Slashdot Mirror
The Technology Hype Cycle
jira writes "What does it take for a new gadget to be succesfull on the market? Which technologies will become part of everyday life in the future? BBC investigates the Techology Hype Cycle."
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
The "technology hype cycle" is fairly easy to shortcut if you have independent testers *use* the product instead of just releasing it to the market. For example, anyone who *used* the Audrey for any period of time could have told you that it would be a complete flop. It was underpowered, slow, and overall useless. OTOH, Apple made sure that people (especially Jobs himself) *used* the iPod before release. Changes were made based on that usage, and the product was better for it.
Of course, that's no guarantee of success. It's quite possible that the product will fail because people don't "get it". In that case you have to watch what your focus groups do. Do they sort of bumble with the thing, with no idea what they're doing? Would they actually keep using it if they weren't forced to? Do they make use of most of the features, or do they ignore them? Most of this can be found by quiet observation of the user with the device. Don't answer questions. Just let them figure it out.
If there's little that can be done about the complexity, then you're going to need a good advertising campaign. Manuals will help, but they only come *after* the purchase. It's much better to explain why they need the device before purchase so that they'll jump right in with the designed goals in mind.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
It's more than marketing. If it were just marketing, we wouldn't have grocery stores any longer; we'd all be using that home delivery service that Whoopi Goldberg was plugging to pay $10 for a six pack of coke.
Marketing can make people aware of a new type of product or make people aware of a problem they didn't know they had before (this was really successful back in the early 1900s when razor companies convinced American women they had to shave their legs and armpits), but it's not the only problem.
It seems to me that what is successful (for the products they showed) is related to a simple, distinctive product that offers something tangible. The iPod can play music and store a lot more than Walkmans. You actually pay for it, so you know what you get. When you buy a song on ITMS, you buy it; not you have the right to listen to it until you stop paying your bill. This is why Apple's ITMS was more successful than the other record companies' earlier attempts.
They talked about satellite radio not being as popular. I think the problem is you have to buy the product (the head unit), plus get a subscription. Barriers of entry are high, and then its one more bill that you pay every month. With DVRs (which are cool, but didn't get adopted as fast as DVDs), many consumers aren't quite sure what they're getting because the category and pricing schemes aren't able to overcome the idea of just going to the store and buying a DVD. Aha! Tangible.
Because of subscriptions and other ways of extracting reoccurring sources of revenue from the consumer, it's the business model that drives product adoption just as much as marketing.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
It goes something like this: some new technology starts to look like the next big thing. Journalists hype it to the moon since it gives them something "truly revolutionary" to talk about. As a result, expectations get all blown out of proportion.
Then when the technology inevitably fails to live up to the hype within some ridiculously short timeframe, they have yet another big story to promote: "Is XYZ a hopeless failure?". Two stories for the price of one!
The moral is not to believe what you read in the papers. Sure, there are plenty of revolutionary technologies emerging, but these things take much, much longer than the press would have us believe.
Peer Pressure
Not so. They existed, certainly, but well-entrenched? Not really. And only one had anything like enough storage to hold more than a single album (the Nomad, which I seem to remember was first). And even then, the ones that had capacity had nowhere near the correct form factor.
I know all of this, because I'd been trying to justify getting an MP3 player for month, but couldn't bring myself to do it because I knew that whilst technologically pretty, they were functionaly useless. Then the iPod came out and I knew immediately I wanted one. Could easily fit in a pocket, and could hold a ton of music? Yep - the first of the players to be truley functional. I only had a Windows PC at the time and there was no way for them to talk. I bought an original 5Gig iPod the same day XPlay hit beta.
Oh, and I've since gone to OS X too, returning to Apple after a gap of about seven years. It's up for debate how much of the iPod's quality acted as a trojan horse there.
Cheers,
Ian
Somehow, it seems appropriate that while I'm writing this, the Microsoft TCO of Linux ad keeps showing.
What I think is most unfortunate is when a company hypes a product, with features people actually want, delays it, then finally releases it, but not as good as promised. Microsoft has done this in the past, but it looks like they may be taking the time to get Longhorn up to snuff.
It will be interesting to see if Half-Life 2 lives up to the hype.
--
Complete an offer, get a free Orkut invite, Gmail invite, and a copy of The Core Media Player Pro, to boot!
damn I ramble on a lot.
I second that. I don't have an online reference, but if any of you can get your hands on a textbook "Clinical Pharmacology" by DR Lawrence, you will find a similar graph plotting the popularity of any new drug that is introduced into clinical practice.
First, it is the panacea for every disease under the sun; then it becomes evil incarnate for all the side effects and adverse effects it causes. Finally, it finds its place in the spectrum of known drugs, with its own benefits and risks.
In my opinion the iPod is a perfect example of marketing over features. Face it, the iPod has fewer features then players with a lower price, people buy it because they dont even know that the Rios etc are out there.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
1: the dvd.... people were pissed off with tapes jaming and pops and hisses on vinal. They liked the compact medium and durability of cd. DVD was ripe for the picking, it had already been sold when they sold the CD.
For next gen (bluRay/holodisk) to take of there will either have to be a huge improvement in quality, drop in cost, or some other compelling reason to switch.
(how may music albums are sold on dvd?)
2:... Satalite radio, never heard of it, sounds crap, I have an Ipod with shite loads of music, I have internet radio piss off I'm not buying that crap.
3: Ipod £200, a bit expensive, I'm going to wait for the price to come down. Maybe I'll get a pda.
Top tip if you want to make a few bucks. Ipod x ICE (in car entertainment).
1 micro pc case (£40)
1 mothor board (£40)
1 100 gb hdd drive (£50)
1 amp or two (£80)
1 display, 1 wifi usb card. (unknown)
~£300, or about the same price as a crap incar multi change unit with mp3 support.
If it runs linux then...
You should be able to link up usb or bluetooth to you phone for hands free.
Link to you ipod, portable mp3 player, usb keyring etc..
Link to the house, or another car, or the internet with WiFi.
Add a usb CD drive if you like, inface add just about any usb device you can think of.
It's a killer because:
It's the same price as current munti changer systems.,
It's interoperable (try mixing and matching current ICE components).
Current systems in the market are crap.
Mp3 playes are just taking off.
Do it well, and no-one will have a standard radio or cd/tape player in the car in 5 years time.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
when some company comes out with the cell phone that doubles as an mp3 player (downloads songs as easily as ringtones), bye-bye iPod.
I wouldn't say it's quite as easy as having an iPod, but Nokia has multiple mp3 playing phone models. And the original N-Gage plays games too.
-- I Am Not A Terrorist.
The iPod got about 40gb of music and about half an hour playtime. The phones got 32mb and about 2-3 hours playtime.
iPod market will never be replaced by the phone market. Same reason the real hifi component market is not replaced by the boom-box market. iPod buyers will always want the extra quality that a dedicated product can give them. A gadget that tries to do everything will always end up doing all of them less.
Two different markets.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
You could have millions of features on a device as long as it's easy to use.
IMO, the iPod's biggest advantage is its simple hardware interface combined with a menu system. You could easily pack more features under an "Advanced" menu, and the physical layout wouldn't have to change at all.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
"Are all the other devices essentially slaves to the PC - which is the Microsoft vision - or do the functions become spread out to smart consumer devices through the home?
5 7&tid=133&tid=103
The article uses the word "slave" when referring to something dealing with technology. Attempting to read the article in California may result in you breaking county law in your locality. http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/11/25/00142
"After three days without programming, life becomes meaningless." - Tao of Programming
But hey it works. Companies delayed adopting OS/2 because MS promised that 95 was going to be so much better. People are delaying switching to Linux/BSD/OSX because MS promises longhorn will be so much better.
This is hardly unknown in business. Harly davidson made bikes so bad they didn't even work out of the factory. Car companies have for years created models that killed people and they are still around. Air travel is the most dangerous form of transport around (the claim that it is the safest is based on distance travelled, bit mean when you can spend an hour in a car and still be in the heart of amsterdam but an airbus will be two countries away) based on trips and yet most people think it is safe.
Surviving hype depends on how much we want the hype to be real. We want airtravel to be safe or else we wouldn't do it. It also depends on how we experience the disappointment. iPod buyers only experience it when they are in the shop and see products at half the price. Not often enough to force them to consider that the iPod is not worth the hype.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.