Edge user vs. average user

Michael Gartenberg | April 26, 2004, 07:34 AM

Interesting point and rational. Except that it's not true. There's a techie market that will buy anything. I'm part of it. As a general rule there's a market for about 50,000 of anything. If it's cool, we buy it. The rest of the world, the millions of users, the masses and the folks that actually make something profitable are different. They don't buy out of cool. They buy out of function or need. Shocking!

By the way, that doesn't mean that the masses should be product designers. It's why I hate focus groups when testing new product ideas. They simply aren't capable of making the leap to where the paradigm might shift. On the other hand, they do tend to get it once it's explained to them and at the end of the day, it's the mass markets that make for successful products as opposed to niche ones. Why do you think it took so long for .MP3 players to make even the modest inroads they have made today? Designing to the edge group is usually a mistake but that doesn't mean every product needs to be vanilla either.

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Source: Edge user vs. average user
Link: http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011/2004/04/25.html#a7287

Michael Gartenberg demonstrateswhat happens when you talk with edge cases. They think the world is just like them. This is why designing products is so hard. Do you design for the edge case, or the "average person?" The thing is, I bet many people will buy hardware designed for the edge case. Why? Because it's cool