

The Tale of a ‘Normal’ Person: A Reality Check - parker
http://www.socialbias.com/the-tale-of-a-normal-person-a-reality-check/

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wallflower
I felt Tivo made it mainstream when I overheard a kid in the suburbs ask their
daddy why they couldn't pause the movie.

I usually keep a tab open to summize (my city as search term), and I've been
noticing a lot more 'normal' people talking about life as opposed to
technology. Also, notice that most of them have less than 100 followers (as
opposed to the pied piper Scobelizer-types 5k+ followers and Scobelizer-
wannabees 1k+ followers). It would be interesting to see the distribution of
followers on Twitter. My hunch is that as Twitter goes more mainstream there
will be more normal people (with 20-30 followers).

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brlewis
This was my thinking 2004-2007 and was my biggest mistake. Targeting late
adopters has not proven to be a successful strategy.

<http://friendfeed.com/e/41230d54-d425-07c8-38a3-4bada029126b>

~~~
parker
I think the idea is that early adopters can evangelize your product and create
its foothold, but it's the late adopters who play mass market kingmakers.

~~~
lsc
this is key. Look at Google. they target technical types, but for joe average,
their product is just as usable as the compitition, who explicitly targets the
average user.

Joe average is going to have a technical person setup his computer- If that
technical person, say, makes firefox the default browser, assuming it mostly
works, joe average is going to use firefox. This might also be why OSX is
doing so much better than previous macOS versions. Whenever a non-technical
person asks me for a laptop reccomendation, I tell them to get a mac, in part
because I know they might come to me for help (and I'll be damned if I start
rooting around in a windows box that isn't properly backed up. Reboot, reboot,
then format and reinstall, I say.)

the other side of this is that it needs to work for joe average... this is why
Linux on the desktop took so long to take off (it looks like it's getting a
toehold in the low-end- by 'just working' for simple tasks) even now, linux on
the desktop only 'just works' if you don't need commercial software.

so yeah, you must target the early adoptors, but targeting the early adoptors
alone is not enough. You must make it usable for the average person.

(which is funny, because I've put almost zero effort into the usability of my
product. I don't have a support budget, so if you don't know UNIX well, eh,
for now I'm not the best product for you.)

~~~
bigbang
"Look at Google. they target technical types, but for joe average, their
product is just as usable as the compitition, who explicitly targets the
average user."

Do you mean search? Its not the case that yahoo or live search targets only at
average ppl. It very well targets you and me too. On the other hand with
Gmail, it targets only at savvy ppl. People are not used to conversations or
tagging or archiving.

~~~
william42
Aside from the tags-and-filters system, none of that is a massive shift from
what people already do.

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pavelludiq
I once tried to imagine what one of those people was thinking and i felt a
strong vacuum in the right part of mi brain. I don't know if anyone of you was
ever asked himself what makes these people different. Weren't we the different
ones? These people are boring, they live in their own worlds. Thats probably
exactly what they think of us :D We understand nerds problems because we are
nerds and these problems are our own. But we don't understand normal peoples
problems, because they are not our problems. Our best shot is at the common
stuff(communication is the most common) In this case we are trapped. We can
search for ordinary peoples problems and solve them with software, but those
are not our problems and we don't understand them. How are we to know if we
are not solving it wrongly? Or if we are solving a completely different
problem in a really messed up way? So here is my best shot at it. Get a boring
job, get married, have kids and get stupid. Have problems and then get smart
again, get divorced and start working to solve the problem. Sounds ridiculous
right? :D Boring people not always have boring problems, but they can seem
boring if you don't understand them. Im sure average Joe thinks solving the
problem with multi-core processors is boring too.

~~~
prospero
If you have a way to make multi-core processors improve the speed of day-to-
day tasks, then all the "average Joe" has to know if that it makes his
computer faster. And because that's something that he _does_ care about, you
have a $100 million idea.

It's absurd to think that there are no real-world problems which have
interesting solutions. To say that you can't understand what more "average"
people would find useful is not an assertion of your superior intelligence,
just an assertion that you're not particularly perceptive or curious.

~~~
pavelludiq
Upon hearing this i was enlightened.

~~~
prospero
I think that only happens once the squirrels start bringing you food while
you're under the tree.

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wozer
I'm not sure I agree with this description. In my experience, there are quite
a lot of people sharing photos online. There are very few people willing to
pay for software (that is not already bundled with their hardware).

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altano
"As it turns out, there is something special about them — they’re normal
people, doing normal things."

No, they're people in stock art doing absolutely nothing but standing around
and looking stupid.

~~~
eru
Yes. But can you find a better i.e. more normal photography?

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mattmaroon
"They believe that a wild horde of malcontented hackers are watching their
every move in unchartered internet waters. . This is most conspicuously
manifested in their distrust of giving their credit card information over a
webform."

Though something like 5% of them will click any link in any email that has
either "PayPal" or a misspelling of "Viagra" in it and enter their social
security number, mother's maiden, credit card number, address, and
waist/inseam sizes.

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demandred
is it just me or do these guys' post seem to reek of quite a bit of arrogance?

Great that they're 'making something people want' but their posts are
generally condescending -- stop the incessant chatter and show off this
amazing product you've built for 'normal' people that is going to change the
world and be uber-profitable.

~~~
DanHulton
It might just be you. This post seems pretty clearly to be from someone who
get Geoffrey A. Moore's thesis in "Crossing the Chasm" - there are a VAST
number of consumers out there that are NOT techie/early adopters and don't
understand things in the way that we techie/early adopters do. If you don't
plan on how to include that segment, then your startup is in trouble.

~~~
wallflower
Flip Video: 13 percent of the camcorder market

~~~
LogicHoleFlaw
The Flip is a fantastic example. We need something like that for digital
cameras.

~~~
ardit33
I agree. I am trying to find a dead simple digital camera for my parents (both
on their 60s), that also takes some good quality pictures.

Imposible to find, and it seems that newer versions just cram more features
into, things that my parents will never be able to figure out, or use them
properly.

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noonespecial
"Normal", in this sense just describes an imaginary HCD pseudo-human. There is
no such thing. There was once a time when normal people didn't have computers,
cell-phones, tv's, radios, cars, refrigerators... you get the idea.

Don't fear the niche, or the early adopter. Today's weird geek toy might be
tomorrow's necessity.

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JimEngland
This is the exact audience and mindset we are using in designing our product.

If you're young (like me), another way to think of this would be to ask
yourself "why would my parents use my product? How can I make it easy and
intuitive for them?"

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edw519
This describes almost everyone I know. (Maybe that's why I spend time here).

OP, however, never mentions the most important thing about this demographic:
_they just want it to work_.

They expect things to work intuitively right out of the box. They don't want
to install any add-ons, extensions, or downloads. And they don't want to have
to get an education just to try something new.

The gas pedal is always on the right and when you enter a room, flip the
toggle switch up to get light.

So why doesn't your web app work like that? If it doesn't work right with the
browser and resolution they got when they bought their computer at Office
Depot, if they have to wait for Flash, or they don't know what it is, they'll
leave and never come back.

This is the 80% in the middle of the bell curve, and they _do_ have money to
spend. Pay attention.

~~~
danw
_They expect things to work intuitively right out of the box_

20% or so of mobile handsets are returned to the shop. Rarely are they
defective but just too difficult to use correctly. (The percentage varies by
handset, I can't find the article I learnt this from at the moment)

~~~
omouse
I remember that stat and I can believe it. The interfaces on those cell phones
sucks :S

~~~
LogicHoleFlaw
I've got a bog-standard cell phone (Razr) and _I_ still get tripped up by the
interface. I hate it!

~~~
helveticaman
Don't get carried away now. Razr is shit. Most other cellphones aren't _that_
bad.

~~~
unalone
Yes they are. I can't think of a phone that I've actively liked beyond the
iPhone. Voyager? Not even close. And apparently people think that's a good
phone, too.

~~~
Retric
The bar for a good cell phone is vary low. I really liked my SCH-A990 because
it worked well as a phone and you could use it as a 3MP camera but while it
was better than average its interface sucked.

To take a picture you open the phone, rotate the display, close it an it looks
like a normal digital camera with a 2 inch LCD on the back and a nice large
button on the top right to take photos. Now all you need to open the shutter
your ready to take pictures.

But, while that button takes photo's with a short click, by holding it down
you can go to movie mode and take movies. So then if you did a short click
that same button wold start and stop taking movies or if you held it down
again it would go back to pictures. Who on earth thought that up? Nobody I
handed the camera to knew how to work it without messing it up several times.
But, most of them still thought it was a _Great_ cell phone.

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cglee
Problem is, a lot of techies aren't "normal" (in the sense outlined in the
article) and they've been following the scratch-your-own-itch advice.

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daniel-cussen
I went for a "normal" market, for all "normal" in the domain "speaks Spanish,
but no English."

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fallentimes
Our target market is the people you described. I'll let you know how it goes.

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hernan7
I don't think "normal people" are as anti-Apple as this post makes them to be.
Also, "normal people" are certainly much less tech-phobic than they were, say,
15 years ago.

