Cos the deciders are on desktop...

-
A screenshot that someone shared with me a few days reminded me of a conversation that drove me nuts about a year ago.

I know - terrible start to a story, but play along. :-)

The screenshot showed a bug (one visual element looked a little off) in a product I'm responsible for. I filed a mental note on it, but knew instantly I'll never prioritize fixing it - for a lot of different reasons (zero impact to functionality etc.), but mainly because the bug is on desktop - a platform that I know is not one where most new users our coming and one that I'm consistently prioritizing behind mobile. It was something I thought about for all of a split-second, and won't let anyone else waste engineering time on.

What did this remind me of? A couple years ago, some folks on another team spent weeks trying to convince me to build something that was a desktop-only enhancement to the product I was working on at the time. They pushed really hard, despite confirming (again and again!) that they did really understand that less than half the users they wanted to reach would see this, and that those number of users would decline over time.

I'd poked for a while at their motivation, and their initial rationale was "at least this set of users will see something better". I naively admired their passion for their customers, but explained that the investment of time and engineering effort wasn't worth it.

Finally, they said "Actually, our boss will see this demo on desktop and that'll really impress him." 

 That was my first real introduction to the "decider is on desktop" problem, but since then I've had to catch it again and again.

While for most products these days, our users are accessing them on mobile devices, the people that make decisions about them (not just execs and managers, but engineers, designers and business folks with the company as well) have spent a long time perfecting their work environments on desktop. Most mobile demos I see even today are in desktop emulators.

So very often, despite knowing better, teams will end up over-investing on desktop and under-investing on mobile. Our work environments aren't going to change overnight. Mark Zuckerberg may be able to draft his IPO letter on his phone, but I still see a significant boost in productivity from an extra monitor in my work setup.

So what do you do?

  • Rules definitely help:
    Most people I know now have "mobile-first" or "mobile-only" investment rules. Some teams refuse to review mocks that aren't mobile-only. Others mandate that all development should be mobile-only. There is no mobile product development. Software that works on phones is just called product development now.
  • So does infrastructure: Tools (demo environments, dev environments etc.) that make it easy to not just develop, but demo to your teams and have them experience on mobile are critical. This is still something most companies haven't got right because the existing setups are "good enough".
  • Finally, there's self-awareness:
    Knowing the bias is the first step. Then you can watch it.  Make sure your deciders aren't on desktop :-)


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A short love letter to ~8 years on Google Search - 8 things I’m grateful for.

-
  After a few weeks off, I started a new gig within Google yesterday and it hit me that for the first time in almost eight years I won’t be working on some part of Google Search. Eight years ago, I told the team when I was interviewing that I was “looking for a place to call home for a while and grow there”. My experiences here more than met that need.  I used to write a regular “10 things about…” listy column for a while at a college newspaper. So in that style here’s 8 things (one for each year) I feel grateful to have experienced/learned in this time. Also, like that column which I banged out the night before it was due, this post is something that I don’t need to do, yet I feel somehow compelled to do (and so it’ll likely be longer and less crisp than it should be :-))    It actually is awesome to work on something so many people use and love, and that positively touches people’s lives. There’s a talk I give externally about Search and a line I often end up using is how the mission
Read more

Why don't you love Chocos, America?

-
Image
A few days ago I had the following conversation with a customs agent at San Francisco airport - as an Indian returning from India I get sent to the customs line even when I check "No food" on the customs form. :-) Agent: "Any food?" Me: "No" Agent: "Sure? No jira or cadipatta ? Me : "No....     well actually I do have a box of cereal." Agent: "Huh. What? Really?" Me: "Yes. Its a brand you don't get here." Agent: "Seriously. Even in the Indian stores? I've never heard that before." Me: "Ummm....yeah." I love reading local customization stories, particularly about how international chains tailor their offerings to local markets - the food industry has the best examples of these - check out this McDonald's story about the McPaneer , or how KFC is incredibly successful in China . But I seem to have missed that the customization extended to breakfast cereal. Turns out the
Read more

What might Twitter and/or Facebook have cost us if they were invented earlier (or should some things stay deliberately un-social?)

-
Image
So I was reading an ebook last week, and came across a quote that I liked. My first thought wasn't "I should write this down" , it was "I want to tweet this." My ebook reading software wasn't equipped for it, and it wasn't trivial to do so I didn't, but I expect most ebook reading software will be updated to do this in the next couple of releases and probably encourage me to as well. Why should reading be left behind? Twitter is already saving live TV . As I look back on the last week watching the Cricket World Cup , a huge part of it for me was watching my Twitter and Facebook feeds for reactions and being part of them. My parents were the only ones that actually called me during the match, but I felt connected to so many more people through FB and the Big T . Wether you're shopping, eating out, playing games, even searching ... apparently "everything gets better with social." We all have a very human, internal urge to express ours
Read more