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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."
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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
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.