‘Nuff said.
Smart Companies know when to say goodbye
Google made the right move here. Wave was revolutionary. And it had potential. But a failed product launch is failed product launch.Knowing when to pull a product and not to invest in the marketing and continuing development of it is the mark of a brilliantly mature company.I am sure we will all end up using elements of wave as time moves on, but as an independent product there are 2 dozens reasons why it didn’t work.
Complexity and Simplicity, Difficulty, Ease
Now if he was talking about an IPhone Application, I’d agree with him. But in this case, we’re are talking about a virtual rocket ship, or a Ferrari Steering Wheel, and make complex stuff like this is both complicated and difficult. Our Code is designed to work, it’s not designed for developers to develop. I try to force the team to keep the architecture as simple as possible but even still, it’s not easy, and it’s not simple.
A newsgroup posting from Douglas Gorney “How not to design for ux” refers to the idea that some think a 9 minute video on how to use a steering wheel suggests that the wheel is too complex. He quite correctly observes that this steering wheel is for RACECAR Drivers and a 9 minute video on how it’s used and how it was designed is not too much to ask for guys who drive at 200 MPH (360 KPH). I guess I’d say the same about software that crawls thru 100s of Millions of possible combinations of fares and flights. In order to do it correctly, in order to do it well, I guess it’s worth waiting 6 months before I let you hack around on it.Here is the original video on YouTube.