Why many ideas suck
December 1st, 2007
There’s a post in French on Presse Citron about why RSS feeds will never be popular among “normal people” and it made me realized (once again) that not all ideas are good. Don’t worry, my point is not to say that RSS sucks. I use it all the time and can’t think about going back to “visiting a site”. So me, RSS is a huge time saver and it satisfies me.
It’s ok if a technology doesn’t make it to the mainstream. It’s what we call being in a “niche”. In the music industry, “niche bands” are called “alternative” or “underground”. They are no way bad, just not mainstream like Britney Spears.
But just like Britney Spears, some mainstream products simply suck. Yet, hundreds, thousands if not millions of people use them.
Many “geeks entrepreneurs” tend to look for a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist. Or they tend to come up with a cool product which will be used by a minority of geeks. So basically, their market is a smaller subset of an already tiny group. That’s not a lot of people. Does it mean that a “geekish” product will fail? Not necessarily. It’s more complicated than that.
So how do you know if your idea sucks? Simple. Don’t ask other geeks. Ask someone NOT in the domain you are working. If you’re coding an application, ask someone in electronics and vice-versa. Guy Kawasaki suggests (in his book - The art of the start) to ask women rather than men. Depending on what you’re planning to do, I’d say ask teenager girls. They are often “right”. In Japan, younger girls often “make or break” new technologies, trends and ideas.
One important thing to remember is not to ask your parents or close friends. They will always say it is a good idea and will rarely say that your idea totally sucks. Remember, they are your family/friends and they don’t want to hurt you.
Good ideas are… well good. They help people solve problems or enhance their lives. Think Tivo for example. It’s just a VCR that “works”. Most people can’t figure out how to fix the blinking clock on their VCR yet they use a Tivo without any problems. Same with iPods. There’s a wheel and a button - that’s it! How easy can it be?
How to screw up on something that was easy and is now hard to use? Appliances. Take a look at most modern ovens, washers, dryers and dishwashers. There are so many options crammed in a totally unfriendly interface that people get confused. Put an iPod style interface on them and leave just a single button and people will run to buy them. My dryer has probably 15 settings and I only use one. Unless my kids play with the dial and I don’t notice then I might use another - but that’s entirely by mistake. I’m a geek and I love buttons but NOT on a dryer. I just want the thing to dry my clothes. I have a “normal” and a “casual” setting. Can someone please tell me what’s the difference? “Hey honey, are those casual clothes or normal clothes?”
Current appliances are not well designed. They’re very hard for “normal people” to use.
I say “normal people” because let’s not remember that geeks are not normal people. We’re a minority who quickly understand and adopt any new technology. Maybe your DVD is connected to your TV via HDMI but I bet your mom’s DVD is hooked via RCA cables. So does HDMI suck? No but it’s still geared towards geeks, not normal people.
Whatever you do, talk about your idea.
Posted in Startups, business, first idea | Comments (2)
December 2nd, 2007 at 2:55 am
I was going to talk about why I disagree with this point about RSS, but I think you sort of make it for me: It’s not the technology, it’s how people use it.
The main argument he has against RSS being adopted by the masses seems to be that only geeks are using it now. This is true. But only geeks used computers 20 years ago, now everyone has one. Only geeks were on the Internet 10-15 years ago, now everyone has access. As these things became easier to use and had better interfaces, they started being adopted by the masses.
Despite his contention that RSS is 10 years old, I think we’re still in its infancy. I remember seeing Slashdot’s RDF feed many moons ago, thinking if I had a website I could use it to show headlines from that site. The idea of reading blog posts via RSS didn’t gain widespread attention until the number of blogs with feeds exploded.
I think it’ll be a while, but eventually in a few years RSS and other XML technologies are going to find uses that will appeal to the masses. There are already feed-like services (like Facebook’s news feed) that are immensely popular. Why wouldn’t RSS have a similar future?
RSS’s future (or Atom’s future, I don’t play favourites) is ahead of it, not behind. We just have to wait for that killer app that brings it mainstream.
December 11th, 2007 at 10:27 am
Great post Denis.
That’s what I’m starting to think about RSS too… maybe it will never interest normal people.
I also love the idea that suggest to ask women instead of men about a techno idea/product. The percentage of women “really” interested in technologies is pretty low, thus they will rarely like something just because it’s “cool” or “well thought out”. If the thing doesn’t bring them any advantage, they won’t show any interest to it.
Men on the other hand (and more precisely men with geek tendencies) will think that a techo product is incredibly cool but won’t necessarely find it useful. That’s precisely how I reacted about a product called Diigo. “Wow… really cool! That’s such a great idea and it works so well!” But in the end, it wasn’t useful to me at all.