Losing the War

I had lunch today with Gelman to discuss pending areas of collaboration. We try and do this every so often and we also try to find new and unusual places to meet in order to expand our culinary universes. In the past we’ve tried sushi places, Chinese, a hot dog cart, a fish and chips shack – heck, lots of stuff.
Today we decided to go for pizza. We’d heard of a new place in the next town over (which apparently has power, unlike a good chunk of my town) and so we made plans to meet.  I looked up their web site to get an idea of the menu and to find out where it is.  And that’s where this place, like so many others, won the battle but lost the war.You see, they have a terrific web site – very nicely designed, an art director’s dream.  Except for one thing:  obviously the actual location of the joint didn’t fit into the designer’s vision.  That’s right:  no address, no phone, no map right up front.  One has to dig down to find it and since most of the site is “coming soon,” had I not been meeting someone, I probably would have moved on.  Most consumers would have followed me.

So many products are beautifully engineered and/or designed but miss the mark because they’re not user-centric.  Google Buzz is a perfect example.  Facebook Beacon is another.  They accomplish what they set out to do from only a narrowly-focused perspective but miss some of the most obvious things – privacy concerns being front and center.  Engineering victories probably won’t carry the day with consumers.  Usability will.

I made it to lunch – the meal was quite good.  I understand the place is jammed – it’s tiny – most of the time but I bet it’s all locals via word of mouth.  No thanks to the web!

Do you have any other examples?  Hopefully you’re not one!