Why the iPad Beat Out the Chomebook

In 2010 we saw the release of the iPad along with the announcement of the Chromebook. I clearly remember my original thoughts on both. I thought the Chromebook was genius. In fact, I'd practically built one myself the previous year. My wife had insisted that her computer was too slow even though she had a pretty fast machine that wasn't even 2 years old. So after trying a number of solutions, I settled on bringing out a laptop from 2003 and not loading anything on it other than Google Chrome. It was blazingly fast at browsing the web. I thought that many other people would love to buy an optimized version of this machine (my grandparents for instance.) The Chromebook would boot up immediately and have everything needed for an optimal web experience. For the iPad I had almost the exact opposite reaction. I remember listening to an Engadget podcast that asked  Who really wants a giant iPhone and I heartily agreed. Case closed.

But how did things turn out? The iPad turned out to be a transformative device -- completely creating the category of the mass market tablet. Apple sold over 15 million first generation iPads and had 96% market share until Q4 of 2010. What I hadn't realized at the time was that companies have been trying to make a great tablet computer for years but no had been successful at it. An interesting side effect of Apple creating the tablet market was that there is now no need for the Chromebook. Why would anyone buy a PC just to browse the web when an iPad does that so spectacularly. I suspect that Chomebooks might still have a role in businesses -- especially when you can lease one for $20/month. An optimized Chromebook would go well with Google Apps if your company were totally committed to the platform.

But the iPad has allowed others to transform the product landscape. One product that comes to mind are online news readers. RSS readers is a great technology but have a number of failings. They feel more like email readers with unread messages more than a newspaper. But look at the iPad's best take on the newsreader: Flipboard. There are some really great talks online by Evan Doll, one of Flipboard's founders that talk about what makes Flipboard a great news reader. You can find them at iTunesU in the lectures Designing for the iPad (which was given before Flipboard and the iPad itself were released) and Designing Flipboard. Evan talks about some key things that make Flipboard great:

• Creating something beautiful that combines design and editorial (like a great magazine)
• Preventing information overload (an issue of Time Magazine doesn't overwhelm and scare you like your Facebook News Feed might)
• Leverage the personal nature of social media to create a magazine personalized magazine

After spending time with Flipboard you realize why Flipboard is a fundamentally different (and better) way of consuming online news.

Your Product Will Never Be Simple Enough

In a recent article, David Pogue wrote that there is no core curriculum for people to understand technology. People often ask him "obvious" questions about technology that they never learned. That's probably why he wrote his missing manual series. We're all familiar with the problems of complex technology that we can never figure out but how can we fix this problem? One goal would be to make technology as easy as tying your shoes. Unfortunately, most of us can't even figure out how to do that right.

Even tying your shoes isn't as easy as it should be. At the TED conference in 2005 Terry Moore  gave a quick 3 minute talk on how to tie your shoes. After a pair of his shoes kept coming untied, he tried to return them. When he went to the store, the sales person said, "Hey, you're tying them wrong." This was a bit upsetting because at 50 he thought "If there's one thing that I thought I'd really nailed, it was how to tie my own shoes." The salesman proceeded to explain that most people tie the weak form of a shoelace knot (also called a granny knot) instead of tying the strong form of the knot (a slip knot). It's three minutes very well spent watching the video as your shoelaces will never become untied again. By the way, for a more thorough treatise on the topic take a look at Ian's Shoelace Site.

So if even shoelaces aren't idiot proof, how can we as product managers expect our customers to use our products correctly. Here are a few ideas:

1. Make the Primary Use Cases Super Clear: Twitter has many complicated features for power users (e.g., hash tags) that many newbies don't understand. But even the most naive user will pick up on the giant "What's Happening" window at the top of the screen. This design feature was so useful that Facebook quickly copied that design feature.
2. Allow Users To Come Up To Speed Easily: Microsoft Office is the king at this. First of all, Office has keyboard shortcuts. But a new user doesn't know how to use them. So if they want to copy something they go to Menu -> Edit -> Copy. Then they realize that you can also copy by pressing control-C -- it's right there next to the copy menu item. In Office 2007 they went much further by combining all of the features of menus and toolbars into a single "ribbon". This greatly increases the transparency of the program and brings features much closer to the user. It also provides pre-packaged uses of features (e.g., formatting a table in a pleasing way) that allows people to leverage the power of Office very easily. Then they can customize the features later. If you're interested, there's a great video on the ribbon with the user interface lead for Microsoft Office. 
3. Getting Started: Many companies post tutorials or how to lists. YouTube has a good example with their Creators Corner. It has everything that you need in order to create great YouTube videos including "inspiration". Though this site is quite complete, it's a bit overwhelming and takes a while to find. Probably the best way to get people to understand your product is through video. Google produces videos for many of their products like the Google Music cloud. Chase Blueprint does a great job of explaining a very complicated product in a way that makes sense to the everyday customer. These are essentially marketing videos that quickly take users through the primary use cases.  These can be low cost -- like Google does -- and still deliver a simple and clear message on how to use the product.
4. Tip Of The Day: Users want to be up and running as quickly as possible. But once they get the swing of things, they rarely look for additional features. One way to get users more engaged is to add a "tip of the day" so that every time the user uses the application or logs on to your website, the receive a new idea of how to use your product. Some tip providers like Windows Secrets even send a weekly update to subscribers. Though these lists are often for the primary software that customers use (e.g., Windows, Google Apps, etc.)
5. Take Advantage Of Rebellious Users: Customers don't always use your product as expected but that's a good thing! It's important to know that even if you've designed your product perfectly, power users will figure out interesting ways of using your product that you'd never imagined. UX Myths has a good list of products that were used in ways that were totally unexpected when they were designed. For example, Twitter moved from a site where people shared what they were doing to what they were thinking about. A classic case is Kleenex which started as a makeup remover and ended up with a very different use case!
6. FAQs: And of course, if all else fails have good FAQs. A well written FAQ is a really great thing. They were my favorite things on the internet before 1994 when Mosaic kick started the web revolution. And if you want to get really meta, there is a FAQ about FAQs.