Great Demo, Lousy Experience (and vice versa)

Michael Gartenberg | June 28, 2007, 11:46 AM

I've been spending a lot of time about different technologies and the things that people use and how they use them. There are two different trends that I'm starting to see and I'll sum them up at the extreme.

1. Stuff that demos really well but doesn't work well at all in practice.

2. Stuff that makes for a less impressive demo but works great in practice.

Often, the former gets noticed, the latter gets ignored. Why does this happen? Well, often the folks designing the product clearly never used it in a real world scenario. Likewise, reviewers often look at things only superficially and don't get the real world probelms that exist.

Let's look at a real problem. Reading the NY Times in a mobile scenario. Try the following. Go to your phone or blackberry or whatever and enter the following URL. mobile.nytimes.com (it won't work on a PC, you'll get re-directed to the main page). Take your time. I'll wait. Now go to nytimesriver.com (it's not updated at the moment but you'll get the idea). Which looks sexier? No doubt the Times offering. But spend some time, try to read the Times on both and you'll immediately conclude the nytimesriver is the better solution. (there's a quantifiable reason why it's better that has to do with the difference in content creation, content reference and when referencing the ability to skim and the need to go deep, but I'll save that for another post).

Why? I doubt anyone who developed the Times application reads the Times that way (or why make me click through a story five times to read it?). On the other hand Dave Winer wanted to read the NY Times on the go, found existing solutions lacking and decided to build a better mousetrap himself (I wish I were one of those people capable of doing that).

This is only one example, I could give more but I'd like to see simpler, less flashier things that work better. I'm finding myself going more and more "retro" with simpler, less flashy solutions just so I can get more and more done. More on this to come.

Update - Dave Winer comments to me via email

For example, investors are a lot like the press people, if an idea looks sexy they invest, but rarely invest in things for their utility.

The next question, ultimately, is how can users who want utility fund development that serves their needs. When we break through there, it will be as big a deal as blogging was for journalism, for example.

Yep. I totally would pay for nytimesriver.com. Not sure how much (since I'd be paying for utility not content) but I know it's something that could be valuable enough to be a business for someone. It's one of the issues TiVo has had. You're not paying for content, you're paying for utility like EPG and pause live TV. Much harder to sell IMHO (and backed by data).