I have been meaning to write a blog on Creating Product People Love for a few weeks now, and am finally getting around to it.  I remember seeing a talk on this very topic several years back, and unfortunately my notes from it got trashed when I accidentally reformatted my laptop (ouch!).  The speaker had a great list of the essential elements that lead to products people love using.

I was sitting on my couch a while back thinking how much I've started to enjoy driving my car--just driving along--and it got me thinking about this topic.  There's something completely relaxing about having a CD playing in the background and cruising down the freeway, not even at excessive speeds necessarily (though that sounds pretty fun to ;-> ).  Somehow associatively, it got me thinking about video games, which also seem to have an equal thrill to them.  In both experiences, you have this immediate sense of control about what's in front of you--whether it be a steering wheel or a joystick.  Video games are even more interesting, because they present challenges to deal with.

Both of these experience I think are telling about a fundamental that underlies all great product design: efficacy.  As humans, we enjoy ourselves the most when we're put in a situation where we can exercise control over what's in front of us.

When I think about the gripes people have with software and computers in general, efficacy seems to be at the bottom of all of them:

• “Software is too confusing and complex; it makes me feel stupid.”
• “Why does it crash?”
• What's with all this fluffy UI?  I want to have access to the source code and get down to the metal on the command line.”

So I think through induction I stumbled upon one of the tennets of creating products people love.

Feel free to chime in if you have any other essentials you think play into the mix.

Michael Dunn from the Windows Deployment team wrote a good post on building a solid setup.  For those that didn't catch it, it can be found at: http://blogs.msdn.com/mdunn/archive/2004/04/09/110702.aspx

-Kevin

I sat down for breakfast this morning after plunking down $1.50 for a copy of the Seattle Times.  I usually find myself more distressed than encouraged after reading the paper.  So I was pleasantly surprised when I flipped to the local news section today to read a column titled Woman works to find work by Nicole Brodeur.

The column introduced a local woman, Jennifer Ryan, who's searching for work.  Apparently she had put an ad in the paper under the section “Work Wanted.”  Interestingly, she was the only person to put an ad in that particular section, which floors me given how much I hear about unemployment.  Her ad read:

West Seattle mom will clean, shampoo carpets, do yardwork, clean gutters, drive errands, detail autos/campers, haul & dump, paint, sm. repairs, baby/pet sit, etc. bldg. maint. background, hard worker, strong, able to lift, honest worker w/eye for detail — rsnbl. rates. Need to Make Ends Meet.

At the end of the column Ryan speaks to her dismay, “They are more willing to help people who don't want to help themselves.  The more you try, the less help you get, and the less you try, the more help you get.”  She sums up her attitude by saying, “I want my mother to be proud of me, whereever she is.”

I have never met this woman, but I am proud just reading this little bit about her.

Okay, this is my first ever attempt at writing a blog.  I am pitifully behind the times, but I figured better late then never.

First, a quick introduction... I work as a Program Manager at Microsoft.  I started working at MS as an intern when I was in high school.  Back then I was a Software Design Engineer--err developer.  I have no idea what they were thinking when they brought in a 17 year old kid who's biggest programming project consisted of writing QuickBasic code that converted numbers ($17.50) into long handed strings (Seventeen and 50/100 dollars).  After doing the internship gig for three summers, I wrote one of my friends at the company telling him I thought it would be cool to try Program Management sometime.  I did not give it much thought, until I got a message back saying I should do interviews fora  Program Management (PM in Microsoft speak).  I ended up trying that the next summer, fell in love, left college early and the past four years since then have been a whirlwind.

That's not much of an introduction, but it's good enough for now :-)

Anyway, I am not really sure what I'll be putting in this blog.  I work deeply with the setup technologies at my job, so I'll try to write about that from time to time.  I am also a photography hobbyist in my spare time, so I'll be sure to upload pics from my exploits.

-Kevin