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Title:

Products vs. Users: Who's Winning?

Your vote:
Yes No
Organizer:
Chris Wetherell, ThingLabs
Description:
In recent years a new struggle has surfaced between two groups of people closely aligned in affinity but actively working against each other. The tools we create and use, like robots in a sci-fi epic, seem to both invite mob justice and attack the public without warning, with results merely trivial to some critically important. In the war for who owns your experience, your data, and your brand the conflicts which were normally private in recent years are now public, loud, and hilarious. A war has erupted online between Products and their Users: who is winning? And who will be claimed the victor?
Questions
Answered:
  1. When should customers/users be fired?
  2. What unpopular changes actually wound up growing products?
  3. How much can a product blame bad decisions on a user's fear-of-change?
  4. What power do users have in changing products?
  5. Do people actually leave services after revolts?
  6. How long should products wait before reverting a change based on user feedback?
  7. Should changes be created in the open?
  8. What strategies should products employ to help users during changes?
  9. What's the best way to prevent a product you love from being really, really stupid?
  10. How do you prevent products from seeing you just as an edge case?
Level:
Intermediate
Category:
Case Study, Community / Online Community, Digital Divide, Other / Out There, User Experience
Type:
Panel
Event:
Interactive 2010
Bob Bigellow
on 17/8/09
Users are clearly winning.
Bill Strathearn
on 17/8/09
maybe this should be called: "adjusting the volume on your user feedback channels"?
mary hodder
on 17/8/09
this panel suggestion is great (just voted for it) but i wonder about the premise.

is the last sentence maybe better framed as:

A war has erupted online between Product Producers/their funders and their Users: who is winning? Product makers and their funders have one set of goals and the users have another often times.. and the myth of funding/startups where you "locate the business model after you figure out the product" often leads to the misunderstandings and hurts between users and founders/producers. Is there a victor (and a loser) or can you create win/win situations where both parties are happy? How do you do that?
mary hodder
on 17/8/09
i think you should get @caterina to be on this panel.. she would be great.
Dave Gray
on 17/8/09
This is a great topic Chris -- a lot of depths to be explored. I hope we also get some strong emotion.
Andrew Hyde
on 21/8/09
I 2nd Mary, it would rock if @caterina could be on the panel!
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