Entelligence: Close to the edge
By Michael Gartenberg 
posted May 13th 2009 3:45PM
posted May 13th 2009 3:45PM
Entelligence is a column by technology strategist and author Michael Gartenberg, a man whose desire for a delicious cup of coffee and a quality New York bagel is dwarfed only by his passion for tech. In these articles, he'll explore where our industry is and where it's going -- on both micro and macro levels -- with the unique wit and insight only he can provide.
Now if you're reading this, chances are you're a bit of an edge case -- or at the very least a gadget enthusiast. That's cool, I'm one as well. In fact, over the last few years I've coined three rules that I've come to refer to as Gartenberg's Three Laws of Consumer Electronics. For those of you not familiar with them, they are:
- There's a world wide market of 50,000 for any device sold to enthusiasts and early adopters.
- If Gartenberg sees a product at a demo and doesn't offer his credit card for purchase immediately, the product is doomed.
- Even if Gartenberg does offer his credit card, the product may well still be doomed -- as Gartenberg is part of the 50,000 enthusiasts that will buy (almost) anything.
(If you're in the NY area, come on over some time and I'll show you my collection)
There's a techie market that will buy anything. I'm part of it. There's about 50,000 of us who will buy anything. If it's cool, we buy it and then we move on to the next shiny thing. Unfortunately, you can't make any money that way. The rest of the world, the millions of users, the masses and the folks that actually make something profitable are different. They don't buy out of "cool." They buy out of function or need, especially in tough economic times like this. Shocking, I know -- but true; and that's why product designers need to think of the enthusiast as well as the mainstream market as they create the latest and greatest.
By the way, that doesn't mean that the masses should be product designers. It's why I generally hate focus groups when working with vendors who are testing new product ideas. They simply aren't capable of making the leap to where the paradigm might shift. On the other hand, the masses do tend to get it once it's explained to them, and at the end of the day, it's the mass markets that make for successful products as opposed to niche ones. Why do you think it took so long for MP3 players to make even the inroads they have made today as mass market devices? Yes, the edge cases bought an early one, but it took the iPod to take MP3 to the masses. Designing for the edge group is usually a mistake, but that doesn't mean every product needs to be vanilla either.
The key is, I believe, to design for the edge but create products that can make the shift over the to the mass markets. That is, products that fit a mainstream need, are not niche, are approachable for novice users, but have enough depth for advanced users to master. Products like the Nikon D series digital SLRs, The original Palm Pilot and of course, the iPod all met this criteria.
"The key is, I believe, to design for the edge but create products that can make the shift over the to the mass markets." |
Way back when, music players started like this, but there are a lot of reasons that they were able to make the leap from the enthusiast to the masses. In the case of MP3 players, it's not about design for the edge or the masses -- it's about where the sweet spot is today for folks to build and sell devices. There may be folks that need or desire 100GB+ devices, for example -- they just don't represent the mass market. The mass market is still happy with about 1,000 songs and the capacities that go with that number. The proof? Look how well the iPod nano and iPod touch are doing. They're at a capacity and price point that users want today. As for tomorrow? That will change over time but there still needs to be a bridge from the edge case to the mass market. No bridge, no sales. Most of the time, the market needs to be educated to drive things forward, and that's where the edge case comes in. These are the folks that educate the masses in terms of design.
Sometimes, the market knows what it wants once it see it but at the same time it won't pay for more than it needs. And that, my friends, is why they call folks like us enthusiasts. So, as an enthusiast, what advice do you have for vendors to take products from things that appeal to folks like us to the mass market?
Michael Gartenberg is vice president of strategy and analysis at Interpret, LLC. His weblog can be found at gartenblog.net. Contact him at gartenberg AT gmail DOT com. Views expressed here are his own.
That was a very nice article. I enjoyed reading it and it certainly rings true. I myself am in the 50,000 group and I agree with your statements above.
I think I'll be apart of that crowd a little more when I get a better job. Right now I'm comfortable being that guy that waits a few months as the product gets reviewed and the kinks get worked out before I buy into it...
I'm one of those 50,000 - well, I would be, if I had enough money to buy the things I want.
How do I know I'm one of them? Because I want three or four smartphones... but seriously, I can't just waste my money like that! OR can I? >:-)
I found it somewhat roundabout.
If you guys join, it'll be 50,002.
Just saying.
@ craigj
I see what you did there.
Wrong album!
Not diggin' this guy's articles - I just can't get past his background. It feels like he writes with an agenda. Maybe we could balance it out and get Andy Ihnatko to write some Engadget articles too? Or Guy Kawasaki?
Haven't read the article yet, but that's one of the best albums ever.
You beat me to it. I haven't listen to this album since I ripped it from CD. Might just have to fire it up tonight.
This is a fantastic band, but in my opinion Relayer is a better album. (i'm more of a fusion guy anyway).
If you like Yes and haven't heard of the Dutch band 'Focus', check out the albums "Moving Waves", "Focus III", and "Hamburger Concerto".
"...down by the river..."
One of the best yes albums ever. I prefer fragile though
i thought there's always a difference. formula one cars were designed from day one as formula one car, rolls royce is designed from day one as a rolls-royce. it's hard to make a shift.
look at the evolution of iphone. from totally rigid ver 1.x.x to 2.x.x with app store and now to 3.0 with even more openness to the "edge" users with connector opened up and lots of other free choices. but the shift seems quite untrivial and painful too...
I don't mean to be a hater or anything but this is the second thing that this guy has written for engadget and I just really don't like the guy and I don't think I have ever been able to say that about anyone writing for Engadget so far.... Maybe its just me.
"and I just really don't like the guy"
Why? What has he done to you?
I don't think he takes as much time to makes his points valid. Like with what he said at the end with the mass market and the 50,000 faithful.
"There may be folks that need or desire 100GB+ devices, for example -- they just don't represent the mass market. The mass market is still happy with about 1,000 songs and the capacities that go with that number. The proof? Look how well the iPod nano and iPod touch are doing."
Honestly he made a huge bomb before the end and didn't go through wrapping up a lot of the loose ends in the scenario. For example the market had a huge market for the 120 GB iPod but when you start to loose features from the iPod Touch then it doesn't justify to get the larger storage. I bet tomorrow if they dropped the price down for the iPod Touch and added a 80-120 GB model it'll sell tremendously. It's just more of a company at this time raking their profits on their success.
Really he should've started diving into how much the pricing on some of the technology out is unfair and how in ways it is but he kinda just cut it off there with a big gaping hole in the article. The benefits and the consequences of being an early adopter but he didn't. He just kinda left it up to the imagination of the reader and for us to come up and debate everything else. It's good for the first post in a forum but for a blogsite this is kinda minimal...
@skeet
So let me get this straight. You're saying if the ipod touch were CHEAPER and had an 80-120 GB capacity, tons of people would buy it? I must see evidence for this outlandish claim.
@StammesOpfer
Agreed. The guy tried to coin a set of laws after himself. Someone has an overactive ego...
Well, he IS an analyst...
did you have these debates with Gartenberg? Or do you just like talking in the 3rd person.
Am I mistaken, or was pretty much every point in this article pretty f'n obvious? Oh really, you want to design a product that appeals to beginners, intermediates and experts alike? you don't say?
*sorry, that came out angrier than I meant it. I had a RAID crash today, so I've had better days.
Well written, and much less cynical than my favorite quote to cover the phenomenon.
"No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby."
-H. L. Mencken
You should read the Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, a book that thoroughly explains the role that mavens (what you call "enthusiasts") play in popularizing products to the masses in an epidemic-like way.
you should listen to the tipping point by The Roots
The problem with Malcolm Gladwell is that he's a very intelligent, seemingly nice, reasonably knowledgeable guy who peddles snake oil.
I enjoy his books, but they're not close to remotely being scientific. Most of the arguments presented are explanations after the fact. This makes it no more credible in my eyes than the latest pop psychology in the pages of Cosmo.
Interesting reads, though.
Close to the edge, great album.
down at the end, round by the corner
close to the edge, just by a river
seasons will pass you by
i get up
i get down
I didn't read the article but I also wanted to comment on the great reference to a great album.
I think it's a losing game to even appeal to only early adapters. There is no shift--you make a good product that everyone will like, from day 1, and you will be able to sell it to everyone.
How about this: Design things to be configurable, so anyone can make them do what they want.
Because making it configurable comes with a cost. It comes with a development cost, a test cost, and a support cost. Sometimes that cost is justifiable, sometimes its not.
Especially when "configurable" appeals to the enthusiasts only. A common complaint I see leveled towards operating systems and the like is that you can't easily skin the UI. Yet for the vast majority of users this isn't even something they care about. The added cost to the developer of supporting such a feature just isn't worth it.
Most consumers don't need a laundry list of features or a huge amount of configureability. Most consumers need a product that helps them accomplish something without getting in their way. They don't want there to be a need for vast amounts of technical know how just to take a picture or listen to music.
Engineering is all about tradeoffs.
nice naive thought. assuming only 5% will configure their wishes to the device, what will be the default design, what will you see when you open the box "before changes"? the design of that default is industrial design.
i like those three rules and I think I fall into the "edge" category.... no wonder my wife has my wallet and paycheck..
Thank goodness I'm not the only one who bought that album ... er sorry "heard about it from a friend".
Was it one of the doomed products that only sold 50k units?
I like the idea of expandability and tweaking. If a product has nothing but what the masses need... BUT it has the ability to be expanded upon easily, then that means there could be add ons or expansions at some point that appeal to the edge folks. If you would prefer to hit the edge market first, and then head towards the mainstream, that's fine. Then you design the product so that it can be easily customized or expanded upon. Then once you're sure you have something solid there, design some sort of add on that will appeal to the edge market, and then release the product along with the expansion device.
I think you touched on it when you spoke about the "edge" having some intuition to where things will end up.
It would seem that the key to making a breathtaking device (one that is revered by both the edge and the mass market) is using the intuition of the edge to help develop a target that is understood very well. If you don't know exactly what you're aiming to do odds are it will fail or at best you'll have to rely on luck.
Once you've established that target, start working on developing the business case in terms of what is technologically and financially possible (i.e. it has to hit a certain price point within your design frame), but even more so the product needs to have a logical bridge between an established market (i.e. we know people will pay for CDs) and the target you've established (i.e. what if they could own all their music through a digital store like iTunes). I also believe how you're going to build this bridge from a technology, cost and marketing has to be defined up front otherwise you're back in the hands of lady luck.
From there it's just about execution.
It seems that most product failures tend to either focus on the "edge's" intuition (i.e. making a product that IS the future but is priced or marketed poorly), or the mass market's already known appeal (making a me too product that's sure to sell a few but is already a well established market that is on it's way down).
This article is about the Palm Pre, right?
As one of those people who is always spending far too much of his disposable income buying electronics marked-up from Japanese importers, I love the spirit of this post.
I am curious however where you get that number (50k) from.
I own an Optimus Maximus... I think I fit into the club....
http://www.flickr.com/photos/legendmedia/3088992276/
no, you're someone who likes to brag about spending 100x as much on something, when you can't even type as well on it.
The best example I can give on this topic is software, let's say a firewall. The first goal should always be to design for the core first, the people who will make you the most money, so in this case you'd want a product that is fairly secure and easy to use. It needs to not confuse the consumer and so needs a slick, straightforward UI as well as lots of checks to make sure they don't break anything. From here you expand, and you create something that allows an "edge user" access to the underbelly, for all the customizations they can handle. Just as you understand, though, first and foremost you need a product for the mass market. I think I would suggest the opposite of your advice, that instead of designing for the edge and trying to hit the market along the way, you need a solid, core product before you should consider luring in enthusiasts, so you want to design something that extends upwards in their direction.
Early adopters will tell you where things are going to be, never where things currently are. The 50k example therefore has concern for the practicality of product or offering, they just realized where the shortcomings are and how they should be improved. Whether you're over-clocking a PC or tuning a German import or hacking software. The manufacturers eventually move towards the direction of the early adopters as the market for it grows.
Entertaining article but hardly enlightening.
This article very much reiterates Malcom Gladwell's concept of "The Maven" in The Tipping Point. Anyone that wants to take this argument a step further should read the book.
This is an interesting article, but it misses a major point of product design and marketing. That is the product life cycle. You first have a target market that you are aiming for and for some products that is the fringe that you are refering to, but then there are the early adopters that buy just after the fringe once they have talked to one of their friends or someone that they trust that is on the fringe. These are normally leaders for a product and the people that the main customers will turn to for oppions. You may fall into more than one of these catagories depending on the person that you are talking to.
Then there are mainstream customers and they tend to adopt in 2 stages there are the first round and then there are the ones that will buy on the tail end of the product life cycle. Then there are those who prefer to buy items at the end of the product lifecycle and this is usually because they don't see a need for it at the products mainstream price, so as the product becomes out dated and gets cheaper they then begin seeing value in the product.
When designing a product you need to keep in mind how you are going to possition the product in the customers mind at all stages as well as how you are going to demonstrate value to the customer.
Successful products need to do two things.
1) Fulfill a need.
2) Be able to "just work."
There are three ways to fulfill a need.
One is to fulfill the "professional" need--to offer a product or service that a small group of people need so badly that they'll pay practically anything for it. There are problems there, though--it's a small market, so competition is vicious, and the professionals know EXACTLY what they want, so your product or service needs to be robust, customizable, and easier than the DIY solution would be.
Another is to fulfill the "mainstream" need--to offer a product or service with obvious appeal. The problem there is that the market's usually already saturated. Unless you can do something better than the other people on the market, there's barely any inroads.
The trickiest one is to target an emerging need--something that people don't know they want, but either have or will soon develop a need for, thanks to either changing societal conditions or growth in technology. Edge users are a great way to identify when technology exists to solve a problem, but a horrible way of identifying when the need will cross-over with the mainstream. The MP3 player market is a great example--it was invented in 1979, and the first commercial MP3 player was made available in 1997, but it took until 2003 for anyone to care. And why did that happen? The iTunes store finally made the MP3 player "just work," no technical knowledge about MP3 bitrates or ripping CDs required.
The biggest obstacle to something "just working" is often infrastructure. The number of things that had to converge to make MP3 players work is mind-boggling--people not only had to be comfortable with computers, not only with the Internet, and not only with the idea of shopping online, but with the idea of paying money for something intangible.
There's a book to be written here. There probably already have been several. Thanks for the food for thought.
Hmm. Interesting article. I have often wondered the same thing when I get to see product concepts or short blurbs of what the company wants to do in the next couple of years. I won't consider myself an edge user since I don't have the finances for that kind of habit. However, I would consider myself an enthusiast. I am easily an early adopter if the hardware and software are solid enough (my lack of a G1 is a good example). There is the little concern of being able to know what you like and what suits your needs. This being the mainstream mantra, I would say that companies do best when they design for those in both groups mainstream and enthusiast alike. Mainstream being mainstream, they don't quite realize how limited products are at times, and enthusiasts alike want more but can and do settle for something less more often than not. The best thing that any of us can do to protect ourselves from companies cramming mediocre and/or overpriced crap is to be an informed consumer. Buy nothing without comparing similar products, even 1 or 2 above and below your needs and price range, so that you have a better idea of what you get for the cost. Granted there is much of a gray area here but that is what is so great about competition - options.
Someone other than Apple needs to make product lines where EVERYTHING just looks great...the Dell Adamo looks amazing and there's a Lenovo notebook (can't remember which model, it's black, white and orange I believe) look great but specs are lacking. I understand they have different markets in mind, but so does Apple, granted everything is more expensive. They have a GREAT looking desktop with different configs for how high/low-end you want. They have the Mac Pro for the music/video/graphics editors in mind and the Macbook Pro for a portable option with the same demographic. Why doesn't Dell or anybody else do this instead of making a line of ugly business notebooks, or a cheap plastic entry-level Fisher-Price looking notebook, and then ONE nice line that's grossly overpriced?
Not trying to be an Apple fanboy but you can't deny everything from them LOOKS sleek as hell! It seems not one other computer manufacturer has figured this out in their product lines...it's hard to find a notebook with killer graphics and good specs all around that doesn't look fug. The Macbook Pro looks great but I can't afford a $3,000 laptop just for looks, when a fugly one with the same or better specs goes for a grand less.
Just talking out loud, even though a product is meant for the masses doesn't mean it can't look a little sleeker or LOOK like an entry level product. I don't have a marketing degree or anything but it just doesn't make sense to me.
thank god I'm not the only one who found that article incredibly obvious.
I view this article as an intelligence test. If it reveals new ideas to you, then you're probably on the left-hand side of the bell curve...
Spot on, now if only most of the commentors on this and other enthusiast blogs would recognize what a minute fraction of the overall market they are. Then they would stop making asinine statement about how will fail or sucks because it doesn't do everything they want it to. Its not going to happen, but its a nice thought at least.
Great album. We worn down the vinyl on that one!
IMHO, manufacturers spend way too much time trying to make products designed neither for the enthusiast, nor the mass market, but to trick consumers into buying something they don't need. They create a "product line" out of a single device by slightly upgrading it from last-year's model, then taking features away from it ("Oh, you want a USB port? That'll be another $50. Need $6 more worth of flash memory? Add $100. Want a 3.5 inch jack? Just forget it. But we'll sell you a proprietary adapter for $25—AND it will be molded out of WHITE plastic!). The market is saturated with junk products that do little-to-nothing, but they'll advertise the heck out of them until people believe they need them. Manufacturers LOVE "the edge"... we'll buy anything because it's new. Their formula is usually: 1) Get enough techno-geeks to buy it 2) Get it to become geek-cool, then 3) once enough people hear about it, maybe it will become regular-cool. THEN the techno-geeks will shell-out to buy the NEXT thing, because we sure don't want anything that's just regular-cool.
I still use a first-gen 10gb iPod, I guess that makes me an cheap old-school techno-geek—not a very desirable demographic to market to.