another 12 reasons why products fail

9 October 2013, 10:49

Part two of the mini‐series I am running at the moment on the usual social channels—twitter, g+, linkedin and xing—called wishful thinking breeds failed products. It distils what I have witnessed and heard during 20 years in the (mobile) software industry.

By request, here are the second dozen of these for future reference. I am curious if you recognise some of this wishful thinking:

‘A list is a list is a list. Why do these two parts of our app need such a different design?’
‘Sure, it needs to be designed. Let’s get a [student, intern] for that.’
‘Our usability sucks. To fix that, maybe we can take some guidelines and apply them religiously.’
‘The features our most‐valued customers ask for are implemented asap, future plans be damned.’
‘The development is almost finished, now we need some design on top to jazz it up.’
‘We are the typical users.’
‘Let’s get the designer(s) to deliver 3 proposals, then we pick—and mix—what we like.’
‘For that you can export the data to excel.’
‘We did do user research; we asked them what they liked and not, and what was missing.’
‘We have been doing it like this for many years.’
‘We design in code.’
‘Really, users could also put some effort into using our software.’

ask not what this blog can do for you…

Now, what can you do? First of all, you can spread the word; share this blog post. Second, the series continues, so I invite you to connect via twitter, g+, linkedin, or xing, and get a fresh example of wishful thinking every workday.

And third, if you recognise that some of the wishful thinking is practiced at your software project and you can and want to do something about it, then email or call us. We will treat your case in total confidence.

ps: you can check out part one if you missed it.

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If you like to ask Peter one burning question and talk about it for ten minutes, then check out his available officehours.

portrait of Peter  Peter Sikking is an experienced
interaction architect. He unabashedly puts shipping great products at the centre of his design practice. He is known for his work for Google, Nokia, the Metapolator & GIMP open source projects, and startups.

Peter teaches, mentors, lectures and publishes. He enjoys working with small teams in an international setting, but also the fact that his work can be found on half a billion mobiles and creates billion‐dollar revenues.

What is Peter up to? See his /now page.

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