Comments on: Courageous Redirection

By: 5 Lessons for iPad App. Design | Sandler Techworks

5 Lessons for iPad App. Design | Sandler Techworks — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 03:30:54 +0000

[...] it was lacking and had to scratch it and start over. She cited Andrew Hinton’s post on Courageous Redirection, which talks about projects that were made better because they were [...]

By: Andrew

Andrew — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 00:14:01 +0000

@sarzha Fascinating article! That’s a great point … and something I’ve been thinking about a bit.
When I read the article, I kept thinking Broussard felt different for some reason, from the other people I’d referenced. Admittedly it may just be the way the Wired article is written, in hindsight. If he’d been wildly successful, that would’ve changed how we see his decisions, perhaps? But the big difference seems to be that the other products eventually shipped. They took the bold step of actually releasing a product to the world, even after making some major changes along the way. They knew that all their courage meant nothing if they didn’t actually put a product in people’s hands.
I don’t know, maybe it’s easy to say that in hindsight? But Jobs’ Apple has had multiple failures, including the Lisa, the early Apple TV, the mouse on the early iMac, the Cube, etc. They were willing to fail.
Broussard wasn’t willing to fail. He kept letting something get in the way of going ahead and shipping his product. I wonder if it was fear?
Seth Godin has a great talk on this that I saw recently, here:
http://the99percent.com/videos/5822/seth-godin-quieting-the-lizard-brain
I’m not saying it’s an easy distinction to make, and it’s probably nearly impossible in the moment. But it seems to me the main problem Duke Nukem had was that it simply never shipped, so they could move on to another product.

By: sarzha

sarzha — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 17:30:43 +0000

Really interesting, though the latest Wired has an article about the failure of Duke Nukem 3D that seems to be a caution story against too much "courageous redirection." These anecdotes make for compelling stories, but one could probably drudge up stories where these redirections turned out to be mistakes? Just playing devil's advocate....

By: Christopher Fahey

Christopher Fahey — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 22:50:20 +0000

This is, of course, the "sunk cost fallacy" -- how people so often feel that they cannot change direction when they've spent so much on their current direction. I think there are two great ways of eliminating the kind of big momentum that prevents big changes. First, practice little changes all the time. Allow individuals to change course mid-week or mid-day based on new facts (kaizen. Sketch (the hotness) lots of ideas instead of investing in the first one. You know the drill. Second, roll out changes in small increments. Which, of course, is also all the rage these days.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 01:29:30 +0000

@alla that’s an excellent distinction to be aware of … I do think it’s still important to figure out what key parts of the experience have to be *just right* — but yes, there’s room for improvement after the fact. And depending on your user-base, they may be used to having more changes happening ongoing on your particular site (or in your application).

By: Alla Zollers

Alla Zollers — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 15:33:32 +0000

Great article! I have been in several situations where I wish the product manager had the cojones for some courageous redirection!

The one thought that I had while reading it was that many of the projects you described are quite fixed after release (maybe not WoW). Once Pixar releases Toy Story, the movie is done and will never change form no matter how much feedback they get. A more “soft” product, such as a website, often has to change based on how people use it, so getting it right in the beginning is not really that important, but perhaps growing into a different direction?

By: Andrew

Andrew — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 19:13:51 +0000

@jane awesome example, thanks!

By: Jane Pyle

Jane Pyle — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 17:37:21 +0000

At UX Week last year there was a presentation by the design lead for Microsoft Word. He mentioned that they had spent more than six months on a design and they decided to scrap it and start over again, leading to the current Ribbon design.

By: Abby

Abby — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 17:15:29 +0000

@ Andrew

Only did it once. One of the only times I have cried at work. Ill tell you the story sometime.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 17:07:05 +0000

@Abby

Amazing how far some of these things get before turning … actually gives me a bit of angst just reading about it. It makes me wonder if I’d have the cojones to pull that trigger.