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How did product manufacturers figure out what features users wanted most before modern technology? I'm guessing they didn't just set up a hidden camera in their

How did product manufacturers figure out what features users wanted most before modern technology? I'm guessing they didn't just set up a hidden camera in their homes and spy on them using it without their permission.

maccard 7y ago
They asked customers, and developed based on feedback from engineers, PMs, etc. As someone who works in an industry where people are vocal about what we should be doing, what people do and what people say they do are two different things. That, and products are different now. Software releases are daily if not more often, and to keep up with that sort of pace, you need data quicker than you can get in and analyze hundreds of people. There must be a middle ground though. It can't be necessary for me to share my location data with an app for analytics, nor should it be necessary for me to provide a timestamped personally identifiavle breadcrumb trail, just so a site can know how i navigated.
- Nextgrid 7y ago
  I noticed the quality of software has declined significantly in the last decade despite more and more telemetry & analytics being used. I'm not convinced analytics provide more valuable insights than committed customers' feedback.
  - saalweachter 7y ago
    They're answering two different questions: what do vocal customers say they want and what does the mean customer actually do? History is littered with beautiful products that only like five people actually wanted. I love the Chevy Volt, it fits my use case perfectly and is everything I would ask for in a hybrid right now, but it's sales numbers were objectively crap. It was basically a Chevy Cruze, but sold something like 1/20th the number of units over the same time period; I'm not surprised it was discontinued. Analytics-driven design leads to unexciting products that are useful enough to most people, with only occasional forays outside the mean when a subteam manages to launch an "unnecessary" feature with neutral metrics (until another subteam discovered the feature can be turned down with neutral metrics). It's not surprising companies love that style of development.
    - choward 7y ago
      > They're answering two different questions: what do vocal customers say they want and what does the mean customer actually do? The only question they're answering is "how do we maximize our profit?". If that happens to mean adding features users want that's just a nice side effect.
      - maccard 7y ago
        Claiming companies only care about profit is a bad faith argument. By that argument, the only reason the product exists in the first place is for profit. It's coming from the same place as claiming the only reason people work for companies is because they would starve to death otherwise. Distilling the argument to that point removes any opportunity to discuss the actual question being asked. I work on a live service, and we use analytics to determine the impact of a crash. If someonr crsshes, often they go straight to reddit and conplain If you took everything at face value online, you would never correctly assess the impact of an issue, and you'd spend all your time fixing rounding errors of issues rather than improving the experience for a large number of people. If you ask people, they'll tell you it's the worst issue, even if it's never happened to them.

maccard 7y ago

They asked customers, and developed based on feedback from engineers, PMs, etc. As someone who works in an industry where people are vocal about what we should be doing, what people do and what people say they do are two different things. That, and products are different now. Software releases are daily if not more often, and to keep up with that sort of pace, you need data quicker than you can get in and analyze hundreds of people. There must be a middle ground though. It can't be necessary for me to share my location data with an app for analytics, nor should it be necessary for me to provide a timestamped personally identifiavle breadcrumb trail, just so a site can know how i navigated.

Nextgrid 7y ago
I noticed the quality of software has declined significantly in the last decade despite more and more telemetry & analytics being used. I'm not convinced analytics provide more valuable insights than committed customers' feedback.
- saalweachter 7y ago
  They're answering two different questions: what do vocal customers say they want and what does the mean customer actually do? History is littered with beautiful products that only like five people actually wanted. I love the Chevy Volt, it fits my use case perfectly and is everything I would ask for in a hybrid right now, but it's sales numbers were objectively crap. It was basically a Chevy Cruze, but sold something like 1/20th the number of units over the same time period; I'm not surprised it was discontinued. Analytics-driven design leads to unexciting products that are useful enough to most people, with only occasional forays outside the mean when a subteam manages to launch an "unnecessary" feature with neutral metrics (until another subteam discovered the feature can be turned down with neutral metrics). It's not surprising companies love that style of development.
  - choward 7y ago
    > They're answering two different questions: what do vocal customers say they want and what does the mean customer actually do? The only question they're answering is "how do we maximize our profit?". If that happens to mean adding features users want that's just a nice side effect.
    - maccard 7y ago
      Claiming companies only care about profit is a bad faith argument. By that argument, the only reason the product exists in the first place is for profit. It's coming from the same place as claiming the only reason people work for companies is because they would starve to death otherwise. Distilling the argument to that point removes any opportunity to discuss the actual question being asked. I work on a live service, and we use analytics to determine the impact of a crash. If someonr crsshes, often they go straight to reddit and conplain If you took everything at face value online, you would never correctly assess the impact of an issue, and you'd spend all your time fixing rounding errors of issues rather than improving the experience for a large number of people. If you ask people, they'll tell you it's the worst issue, even if it's never happened to them.