Las Vegas as a Model for Products
Posted by Ivan Chalif in Best Practices, Customers, InterfaceThe BW and I took a trip to Vegas this summer (her first) as long weekend getaway. Our experiences there were quite different, even though we were together 99 percent of the time. Vegas is many things to many people and we had different expectations (from each other) going in and by the time we were headed home, we had different views about the experience.
On the outside, Las Vegas is flashy. A large, shiny diamond with many facets, twinkling in the light. Everything blinks or flashes or emits sound. Sometimes all three. Sometimes, all the time. Everything in Las Vegas is vying for your attention. Underneath that sheen, though, it is still very gritty, very unrefined.
The minute that you step off of your plane onto the jetway, you feel the heat. When you reach the terminal at McCarran airport, you feel the sudden shift in temperature as the air conditioning hits you full force. Then it’s the rows of slot machines. Only a few by comparison to a casino, but in the sparse area of an airport, their constant wave of chimes and chirps is a stark contrast to the standard airport experience.
The bombardment continues on the cab ride (even within the cab itself, via “coupon books”, maps, and billboards attached to the ceiling of the cab) to the hotel. Billboards for shows, neon signs for casinos, the visage of Donny & Marie or Penn & Teller emblazoned across the side of hotel towers and myriad ads for lawyers who can get you out of any trouble you have found yourself in during your trip to Sin City.
Unless you are sight- or hearing-impaired, you can’t escape it.
And so it goes even as you arrive at your destination, only more focused. See our shows! Join our VIP club! Sample our expansive seafood buffet! Free drinks at the tables and slots! In the end, it turns into white noise. A din that is undifferentiated from the sound of traffic on the freeway, but which you cannot avoid or turn off.
Products can be this way, too, in a couple of ways. One is how the product is marketed, but the other is how it is made.
On the marketing side, Vegas gave me the feeling of being at a tradeshow. The leaflets being handed out are a little less risque (at tradeshows), but the intent is the same–”Come by our booth and check out our goods; we’ve got the best/hottest/fastest/cheapest (depending on your preferences) thing in town.”
There is also a sense of one-upmanship going on, too. Instead of a product being judged on it’s own merits, there is a comparison to how much better a product is than it’s competition. I’ve always disliked that type of positioning. Not only does it have the potential to bring a specific competitor into the picture if they were not already there, but it doesn’t allow the product to be evaluated on what problem it solves for the user.
Let me give some Vegas-style examples (and some commentary):
- Loosest slots in town
Really? Your slot machines payout more often than other casinos?
- More rooms
OK, but doesn’t that equate to being more crowded? Why is that good for me?
- The best shows in Las Vegas
What makes a show the best? What metric is used to validate this: laughs per minute or volume/duration of clapping per show?
- The most stores
This one is pretty easy to metric, but who goes to Las Vegas to shop. Most of the stores I have seen fall into two distinct categories: stores that already exist in my hometown or stores that are so expensive that most vistors would only be able to purchase something AFTER winning big at the loosest slots in town. When was the last time you bought a Faberge egg or a $4000 handbag?
- Something for everyone in your family!
I laugh at this every time. There is a reason that Las Vegas is known as Sin City. Sure, there’s a thin plastic veneer over the top that makes it all look sparkly clean and family-friendly, but really, what part of gambling, drinking, smoking, scantily-clad folks (visitors and staff) is family-friendly? I’m an adult and I enjoy one or more of those (you can try to guess which one(s), but even if you don’t partake of any of those, they are pervasive. From the swimming pool and hotel lobby to the hostesses to the flashing billboards.
That last one also is a big problem for products. Great products start off solving a challenging problem for users, but as a product matures, it typically expands to meet a broader set challenges, but in doing so, loses focus on what made it successful in the first place. Microsoft Word is a good example of how this happens. It started off a solid, Every subsequent release offers new features, which dilute the user experience and make the software more complex.
Complex is fine as long as it is the software that is handling the complex part. As software matures, the user experience should become easier; better, not worse.
Now Microsoft Word has hundreds, maybe even thousands of features, most of them unused by the majority of users. The most important feature, the one that has the greatest impact to users is not one in that is actually in the product. It’s ubiquity. The ability to share documents with almost any person who has a computer. Oh, and spell-check, but I would argue that feature causes more problems than it solves.
Products need to grow. The challenges that users face change over time and your product has to change, too. But be careful about what shape that change takes. It’s very easy to tack on features and capabilities. It’s more difficult to do it in a coherent way that actually simplifies using the product.
My suggestion to those of you who have both growing and mature products is to look at your product. Look it in the face as a user does and ask yourself, “Does my product look like Las Vegas? Am I just placing a thin veneer over the top to make it look better in the sales cycle or am I creating something that truly solves a problem for my users?”
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