Posts tagged “easy answers”

Noise sans signal about stickers

Bullshit punditry from 37signals

Call off the expensive market research and fire the analysts and consultants.

Here’s a great way to find out if a company that makes physical products respects their products and their customers: if there’s a sticker on the product, and it peels off cleanly (and without tearing), then they’re a respectful company. If it tears or leaves sticky residue that you need to scrape off with a razor, then they don’t.

It’s that simple.

What is the ridiculous need to make a big noise by oversimplifying something to the point of absolute stupidity? Stickers are the only measure? It’d be great to suggest this as an interesting indicator of the user-centric nature of a business, but the overboarding is silly, falsely passionate, and hurts useful (and actionable) discourse. The little diatribe is poorly written, to boot. Is the reader the company (who should fire their consultants) or the annoyed consumer (who has no consultants to fire)?

I’m reminded (unhappily) of a previous rabble-rousing-yet-shallow battle cry against flip-charts.

As the Simpsons cynically told us:
Lisa: This is madness. He’s just peddling a bunch of easy answers.
Carl: And how!

Series

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