[Sigia-l] Ammo

[Listera]

We often get asked why a company should spend money on usability,
architecture, etc? Inevitably they ask for justification via ROI figures,
which often means someone will post desperately here about 'research' or
'numbers' on this or that.

Of course, very few people ever figure out the cost of not having a good
usability/architecture or the cost of having a bad one. Since this is often
the norm, it rarely gets inserted into the equation.

Anyhow, the reason I'm recounting all this is that while there have been
many examples of atrocious usability/architecture/purpose integration
tanking companies during the dotcom era (think Pathfinder, Pop.com, Pseudo,
VerticalNet, etc), here's one current, highly-visible and absolutely
destined to flop, doing so in slow-mo before our very eyes: MovieLink. The
gazillion-dollar movie downloading contraption concocted by five top
studios. (And let's assume that they are not doing this nefariously just to
create the precedent of a flop for their own arguments for draconian DRM
measures.)

While I can go into the details myself, here's a brief account by Stewart
Alsop (a notoriously lousy predictor, but right on the money here) from
Fortune, "Hollywood's Latest Flop":

<http://www.fortune.com/fortune/alsop/0,15704,395304,00.html>

So, the next time marketing has a 'brilliant' idea they want to rush on, you
can email them the article to show why spending millions on a bad idea won't
make it any better.

Best,

Ziya