Fatal Flaws in Products

I had breakfast this morning with Nick Desbarats of Choicebot and we were discussing the Newton - Apple’s first version of the iphone - and Nick mentioned that the product had several “fatal flaws” - a term they use often at Choicebot to describe something that is not “ok”, or “I can live with”, but is a feature that actually eliminates the product from consideration.

It’s an important consideration.

In fact very few things are on a linear curve from “bad” to “great”.  Most things that I don’t engage with are because of one very specific fatal flaw - it is too expensive, it doesn’t integrate with my email, I can’t do x with it…  I can pinpoint a specific issue that deterred me from the product.

Oddly, I assume that the opposite is not true.  It is not one single feature that leads me to purchase or engage.  It has to be a couple of features - brand association, reliability, and a killer feature.

As we get closer to completion of Dex, I have been working hard on making sure our killer features are going to really impress people.  Now I’m going to be spending more time looking for fatal flaws that will turn people away.

Thanks Nick.

(PS - for more information on fatal flaws and great product selection, check out choicebot.com)

Tags: apple, choicebot, newton

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 9th, 2008 at 10:53 am and is filed under Features, design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.