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If your articles main solution is “just build what the user needs / asks for” then it comes off as incredibly juvenile and naïve. This is one of the hardest pro

If your articles main solution is “just build what the user needs / asks for” then it comes off as incredibly juvenile and naïve. This is one of the hardest problems in product design. Also they seem fairly oblivious as to why these hardware apps are poorly made and require accounts. It’s because it’s expensive to write software and you already bought the product. Whatever keyboard light program you’re using costs real money for the company to make and maintain, and they’d like to keep costs down.

wpietri 4y ago
> This is one of the hardest problems in product design. True, but it is also one of the easiest. We have known for decades that you can get much better products with little effort. E.g., by doing basic user testing with 5 users and then iterating. We did that at a consumer-facing startup in 2010 by getting 5 people off Craigslist every Tuesday, and we learned useful stuff every week. By the following Tuesday, we'd have new things to try out. It worked great. And all of this was old knowledge even in 2010. Is it true that there are user problems and needs that can't be settled with a quick user test? Sure. There are all sorts of harder problems, with fancier research techniques to match. But given that so few places are even doing the basics, I say we should start there. Just build what (we think) the user needs, and then as soon as possible see if it worked.
UncleEntity 4y ago
> Whatever keyboard light program you’re using costs real money for the company to make and maintain, and they’d like to keep costs down. Then just release the hardware specs and let motivated users maintain it past it useful (to the manufacturer) life. Like, I have this Govee thermometer I bought to learn about Bluetooth that needs an app to read out the data stored in it. Last I looked nobody reverse engineered the protocol and they don’t have technical specifications because they want to keep you inside their ecosystem. Someday they will just give up the ghost and all these gadgets will be mostly useless (said thermometer transmits current readings so can always be read with a little work). Yet another of my “when I get motivated enough” projects… —edit— Counterpoint: I have a couple Bluetooth button things which did provide specs and it took me a couple hours of fiddling to get it to fully work with an example program, I push the button and the computer knows it, computer tells it to beep and it beeps, its built in “alert on dropping signal” (so you don’t lose your keys) just works, easy peasy.

wpietri 4y ago

> This is one of the hardest problems in product design. True, but it is also one of the easiest. We have known for decades that you can get much better products with little effort. E.g., by doing basic user testing with 5 users and then iterating. We did that at a consumer-facing startup in 2010 by getting 5 people off Craigslist every Tuesday, and we learned useful stuff every week. By the following Tuesday, we'd have new things to try out. It worked great. And all of this was old knowledge even in 2010. Is it true that there are user problems and needs that can't be settled with a quick user test? Sure. There are all sorts of harder problems, with fancier research techniques to match. But given that so few places are even doing the basics, I say we should start there. Just build what (we think) the user needs, and then as soon as possible see if it worked.

UncleEntity 4y ago

> Whatever keyboard light program you’re using costs real money for the company to make and maintain, and they’d like to keep costs down. Then just release the hardware specs and let motivated users maintain it past it useful (to the manufacturer) life. Like, I have this Govee thermometer I bought to learn about Bluetooth that needs an app to read out the data stored in it. Last I looked nobody reverse engineered the protocol and they don’t have technical specifications because they want to keep you inside their ecosystem. Someday they will just give up the ghost and all these gadgets will be mostly useless (said thermometer transmits current readings so can always be read with a little work). Yet another of my “when I get motivated enough” projects… —edit— Counterpoint: I have a couple Bluetooth button things which did provide specs and it took me a couple hours of fiddling to get it to fully work with an example program, I push the button and the computer knows it, computer tells it to beep and it beeps, its built in “alert on dropping signal” (so you don’t lose your keys) just works, easy peasy.