Comments on: Product Integration - Usability killer?

By: Back or Front? « Confessions of a Digital Immigrant

Back or Front? « Confessions of a Digital Immigrant — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 09:52:13 +0000

[...] of functionality. Gopal Shenoy, who writes a popular blog on Product Management, has an interesting example to [...]

By: Abhi

Abhi — Thu, 22 May 2008 15:09:47 +0000

I think the issue here is actually poor usability… convergence is going to be key in the 21st century - even Apple has come down from it’s high horse… the products apple is looking to drive the future [iphone, ipod touch] are convergence devices… even Front Row on OS X & Apple TV are on that road…

The same display to control everything would be pretty cool if more time was spent on make it more useable… also it seems like they have bugs in their routing system… if I were Toyota, I’d partner up with someone like Garmin to provide the GPS & Routing technology, and have my product team work with Garmin to provide an integrated, usable interface.

By: David Locke

David Locke — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 07:56:14 +0000

Does integration make sense? Does presenting the various views on a common display mean that the underlying functionality is integrated? No.

In the Toyota example, the radio controls could be integrated. But, the radio has nothing to do with the MAP (GPS) other than displaying some content. You don’t see any cell phone controls, but the MAP and the cell phone could be integrated, if you were augmenting the GPS with cell tower navigation. Maybe the AM/FM signals contain location data, integrating that would be interesting. But, as it is, the functions are not integrated.

Usability isn’t just an issue of the interface or view. Bad models give rise to bad interfaces. Too often interfaces are after the fact add ons developed by a graphics/interaction designer, instead of the developers that built the model. The former have to paper over model issues.

Personally, I want my cell phone to act like a phone. If it acts like a web browser or anthing other than a phone, it won’t be my phone.

By: Raj

Raj — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 02:37:29 +0000

Gopal,

Good point, I agree with you that it is very important to address usability and usefulness simultaneously. I’ve found that this is especially hard to explain to engineering teams, but PMs should persist in explaining it to engineering nevertheless.

I think balancing usability with usefulness (aka features) is one of the key areas where product managers can add a lot of value. I wrote a more detailed post about this in our new blog Practical Product Management. Keep up your excellent blog!

By: Usability vs Features - Product Management’s Role : Practical Product Management

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 02:27:42 +0000

[...] was an excellent post recently at the Product Management Tips blog by Gopal Shenoy that discusses how the usability of a product is severely affected when [...]

By: gopalshenoy

gopalshenoy — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 03:07:42 +0000

Sridhar,
If a product does not solve a problem or solves a problem nobody cares about (Sharper Image comes to mind at being very good at this and where are they now), it is not going to succeed no matter how usable it is.

But I think it is a fallacy to believe that you have to make the product usable first before you work on usability - they can and need to be done at the same time.

This is the excuse that I have heard over and over again from engineering - we will improve the usability later, let us make sure we get the product out first - this may have worked in the 90’s, but times have changed.

By: Sridhar Oruganti

Sridhar Oruganti — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 05:03:34 +0000

hi,
As a novice(aspiring a role) in Product Management,I always wonder whether usability or usefulness comes first.

By: Michael Ray Hopkin

Michael Ray Hopkin — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 22:54:41 +0000

I had a product that ran a similar course to the GPS system you describe. It started out as a straight-forward platform for a well-defined set of core solutions. However, over the next few years it became a huge, feature-filled mess. One of the biggest problems was the need to put any feature that might be used twice or more into the “platform” because “that’s where common features go.” When I took over I said “no” to a lot of groups and was not the most popular guy. But we made good progress.

I’ve since moved on to another company where I have control over the entire product set. It’s refreshing!