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Number
7: June 18, 2003
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This week in Katydid:
Palm
Turns Handsprings
Palm recently
announced it was acquiring Handspring. With it, they get back Jeff
Hawkins, the original designer of the Palm, as well as the popular Treo
line of Handspring-integrated phones. For my money, the Palm organizer
was the product with the best design to come out of the nineties. Not
much beats it for usability.
The Palm Pilot was engineered from the outside in. It was designed
for how someone should use it. Jeff Hawkins carved a model in wood and
told his team to make everything fit inside. He knew that in order for
the device to be successful, people had to want to use it. It had to
feel right in the hand and it couldn't be complicated to operate.
I felt so strongly about the design that I purchased a Visor shortly
after Jeff Hawkins left Palm to form Handspring. I've kept the same
device ever since. I use it for my contacts, my notes, and to follow
the stars.
Palm and Handspring
have struggled to match the intensity of their early days. I still
remember the bonafide hubbub Palm generated at Comdex with one of their
product launches. Perhaps that's the catch with creating a must-have
product – eventually everyone who must have one will have one. Then
what?
The answer for Palm and Handspring was to make it more complicated.
They added components, modules, and add-ons, which in turn required
cases and bags for storage. They put everything you used to have to
carry your laptop around for into a device that fits in the palm of your
hand, and then they added so many components that you need a case the
size of a laptop to carry it all. Not a bad business model unless your
value proposition is simplicity.
There's a parallel in the world of development. It's called feature
creep. It's why everyone universally thinks Microsoft Office is way too
slow and wants to know how to turn off that blasted Assistant.
On a web site, it's the inexorable crowding as new offers and
gimmicks crop up. Soon, the site has so many things tacked on that the
architecture no longer makes sense. Like shaking a tub of popcorn, all
the big pieces tend to float up and all you have at the bottom are
crumbs.
What's the answer? Well, in most cases where companies find
themselves far afield chasing whims, it means getting back to basics. As
I would say to Palm, go back to what you do best. That doesn't mean
trying to sell the old Palm Pilot. It means asking yourself, "Now
that we live in a world that already has us, what do people really
need?" Carve a model (draw your architecture) and make sure
everything fits.
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What
Does Your Slogan Cry Out?
Got Milk? Just do it. Where's the Beef? Be all that you can be.
These are slogans and slogans are fighting words. Don't take them
lightly.
Slogan comes from the Scots word for battle cry. Each clan had
their own slogan to cry out when engaging the enemy.
A tagline is not a slogan. There's nothing inspirational about
"the worldwide leader in wireless widget design." Taglines
work best for new companies that need to establish what they do.
Taglines are for the press release. Slogans are for campaigns.
Slogans reflect the personality of the company and they may change
over time. They tend to be verb oriented, impelling the customer to take
action. Like the voice of that coach who pushed you to new heights, a
slogan is powerful whether shouted in motivation or whispered in
inspiration.
Look at your marketing and see if you have slogans or taglines. Ask
yourself what you would like to shout as you go into battle. Now go out
there and Make Some Noise!™
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Thanks for Reading
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Kind regards,
Kevin Troy Darling
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