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35 pointsdilanj41 comments

"CEO, or the design director, or someone with a huge amount of power at Heinz should personally use every one of its products for some arbitrary amount of time before it is approved to be sold."

Do you really think the CEO doesn't use Heinz Ketchup in the new bottle? I love the new bottle! It has never "jammed" up for me and its a huge improvement over the glass bottle. I guess you should use those tiny ketchup packets if you're having a problem with getting ketchup out of the bottles. Did you know that Heinz is in the process or might have already released a bottle that doesn't let that "watery ketchup" come out when you first use it. It was their number one complaint from ketchup users. That's customer focused innovation!

I know that your an Apple fan boy but believe it or not - not "everything Apple" is god-like in fact I find the iPod Nano lacking and it was the first product I ever bought from Apple.

Getting back to the Heinz ketchup bottle - I eagerly await your better re-design...

I agree. Apple fanboys are like Porsche aficionados. They buy it because it's sexy and elitist, therefore, the consumer is also sexy and elite by association. It doesn't mean that Apple's products are better than any other, just more stylish. Do I even have to mention the huge number of flops that Steve Jobs had prior to the ipod? Do people remember the NeXT cube? The Newton? That mac that looked like a toilet seat?

I myself read your article and saw the ketchup bottle picture on the page prior to reading your thoughts about it and thought to myself "Oh yea, that upside-down ketchup bottle - that was a good product change, I never have to tap the side of the glass bottle again to make the ketchup come out! Yea!" But hearing your comments on the futility of the design change made me think that perhaps you just aren't the typical user of the product and you're the exception that's not satisfied with the design, not the rule.

I think that companies are making changes that work well with the company's 'vision' and sometimes the company's vision needs to change. The whole thing about Dodge/Chrysler is that they make larger vehicles - gas hungry, 2-ton trucks that are still very popular. Fiat bought them thinking that they can re-tool the assembly lines to make cars and parts for smaller, fuel-efficient cars which will be more popular (see Europe,France,... - people drive those crappy, little 2-cylinder cars everywhere and big trucks and minivans are not even heard of for the typical customer). Chrysler/Dodge made great changes for their trucks - I own one and it's more reliable than my wife's Honda Minivan, but the company's focus was on large cars, which are not in favor anymore by the general public. They made a good product and I'm sure that the CEO of GM probably owns and drives GM cars (as well as some luxury cars) on a very regular basis. The problem is that they were not seeing the big picture, that's all.

I was referring to the bottle that has liquid-reduction technology you are talking about. There appears to be some mechanism that only lets the viscous liquid through, but it keeps jamming and preventing anything from coming through. Not a big deal, but still annoying.

I respect Apple as a company. Making the assumption that I would blindly follow every move Apple makes just because I mention Steve Jobs is a good CEO is a low attack and also incorrect. Why are you attacking me personally?

Sorry if my comment came across as attacking you. I was trying to state that your "attack" on Heinz and it's CEO.. is unwarranted. I'd don't work for the company but I am a fan.

You are absolutely correct about bureaucratic crap getting in the way of innovation. I even agree with your point.

But I must say I am tired of hearing about how great Steve Job's is... He is great but Apple can't be the only company that has a focus on design and innovation.

Once again - sorry if I came across as attacking you - I didn't mean to...

He is great but Apple can't be the only company that has a focus on design and innovation.

I'm quite tired of this as well. Lost in the mix are companies like Braun, BMW, Philips, and P&G. Their products are often just as well designed, if not more for the fact that they create things outside of consumer electronics.

Apple has some of the best advertising and branding in the world, and subsequently has a cult-like following. But I doubt many of its "fanboys" recognize the letters TBWA.

Of the companies you list, Braun seems to me the only one that reaches Apple's standard.

There are lots of companies that produce great design. Artemide, Knoll, Bang & Olufsen, and so on. But these are a lot smaller than Apple. It's not easy to find a company with revenues as big as Apple's that does design so well.

It's not easy to find a company with revenues as big as Apple's that does design so well.

I've noticed that too. There seems to be an inverse correlation between company size and the quality of design. I think Apple is almost pseudo-exception to this though, since their ID team has less than a dozen people. Or maybe it's just because their CEO has taste.

But a lot of the best design still goes completely unnoticed. An object as simple as a Band-Aid might not evoke the same emotional response as a sleek aluminum MacBook or a Porsche 911, but I'd argue that its design is just as revolutionary and even more influential to the world.

Braun to me seems like Apple's older brother. Or at least just Dieter Rams.

The only thing that matters to a company of any size is its product and customer experience.

That's a load of crap. What is true for a small start-up is not necessarily true for a huge behemoth.

There are many other components to the mechanisms for making money (which is what businesses are - human machines to make money), and although product development and customer services are very important in the early stages of a company, the focus shifts, later, to other areas (like sales or value chain optimisation). Those can make a much larger difference to the company's profits, once it is at scale, and so they deservedly get more attention at those scales.

This article represents a very narrow-minded, naive view of business. Perhaps you should work in a wider variety of companies before making such grand statements. Maybe read a book or two about corporations. I recommend "Management" by Peter Drucker as a (heavy, but excellent) starter.

Of course those things matter, and they're part of the customer experience. Your marketing and sales strategy should be of the same quality as your product. Don't think of them separately. You're providing value with the product and convincing people to buy it with the sales and marketing strategy. Sure, the budget allocations shift back and forth, but both should always be above some minimum threshold of quality.

If you think of your entire company as providing a "customer experience," then you only have one threshold, and everything is held to that standard.

The companies I am angry at are the ones sacrificing product quality and value for sales and marketing. (And also companies that just ignorantly release crappy products and ignore their customers/employees.)

But if crappy products sell and don't sell any worse than better (and more expensive) products, then it is a mistake to invest effort into making them better.

customer experience != maximizing value to shareholders

I wish it were. I really do. But it isn't.

Can you provide a real world example of where this is the case in a healthy market? I do not think this is true except in very poor market conditions like with monopolies or odd social situations.

Enterprise sales. Though of course you'll argue it's not a healthy market.

User Experience / Price / Design / Exclusivity / existing infrastructure / external pressure (see legal reqs, etc)

A product / service can create value in all of those areas.. some are either mutually exclusive or at least practically so.

To even use Apple as an example.. Great Operating system - unless you want a netbook. Or want to play games. Or create blu-ray disks.

Put it this way - I'm sure you can make a better hamburger than mcdonalds. But I'm sure Ray Croc made a whole lot more money than most of the people on HN ever will.

My brother was the brand manager for a dying food brand (well known national brand). The first thing he did when he was hired to improve the brand was to improve the quality of the food (better cuts of meat, fresher veggies, lower sodium, etc.). You know what happened? The customer complaint line was jammed with pissed people. He did a complete 180 and removed the higher quality items (the healthy stuff like vegetables), increased the quantity and sales started to climb.

That is a clear case of people wanting crap... in fact demanding it instead of the better quality product.

Note: Sorry for being vague about the brand but he is still there and might not want the full story public.

The key point of your story is that your brother's definition of "higher quality" didn't mesh with the customer's. That's a problem.

If people were satisfied with the product, changing the ingredients is definitely going to add risk. I worked for a food manufacturer, once upon a time, and we did extensive triangle testing even when sourcing ingredients from a new vendor.

People want quality. That doesn't mean their taste is the same as yours...

Triangle testing?

Sorry, it's a common "term of art" in the food sciences.

Basically, it is blindly tasting three samples, and trying to tell which one of the three is different. (The other two are the same.) So, if you are testing a new supplier, you can give the subjects two samples from the old supplier and one from the new supplier, and see if they can pick out the odd one with any kind of statistical significance.

The key factor is that it is not attempting to measure "which tastes better", but rather, "which tastes noticeably different".

No need to apologize. Thank you for the explanation.

The point I was trying to make is that the customer didn't want "better," they wanted the "same" even though it was crappy. The post I responded to seemed to want an example of that.

On your points, I agree mostly but in this case people didn't want better quality. They liked the taste of the lower quality product.

In that case, it's not "lower quality product" now, is it?

It may use ingredients that score better on certain metrics (low sodium, etc.) but these don't mean"better quality" in the sense that these consumers are interested in (the taste that they've come to like.)

You say they got angry calls, but you didn't talk about the difference in sales.

How did they brand the change?

Did they reposition the food items in the store?

Did they redesign the packaging?

Did they market the better food in the same way as the crappy old food?

How long did they give it the stuff to see if it would sell?

If you've been previously selling to misers with no taste, and you want to expand (misers with no taste are not loyal but they are loud), you have to not just change the product but the ecosystem.

Of course people bitch. People will bitch your ear off for any change. Every good manager knows this.

The question is: does it sell? And if it doesn't, are you doing all you can do to help it sell?

Just adding more is a local optimization. If you want to change the bigger picture, in a situation like that, you have to upgrade your customers... to people who will pay more. Which means your existing customers are likely, yes, to bitch. But, as you said, the brand was already dying so maybe its current customers aren't the right ones.

You can't switch Alpo with Finest Steak and expect to charge dog owners more money. Doesn't work.

Those are all excellent questions. Unfortunately I don't have all of the answers. I know he test marketed the changes and that it failed -- it never made it to a full national roll-out. The way he tells the story is that he tried improving the quality of the food and promoted it on the package but kept all other variables equal (most notably price) and it was met with disgruntled customers and sales suffered. I guess I can say that this was a prepared meal product -- Ultimately what worked was sticking with the low quality ingredients, including more of them and ditching the veggies. In the end he did turn the brand around with this strategy.

> Can you provide a real world example of where this is the case in a healthy market?

McDonalds hamburgers.

They have arguably the worst tasting hamburger of any restaurant chain and yet they sell more than anyone else.

Wal-Mart: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=653051

Supermarket own brand products are often of a much lower quality than branded versions, but sell well because they are cheaper. There is a quality/price trade off with a lot of products and a demand for those on both ends of the spectrum.

Um, everything I've read says that supermarket brand foods are often name brand excess sold under private label. Yes/no?

You're both correct/wrong. (Except that the premium store brands are not "excess" - they're planned that way.)

Some store brand products are premium equivs while some aren't. (Some stores even have two brands so they can compete with the premium with the same quality at a slightly lower price and at lesser quality at a significantly lower price.)

There was a big Harvard Biz Review article about store brand strategies several years ago.

perfect example of a company that doesnt give a crap about their customer experience but cares deeply about efficient processes: Wal-Mart

try asking someone at a walmart in a metro area where you can find car tarps or universal remotes...

This is why startups exist. Those large companies that cite politics as the reason for a crappy product do have a valid excuse. People and politics are real forces and they have real power in the organization. Overcoming them for the sake of good design is a lot harder, and probably not worth it, compared to just creating a startup to build great things.

Also, what is this "you should follow me on Twitter" stuff? I should? Really?

the glass bottle isn't concerned with usability. it's a branding thing.

plus, it's easy to get the ketchup out if you know how. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6faDt5trSE

I disagree. I don't find either bottle hard to get ketchup out of. But the big difference is what happens when you're done getting the ketchup out. With a glass bottle, I'm left with a plain glass bottle (and metal screw cap) that I can recycle anywhere, or use for just about anything. With the plastic bottle, I'm left with a weird plastic bottle that's really only designed for dispensing one thing.

Reusability is a big part of usability. Generic glass bottles excel at this.

I like the new ketchup bottles. They've never clogged for me, and they rest upside down so you're never trying to get ketchup from the bottom of the bottle.

The rest of the article is right on, though.

The problem with the airline industry in general is that the old axiom "Fast, Cheep, Good - pick any 2" doesn't hold up. Tickets are so cheep the airlines bleed money. The whole point of flying is the speed. As far as "good" goes they can't compromise on safety so it's an industry that sort of has to pick "all three". That is a challenging business model to say the least.

This is a crazy thought but bear with me here.

What if the expenses could be cut by, oh, reducing layers of crufty bureaucracy in, say, web site interaction design? And hiring designers and developers who will make it happen, and then... trusting them?

If there are 15 committees that must be appeased, that's Very Very Bad.

And this is just the web site. The web site cannot cause planes to fall from the sky.

But it can cause customers to have heart attacks... Look at this stinking pile, I mean, testament to the power and usefulness of multiple stakeholders:

http://aa.com/women

Probably correct, but I bet you a nickel that the expenses of useless bureaucrats are a miniscule fraction of capex and opex.

It strikes me that the flying airplanes side of the business has nothing to do with their web site.

"The only thing that matters to a company of any size is its product and customer experience."

Many things matter. Although every company is different, the 3 most important are almost always:

- Profitability

- Cash flow

- Owners wealth

Of course, product & customer experience are important. As means to get to higher objectives. But certaintly not the only thing.

The same would be true of startups that become big companies. For example I'm sure it would be a nightmare at somewhere like Google to make UI changes to the core search listings.

I think someone who has worked on both sides would provide a better insight into the problems faced at large corporate companies compared to the startup environment.

Sturgeon's Law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law) seems worth invoking here. The thing is, if big companies didn't get weighed down by their own bulk and bureaucracy, how would small companies ever compete with them?

"...this kind of email really angers me..."

Chill.

One of the most important things in business is knowing when and where to expend your energy and passion which, believe it or not, is a limited resource. If this motivates you to change something, great. If it angers you, get a grip and find a better outlet. Anger is a waste. Don't allow them to let you do that to yourself.

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