Skeuomorphism is a term used in technology to describe digital elements that replicate real life objects to enhance their purpose and visual characteristics generating a specific aesthetic. There have been plenty of applications in the past thirty years that opted to replicate something we see on a daily basis, and despite being visually pleasing it’s not the best choice for interfaces.
This design applies to software that pioneered its UX and UI essence to stand out from bland element shapes and colors, gaining popularity through 1990s as software developers believed digital interfaces should imitate real life environments to facilitate the user. Some used skeuomorphism to build interfaces with the intent of standing out from the rest of the competitors, others just went along the trend and often created unpleasant design experiences.
Microsoft’s BOB in 1995 wanted to be the main interface for Windows.
Skeuomorphism and 3D
The purpose of skeuomorphism is to facilitate the user by creating 3D or realistic user interface elements with the purpose to stand out, reproducing a familiar environment, and to be clearly visible by different experience. However, the abundance of elements in the UI doesn’t help understanding how we can clearly accomplish our tasks.
Backed by Y2K design influences, skeuomorphism peaked with Apple’s products between 2010 and 2015, but was also a major driving force for Microsoft’s OS such as Vista, 8, and earlier for Windows XP. Designers and developers toned down the use of skeuomorphism by only using 3D elements for program icons, leaving the background to a much clearer operational state and adopting a much neat desktop.
Through time icons became cooler with more details upgrading the visual style both for Microsoft and Apples products, and everyone at that time thought this design style would be the next big thing in terms of UI; however, it turned out to be a massive load of information for the user to digest and understanding which features can be interactive and which not. Spatial and element disorientation made it difficult for users understanding the interface layout.
Even the trash bin got cooler through the years.
But does it fly?
Skeuomorphism is aesthetically pleasing but places an excessive cognitive load upon the user, and some styles tend to be more detailed than others increasing the hardware and software requirements for the app to run, thus more energy translates in less battery life for the device and lower user expectations. Apple has always been a great fan of skeuomorphism and IOS 6 was peak design representation of realism for this style. It worked very well by impressing the audience when the iPhone was launched as users would interact way more often with these elements compared to their laptop or Macintosh.
Good looking but it’s distracting.
Because we’ve been using our smartphones more often than previously thought, Apple understood they were visually punishing their users with an excessive amount of details for each app. Notes app, Newsstand app, Voice Memo app, they all featured high elements of realism to stand out from their competitor and wow the user. Skeuomorphism is detailed with elements to enhance the high fidelity of real life objects, but here comes how the aesthetic portion will affect the usability of the product confusing the user over what it’s possible to use and what’s not.
Yes, skeuomorphism is nice in small doses and might work well within specific apps that require a certain degree of realism in their UI. Music software is a great example because the depiction of physical equipment connects right well with users: an amplifier, a guitar pedal, a mixer. They’re all technologies that are still used today existing in parallel with their digital version, and they also tend to change very little through time compared to other mediums.
Which features can you interact with and which one are just aesthetic?
Do we really need this type of realism between the analogical and the digital world?
I don’t think we do as much as we needed in the past as today’s users are more trained and prepared to understand software elements. Yesterday’s skeuomorphism wasn’t just a pretty aesthetic feature but rather a teaching element helping users recognize their tools in a faster way. A yellow paper with rows of lines immediately pushes the user to think about a notepad, a shiny metallic gear represents the setup icon to make changes to the device, and so forth.
Replicating the plastic keys of a computer keyboards to be tapped on a touchscreen was Apple’s idea to reduce the onboarding process from those who used physical pads, for example Blackberry users, making a statement about their products by pushing for a full digital experience.
IOS toned down the realism to provide more clarity.
However, skeuomorphism with its elements has the power to saturate the eyes faster than a simpler UI approach, and that’s why over the last ten years a rise in popularity of minimalist design was protagonist in the markets. Simpler is better because it plays easy on the cognitive load, especially since we use our smartphone as a tool for multiple purposes for hours at the time on a daily basis.
Can skeuomorphism exist outside its environment?
Realism and 3D elements are characteristics of skeuomorphism and are visually recognizable from the start. The high details levels and sense of aesthetic is a peculiar leverage standing out from the rest, this will set this style apart from the rest, meaning skeuomorphism is bound to its essence and will clash if paired with other interface models.
Skeuomorphism comes in other flavors and is a strong ingredient in videogames because it represents the optimal intersecting point between realism and 3D. The user perceives a direct connection with this design as different elements bridge the two sides, and this choice of style enhances the experience of the player not just in the dynamic game play session but also with static ones.
Note the map details with the seal stamp on the bottom-left and the name of the printer on the bottom-right of the map. [Dishonored 2– 2016 Arkane Studios]
A new trend has seen a soft return of skeuomorphism under the name of neumorphism where there’s a mix of 3D elements in a clear environment of distinct design style. Personally, I think it’s a good modern option to consider if flat design is fading out, but not all software can benefit from an aesthetic change as the UX behind is the main mechanism for the purpose and functionality of the product.
Neumorphism is perhaps what skeuomorphism was intended in the first place.
Skeuomorphism and logos
With the late changes in design trends, many brands opted to abandon skeuomorphism to adopt a minimalist approach to refresh their status quo. It’s the case of web browser Firefox by Mozilla that evolved from higher details and an aim to realism to a logo representing a fox wrapping a globe, where for every reiteration the details have been removed.
A Firefox is actually a red panda, but it would be difficult not to think of a fox.
As time goes by the skeuomorphism phenomena lost its appeal with designer seeking more essential shapes and contrasts rather than an overabundance of visual stimuli. The race for simple and cleaner logo began across multiple industries, affecting a domino effect from other companies.
British Telecom went drastic in their logo change to a simple purple/white duo.
Skeuomorphism placed a great emphasis over the last thirty years in UI and graphic design, so much that it prompted the industry in opting to flat design choices. As we live in a minimalist design era where we abandoned textures, details, complex patterns, to decor our homes and cities, and with the fact sleek and smooth design seems to be the latest trending choice. I wouldn’t be surprised if skeuomorphism comes back to provide a physical connection with products and services, maybe as an antidote to the abstract gesture and interactions our devices are being developed with.
In essence, skeuomorphism is a cool highly packed and detailed design that wants to mimic real life elements with the intent to provide a unique experience for the user, but that at the same time loses practicality making it a poor UX choice especially for today’s technology where everything it condensed on smaller and portable screen devices.
Yes, this is another post about Microsoft and its competitors. IF you don’t like a long read then jump to the bottom of this post, but if you instead enjoy reading what’s cranking my gears get comfy and make some coffee or tea.
It’s the summer of 2008 and everything is starting to crumble into pieces on a global scale. Plenty of business people are glued on their Blackberry witnessing the stock market crashing live, they’re all sweating and they don’t know what’s going on despite their knowledge or whatever economic book they read at college isn’t making any sense at all. Lehmann Brothers is out, gone, the company was left with any chair to sit on when the music stopped. Who is next? Bank Of America? No, too big too fail, but so they said about LB and AIG. The world is collapsing, it’s another black Monday-Thursday-whatever all over again. It’s down to the seconds to pass the historical TARP bailout or the western world is gone.
If there’s one thing we’ve learnt from the 2008 financial crisis or any other major similar event of the past, it how the information is distorted when information channels are few. We can imagine on a X/Y axis the inverted trend taking place: the more information channels we have, the more the tragedy seems different from when it was told. But this didn’t stop bad things from happening again, and we won’t discuss about Silicon Valley Bank or Credit Suisse; we will discuss about what it takes to become relevant again even if your name was never forgotten.
Flashback
This is the story of how Microsoft got its groove back and how ‘maybe’ the public will perceive it equal to Apple, but it’s not the case; however, it’s worth the try to explain why we find it difficult to place together apples and pears. Pun intended. So, trying to elaborate something far too fetched and philosophical, I’ll try my best to illustrate how the situation is and how it might be for the next ten or so years.
In my February’s post I wrote about the missed opportunities companies like Microsoft have lost to lead the tech race of consumer’s products. This feels like a second part to the original post and I’d like to find closure along these lines to close this chapter. I don’t like to beat -too much- the dead horse but in order to write a clear thought you’ll have to bear with me in this journey.
When tech companies from Silicon Valley started to become big across the 70s to the beginning of the 80s, very few would have predicted the establishment’s strategy in a world where Moore’s Law was far-far away. So, if you look back at that famous and alleged statement attributed to Bill Gates: “68kb ought to be enough for everybody”, little he knew how wide the horizon was expanding beyond his office desk.
As Apple -the underdog at the time- challenged the world and especially MS, there was no economical predicament to how big a company could and would expand in the tech sector let alone in its financial aspect. With MS establishing itself for decades as the king of the hill of the home PC and software solution, others were swept and dramatically beaten to the punch of chips and transistors. There was no second place in this business unless you carved yourself a niche steady place on the market, and that’s what Apple did in order to stay competitive.
For years Microsoft stood still overshadowing the global computer market with Windows and eventually its web browser Explorer. Whether it was sheer luck of sheer theft, the windows system felt the most sensible solution for the PC consumer segment, giving the ability to introduce a new addition to the appliance set inside millions of homes everywhere. The concept of a piace of technology being used by everyone that wasn’t a television was the star of the starlet of the 80s and the celebrity of the 90s.
“Whatcha thinking?” – “Nothing, just computer stuff”.
The decade of the 1980s was for many the age of consumerism and the need to have more, to buy what the world had to offer without putting boundaries from where it came from. Buy Sony’s Walkman, buy American computers, buy German cars, and so forth. This was fueled by an increasing spending in the west that pushed public debt to whole new heights, credit cards were in everyone’s wallet and travels cheques were used like sugar in sodas. It was this decade that allowed companies like Microsoft to expand their operations and retinue abroad along with other US corporations like Nike or McDonald’s.
After two Ronald Reagan’s presidencies, Rocky 4, and the collapse of the Berlin Wall in Europe, things were about to change for Microsoft. The reunification of the two Germanies and the collapse of the Iron Curtain with Russia in 1991, were the preambles of a new free range of market ambitions through product placement where no family had ever seen a PC. Imagine all the countries that once where part of the USSR: Poland, east Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, the Balkans, now representing a fresh opportunity to provide Windows as their standard operating system (talk about communism…).
So, Bill Gates and his pals at Microsoft were celebrating a whole new market to conquer and control from Berlin to Moscow, with millions of new MS users to become and to stay for quite a long time. It’s the 1990s and internet is happening slowly but everywhere, connecting the dots from country to country with virtually no boundary set in the middle.
What about the apple?
Meanwhile the PC world was growing in this period of time, Steve Jobs and Apple divorced in 1985 and ultimately he set his eyes on the next venture with a new company called Next to provide quality computing to a niche market. This is the second attempt Jobs planned in the tech business by carving out his own very spot next to MS, there was no doubt Apple in the first place would try to reach their numbers and Bill Gates was sure of that.
In 1996 next would close his run after just only ten years of activity trying to place across offices and universities practical but expensive computers. After all, what could Next machine do compared to Microsoft? We have to admire Steve Job’s resilience in his quest to bring quality computers onto the consumer market; however, PC at the time weren’t cheap to buy and trying to justify an Apple or a Next product for the average family was a very hard task to accomplish.
1989 to 1999 was the liftoff decade of Microsoft.
It is the 90s that saw Microsoft acknowledging its popularity with a constant growth that begun shy in the first half, only to jump high in the second half of this decade with its stock value steady upward. But it wasn’t on quality that Bill Gates made his fortune, it was about quantity and the number of Windows and Explorers copies installed and sold in the international market. The monopoly of cutting out any competitors made the fortune MS is now enjoying.
The release of Windows 95 and later of Windows 98 on the computer market were the one-two steps to a major jump toward the closing of the century, and onto many new things for the upcoming new one. Despite the poor reception of Windows ME and Windows 2000, Microsoft will turn the tables around in its favor releasing the acclaimed Windows XP at the end of 2001.
It is at this point that ten successful years of Microsoft made the public believe no other company could surpass that or even establish a small parallel market. The 70s and the 80s were over, there was no more room to experiment in every direction and the age of the monopoly was at its peak with MS dictating the rules and overshadowing everything. However, a twice-defeated Steve Jobs received a third chance when in 1992 then Apple CEO John Sculley was pushed to resign from the company. Cupertino mama had enough of cheap tricks coming from cowboy executives trying to split the company to make personal profits. Apple wanted its status quo back of niche computing for the few selected able to understand its flavor, away from the store shelves, it wanted to be more than unique anche they understood the only man able to turn the tables would be Steve.
Think Different. A motto that really worked well for Jobs’ company.
Apple would do things differently as Jobs came back and this time was different with the next ten years dedicated to a whole new product philosophy; it was about creating not just a line of products but a creed to good product to cater the best of the best technology could provide to millions of users. This didn’t arrive until the second half of the 90s when things started to turn around for the best, but first Apple had to come out of its jungle understanding they’ve been chasing a repetitive design approach for years that never could distinguish them from a PC.
The various Macintosh desktop like the Centris, LC, PowerMAC, never really stood out from the crowd of other similar computers unless you’d get close enough to spot the colorful apple logo; beside, they all look white and boxy or greish, virtually indistinguishable from a Windows PC. This was a major epiphany for Steve Jobs, he understood that in order to let people experience the true niche computer flavor he had to fool the eye first.
Overtaking
I’ve never bought an Apple product except for the white wired headphones for the iPhone I still own today; it was one of the best tech purchase I’ve made in a long time and its quality reflects the $40 price tag. People around me grew very fond of Apple’s product from smartphone to notebooks, the iPod was very seducing at the time and its cost too forbidding for my pockets. But purchasing such a product meant you’d be set for many years for the quality and reliability beside the design aesthetics. Nonetheless, when Apple started developing its own ecosystem to encourage users in getting more of their products, something funny was about to happen.
While Microsoft continued to expand after its success of Windows XP, the company also tried to compete with other products by entering the music industry with their Zune player in 2006 and with the Windows phone in 2010. The public and the tech press wasn’t sure what statement MS wanted to pass by competing very late with two products Apple already established years before; in fact the iPod had been around since 2001 and the iPhone was launched in 2008
I can’t stress enough the fact how big companies trying to lead the markets at all costs often stumble in the process only to chase the competition. Why is that, why does it happen? Microsoft has been leading the computer market for decades, the virtual monopoly of PC with their pre-installed OS provided the company with a sense of omnipotence that has the tendency to make you blind over the simplest things under your nome. MS believed their millions of users already owning a PC would automatically buy Zune or the smartphone out of a consumer loyalty taken for granted.
Too fast, not too furious. Zune placed little effort in its product abilities.
By this time Apple had concluded the 90s with its cycle and pushed the company onto the highest it’s ever been and able to print money. The iPhone, iPod, the Macbook, the Macintosh, they all came full circle in establishing not just a series of powerful products but the alternative to a market where Microsoft had been leading for far too long. Jobs knew that it was necessary to spawn a new set of eternal rules for Apple with the creation of products well above the market average. When you pick up a Macbook there’s immediately a sense of tasteful thickness and quality other brands don’t convey, you can feel this product was developed on another planet far enough to share virtually nothing with its competitors.
We all know that buying Apple’s products is the equivalent of being chauffeured to work rather than taking your car or riding the subway. You’re getting an experience that goes well beyond the average PC quality and all at a cost; this is what establishes the company apart from the rest of the hardware and software by outsourcing nothing outside its walls. Steve Jobs made it back 110% from that distant day of 1985 when he was expelled from Apple by Sculley. Design became the main focus behind every iPhone or Macbook developed in Cupertino with a unique approach to innovation no other business had ever undertook. Sadly Steve Jobs passed away in 2011 after a long health battle against cancer, and for many Apple peaked during his presence establishing his enterprise as a beacon of design principles amidst a foggy sea.
A sunset
Microsoft continued along its path despite the lawsuits it faced regarding their OS monopoly over the PC market. The disappointment of Windows Vista in 2007 and Windows 8 in 2012 didn’t help the company to win sympathies nor the required confidence to win public’s in addressing the main issue: where is MS going with this? Thankfully the stride of poor OS was interrupted with Windows 7 in 2009 and Windows 10 in 2015, two solid programs that managed to makeup for their previous antagonists and their lackluster effects on the consumer market. Or did they?
Windows Vista was a sore eye for Bill Gates with the OS following the very successful Windows XP after years of user happiness. Although we could manage the ferocious permission request of administration privileges Vista kept asking and mesmerized by the desktop activity slider; the punch in the gut was Windows 8.0 that suddenly alienated millions of PC owners around the globe. Its tablet-like interface wasn’t intuitive because the majority of the public out there at the time didn’t have enough experience using a tablet, let alone an interface that pushed the user to leave keyboard and mouse. To make things more challenging, Windows 8 featured a button on the taskbar switching back to the old desktop and Start button setting further confusion among the userbase, and as a OS this 8th iteration was pretty much disliked by a large portion of users.
Microsoft had chocked itself in the second half of the 2000s letting precious time and resources go to waste in order to create yet another product either too early for the markets, or too weak to grab enough attentions from the users. In fact it was pretty obvious Microsoft rushed Windows 8 wanting to emulate Apple’s iPad, as if suddenly desktop users didn’t matter anymore or would disappear the day after. It’s at this point -once again- that the peculiar thought crossed my mind:”Has Microsoft given up? Did they reach peak performance?”. Just like any human being, society, empire, they all reach their maximum height at a certain historical moment and after that they cannot continue any longer slowly riding towards their sunset.
Is the end THE end?
In the 1971 sci-fi movie THX-1338 by George Lucas, at the end of the story the protagonist Robert Duvall emerges from having lived in an underground city his entire life seeing for the very first time the sun and the sunset. Perhaps we can use this analogy to describe Microsoft’s journey after all these decades, where it’s the end of an era for the company and walking towards the sunset is often a metaphor for ‘the end’; however, in the movie we don’t know if the protagonist survives the night but we know that when the night comes we take such time to think about the day and all that’s happened.
Microsoft isn’t done, it persists. Despite the continuing rise of its stock value until today, the company found it extremely challenging to enter the new century much like the new kid on the first day to school: awkward, stared, alienated, judged, watched by many, estranged, what now. This is probably how Microsoft felt entering the 2000s with the whole world asking:”What many great things will MS bring us?”. No pressure, except a lot of it. But sometimes great and enormous pressure is able to create precious stones.
Secretly
After developing all kinds of applications and services ranging from the home consumer to the business market, Microsoft had created for itself a lengthy portfolio across several decades forging the PC world. On the other hand, Apple has continued a relentless pursuit towards its vision of design perfection that spawned a ‘religion’ off its brand, a dedication to extensive attention to the user experience and to the results it delivers. Ken Kocienda writes about this process in his 2018 book Creative Selection: Inside Apple’s Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs, explaining the detailed attention in the selective process of building up the digital keyboard for the use while developing the iPad, there Jobs would constantly put his team under pressure so they would understand and the intricacy of their design to the minimal aspects.
It would be too late now for Microsoft to turn around and begin a similar process of extensive user research over their product development; but why? What Apple stood for was ahead of its time on a grand scale. Creating hardware and software for a niche markets when computers barely started entering homes and offices was a dare, but the great gamble paid off when the market was young and naive. Today there’s virtually no space for the type of innovation Apple provided over the last 20+ years, now they’re off to healthcare, VR, and payment solutions; the iPhone cannot receive any major significant improvement anymore and their Macbooks won’t get any slimmer otherwise they will lose purpose from the technological point of view.
After a long and zig-zag journey of OS publishing, an under performing web browser, an ignored search engine, Microsoft decided it had enough of the second place and in secret the company decided to invest in an industry almost forgotten by the media and the public, let alone by the tech industry. Perhaps at Redmond WA somebody slammed their fists on the table during a meeting scaring the nerds into a corner of the room, and perhaps it was a good thing if this happened. Someone had reached peak disappointment levels and proposed to invest on Artificial Intelligence while everyone looked at that person in the most alienating way. Whether this is the truth or not, something clicked inside MS’ head to move over new pastures where no grazing have yet to be made.
The Covid-19 pandemic played a key factor for many companies to rethink their corporate strategies beside their smart working solutions. Microsoft realized that with their empty offices they could focus on working on something very secret, splitting the projects and work loads among employees and teams working from home and lessening the risks of internal leaks. By having different units working on the same project they won’t know what the great picture is really about.
“Microsoft secretly investing in artificial intelligence” that’s the prompt for Stable Diffusion I used to generate this image…
In the fall of 2022 the press and the tech industry were getting drunk on the Metaverse juice with all its possible applications and side quests. Articles upon articles were published that year praising the next dimensions of the internet (I did too :)) and its integration with blockchain technologies. The party ended when in this time frame we start seeing odd publication of warped images generated by AIs of different nature: DallE, Stable Diffusion, Midjourney, entered the ring as heavyweights ready to disrupt everything digital. But wait, there’s more! ChatGPT followed suit upsetting all copywriters, SEOs, social content managers, and this was just the beginning.
Microsoft didn’t care but it would very unwise of them not anticipate this within a carefully planned strategy; after all, their social platform LinkedIn would only benefit from task and content publishing automation by removing obsolete Monday morning selfies posts about ‘self-empowerment’ and awful self quoting motivational e-cards from boring unoriginal users. But this isn’t about the sprinkles or the icing on the cake, this is about the recipe that holds together the ingredients and how they will eventually taste.
The surprise continued when in January 2023 more news were released about MS and AI with an understanding that it would impact several IPs such as their browser Edge, Bing, and eventually spawning a new method of assisting users with the power of artificial intelligence when using Microsoft Office. Clippy 2.0 if you remember that little animated assistant on the top-right corner of your screen. As the weeks went by with more information bouncing across websites and social platforms, we faced the uncomfortable truth of the rapidly growing use of AI. But that didn’t matter, Microsoft hand chained up a series of investments and deals with ChatGPT and OpenAI enough to secure a leading role and a major leap ahead of Google, Meta, Apple. Suddenly MS isn’t stared at like the new kid in school anymore.
It was at Microsoft Windows Developer conference of 2000 where former MS CEO Steve Ballmer chanted the magic words “Developers, developers, developers!” soaking in sweat trying to prompt the large crowd of the event. It worked and that moment in history became a meme for the ages to share.
Developers, yes, but what was Microsoft’s angle back then? During that live event, Windows XP was being finalized to be released the next year, the XP as in “experience” for the total renewal of its approach on the PC operating system that would become an immediate success. Users left behind the dear Windows 98 and the forgettable Windows 2000 and Windows ME.
I remember quite well those years and the PC distribution suffered from the customer perspective to the point people didn’t even realize there were two OS between Windows 98 and Windows XP. Really? Yes, the potential wasn’t living up to standards of what the average user actually needed, and here we are talking major OS operations forgetting the user experience.
Has Microsoft ever proposed a UX to grace PC users that grew discontent over the years because the excessive weight was put towards developing useless apps? It took decades to provide the average MS user the ability to use a PC without asking their kids or grandkids how to connect to the internet, how to install software, and how to find specific but essential information like the network name or the network password.
Seems pretty jolly work for today’s standards, yet while MS users suffered in pain across the 90s and the 2000s because of poor software feedback and other UX malpractices, Apple and Linux were taking notice from afar watching every step Microsoft took. While Microsoft followed the typical strategy of overwhelming the user with as many features as developers could come up with, the actual user was just looking to write documents, read email, doodle with MS Paint for fun.
Windows XP was the right approach to a friendly UX, but despite its success, its direction was discarded when new projects were released.
Windows XP had the right pedigree to become a beacon for users in experiencing a better software environment: its colours, shapes, icons, features, were right and users felt comfortable around a new OS development approach. We can say this OS popularized and made it easy for new users to approach the digital world, especially when owning a computer at home back in 2001 when it became popular to do so.
It’s the end of 2001 when Windows XP is released, September 11 just happened and the world is in shambles. People are slowly acknowledging computers as a major and essential furniture in the household, just like the over, the dishwasher, or the washing machine. Soon after these computers will connect to the internet changing the lives of millions of people at the time.
The months flipped fast off the calendars from the wall, it’s years now and we witness the release onto the market of Windows Vista, a total change from the UX and UI of Windows XP trying to on and off take sips from the Apple’s dimension and creativity. Then Windows 7 in 2009 taking us back to familiar and safe waters by providing the user with an experience capable to work well at home and at the office.
Three years later millions of users would be introduced to Windows 8 marking a drastic setback in UX discounting years of progression. This latest OS release was a sneak preview and overzealous move by Microsoft to introduce us to tablet UI systems: programs are now apps, icons are all available upfront without using the Start button (apparently), Microsoft Marketplace wants to disrupt the app distribution system by gatekeeping the PC world.
Paint 3D, a very useful app…
But let’s not forget about developers, developers, developers, since Microsoft placed a hefty value and pressure on the role of developers to enhance the perceived image at their root concept. This because MS perceived product and service creation as a pure work of back-end software programming, excluding the UX process that would get the user comfortable with the latest releases; instead the Gate’s boys insisted on providing solutions from the developer’s perspective only, skipping the fact that whatever Microsoft did was being given to teachers, plumbers, dentists, librarians, shop keepers; basically a whole world apart from the C++ and C# software developers.
What about web developers? Remember when Windows had that cozy program called FrontPage where you could create your basic website? FrontPage existed from 1995 to 2007, retired when Web 2.0 started to grow unleashing its potential as social platforms like Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, Youtube, rose to the top of society’s digital communication channels. There Microsoft lost its chance to beat Adobe to the punch by not making its own tool to develop web pages, and to integrate such tool in its MS Office package.
But we all know the sad story of Microsoft being ahead of its time and being unable to capitalize on its own creativity and potential, almost like a first-born child that never believed in his true potential and let the younger brothers lead his existence. This has given Apple and other competitors room to grow over the years taking notice of what MS didn’t have the courage to push through. Not many can remember the 2003 Microsoft/HP tablet sporting Windows XP and being ahead of the whole game in terms of portability. It was the Microsoft Window For Pen Computing, a new way to look at portable devices through the aid of a flat computer using a pen instead of a mouse, just like pen and paper with a notepad.
For me Microsoft is like the first car you ever drove: your newest and best experience happens there when young and full of hope, much like the joy of freedom going to pick up your friends Saturday night for a spin and something to eat, or when you go pickup your date and make love folding back the seats. The best memories are there and will be forever with you even if along your path you meet new friends like Apple, Linux, that change your philosophy on how hardware and software should be designed and produced.
This explains itself pretty well
This is not a post against developers, it’s a post against missed opportunities and that daredevil attitude which faded away from companies that once were eager to change things around, and they wanted to do that because they had the ability to create something to improve the user experience of millions of people. If Steve Jobs said “Stay hungry, stay foolish” it was because that mindset allowed Apple to win the fight knowing they had to fill their stomach by putting something on the table; however, when you stuff yourself beyond the primary needs, you loose any incentive to be foolish by not being hungry anymore, and that’s what happened to Microsoft.
When Netflix offered itself to BlockBuster in September of 2000 for just $50 million, laughter was the answer from former CEO John Antioco further declining another offer to take BB’s titles online through Netflix. Antioco’s tenure of BB would be short after that moment as the company pitched into a nosedive for obvious reasons bleeding liquidity and popularity, one of them being the pursuit of old business models avoiding any foresight of tomorrow’s changes, but the most important was ignoring how technology had changed society at the turn of the century with internet and its many applications.
On the other hand, Netflix had embarked on a successful journey after that September of twenty two years ago, first with in-mail DVD shipping and then with streaming their content over a computer, until today where any electronic device linked to the web can play what the company has to offer. Success allowed Netflix to produce its own format rather than just publish movies or tv series from other sources, they did so by marketing their IP trying to surf the latest socio-political trends of the last five years, and this allowed their brand to remain relevant across the expanding popularity of social platforms reaching billions of people worldwide. The perfect communication machine.
Growing pains
As the company expanded its roster investing many millions of their own into new productions, prices slowly went up from their original monthly fee of $8 to the $15.49 of its premium streaming quality -almost doubling- but it’s understandable as times do change having inflation playing its part and new content costs quite a bit to make. This left Netflix vulnerable in the last few years with production targeting specific themes of culture, sexuality, ethnicity, politics, making it a risky bet because social issues have been galvanizing left and right the population with a crescendo in recent times. Also, their decision to sever ties with actor Kevin Spacey for his allegations and therefore abruptly ending the hit House Of Cards, have played a major role in the company’s health.
This vulnerability turned the company from being a successful business model to a marketing machine willing to produce fast and loose content trying to please everyone in the audience over the latest trends. While it seemed to have worked in the beginning, now it’s not anymore and Netflix has been pulling the plugs on several projects that didn’t meet their expectations including series amid production, ratings have been dropping and the viewers are not willing to pay for content that caters to a specific niche of society, leaving the largest share of customers questioning recent price changes and subscription plans
About subscription plans, Netflix is introducing a basic one for $6.99/month with ads running inside. Ads? Yes, ads playing while you watch what you just paid and subscribed. Wasn’t the plan to pay for content having ads removed in the first place? Yes, it WAS, now no more. This is setting back Netflix by putting it in par with other solutions hooked to your living room TV set, now there is little difference of choice from your cable provider and a streaming service.
Why all of this? I’m assuming that Netflix is running low on options to fill back its treasure room that has been running low over the last years because of poor decision-making over their productions. Movies and TV series cost a lot, so much they have been bleeding Netflix for sometime without making back what they thought they would; who to blame? We can only blame the pervasive pursuit of marketing strategies and poor numbers that shift like a wind socket in all directions without any prior notice. Marketing departments play their game far from the field, they gather data according to trends with a superficial approach to the user’s needs until it’s too late and “Whoopsie Daisy!” the cookie crumbled.
Do your research
When creating or improving a product/service, the first thing to start with is research to acquire new data discovering the necessary. In User Experience you cannot afford to skip your research process otherwise you don’t have anything to work with, much like bricks when building a house, and you don’t want to deliver something useless that just costed a hefty budget. Netflix should have researched better data over what the users needed without focusing just on trends, and should have listened to paying customers on what they really wanted to consume; instead the company seemed to have audited outside their user base and based their marketing research in an echo chamber. Imagine running a restaurant near a university or college campus, sourcing your recipes to the tune of meatloaf, mashed potatoes, green peas; albeit tasty options they don’t reflect your consumers’ wishes and habits. Youngsters don’t want those food options because they’ve been eating them for years at their parents and grandparents house every Sunday meal of their lives. Teenagers and young adults know pretty well they can eat anything without worrying about putting on weight or thinking about health-related issues, so they go ahead and chomp down burgers, fried food, and guzzle down sugars like no tomorrow, so let them be, let them eat like that in their youth because they can only do that once in their lifetime. But Netflix doubled down and insisted on serving youngsters tofu and cold soups telling them they are healthy and that’s what the cool kids eat.
Issues
There are other important issues reaching the core of Netflix business structure that through time did not improve the company’s position, these five points are an influence to their brand name:
1. Netflix thrived when there were no competitors
At the beginning of this post I wrote about the early steps of Netflix and how it was the only company on the market, they did the right thing defying business giants like BlockBuster questioning their very own existence and eventually crushing them; this left a huge void to fill and so they did fill it alone without any metric to test their efforts. However, their rapid success overshadowed some important priorities such as which direction to take, but most importantly the did not establish a focus on a small/specific product line to consolidate and create the business identity, but rather constantly throw things at the wall hoping for something to stick.
2. Netflix thrived thanks to others’ IP
The floodgates of fame and wealth opened thanks to productions crafted by other companies, think about The Office, 30 Rock, The Parenthood, these just from NBC/Universal -going as back as 2011- along with vintage TV series from our youth. It was a major hit for Netflix especially because portable devices like smartphones and tablets were new technologies capable of streaming contents from the web, this helped a lot in their growth process.
3. Others watched and learnt
Disney amid others like Hulu, NBC/Universal, Amazon, silently watched from afar and started taking notes on the future of entertainment away from the traditional TV cable distribution. Star Wars was coming back with three major movies continuing the saga, including season series and minor movies that would connect in between all the lore; so Disney bought all George Lucas Star Wars assets and removed their IP from others platforms and went on their own with their Disney+ streaming service. They’re plan wasn’t a fluke.
4. Others want their IP back
As we mentioned the competition catching up by making their own club house, brands like NBC/Universal want their IP back to be streamed exclusively on their platform. The Office is one of them along with 30 Rock, two very successful series that have been collecting accolades for years and years; now that they’ve departed Netflix the company tried to fill their voids with their own productions without the expected returns.
5. Stranger Things won’t last forever
This show is amazing and nostalgia is always a safe bet for brands, but how long will it last? Titles like Stranger Things have huge success until they don’t have it anymore, because producers push to saturation trying replicating through the seasons what made titles triumphant in the first place; however, the audience can easily catch that drift and there’s the high risk of emulating the many mistake of Game Of Thrones over their lasts three seasons. I assume Netflix has already something in the works to replace Stranger Things in the near future when its magic will eventually fade out, and this big next production should be founded on deep entertainment beliefs to be a worthy title for the company recuperating their wealth back.
Conclusions
I canceled my Netflix subscription in 2018 for lack of quality content and also because having Prime with Amazon was a better deal. I did enjoy streaming movies and TV series I hadn’t watched in a long time, but I grew tired of parsing through Netflix’s catalog where titles of average and low production were the majority, I assumed they belong to some forgotten VHS store placed in a strip mall in the suburbs, something like an old BlockBuster. I thought it was just me believing Netflix would allow you to watch any movie you wanted, working as a library where you will eventually find something to enjoy, unfortunately it wasn’t the case and there were families, friends, colleagues, where they all believed that too when they subscribed for their first time to the platform. Netflix doesn’t work like a library where you pull out of memory lane a title from your childhood; it’s also understandable for technical and practical reasons why this doesn’t happen. My criticism towards Netflix is them caving in too many trends that seem to be deep but are not while trying to cater and please everyone in the audience; the company should roll back at what made them popular but it’s not possible to set back the clock as competitors have grown through time -so much- Netflix should diversify its business offer by providing something others can’t get their hands on for a while, they should entertain the idea of streaming different live events like e-sports, concerts, creating live shows, because if paying a monthly subscription to watch ads is now the thing for Netflix, they might as well become a TV network and change their format once and for all.
Facebook has changed its company name into Meta and established a network of platforms and services to leap forward into more innovation. FB, WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, Quest, are part of this digital realm and are the backbone of Mark Zuckerberg’s new project called the Metaverse.
What is the Metaverse? This has been a common question posted and asked throughout the web from articles to videos, many don’t know and many others don’t want to guess because are biased towards FB and its founder. The Metaverse is a digital realm made of virtual reality, augmented reality, blockchain, cryptocurrency, together hosting a new entertainment/commercial/financial environment.
The Metaverse will play a crucial role attracting different brand areas to invest in new forms of business. Four major areas were found to be suitable for Meta to open up to new opportunities: –entertainment – social – banking – commerce
Let’s enter the Metaverse by taking ‘entertainment’ as an example. Here we have a wide corridor for brands to invest by creating fresh products/services or simply transferring in the Metaverse what’s already available. Videogames, movies, shows, gambling, will play an important role in shaping this virtual world by connecting with e-commerce platforms and various payment systems, this will create a whole new digital economy reforming the markets.
Here we can see an in-depth view of how videogames will change the markets once they enter the Metaverse. The user will play a significant role competing in the market of digital content making, this will prompt new methods of commerce and money-transferring and for many users it will open to professional opportunities to explore.
A more structured view of the Metaverse can be seen here below with the user at the center of everything. The closer elements and brands move towards the user, the more personalized the experience will be and at the same time its digital factor will increase.
What we can expect from the Metaverse is a multi-layered digital reality that will span across different forms of communication, content, devices, and Meta will use the already existing owned platforms to build and connect both vertically and horizontally. However, we should be aware that much like the internet in its early commercial days, the Metaverse will begin resembling the Web 1.0 in its initial stages and progressively have its users build by taking the shape they want.
On the question “Should my company be on Tik Tok?” the answer is pretty clear “Who knows?”, this is because there are several business practices that are layered according to market needs. A fancy word to state that not all businesses are the same.
Over the last ten or so years the retail sector across Canada and the US has suffered plenty of setbacks due to two major changes that even large brands cannot control: people and technology. As shopping centers have seen drops in foot traffic, new generations with new wishes came along moving away from the suburbs into the city. Online shopping has happened and it fortified its position during the pandemic.
The death of Block Buster, Sears, and other big brands, was one important alarm that retail points were about to enter a long period of suffering. Some like Cadillac Fairview mall in Toronto wants its shoppers to come back and they are using the social platform Tik Tok as marketing tool to lure back people, and especially their young ones since it’s a platform with a specific demographic, therefore not the consumer segment with disposable income ready to spend.
The third element that has recently added to the uncontrollable element is the disruptive nature of Covid-19 and everything related. Most likely we won’t go back to pre-pandemic normality until 2025, the reason is the general and ambiguous nature of politics and its self-preservation nature of keeping parties’ popularity as priority number 1, while people’s safety is at number 2 with catastrophic consequences on vaccination delays and digital traveling passes.
The infinite sadness of retail continues because people have changed the way they shop, they do it by browsing comments and product ratings to see what the community has to say about your next hair drier or pair of sneakers. But also, Consumers have been hit with a slap at their face by the 2008 financial crisis significantly weakening its ability to spend without worries; now we count pennies in the jar.
So, let’s briefly recap the situation:
shopping malls are vanishing because new generations cannot afford to live like their parents in suburbia with a McMansion and three cars; they moved downtown spending more of their money and quality goods.
the real estate market for important cities like New York and Toronto is on a nose dive, after having gentrified old ‘mom and pop’ shops on a crusade to tear down and rebuild entire city blocks we found out large brand have left.
Vacant premises are left without commercial tenants due to the expensive leases building owners are asking. E-commerce platforms like Amazon have grown like never before during the last two years because of lock downs and social restrictions; everything is digital but large retail brands still struggle to acknowledge it and adapt.
To the question “Should my company be on Tik Tok?” the only answer is another question “Are you digital?” to which any decent and smart CEO can answer him/her self. Time is running out, but hope is eternal; I read somewhere.
I wrote a post on Linkedin a few days ago on the value of a logo. I was upset reading (yet again) about entrepreneurs going to a $5 site to buy their identity. This is how much they value their image and the perception from the public.
It’s understandable having a little budget when you’re new to the business or you’re facing difficult times, especially since we’re still going through the demise of the pandemic. However this is still a sign of how many entrepreneurs don’t understand or don’t value the necessity of branding, let alone just their logo.
Yes, your mom&pop bakery doesn’t need a full corporate branding with multi-platform social presence, all it needs is a sound logo with a small website and maybe an Instagram account to keep fans aware of the latest goods for sale. This is important because it creates value for customers to believe in and to connect with the product and its maker.
Purchasing your logo for $5 website will save you money and will give you the appearance of your business worth those five bucks. That is equivalent to opening a shop and spend $5 to renovate it, so imagine the look on people’s face when they see the front and leave. But beside that, entrepreneurs are missing a chance to connect with designers and seek true help from professionals, leaving behind the most important thing of their enterprise which is customers’ first impression.
Another bold rebranding has appeared entering 2021 after BK’s strategy to renew its look. This time the Central Intelligence Agency decided to drastically change the way their website’s aesthetic perception impacts the audience, in an effort to renew the brand and to appeal to new generations. The design appears at first sight as a blend of 60s corporate vibe with 90s futuristic approach, aiming to open itself on a commercial level rather than a government institution.
