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I never understood why those hardware companies like Samsung won't bring in some talented or established external design team to work on the UI and general beha

I never understood why those hardware companies like Samsung won't bring in some talented or established external design team to work on the UI and general behavior of their software. I mean those guys have to realize that while software can be THE selling point of their devices, it will always fall short as long as it's just an afterthought.

aaronbrethorst 13y ago
Bolting on an external design team almost never solves the problem. They don't know how to navigate the company, the engineers don't trust them, and the execs rabidly defend their territory, which they see the acquisition encroaching on. The external team sticks around for 2 years (or whatever) until they've completed their earn-out, and then they bolt. Think about it like this: it takes the design team six months to figure out who to talk to. By then, the product team is locking down the next version of the product. The design team spends the next year prototyping beautiful features for v.Next. v.Next rolls around, compromises are made, the design team is inevitably broken up in a re-org, and, by the time they're ready to actually contribute, their two years are up, and they split.
wilfra 13y ago
Because they are designing by committee. Samsung surely already has World-class designers on their team. However those designers don't have dictatorial power to make hard decisions and tell entire divisions of the company that they are SOL. But that is what would be required for them to put out something great. That is why it is so much easier for startups to innovate than big companies.
- thirdsun 13y ago
  Well, I see that point, however it's just hard for me to grasp - clearly Samsung (like many other hardware manufacturers) have to acknowledge that their bottleneck often is design and UX. Yet they have all the resources to change that readily available. On the other hand, the longer I think about it the more I come to the conclusion that pleasing and intuitive design just isn't a major focus for those brands, and maybe not even for their customers: After all it's not something you can put as a bullet point or spec on the back of the packaging.
flyinRyan 13y ago
Because they've been infinitely more successful at waiting for others to solve it and then just stealing or buying the resulting solution.

aaronbrethorst 13y ago

Bolting on an external design team almost never solves the problem. They don't know how to navigate the company, the engineers don't trust them, and the execs rabidly defend their territory, which they see the acquisition encroaching on. The external team sticks around for 2 years (or whatever) until they've completed their earn-out, and then they bolt. Think about it like this: it takes the design team six months to figure out who to talk to. By then, the product team is locking down the next version of the product. The design team spends the next year prototyping beautiful features for v.Next. v.Next rolls around, compromises are made, the design team is inevitably broken up in a re-org, and, by the time they're ready to actually contribute, their two years are up, and they split.

wilfra 13y ago

Because they are designing by committee. Samsung surely already has World-class designers on their team. However those designers don't have dictatorial power to make hard decisions and tell entire divisions of the company that they are SOL. But that is what would be required for them to put out something great. That is why it is so much easier for startups to innovate than big companies.

thirdsun 13y ago
Well, I see that point, however it's just hard for me to grasp - clearly Samsung (like many other hardware manufacturers) have to acknowledge that their bottleneck often is design and UX. Yet they have all the resources to change that readily available. On the other hand, the longer I think about it the more I come to the conclusion that pleasing and intuitive design just isn't a major focus for those brands, and maybe not even for their customers: After all it's not something you can put as a bullet point or spec on the back of the packaging.

flyinRyan 13y ago

Because they've been infinitely more successful at waiting for others to solve it and then just stealing or buying the resulting solution.