User>Driven

Well, the votes are in and, unlike in the Democratic primaries, the winners and losers are clear from the voting. Thanks to everyone who nominated their most and least favorite products and services of 2007 and to everyone who voted on those nominations, either publicly via comments or privately via email.

Apple Wins the 2007 User>Driven Hall of Fame

With multiple nominations for Leopard, the iPhone, the iPod Touch and AppleTV, Apple had the critical mass to lift them head and shoulders among others. Yes, Apple is a company and not a product or a service, but the consistency of nominations and votes for their products and services prompted me to award them the title collectively.

"This is easy. The best product is Apples' Leopard OS. The worst is Vista. I would have said the iPhone is the best, but the opportunity to compare / contrast Apple and MS for each of their OS releases was too compelling."

"iPhone anyone??"

"I'd have to second (or maybe third) the iPhone as best. If this is truly a competition of design then it wins hands down. The small technical and pricing issues with it don't come anywhere close to outweighing the elegance of the UI and user experience. That said, I'm waiting (seemingly forever) for the 3G version :)"

"ON THE POSITIVE side, I'm going to nominate the iPod Touch, especially in light of the software upgrade announced on Tuesday. As soon as Some Bright Mind figures out how to rig an audio in microphone and get VOIP working on it, it will become my must-have device."

"I'm going to go ahead and cast my ballot for Leopard. I'm really most intrigued by its contrast with Vista, the way it shows off what an OS can do if it's not hobbled by coming from Microsoft."

HONORABLE MENTION goes to the Blueline Power Cost Monitor for the greenest product nominated. I used this at home and with what I learned I was able to reduce my electricity usage by about 25% on a sustainable basis. By translating usage into dollars in real time, it quickly helps you learn what sucks the money out of your wallet and look for ways to save.

Samsung u540 V CAST Music Phone Wins 2007 User>Driven Hall of Shame

There was enough complaining about this one particular low-cost music phone from Samsung that it had to be the winner overall. (It was nominated twice in the first two responses to the contest announcement.)

"Every time I pick it up I accidentally engage two or three different buttons. Most times, my fumbling gets me to one step short of snapping a photo. And if you are not careful, it will snap shut on you while you are trying to open it to answer the phone"

"Worst product is my wife's Samsung cell phone."

"I keep my votes to the...Samsung phone (worst), as it has only proved itself worse every day."

DISHONORABLE MENTION goes to iTunes movie rentals for their 24-hour policy. Renting movies right from your TV or your Mac and moving them easily between devices seems like a dream come true - unless you are one of those people who have a hard time finding two hours at a stretch to watch an entire movie (and who doesn't?). Pause your movie until tomorrow then try to pick it up again on a different device and poof! It's gone.

Nomination Awards 

As promised, User>Driven t-shirts go out to those who nominated the winners. Glen was the first to mention Apple in his post about Leopard vs. Vista. Gina (my sister - full disclosure) jumped in early with the Samsung u540. Congratulations and thanks for playing our game!

Thank you to everyone who wrote in nominations for the 2007 User>Driven Hall of Fame and Shame. We have 14 nominations for the Hall of Fame and 7 for the Hall of Shame. Post your votes below as comments by Saturday, February 9th. The votes will be counted and winners declared on the 10th. The original nominators of the winning products or services will receive User>Driven t-shirts from Zazzle.com!

Nominees for the 2007 Hall of Fame

• Traditional kitchen Egg slicer
  
• Black & Decker 18V Pivot Vac portable vacuum cleaner
• WordPress blog hosting service
• GM OnStar auto safety and security system
  
• Apple MacOS Leopard operating system software
  
• Apple iPhone connected device
  
• Apple iPod Touch wifi MP3 player
• AppleTV media server
  
• Original Microsoft Zune wifi MP3 player
  
• Eyefi 2-gig SD memory card with built-in 802.11 wireless
• Blueline Power Cost Monitor
• DD-WRT open source wireless router firmware
  
• Windows Home Server software
  
• Google Apps online applications

• Samsung u540 v cast music phone
• Apple iPhone connected device
  
• Apple iChat video chat service
• Apple iTunes movie rentals
  
• Microsoft Windows Vista operating system software
  
• Yahoo! online services
• 2008 Honda Accord automobile exterior design
  

Some of you may have noticed a few additions in the above lists. I've added my own nominations to both lists, things that impressed me (favorably or un-) in 2007.

I've nominated AppleTV for the Hall of Fame because it's worked so well for me as a music, video and photo server. It really has been a set-it-and-forget-it device for me from day 1. I wrote a blog entry on it back in March '07. I liked it then and I like it all the more as Apple has added new features. In particular, I was pleased when Apple announced movies (and TV shows, I hope eventually) for rent instead of for purchase through iTunes and directly through AppleTV. In my original comments I suggested that Apple should allow me to download content directly from the device instead of always requiring me to go to my Mac and use iTunes and then sync. They've listened to customers like me and gone and done that via a software upgrade. (Steve Jobs even mentioned customer feedback on this feature in his MacWorld 2008 keynote speech.) That's user-driven!

A feature of this same new service pushed me to add iTunes movie rentals to the Hall of Shame nominees, though. I approve of renting these kinds of bits, but the time limits on rentals make no sense to me. Rentals last up to 30 days from the time of download and 24 hours from the time you begin watching. I think a simpler model would be to allow you to watch it all the way through 1-3 times. This would prompt people to buy and download content that they mean to watch someday without worrying about it expiring before they get around to it. I think people will become reluctant to sign up for season passes to TV shows, for example, unless they religiously watch the shows as they arrive. The 30-day restriction bothers me less, though, than the 24-hour one. I personally have a trouble watching a 2-hour movie in one sitting. I have kids and it's hard for my wife and I to sit down to watch something until late in the evening, by which time we usually only have an hour or so before we have to go to bed. We have a good thing going now with Netflix where we can watch half of a movie, find a good place to pause, and pick the other half up the next evening. The Apple rental model, though, would cause the movie to expire just as we were sitting down to watch it on day 2. With the 30-day restriction in place, I just can't fathom the purpose of the 24-hour window. As far as I can see, it accomplishes nothing but keeping me away. This is a common restriction (Comcast OnDemand works the same way), but I had hoped for a more thoughtful approach from Apple.

I've also nominated the 2008 Honda Accord's new sheet metal for the Hall of Shame. This is a popular car that's been accused of blandness for many years, and I am assuming that Honda decided they needed to liven up the design a bit as they did with the smaller Civic. I personally find the new design simply ugly, however. They've taken an elegant and simple design and made it look bulky and complicated. It looks sporty from a few specific angles, but from most it looks quite awkward. The design is similar to, though edgier than, the new Toyota Camry with similar squared-off lower bodywork meant, I assume, to look like the custom bodywork you see on tuner cars. Given these cars are usually sold to more mature folks, though, this seems an like odd design direction. Maybe I'm just getting old. There are also design cues in the high beltline and overall bulk from the very successful Chrysler 300, and in the deep crease along the Honda's flanks and the bulbous rear on both cars that seem lifted directly from Chris Bangle's work at BMW - neither of which have impressed me.

See the reader comments at the bottom of the 2007 Hall of Fame and Shame announcement for background on why each of the other nominees should be considered. Post your votes as comments below by this Saturday and we'll soon find out what products and services you think were the best- and worst-designed in 2007. Thanks!

Well, it's that time of the year again and time for the second annual User>Driven Hall of Fame and Shame.

Last year, if you can still cast your mind back that far, a number of products and services were nominated by readers, but in the end, Netflix won the Hall of Fame award for their innovative CD-by-mail service and continuous improvement program for their online user interface.

The Comcast HD DVR won the Hall of Shame award for "frequent crashes, unresponsive remotes, poor navigation and searching, and the lack of basic features found on competing DVRs that have been on the market for many years."

Like last year, I'd like to invite readers to submit nominations for products or services that they thing are incredibly well or incredibly poorly designed. Last year's instructions, slightly updated:

Take 10 seconds right now and think of the one thing (product, service, website, software, gadget, whatever) that really works for you, that's so elegant in its design and operation it must be the result of a good feedback loop between the product designers and its intended users. Write down your first thought in reply to this entry.

Then take 10 more seconds and think of the one thing (same list) that really irks you every time you have to use it because the product designer clearly did not take the time to think about how it would really be used or try it out on one real-life person before getting it to market. Write that down too and hit reply.

Even if your favorite product or service isn't new for 2007, if you used it or became aware of it this year, put it down.

Last year I nominated a few items but this year it's all up to you. Just click the little comments link below to add a comment telling everyone why your most and least favorites are deserving of praise and/or scorn. Let's hear it!

This site promotes the concept of user-driven product development, the process of involving users directly in the creation and improvement of your product to ensure it solves their problems. Another (increasingly popular) definition of "user-driven" is the Web 2.0 notion of participation in the online world by everyday people in discussion forums, blogs, social network sites, podcasts, etc. In many cases, large businesses like YouTube have grown up entirely around user-generated content.

BusinessWeek has an interesting chart (based on Forrester data) showing which demographic groups participate more or less in these kinds of activities. Generally, you'll see that younger people have adopted Web 2.0 in greater numbers than their elders. This is unsurprising, of course, as they have adopted the Internet itself, email, and even computers much more readily than older folks who didn't grow up with them.

It's interesting, though, that people who create content (bloggers, podcasters) or who comment on or rate other people's content have a much broader profile across ages than those who use social networking sites. Also, use of RSS is quite low across the board, but it doesn't seem to have much of an age bias at all.

I often think that consumer product makers have forgotten that buyers and users don't necessarily have the same needs. In B2B product development, we often devise personas to test our proposed product designs against. A persona is a kind of stand-in or archetype for a group of customers or users. For example, the buyer of the company's email solution is someone in IT while the users are all of the employees. The buyer wants the right features at the right price. The users are unaware of the price, but they want the features and they also want the product to be usable.

Consumer product packaging these days is designed for two jobs only. It's designed to promote the product (see this great internal Microsoft video analyzing their own packaging foibles) and it's designed to protect against loss (through breakage, leakage, spoilage or theft) prior to the sale. It is not designed with the user in mind. Here are a few of my favorite examples of packaging that defeats the most basic attempts at using the product.

• My 7-year old likes these pre-packed meals called "Lunchables." They are incredibly bad for her but once in a while when we're at the store and she asks, I buy one for her. We get the package home and she can't, for the life of her, open it. Firstly, the glue they use to hold the box together is stronger than the cardboard it's made of, so instead of opening where it's supposed to, the box consistently shreds in inconvenient spots. Secondly, inside the box is a plastic tray sealed with more plastic that must be peeled back by hand without any overhang to get a grip on. This layer is needed to keep the food from falling through the holes in the front of the box designed to show off the food inside. That wouldn't be too bad except that underneath that plastic layer, each individual component of the meal inside is separately sealed in its own plastic bag. These inner plastic bags are tough, too. I can't get it open for her with my hands and have to resort to scissors or a knife. The whole point of Lunchables is that they are supposed to be portable and all of the food can be eaten without utensils. But you can't actually get at the food without tools. Usability of the packaging has been sacrificed to presentation and security.
  
• My daughter is also fond of those foil juice packs that come in Lunchables and that a lot of kids drink from. They're fine to drink from (if you avoid the kind that's almost 100% sugar) but getting the straw into them can be messy. They have a penetrable spot the straw is supposed to go into. Trouble is, using enough force to penetrate that spot almost always causes the straw to pierce the opposite side of the pack. So you end up with a leaky pack - not something my particular 7-year-old is fond of. Neat packaging idea. Not usable in practice.
  
• And as long as I'm on juice, plastic bottles of apple juice seem like a sensible, non-breakable idea until you try to open one. Several times, I have had to get out the pliers to break the grip the screw-top lids have on these bottles. I imagine at one time looser lids must have come off or leaked, but the answer can't be requiring tools or small arms to open them once you've gotten them home.
  
• I think I know why CDs are so impossible to open. I assume it's so they are difficult to open in the store and steal. Couldn't they invent a security system, though, that keeps losses down while not necessitating 5 minutes with an exacto knife to get your purchase out of the box when you get it home? I bought a tool that's actually designed to open CD packaging easily (so you know I'm not the only nut who has this problem). It worked okay, but I still had to peel off several plastic tape fragments with my fingernails.
  
• The worst case I've seen yet of a manufacturer going to great lengths to make something look good in the store and be impossible to unpack at home is those miniature doll-and-a-zillion-little-accessories kits both of my daughters are obsessed with. To display the doll and all of the little doodads that come with it (50% of which are lost within the first hour), the package has an open front. To keep all of that stuff from leaving the store without being paid for, the manufacturers have devised a diabolical web of invisible attachments. The dolls and any large accessories (such as furniture) are actually held in place by thin plastic-coated wires. These wires encircle the item in front and are tied together in the back, passing through the decorative cardboard backing. Behind the cardboard these wires are hand-twisted dozens of times. Some person on the other side of the earth is being paid less than a dollar a day to sit and twist these wires over and over again, dozens of times by hand. They are also paid, it seems to use scotch tape to hold everything else down. Reams and reams of it. I paid $15 for this toy and have to spend half an hour undoing all of this manual labor. At my pay rate, the time I spent unwrapping the toy for my daughter cost me more than the toy!