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If you're not interested in the criticism offered, a good strategy is to politely thank everyone for their comments, possibly briefly explaining why you made th

by jnovek 18y ago

If you're not interested in the criticism offered, a good strategy is to politely thank everyone for their comments, possibly briefly explaining why you made the decisions you did. An even better strategy is to completely ignore them. Especially if the complainers aren't and never will be your users.

mechanical_fish 18y ago
+1 for that. The proper strategy, referencing my own post above, is to adopt the role of Apologist. Say that you're sorry that people reacted poorly to this beta of your app. Say that you'll take the criticism to heart. Make some joke about how you should have shown the app to your art-school friend before launching it. Then, shut up. Don't escalate. Don't feed the mob. Then, make some fairly basic changes in the graphics. Change the color and the fonts and fix the alignments. It'll take an hour at most, it'll probably make the app look better, and it will suggest that you're trying to listen to your customers and do the right thing. Obviously, if you want to win over a guy like Gruber (a design fanatic who spent several months agonizing over the font and color choices for his website) you'll have to do more extensive design work. But that's not the primary goal. The primary goal is to defuse the situation and avoid seeming hostile or egocentric.
- gruseom 18y ago
  But that's not the primary goal. The primary goal is to defuse the situation and avoid seeming hostile or egocentric. That makes a lot of sense and is really helpful. Hostile and egocentric (or at least defensive) are pretty much how he did come across. Plus incongruent (saying how amused he was when he obviously wasn't, and so on). There's a huge culture gap between the supercilious Apple snobs, whose haughtiness is a composite of everything bad ever said about Mac users, and the earnest outsider trying to justify himself and not realizing that he's only making things worse. For example, he mentions his years of experience and how many people use his data-entry apps, things that carry credibility in his culture but are just the sort of uncool things that are disdained in theirs. The whole thread is full of these crossed signals.

by jnovek 18y ago

mechanical_fish 18y ago

+1 for that. The proper strategy, referencing my own post above, is to adopt the role of Apologist. Say that you're sorry that people reacted poorly to this beta of your app. Say that you'll take the criticism to heart. Make some joke about how you should have shown the app to your art-school friend before launching it. Then, shut up. Don't escalate. Don't feed the mob. Then, make some fairly basic changes in the graphics. Change the color and the fonts and fix the alignments. It'll take an hour at most, it'll probably make the app look better, and it will suggest that you're trying to listen to your customers and do the right thing. Obviously, if you want to win over a guy like Gruber (a design fanatic who spent several months agonizing over the font and color choices for his website) you'll have to do more extensive design work. But that's not the primary goal. The primary goal is to defuse the situation and avoid seeming hostile or egocentric.

gruseom 18y ago
But that's not the primary goal. The primary goal is to defuse the situation and avoid seeming hostile or egocentric. That makes a lot of sense and is really helpful. Hostile and egocentric (or at least defensive) are pretty much how he did come across. Plus incongruent (saying how amused he was when he obviously wasn't, and so on). There's a huge culture gap between the supercilious Apple snobs, whose haughtiness is a composite of everything bad ever said about Mac users, and the earnest outsider trying to justify himself and not realizing that he's only making things worse. For example, he mentions his years of experience and how many people use his data-entry apps, things that carry credibility in his culture but are just the sort of uncool things that are disdained in theirs. The whole thread is full of these crossed signals.