Once upon a time I thought there was a better chance I could be convinced the Earth was a giant pyramid glued to the back of a pterodactyl rather than the Zune player was a device worth noticing. And those vows by Microsoft… saying they would pour and pour money in it until it becomes successful didn’t seem to help at all. Well, someone, somehow realized it’s not all about money, especially if the giant goose in which throat you try to stick it has a defunct anus. Someone in the long corridors of Redmond probably tripped, fell on its head and had an Eureka moment – It should all begin with the design. Then money.
That someone, hallowed be His name, gathered a bunch of designers and said “Hi guys, here’s the new iPod touch. You have one week to study it. It’s not crap like Steve Ballmer told you, it’s actually good. People are buying it for Bill’s sake! I want something better than this.” The designers, well trained in their profession and all of them closet Apple fanbois, began to scratch their heads and probably said to themselves “That man tripped in the corridor! We’re doomed!” That’s because they didn’t know (yet) how much money Microsoft is ready to pay to get the job done. The goose was fired and sent to a farm. Where it should have been in the first place.
The first suggestion the team of designers made was to get rid of the brown Zunes – they said “Mr. Someone, our research clearly shows that people, especially young promiscuous geeks, associate the color brown with poo. It may surprise you but nobody wants to hold poo in his hands or put it in his pocket, so let’s ditch it.”
“Fine!” said Mr. Someone. Here’s a 10 000 $ check for a good suggestion. The designers went home, told their wives what happened and were accordingly rewarded in bed. The morning after, they went to work ecstatic. They found a note on the door saying – the next good idea gets 20 000$. Then they unlocked their secret drawers, threw all those books about Jonathan Ive and started thinking… and thinking… and thinking. And one of them got it. “No rounded corners!” he cried. “OMG, said another, how come we didn’t think about that before!”. His buddy tapped him on the head and replied “Well, great ideas seem simple only in retrospective, my friend!” “True!” said the guy behind them “True!” repeated Mr. Someone as he wrote the next check.
The designers went home and saw their wives (or husbands, for those married before Proposition 8 was accepted) made them a gourmet dinner and after the clock hit bedtime they were rewarded with the most dirty and shameless sex a woman (or a man) could offer. It seemed like a dream. Working for Microsoft had never led them to such excesses. The next morning they woke up with a headache but even more enthusiastic. They went to the office, ate some donuts and started thinking again. “Hey pal,” said one of them to the person sitting next to him “I think that enormous blob called button has to go. It was a bad replica of Apple’s wheel, neither round, not rectangular, kinda big, and to tell you the truth… I never really liked it.” “Neither did I” said Mr. Someone and wrote the next check.
When the designers went home, something even stranger happened. Their wives had invited a colorful bunch of strippers of all races and hair-types to the most lustful orgy the world had ever seen since the times of Sodom and Gomorrah. The designers woke up late the next morning and went to the office where Mr. Someone already waited for them. “I know” he said “You all had an orgy last night and couldn’t wake up in time” The designers were totally struck. “But how…” “Well” said Mr. Someone” Bill Gates paid for it and picked up the girls personally with the assistance of your wives. Now let’s get to work, you never know what could happen next…”
The story is longer than that and I won’t go into further details but what we can all learn tonight is: a) design matters, b) motivation matters, c) when people love the stuff they design they are really productive, d) one should never rely solely on money to get good results and e) the money must be spent wisely. Of course the new Zune HD is not perfect yet. Nobody wants it to be. What we really want is someone to light some fire under Apple’s ass. That way, both Zunes and iPods will win. Oh and that “marketplac” on the Zune screen… well, some designers have really bad hangovers. May they be forgiven!
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