The Importance of Branding
Jason Dunn sums it up best:
Companies often bemoan Apple’s success in many markets, and wonder why they can’t achieve the same thing – they could, if they paid attention to the customer experience and stopped letting engineers and software developers make all the decisions.
You can’t really add anything to that, can you? I know I can’t.
Technorati Tags: branding, software, computers, technology
March 4th, 2007 at 4:20 am
Microsoft’s notes are interesting, as are Dunn’s comments. However, I’m amazed that people still think “engineers and software developers make all the decisions” WRT the “customer experience” … most if not all of the experienced developers I know would be willing to discuss such things with both management and customers, but in many cases we have very little say in the process or the end result – decisions are made by marketing and management after they listen to customers – or not, sometimes.
The old game of “telephone” (or “post office”) doesn’t begin to explain the distortions I’ve run across over the years because of this …
March 4th, 2007 at 3:13 pm
They don’t make all the decisions, but you can’t tell me they take input from consumers and produce a product like the Zune or an OS like Vista.
You just can’t.
People grab a Zune and the first thing they do is try to scroll the wheel around. It doesn’t work that way. People since it came out have suggested that it would’ve made more sense if they had just asked people beforehand. I find it hard to believe that they consulted anyone and came up with the Zune.
That’s just one of many examples.
Software dorks don’t have the final say with no other input, but I think Microsoft tends to listen less to users and more to their internal “we think this is great” yes men.