That article misses the bulk of what good design is actually about. To quote Steve Jobs:
"Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like. People think it's this veneer -- that the designers are handed this box and told, 'Make it look good!' That's not what we think design is. It's not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works."
If you want to learn about design, before reading books about colors, fonts, grid layouts or how to make an inner glow in Photoshop, you should start by reading something like Don Norman's "The Design of Everyday Things" to gain an appreciation for how things work, and why. Then worry about making them look good.
I have two stories to add to this discussion, although perhaps this discussion does not need more fuel to the fire.
First, when I was 21 (in 1999), I was the founder of my last startup, Tellme. So I have been a young entrepreneur.
Second, one of Tellme's customers (in 2002) was American Airlines. So I understand how they work and the challenges they face.
At Tellme, we built a lost baggage voice application for AA. They figured if we could make their 800 number keep customers happy when the airline lost your bag, we'd be able to do a decent job on the rest of their apps. I'm proud to say that today Tellme answers every call to American Airlines, but back to lost bags. In the course of building that initial application, I learned things like: airlines issue a ticket number, a PNR, a bag tracking number and a lost bag ID to customers. These numbers are all different and customers don't know which is which. I also learned that at that time, American could not pull up a list of reservations (PNRs) based on your Frequent Flyer number, which was celebrating its 25th anniversary that year. Finally, I learned that passenger names for the lost bags database contained only the first 8 characters of a passenger's last name. Projects were underway with major subcontractors such as Sabre and EDS at that time to resolve and improve some of these issues. But the point is, big companies have complex systems. Some of these things were unbelievably bad at first glance to a tech guy like me, but they were all there for a reason. We also take for granted the fact they manage the incredible operational logistics of taking off a few thousand airplanes and moving millions of people around at 500+ mph in the air every year -- not too shabby! So my takeaway #1 is that it is far too easy for geeks, especially inexperienced geeks, to bash the complexities of big enterprises. At Tellme, we were successful by working within the constraints we had. For the lost bags app, we figured a consumer would never know which bag ID or ticket number we were asking for, so we built an app that found the user's lost bag record by asking the caller for 1) city where bag was reported lost; 2) date of loss and 3) last name of the passenger. Since the last names in the lost bags database contained only the first 8 characters of a user's last name, we used the US Census database of all names to automatically expand all 8-character last names into all the possible last names (e.g. Williams would be expanded to also include Williamson, etc., as a possible match). Throughout our deployment and work with AA, I became really impressed with the talent and dedication of their employees. A woman I worked with closely wore a necklace with a charm she had been awarded for 15 years of loyal service to the company. In 2002 the company was 4 months post-9/11 and to see the people there move full speed ahead on new applications amidst the greatest challenge to their existence in the history of their industry -- not to mention a national tragedy -- was inspiring.
Second, I was a 21-year old entrepreneur once. I was brash, insensitive, and abrasive. I grew up an only child. You do the math. At times I made cynical remarks that were not helpful. I was smart, and I seldom doubted my own opinions. As my mother would say, "Often wrong, but seldom in doubt." One of the folks on our founding team suggested I read Dale Carnegie. Another gave me the Steven Covey book. In the end I became a more effective communicator not just from reading books but by growing a little older. Yes, Dustin's remarks about AA where he paints them as some sort of completely incompetent idiots are wholly inappropriate and abrasive and unfair. I think that's in large part because the guy is 21. I also understand that designers can be an especially opinionated bunch. Of course, this type of vitriol is not limited to youth. For example, folks on one end of the political spectrum or the other often refer to Nancy Pilosi or George Bush with disdain that ignores the humanity of these individuals. Whether due to youth or passion, people lose their perspective, and when we do this, our message gets lost in the heat of its delivery.
My recommendations would be to try to put yourself in the shoes of the guy you're criticizing. You can be frank in your criticism, but you don't need to be callous. It gets easier with age. I'm still to this day critical of some things, and often I am passionate about those opinions, but it's possible to be a passionate critic without coming off as a jerk. It's something I work at all the time.
It's also possible to be an airline and have a good web site. As an American Airlines customer, I hope they improve a lot in that area soon, as Virgin America is definitely setting the bar today for in-air customer experience, and neither has a particularly great Web site. Yet.
I haven't looked exhaustively, but there are solutions out there to book appointments with your doctor or dentist, and there must exist some solution to book an appt with your professor, but what's needed here is something simpler, i think. it would be interesting to see what others say.
I'm an investor in a company called NABsys that's doing this type of electronic sequencing with nanopores today; it's definitely a cool space with profound implications for genetic sequencing. If anyone's interested, let me know and I'd be happy to intro you to the NABsys team: http://nabsys.com/
Yeah, it means the guy is smart and is borrowing strength from what he knows works. 37 Signals published their conversion rates from the highrise landing page for a reason. Goal at this stage is to see if people will sign up for the concept. Once he proves that out (i.e. customer development), I'm sure he'll invest in some of his own graphic identity, logo selection, color schemes, etc.
This is off on a tangent from the piece about Google and Rupert, but it's worth noting that in the general discussion of the demise of the traditional print newspaper business, few folks point out that the small community papers are in a better spot.
The real issue is that the national and world news has become a commodity that you can get from nearly anywhere. At the same time, the quality of the reporting has declined. Folks like Politico may represent the future of national reporting -- a leaner group of highly talented journalists getting interesting stories out. But why pay to read about some major national news story in paper XXX when you have 1,000 other news sources to read essentially the same content?
Conversely, take a look at small community papers. For example, my hometown paper is online at http://bristolri.com/. These guys are doing just fine (I know the publisher). You can't get their content anywhere else. And you know what? Average everyday people want to read local stories about the new school superintendent, the police report, the controversy over a local land development deal, the letters to the editor from their neighbors, etc. They buy the paper. Local advertisers still advertise. The paper is doing fine, and he's not alone -- lots of small papers are doing OK because their content has not been commoditized.
As for Rupert Murdoch, I think he's going in the wrong direction. If I were him, I'd worry less about distribution rights on my essentially worthless commodity national news content, and I would instead set my target on the big ratings agencies. The ratings agencies played a huge role in the credit crisis -- they basically gave bonds a gold star that were, in reality, crap. They should be vulnerable with some sort of new model. There are few companies positioned as well to destroy Moody's as News Corp / WSJ / Dow Jones with their depth of financial industry content / resources / etc. I don't have any idea of exactly what a rating agency 2.0 would look like, but it would seem like a much more productive and valuable place for Rupert to put his focus.
This is a great example of a business where the revenue opportunity when sold as an insurance policy may be much higher than when sold as a per-incident/per-claim service.
Reposition as lost pet insurance, with differing rates based on type of pet, age of pet, whether or not pet has a homeagain RFID implant, etc. Perhaps also offer a standard response or a premium response, where the standard includes robocalls, craigslist posting, notification to local pet shelters/SPCA/dog catcher; premium level includes posting 'lost dog' flyers in local area using craigslist-recruited 'street teams.'
Sell it through vets, a PetCo partnership, dogster.com, etc. $29/year or something affordable like that. Get a special tag and everything "this pet protected by Pet Guardian" or whatever. See also AAA, TowBoat/US, Lifelock for insurance programs that target unlikely bad things like broken down car, grounded boat, or stolen identity.
"Do you care enough about your doggie to protect him with Pet Guardian?"
Market size is big: 60% of American households own pets. If just 0.50% of these pet-owning households bought lost pet insurance @ $29/year, that's an $8mm/yr business. If you got 3% of the market, it's $50 mm/yr.
I am not saying inflation should not be a serious concern, however the article fails to mention that the Fed changed the rules so they can now pay interest on these reserves. That's a massive change in law and policy and is the Fed's primary answer to articles like this one, so it's weird the author completely misses that point.
Here's what FRB NY's Dudley said this week - from Reuters article:
"Dudley argued that the Fed's large and growing balance sheet is nothing that prevents the Fed from controlling inflation once the economy corrects. 'It is not the case that our expanded balance sheet will inevitably prove inflationary,' he said.
Specifically, Dudley said the Fed's new ability to pay interest on excess reserves is a critical tool it uses to keep banks from lending these reserves and thereby creating new credit and boosting inflation. 'Thus, through the IOER rate (interest on excess reserves), the Federal Reserve can effectively retain control of monetary policy,' he said, noting that the Fed can increase the IOER rate if banks begin to find it more profitable to lend these reserves."