Buggy Software – A Strategic Choice
Buggy products can be a real customer turn-off. Witness the recent release of the BlackBerry Storm, Research In Motion’s response to Apple’s iPhone. The Storm had tremendous promise as a great new touchscreen phone, but customer response has been limited because of early bugs in the device’s software. Here’s a quote from one Storm customer in an article from the Wall Street Journal:
“I found myself wanting to throw it in the ocean due to my frustration with its overall usability,” said Steven Golub, a longtime Verizon customer from Morristown, N.J., who bought the Storm the day it was released, but returned it a few weeks later.
That’s pretty damning, but let’s stop and give RIM some benefit of the doubt. Buggy software is a customer turn-off, and undoubtedly bad reviews will dampen customer enthusiasm. But here’s a quote from the same Wall Street Journal article:
Verizon and RIM, determined to release the Storm in time for the holidays, rushed the device to market despite glitches in the stability of the phone’s operating system, according to people close to the launch.
RIM had a choice to make – release a buggy product in time for the holidays, taking bad reviews on the chin, or wait until the Storm worked better and try to gain market share during the traditionally slow Q1 made even slower by a bad economy. We really can’t know for sure if RIM made the right decision, but there are some lessons other companies can learn here:
1.) Know Your Limitations - We all have limitations in our planning: not enough time, not enough people, or not enough testing. Maybe your budget is limited or maybe you need to hit a holiday launch date. Either way, it’s very important to be aware of your limitations early in the process. If you have a tight schedule and a firm launch date, then you should make sure you have enough resources for last-minute development and testing. If you don’t have enough people, then you should evaluate different contingencies for alternate launch dates.
2.) Work Smarter – You may feel like you have to cut corners to overcome your limitations, but the Internet can make it easy to expand your efficiency on-demand. There are many companies that can help you add capacity to overcome bottlenecks and release a better product on time. The uTest software testing service is perfect for helping companies improve their testing, but solutions exist for everything from coding to graphic design.
3.) Have Good Customer Data – If you’ve already passed the point of no return, then you will have to make a tough decision. In this case, nothing helps more than really good customer data. In RIM’s case, they had to decide between weaker customer demand because of timing or because of bugs. Between the two, they chose to cast their lot with a buggier product over a late product.
RIM still sold 500,000 Storms over the holidays, and that’s not bad. This is also their first touchscreen device and it holds tremendous design potential. While Storm Version 1 had a rocky launch, Storm Version 2 may take the world by, well, storm.
I’ve been introduced with the BlackBerry Strom device on it’s early stages including some crucial software updates with tremendous positive improvements. Yet to say, they lack of User Experience unfortunately! Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of RIM products and I think they are the best in regards to push mail services and their BlackBerry products are the best available workhorses for mail purposes and beyond that.
The thing is that the iPhone Buzz got so much attention, that everyone wants a piece of that as well. And apparently it seems that Blackberry wanted a shared cut of other market regions which they did not appeal to with their preceding products. This in the case in both BlackBerry Storm & Pearl flip devices which both I find less user friendly and productive as the ‘old fashioned’ BlackBerry devices.
First of all, the whole concept of a clickable touch screen is somewhat bothersome. Yea, you can ‘get used’ to it in someway however it still feels too awkward I must say. The touch & double-touch action are very limiting in terms of usability and productivity and I personally find it uneasy to use.
Secondly, this is the whole software issue. All regular BlackBerry devices are simple yet user-friendly & most of all productive. The new Storm’s software can give you a real hard time. The variety of keyboards which depends on your viewing mode (either horizontal or vertical) is too big and just too confusing. In one field you get a full QWERTY keyboard, on the other a sure type with shared-letters keyboards. Then there are all kind of field specific keyboards in which you have number only, numbers with chars like asterisk or dash symbols and so on. This is just incompatible and confusing I’m afraid.
Third, the whole Zoom In/Out concept is just not implemented right. You try working your correct zoom level and come up with either a shrank page or an ultra-zoom view which can blow your eyebrows and so forth.
All-in-all this can be a promising device. I must say that after a few days you get used to the keyboard which is not near to the BlackBerry Bold device (Which I personally think is the best of them all plus having the most confortable and smart keyboard & screen).
It’s just that its software, which controls the whole device usability & productivity experience, does not kick-in nicely – And that’s it main weakness.
If the software was well thought then this could be a killer device, but until then I’ll better stick with the ‘old fashioned’ BlackBerry device which cannot be beaten!
I agree that some real user feedback on this could elevate this product’s (and other) software level and resolve all such software issues and I believe that uTest would be a great place for that to happen.
Maybe on the Strom 2 we could see this happening. I’ll cross my fingers to that.
Bernard.