feed) is impacted just by some senior guy in a room going, "This sounds right to me," Like senior exec of IT buying into enterprise solutions that sound good on paper and make everyone's life living hell. "Business people will be able to make programming changes without developers using visio diagram!"
- erichocean 11y ago"Business people will be able to make financial calculations without developers using a graphical spreadsheet!" Like that'll ever happen. Senior execs of IT are so stupid, amiright? Everyone knows only programmers should be doing financial calculations with a computer, and that UIs are for losers. /s
- kalleboo 11y agoActually maybe they shouldn't... http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/02/13/microsofts-excel-might-be-the-most-dangerous-software-on-the-planet/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/02/13/microsoft...