

Ask HN: Can great usability be a differentiator/USP for a product? - prateekdayal

Hi,<p>I am wondering what the HN community thinks of usability as a key differentiator or USP. Are there examples of products that had essentially same or lesser feature but were a lot more usable and therefore successful? I know that 37 signals is a good example of this but I am curious to know if there are other examples.<p>Also, does this apply to B2B startups as well as it applies to B2C startups?<p>Thanks!
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thetylerhayes
Absolutely this is a USP. Entrepreneurship professors love to teach the
concept of "Faster, Better, and Cheaper. You can have two, but you cannot have
all three."

Also, all businesses are essentially one of two types: 1) do something
entirely new, or 2) do something old, but innovate (i.e. do it
faster/better/cheaper). Since it is nearly impossible to do anything that is
actually truly new, most businesses fall into the second category.

Usability would fall under the category of doing something "better," though
well-executed usability should also increase total efficiency, therefore
ostensibly also making the product "faster."

Usability is a steadily-improving idea. A new product is invented, a
competitor sees a way to make the product better/faster, another competitor
then makes it even better/faster, and on and on. It's market-wide iteration.
And at some point, hopefully, one of the companies will create a product with
recognizably great usability. Usability is not an all-of-a-sudden event; it
happens slowly, over time, and is a confluence of factors.

Of course, whoever finally gets to create the product with great usability
gets to also take all the credit. C'est la vie.

EDIT: Specifically, this PG quote comes to mind: "In particular, you don't
need a brilliant idea to start a startup around. The way a startup makes money
is to offer people better technology than they have now. But what people have
now is often so bad that it doesn't take brilliance to do better."
(<http://paulgraham.com/start.html>)

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anigbrowl
Absolutely. Years ago I worked at a small software company which made fairly
innovative end-user client software for a subscription-based online service.
Good organic growth, and it was the unquestioned choice of power users. We
were launching a new version and though the functionality and performance were
close to target I was worried that almost all the work was under the hood;
visually and interactively it was almost the same as the existing version and
felt a bit dated. This was around the time Windows 95 replaced Windows 3.1 and
Microsoft was pushing a neater, more refined look on Office, which I wanted to
emulate. It didn't happen, because look and configurability were always in the
bottom half of user wishlists and I think other members thought my UI
obsession was a bit superficial. Version 4 (I think) rolled out and was
greeted as a solid if unexciting upgrade.

About a week later the service released their own client. It didn't have as
many features or run as fast as ours on a large database - but it was slick,
easy to use, and flexible, and about half the price of our software. Everyone
loved it, other than my employers. _I_ loved it, and started using it at home
with a slightly guilty conscience. Their software was not as good, but it
looked like the new hotness, while ours looked like bad shareware.

Our sales halved within a month or six weeks, and never recovered. B2B may be
even easier than B2C; if it demos well you just repeat the word productivity
at regular intervals and it'll sell itself.

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CrazedGeek
_Are there examples of products that had essentially same or lesser feature
but were a lot more usable and therefore successful?_

Any Apple product released in the past decade or so, Guitar Hero and Rock Band
(versus Bemani), and the Game Boy (versus the Game Gear) come to mind.

~~~
dcx
Strangely enough I've used pretty much every single product you mention. I
might rebut:

1\. GH/RB vs Bemani: Guitar Freaks only had 3 buttons versus 5 in Guitar Hero.
Also the home versions of BM/GF/DM/DDR were always poor copies of the arcade
versions - missing songs, badly-made input devices. And having western music
is a big feature.

2\. Game Gear: Personally I switched to Game Boy because of by crappy battery
life, huge un-carryable size, bad build quality (it broke a couple of times).
Wiki mentions lack of UK/US developer engagement meaning not many local games.

3\. Apple: Stable, UNIX-based computers, which are also good for graphics and
office use? iPad? iPods? Multi-touch, touch-sensitive scroll wheels,
playlists, iTunes Store (100% legal, cheap, good selection of music, which
feeds straight to the iPod)...

In each case users did lose some features. But they gain some as well - I
don't think any are really subsets of the alternatives. I switched to some of
these _specifically_ for better features.

Personally I think usability is nice but it's a secondary differentiator
_after_ providing the best features for the largest market segment your
product can target. There are some really ugly products out there which
survive by virtue of just being the most useful.

That said, successful products also tend to usually also be highly usable
because the consumer market is the biggest segment (contrast - enterprise
software). Or in cases where usability _is_ the feature - accessibility
software? GUI?

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adrianhoward
I'd say yes - with B2B too although the sales pitch is different. You're
usually dealing with somebody a couple of levels removed from the person using
the product, and the usability benefits need to be emphasised more clearly -
since they generally don't encounter the consequences of a bad user experience
themselves.

A usable system is generally a more efficient system. More efficient systems
save you money. Cut a couple of seconds of each interaction a telephone
operator makes on the support lines of a major international and you've saved
them a hundred grand every year.

There are examples out there like IBMs Intranet revamp
[http://www.intranetjournal.com/articles/200209/ij_09_25_02a....](http://www.intranetjournal.com/articles/200209/ij_09_25_02a.html)
or the Australian Defence Organisation e-learning setup
[http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9030669/Mission_Educa...](http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9030669/Mission_Education?taxonomyId=18&pageNumber=1).

You might also find "Cost-justifying usability"
[http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=kDVgsGgkF4cC&dq=roi+u...](http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=kDVgsGgkF4cC&dq=roi+usability+book)
a interesting read.

(Also - as others have commented fewer features / simplicity and usability are
somewhat orthogonal issues. You can have a terrible experience with a
small/simple interface. You can have a great experience with a large/complex
interface. Depends on the user, the task and the goals.)

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sp4rki
There is a difference between usability and simplicity. While there are
generally not mutually exclusive, neither are the mutually inclusive in
contrast. You can sell better usability and more simplicity, but you can't
sell either by itself. It's more like an addendum than a feature itself. You
don't sell simple or usable, you sell features, benefits, and economics, with
simplicity and usability as an added bonus.

A customer will choose the company with the feature set he/she _needs/wants_
over the company without those features but with a better usability. Likewise,
a customer will choose a company over another because of better usability and
more simplicity provided that the features on both products are equal.

Simplicity and usability is a bonus, not a selling point. Make sure your
product is actually better than the rest before trying to sell _simple_.

PD: If a product is over featured then it's equivalent to a simpler product
with less feature and is a loser to a less featured project that has the
correct features but better usability (Zendesk is a great example of this
characteristic). Ipods needed to first be the best mp3 players in the
market(feature wise, and design wise) and _only then_ be the mp3 player with
the best usability.

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RealGeek
Zendesk entered a crowded space of help desk software. Their USP is usability.
Zendesk dominated the space with in couple years.

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aaronbrethorst
Yesterday, I spent a half hour fighting with Kayak's UI in order to find a
one-way flight from DC to Seattle, and never found what I was looking for. I
decided to give Hipmunk a try and found exactly what I needed in under a
minute.

The next time I need to buy a plane ticket, Hipmunk will be the first place I
go.

So, yes.

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starpilot
tumblr and posterous brought nothing new to blogging content-wise, but
tailored the authoring process for minimalist posts. Python wasn't novel for
its featureset but for its lack thereof (DRY). Ubuntu Linux included
substantially less than other newbie-oriented distros (hello 7-CD Mandrake),
but was considerably more integrated and usable than all of them.

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jjdeleon
If you can present it in a meaningful way like "So easy you'll never need to
read a manual", i think is a differentiator

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Lewisham
Apple's iPod is probably the textbook example that yes, usability can be a
USP. In fact, it can be _the_ USP.

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jarsj
I don't know about differentiator but I am quickly learning that it's a must
for any product.

