… it is about whether listening to users makes sense. Steve Jobs in a Fortune interview recently said: “So you can’t go out and ask people, you know, what the next big [thing.] There’s a great quote by Henry Ford, right? He said, ‘If I’d have asked my customers what they wanted, they would have told me “A faster horse.” ‘ ”
On the iPhone special event, however, Phil Schiller said something different. “… there are a lot of things, these and others, that enterprise customers have told us… So we have been hard at work listening to them, compiling lists, trying to understand, what do they really want…”
Of course both Jobs and Schiller know that there are times when you listen to users and times you better not. And the interesting thing is, even when developers don’t listen, they might do it for the best of their users. But how is that?
By all means developers need to follow their vision without asking anybody. They need to think out of the box and innovate. How else could they surprise and ultimately delight?
One of the main responsibilities of a developer is to keep guard over the gestalt of a program. It is all too easy to let your application burst into a universe of hardly connected little features. We have all seen it happen. But it is equally easy to ignore your customers’ needs and to embark on a journey where nobody is following you.
It is not about listening or not, it is about what to do with all the things you have learned from listening. And that is integration. The best feature is worth nothing when not integrated properly. When we read a feature request, we don’t think about doing it or not doing it. After all, if software development is not about satisfying users, then what is it? We are thinking about how we could nicely integrate it with the rest of the application without diluting its identity.
So let us worry about the identity and gestalt of Things. Let us surprise you every once in while, but for everything else we are all ears.
And why didn’t we write about the iPhone SDK? Because it is covered quite well elsewhere.
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Great to read this.
I read a post here about the use of the colour Red in Things, how it was wrong and that it should signify stuff that is overdue _not_ due today etc.
I disagreed. I am finding the colour (lack of and so when it is present, truly-stand-out colour) in Things to be one excellent part of how Things simply works. I _so_ much wanted to enter the debate, but I held off. a)I didn’t have spare time and b)I felt from what I’d read before here and in Twitter, that the developers had enough passion for doing this Thing(s) right, that I could trust they would not be easily swayed.
Keep up the excellent work. Twitter updates are fab. Looking forward to the next Things release, whenever it’s ready. Good luck and good health. -Alan
I fully agree with your post, Jürgen.
I am a company advisor/interim manager and my job mantra is:
‘I won’t listen to anybody but I’d like to hear everything you say’
Keep up the good work.
Well said Alan.
I am amazed and delighted to see the continued wisdom and dedication of the Things team. Thank you so much for bringing a very balanced and refreshing approach to application development! My confidence in Things only continues to grow …
I’m looking forward to the next release as well — it’s great to follow your Twitterstream!
I’d love to be able to work with Things on my iPhone as well. At the moment I have to mail myself or use Sandy [1] — a synced version of Things would be extraordinarily appreciated!
Forgot the link, sorry:
[1] http://iwantsandy.com/home
I fully agree with you Nate! That is exactly what came to my mind when I read Jurgen’s post!!
Nate, I am also amazed and delighted to see the continued wisdom and dedication of the Things team. I’m even more amazed they don’t let our praise go to their heads…
If all politicians were as enlightened and had the same level of communication skills as the Things team, the world would be a much better place.
Steve Jobs for President, with the Things team on his staff…
There’s a difference between designing by committee and listening to user feedback. Unfortunately Apple’s just not very good at making this distinction most of the time, and they tend to throw an adolescent hissy fit whenever they misinterpret the latter as the former since so many of their engineers take themselves so seriously. Though I guess there *could* be some other reason that XCode’s text editor still can’t keep up with my typing on a dual G5 the same way that CodeWarrior’s could on a 100MHz Performa, I just haven’t figured out what it is yet.
When it comes to product creation, Apple don’t even run focus groups.
When it comes to developing features, and feature requests, on an existing product, Apple listen.
It’s that simple.
[…] thoughtfully designed task manager for OSX (similar space to Chandler). One of the developers had a recent post that I thought captured something important about good design: Of course both Jobs and Schiller […]
Nice entry but I’m considering Things as my primary GTD app and there have been no software updates recently. Could you please provide a changelog for Things?
The biggest concern for picking a personal management software for me is trusting the upstream - could you please assure me that Things is a full time project and not a hobby project for you?
Also, this has been mentioned elsewhere by other people, but the Yak feature from Inbox would be greatly appreciated in Things :)
@Bob: For more frequent updates I suggest you have a look at our Twitter stream. We will also create a features page in the Wiki soon.
I take it as a compliment that you believe we are capable of creating this site and Things as a “hobby” :). But our commitment is as deep as you can possibly imagine.
[…] Jurgen: “One of the main responsibilities of a developer is to keep guard over the gestalt of a program. It is all too easy to let your application burst into a universe of hardly connected little features. We have all seen it happen. But it is equally easy to ignore your customers’ needs and to embark on a journey where nobody is following you.” […]
@Jürgen: Thank you for your quick response, I’m more comfortable with Things now, I appreciate the hard work that has gone into it.
I’m evaluating Things against OmniFocus at the moment and a feature such as Yak would really help my choice. Is such a feature planned for Things?
@Bob: Are you referring to the Yak timer in Midnight Inbox? A good place to discuss and request features is through our Feature Requests Forum or by sending a message via the Feedback Dialog in Things itself which you can open from the Things > Provide Things Feedback… menu command.
I’m really hoping to see something from Cultured Code on the iPhone at some point in time. I just love Things. :)
Chris, you might want to have a look at our updated Things page.