[Sigia-l] Putting the "Graphic" back with"Designer"(was:thelesser importance of home pages)

[Listera]

Christopher Fahey:

> What's broken? In the real world, that is.

Creative, Dell, Best Buy, Microsoft, etc.

Creative thought they would do better because their products incorporated
things "missing" from the iPod like FM tuners and audio recording. Dell
thought they would do better because their product was cheaper than the
iPod. Best Buy thought they would do better because their online store could
sell to many more players than just the iPod. Microsoft thought they would
do better because multiple players using multiple online stores, all using
the Microsoft standard, would easily outsell the iPod ecosystem.

They all failed.

Not because some specific implementation of their product design was better
or worse than the iPod, but because of their fundamental inability to
understand the strategic issues when designing their respective products.
They were all designing one isolated, disjointed, insulated aspect of the
music listening experience, with their respective blinders on.

No one really cares how eye-pleasing one's battery icons are (as implemented
by a graphic design master-of-one-trade) if the strategic design direction
is fundamentally flawed.

So what's broken is the notion that you can put a bunch of "specialists" in
a room and if you keep it locked up long enough, they'll turn up with a good
product.

Without strong design leadership that can understand all aspects of the
strategic problem and think through various issues from different angles in
an integrated way, what you get is failure, of masters-of-one-trade.

----
Ziya

"Innovate as a last resort."