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> The Product Manager in charge of this feature should be immediately fired. I hate this kind of writing. It undermines the otherwise good point the author ha

> The Product Manager in charge of this feature should be immediately fired. I hate this kind of writing. It undermines the otherwise good point the author has.

johndavidback 9y ago
Fair point. I use a little hyperbole to emphasize the fact that a product with an incredible global reach should default to well-planned and executed features, particularly if they are sprung upon you with desktop alerts. Hate it or not, someone did a very, very bad job here. Most likely many someones.
- nerflad 9y ago
  I agree with you that it should be implemented better, though I've honestly come to expect this from Windows. It's just a bit extreme considering you submitted it to HN, where the people directly involved actually have a chance of seeing it.
  - 0xCMP 9y ago
    I can see why he did it. These aren't beginners. They're experienced developers and managers. If you work at one of the top 5 tech companies in the world on a product most of the computing world uses then maybe this shouldn't be acceptable. Why is it that this is acceptable for Microsoft to publish? It's not and what makes it worse is that it often gets abandoned. If they had a history going back and finishing this or making it better I'd give them a pass, but I doubt without something bordering vitriolic appearing on HN/Medium no one will care. I think that's the real complaint. Doesn't anyone care about the experience anymore? I feel like it's only Apple who both cares and has executed a strong long term plan for this. I opened my iPhone X and that thing worked. I actually love all the little things they added. It is hard to do that, but it's these little things which make the product special or down-right frustrating when they don't.
    - symfoniq 9y ago
      If the current MacBook Pro is any indication, I’m not sure how much Apple cares about experience, either. I’m still trying to figure out who that machine is made for: Horrible keyboard, gimmicky Touch Bar, worse battery life than the previous generation, no ports relevant to existing devices (including Apple’s own flagship smartphone)... I don’t think Apple can be accused of sweating the details anymore, either.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      - 0xCMP 9y ago
        Very true, but Apple is consumer focused, vs Microsoft is enterprise focused, and so I think we still have a better chance for Apple to react to this than Microsoft would have.
  - Apocryphon 9y ago
    So maybe they might actually fix it.
- hitekker 9y ago
  Don't be too hard on yourself. The same people saying you shouldn't reproach clear and obvious incompetence are the same people calling you, the author, "some random idiot"... in this very comment section.
- contextfree 9y ago
  (used to work at Microsoft, not on Cortana but have friends that did/do) Broken UX flows like this are usually distributed among a bunch of different teams (each with their own PMs) so that no "the product manager" actually exists, and it's organizational seams you're running into. In many cases the individual PMs on each team are well aware of the problems with the overall flow and want to fix them, but find it hard to make room in their "day jobs" for coordinating with other teams to actually do so. So if anything I bet many of them are happy your post could give them more ammo to push prioritizing fixes. I'm only somewhat familiar with Cortana but I think your example broken flow crosses four or five teams’ feature areas, and I know that some of the problems you identified have had solutions proposed/designed/even prototyped by various teams for years now, but I guess so far nobody's managed to get all the teams to commit to any one particular solution. IMO though the biggest sin in your story wasn't that a broken flow for a feature existed, but that someone decided to push/spam a notification that led to said broken flow (and that someone else set up an incentive structure that drove that decision).
knieveltech 9y ago
It certainly does nothing of the sort. There should absolutely be some kind of consequence associated with this kind of flaming dumpster fire making it's way into a production environment.
- castis 9y ago
  Well then the entire world should rejoice that people like yourself and OP are not in control of other peoples livelihood.
  - emh68 9y ago
    What about all the people who have lost their jobs after a company goes under due to horrible product teams? If someone isn’t pulling their weight, you have to boot them for the greater good.
    - castis 9y ago
      Those people and that scenario have nothing to do with what I'm talking about. An unrelated end user of a product should have no power over a persons work status just because they don't like the product. > the greater good subjectivity at its finest
      - emh68 9y ago
        Oh I see, yeah I agree. “Person responsible for X should be fired” is something I see all the time, but it never occurred to me that it might be a serious request.
  - toss1 9y ago
    Really? This is not only a worse-than-useless, waste-of-user-time feature on its own, but it actively interrupts the user to get their attention! So, this PM decided to put into a production environment a feature that interrupts a customer's workflow for no good benefit. It doesn't even benefit Microsoft, so he's not even being a bandit. This is the very definition of stupid. Hurt the other guy, hurt yourself, for no benefit to either [1]. So, why would or should any employer continue to pay a person who performs such an obviously stupid action in a production environment to continue in the same position? We may have a right to jobs if we continue to produce output that benefits the customers and employer, not simply because we continue to exist. Start harming your customers and/or employers, and why should you continue to receive their resources? [1] http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/serendipia/Stupidity.html http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/serendipia/Stupidity.html
lesiva 9y ago
Agreed. The whole piece was emotional, but just reading that statement took it to irrational. I think the underlying point of the article is that the experience of using Cortana could be improved, and Microsoft should be providing explicit next steps at every phase so that you aren't left wondering what's going on. I'd agree with that. But claiming someone should be fired is ridiculous, especially considering that the author still doesn't know what the feature does and it could still pleasantly surprise him. It may just need an additional dialog explaining what to expect next. I assume the feature gives you desktop notifications when the package transitions between tracking stages, and even if that's all the functionality it provides it'd still be more useful than manually checking the tracking website yourself.
- WorldMaker 9y ago
  It also shows the package tracking information on the Home tab as a card. The flow that the Notebook tab tells Cortana what to pay attention to and the Home tab shows information about the things Cortana is paying attention is a subtle one, but I suppose one UX designers would assume people pick up that Notebook acts like a giant Settings area and Home is the focus area. Also, there is a happy path where Cortana does pick up things like tracking numbers from email automatically without having to manually enter them into the Notebook. Though it's easy to miss that happy path, because it also surfaces primarily as cards on the Home tab. (Though Outlook.com now has deeper, more direct, integration than that, showing the tracking cards directly above the email; Outlook (OG) has something like that in Preview, though not yet Cortana connected, and the Windows Mail app looks like it will pick up the feature eventually, too.)
  - ethbro 9y ago
    I'm going to generalize a bit here and say that "smart" features have decreased usability, as aside from single-focus products (e.g. Mint) no one seems to priotize deep discoverabity when the "smart" path fails. Example A: MS trying to funnel all system settings through the search box. If that can't find it because I didn't type in the correct "1996 adventure game"-style keywords, I now have Control Panel (legacy), the Settings app (Win 8+?), and a hodgepodge of single-purpose Metro-ized settings pages.
mikestew 9y ago
I think there are times when a firing is appropriate, as sometimes folks end up in a position for which they are obviously not well-suited. Let’s take as an example the PM that broke party chat on the Xbone when it was released. IMO, assuming the design matched the implementation, it is reasonable to question whether the PM had ever used the previous Xbox 360 or had ever played games on a console at all. I’m not saying Microsoft should boot them out of the company, but they sure as hell shouldn’t be writing specs for games consoles anymore. So “fire” them from the Xbox team, let ‘em go back from whence they sprang, be it another division within MS or some other company. Now whether it is warranted in case, I cannot judge as I don’t use the product.
enraged_camel 9y ago
Does it? Why? People who perform poorly at their jobs should either be transferred to another position or terminated. Why is this a controversial position? If you are the product manager in charge of Cortana, you failed big time. Again, this should be incontroversial.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- coldtea 9y ago
  >People who perform poorly at their jobs should either be transferred to another position or terminated. Why is this a controversial position? First, because some random idiot on a blog post does not know whether the person "performed poorly at their job" in general. He just has a specific gripe. The other person might have done miracles in other parts of Cortana. There are such things as shipping priorities, and they're not determined by random blog posts or comments. Second, because people deserve chances for improving. Anybody at any current position has "performed poorly" at this or another project earlier on. Terminating or transferring them only makes sense if they don't get to improve, which a random blog post can't determine. >If you are the product manager in charge of Cortana, you failed big time. Again, this should be incontroversial. That's why companies don't base their decisions on random posts or comments.
  - alexssung 9y ago
    > First, because some random idiot on a blog post does not know whether the person "performed poorly at their job" in general. He just has a specific gripe. The other person might have done miracles in other parts of Cortana. There are such things as shipping priorities, and they're not determined by random blog posts or comments. I'd say the _Product Manager_ of Cortana has performed poorly at their job if the released product (Cortana) is bad. And yes, Cortana is bad. > Second, because people deserve chances for improving. Anybody at any current position has "performed poorly" at this or another project earlier on. Terminating or transferring them only makes sense if they don't get to improve, which a random blog post can't determine. Cortana was first released over 3 years ago. That is plenty of time for a chance at improvement. > That's why companies don't base their decisions on random posts or comments. Companies should base their decisions on customer feedback, and so far all the feedback I've seen on Cortana is that it's downright terrible.
thisisdallas 9y ago
I agree. I could just as easily write up an emotional medium post talking about how Cortana is amazing because I can simply add calendar events using my voice. I could then say, "The pm in charge should be the CEO!!!1!!111".

> The Product Manager in charge of this feature should be immediately fired. I hate this kind of writing. It undermines the otherwise good point the author has.

johndavidback 9y ago

Fair point. I use a little hyperbole to emphasize the fact that a product with an incredible global reach should default to well-planned and executed features, particularly if they are sprung upon you with desktop alerts. Hate it or not, someone did a very, very bad job here. Most likely many someones.

nerflad 9y ago
I agree with you that it should be implemented better, though I've honestly come to expect this from Windows. It's just a bit extreme considering you submitted it to HN, where the people directly involved actually have a chance of seeing it.
- 0xCMP 9y ago
  I can see why he did it. These aren't beginners. They're experienced developers and managers. If you work at one of the top 5 tech companies in the world on a product most of the computing world uses then maybe this shouldn't be acceptable. Why is it that this is acceptable for Microsoft to publish? It's not and what makes it worse is that it often gets abandoned. If they had a history going back and finishing this or making it better I'd give them a pass, but I doubt without something bordering vitriolic appearing on HN/Medium no one will care. I think that's the real complaint. Doesn't anyone care about the experience anymore? I feel like it's only Apple who both cares and has executed a strong long term plan for this. I opened my iPhone X and that thing worked. I actually love all the little things they added. It is hard to do that, but it's these little things which make the product special or down-right frustrating when they don't.
  - symfoniq 9y ago
    If the current MacBook Pro is any indication, I’m not sure how much Apple cares about experience, either. I’m still trying to figure out who that machine is made for: Horrible keyboard, gimmicky Touch Bar, worse battery life than the previous generation, no ports relevant to existing devices (including Apple’s own flagship smartphone)... I don’t think Apple can be accused of sweating the details anymore, either.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - 0xCMP 9y ago
      Very true, but Apple is consumer focused, vs Microsoft is enterprise focused, and so I think we still have a better chance for Apple to react to this than Microsoft would have.
- Apocryphon 9y ago
  So maybe they might actually fix it.
hitekker 9y ago
Don't be too hard on yourself. The same people saying you shouldn't reproach clear and obvious incompetence are the same people calling you, the author, "some random idiot"... in this very comment section.
contextfree 9y ago
(used to work at Microsoft, not on Cortana but have friends that did/do) Broken UX flows like this are usually distributed among a bunch of different teams (each with their own PMs) so that no "the product manager" actually exists, and it's organizational seams you're running into. In many cases the individual PMs on each team are well aware of the problems with the overall flow and want to fix them, but find it hard to make room in their "day jobs" for coordinating with other teams to actually do so. So if anything I bet many of them are happy your post could give them more ammo to push prioritizing fixes. I'm only somewhat familiar with Cortana but I think your example broken flow crosses four or five teams’ feature areas, and I know that some of the problems you identified have had solutions proposed/designed/even prototyped by various teams for years now, but I guess so far nobody's managed to get all the teams to commit to any one particular solution. IMO though the biggest sin in your story wasn't that a broken flow for a feature existed, but that someone decided to push/spam a notification that led to said broken flow (and that someone else set up an incentive structure that drove that decision).

knieveltech 9y ago

It certainly does nothing of the sort. There should absolutely be some kind of consequence associated with this kind of flaming dumpster fire making it's way into a production environment.

castis 9y ago
Well then the entire world should rejoice that people like yourself and OP are not in control of other peoples livelihood.
- emh68 9y ago
  What about all the people who have lost their jobs after a company goes under due to horrible product teams? If someone isn’t pulling their weight, you have to boot them for the greater good.
  - castis 9y ago
    Those people and that scenario have nothing to do with what I'm talking about. An unrelated end user of a product should have no power over a persons work status just because they don't like the product. > the greater good subjectivity at its finest
    - emh68 9y ago
      Oh I see, yeah I agree. “Person responsible for X should be fired” is something I see all the time, but it never occurred to me that it might be a serious request.
- toss1 9y ago
  Really? This is not only a worse-than-useless, waste-of-user-time feature on its own, but it actively interrupts the user to get their attention! So, this PM decided to put into a production environment a feature that interrupts a customer's workflow for no good benefit. It doesn't even benefit Microsoft, so he's not even being a bandit. This is the very definition of stupid. Hurt the other guy, hurt yourself, for no benefit to either [1]. So, why would or should any employer continue to pay a person who performs such an obviously stupid action in a production environment to continue in the same position? We may have a right to jobs if we continue to produce output that benefits the customers and employer, not simply because we continue to exist. Start harming your customers and/or employers, and why should you continue to receive their resources? [1] http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/serendipia/Stupidity.html http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/serendipia/Stupidity.html

lesiva 9y ago

Agreed. The whole piece was emotional, but just reading that statement took it to irrational. I think the underlying point of the article is that the experience of using Cortana could be improved, and Microsoft should be providing explicit next steps at every phase so that you aren't left wondering what's going on. I'd agree with that. But claiming someone should be fired is ridiculous, especially considering that the author still doesn't know what the feature does and it could still pleasantly surprise him. It may just need an additional dialog explaining what to expect next. I assume the feature gives you desktop notifications when the package transitions between tracking stages, and even if that's all the functionality it provides it'd still be more useful than manually checking the tracking website yourself.

WorldMaker 9y ago
It also shows the package tracking information on the Home tab as a card. The flow that the Notebook tab tells Cortana what to pay attention to and the Home tab shows information about the things Cortana is paying attention is a subtle one, but I suppose one UX designers would assume people pick up that Notebook acts like a giant Settings area and Home is the focus area. Also, there is a happy path where Cortana does pick up things like tracking numbers from email automatically without having to manually enter them into the Notebook. Though it's easy to miss that happy path, because it also surfaces primarily as cards on the Home tab. (Though Outlook.com now has deeper, more direct, integration than that, showing the tracking cards directly above the email; Outlook (OG) has something like that in Preview, though not yet Cortana connected, and the Windows Mail app looks like it will pick up the feature eventually, too.)
- ethbro 9y ago
  I'm going to generalize a bit here and say that "smart" features have decreased usability, as aside from single-focus products (e.g. Mint) no one seems to priotize deep discoverabity when the "smart" path fails. Example A: MS trying to funnel all system settings through the search box. If that can't find it because I didn't type in the correct "1996 adventure game"-style keywords, I now have Control Panel (legacy), the Settings app (Win 8+?), and a hodgepodge of single-purpose Metro-ized settings pages.

mikestew 9y ago

I think there are times when a firing is appropriate, as sometimes folks end up in a position for which they are obviously not well-suited. Let’s take as an example the PM that broke party chat on the Xbone when it was released. IMO, assuming the design matched the implementation, it is reasonable to question whether the PM had ever used the previous Xbox 360 or had ever played games on a console at all. I’m not saying Microsoft should boot them out of the company, but they sure as hell shouldn’t be writing specs for games consoles anymore. So “fire” them from the Xbox team, let ‘em go back from whence they sprang, be it another division within MS or some other company. Now whether it is warranted in case, I cannot judge as I don’t use the product.

enraged_camel 9y ago

Does it? Why? People who perform poorly at their jobs should either be transferred to another position or terminated. Why is this a controversial position? If you are the product manager in charge of Cortana, you failed big time. Again, this should be incontroversial.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
coldtea 9y ago
>People who perform poorly at their jobs should either be transferred to another position or terminated. Why is this a controversial position? First, because some random idiot on a blog post does not know whether the person "performed poorly at their job" in general. He just has a specific gripe. The other person might have done miracles in other parts of Cortana. There are such things as shipping priorities, and they're not determined by random blog posts or comments. Second, because people deserve chances for improving. Anybody at any current position has "performed poorly" at this or another project earlier on. Terminating or transferring them only makes sense if they don't get to improve, which a random blog post can't determine. >If you are the product manager in charge of Cortana, you failed big time. Again, this should be incontroversial. That's why companies don't base their decisions on random posts or comments.
- alexssung 9y ago
  > First, because some random idiot on a blog post does not know whether the person "performed poorly at their job" in general. He just has a specific gripe. The other person might have done miracles in other parts of Cortana. There are such things as shipping priorities, and they're not determined by random blog posts or comments. I'd say the _Product Manager_ of Cortana has performed poorly at their job if the released product (Cortana) is bad. And yes, Cortana is bad. > Second, because people deserve chances for improving. Anybody at any current position has "performed poorly" at this or another project earlier on. Terminating or transferring them only makes sense if they don't get to improve, which a random blog post can't determine. Cortana was first released over 3 years ago. That is plenty of time for a chance at improvement. > That's why companies don't base their decisions on random posts or comments. Companies should base their decisions on customer feedback, and so far all the feedback I've seen on Cortana is that it's downright terrible.

thisisdallas 9y ago

I agree. I could just as easily write up an emotional medium post talking about how Cortana is amazing because I can simply add calendar events using my voice. I could then say, "The pm in charge should be the CEO!!!1!!111".