Learn, Make, Learn
Learn, Make, Learn is two product geeks sharing qualitative & quantitative perspectives to help you make, better. Hosted by Ernest Kim and Joachim Groeger.
Learn, Make, Learn
The Perils of Fan Service
The concept of fan service, which originated in anime and is now common across media, has pervaded the world of product creation as well. We discuss what it is & why it’s vital to serve your customers without pandering to them.
FOLLOW-UPS – 01:11
Progressive Complexity (aka Progressive Disclosure)
THE PERILS OF FAN SERVICE – 03:50
Star Wars: Fired Solo Directors Didn't Want Movie To Just Be Fan Service
BlackBerry’s Future in Doubt
Clicks is a BlackBerry-style iPhone keyboard case
Janet Jackson Goes Sneaker Shopping With Complex
THE “YES, AND” APPROACH – 12:57
Why Porsche announced an SUV in 1998
Engineering guru Albert Biermann on making the Hyundai Ioniq 5 N
IT’S ABOUT THE VIBE OF THE THING – 19:01
The Homer Simpson car is a great lesson in building products
What everyone gets wrong about this famous Steve Jobs quote
THE VALUE OF PROTOTYPES – 23:38
IDEO: The Secret Power of Prototyping
On IDEO’s early days and the importance of prototypes
WE’RE NOT SAYING IGNORE YOUR FANS– 25:31
Reddit’s IPO is its own decline
Vollebak: The Dyneema Ultralight Jacket
The End of Social Media: An Interview With Jack Dorsey
Overheard: Steven Soderbergh
KEEP YOUR PROTOTYPES FUZZY – 39:36
UX Prototypes: Lo-Fi vs. Hi-Fi
IT CAN BE GOOD TO BE NICHE – 44:28
WEEKLY RECOMMENDATIONS – 47:15
Secret Galaxy
The efficacy of duct tape vs cryotherapy in the treatment of the common wart
Does One Line Fix Google?
Vivaldi Browser
CLOSING & PREVIEW – 01:00:59
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Rant, rave or otherwise via email at LearnMakeLearn@gmail.com or on Threads @LearnMakeLearnShow.
CREDITS
Theme: Vendla / Today Is a Good Day / courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com
Drum hit: PREL / Musical Element 85 / courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com
Hello and welcome to Learn Make Learn, where we share qualitative and quantitative perspectives on products to help you make better. My name is Ernest Kim and I'm joined by my friend and co host Joachim Groeger. Hey Joachim, how's it going?
Joachim:Hello. Hello. Uh, I'm good. Um, we've, we've had a little unexpected break, but I think, I think we're fresh and ready to go. Although you are hinting at the possibility that you are feeling rusty. So maybe I'm just overconfident and I also will not be able to string a thought together for this, for this session. We'll see.
Ernest:Yeah, yeah, so definitely uh, apologies for missing a couple of weeks. Um, it's really my fault. Uh, just the day job basically has gotten in the way of, um, our ability to record for these past two weeks, but we're excited to be getting back into things. Uh, and yeah, hopefully we're not too rusty. Um, so this is episode 17 and today we're going to discuss the perils of fan service in the context of product planning and creation. But let's start with some follow ups. And I actually don't have any follow ups today, but do you have anything you want to append to our previous episode, Enough is Enough, or to any episodes prior?
Joachim:Just a quick one. We had a couple of discussions a few episodes ago now. When we were talking about the Kahneman stuff, we were discussing how not to talk down to your customers and your users. And I was hinting at the fact that I think, video games have a very good respectful way of teaching the player about the game, but at the same time also letting them get more immersed in the game at the same time. and I was chatting with another person, um, who is an, uh, an, uh, interaction designer himself, Nate Grubbs, and he had said, Oh, the phrase to describe that is something called progressive disclosure. and so I thought I would share just this, uh, the phrase progressive disclosure, mainly because I think when you're describing a concept and you don't have a way to name it, it gets very, very difficult to find documentation, research, any ideas surrounding that. So that's the first bit. And also the Wikipedia is super, super thin. Um, but the primary example that they lean on in the Wikipedia entry is the work that Christina Hooper Wolsey, who was a founding member of the Apple human interface group, uh, had conducted. And she was, it sounds, seems like the only person to articulate this idea that sometimes you don't need to show everything at once because of the complexity of the machine that you have. And so progressive disclosure became Mac OS's, the early Mac OS's kind of style of having a button that would say show details or advanced. Um, that notion is exactly progressive disclosure, right? It's saying there's some stuff that you can do day to day, don't worry about it. And then if you want to go deeper. Here you can go deeper and tweak some more settings. I think you find that also on the print screen is the classic example in macOS. So we've encountered this type of progressive disclosure. I think we can take it even further. And again, I can lean back on the video games as an example of. A thing that works really, really well, um, in, uh, doing that, um, because it's, you get to use and learn at the same time. And, you know, if we can do more of that, that would be amazing. So progressive disclosure, that was my little follow up from our Kahneman episode, uh, many weeks ago now.
Ernest:Oh, that's a great one. And I think that's a great point too, just the importance of having language to describe a thing. thanks for sharing that one. Now, if we want to move on to our main topic for today, fan service is often associated with anime and more recently, big budget franchise films. And it's generally understood to be material added to a work that has no relevance to story or character development, and is included solely for the purpose of pleasing existing fans. The Marvel Cinematic Universe and recent crop of Star Wars films are full of fanservice moments, with the most egregious for me being the eye rolling Early on in Solo, a Star Wars story in which we learned the origins of Han Solo's name, which no one needed to know. Um, but fan service is something we also see in product design. And while it certainly makes sense to engage existing customers when planning for the next incarnation of a given product, Tipping the balance too far over into fan service can lead to diminishing returns. One example I'd cite is BlackBerry, which for years after the introduction of Apple's iPhone, continued to insist that their fans preferred phones with physical keyboards. And the thing is, they were right. A 2013 article in the New York Times cites one such fan, Gordon Roscoe. According to the paper, quote, Mr. Roscoe said he had used BlackBerrys for about nine years. What I call my fat Polish fingers have a hard time with touchscreen keyboards, so I'm going to keep using this thing until I can't anymore, unquote. Now, unfortunately for BlackBerry, Mr. Roscoe represented only a sliver of the broader smartphone market opportunity, yet they continued to insist on serving that fan base until the company lapsed into irrelevance in the smartphone market. So that's just one example to get us started. Joachim, does that spark any thoughts on the perils of fan service in your mind?
Joachim:The first thing, just because you mentioned the BlackBerry example, and that there was some potentially some demand for people to have physical keyboards. I mean, very recently there's been clicks. Uh, I don't know if you've encountered that product. I haven't seen it in the wild, but I saw the posts on the internet about it. It's a case for your iPhone that has a tiny QWERTY keyboard that really resembles the old BlackBerry keyboards. So it's just attached to it. It makes the phone much bigger. Um, and I think people were pretty excited about this. Um, for some reason, so was I, I don't know what it is. There's something about physical keyboards. I've always liked them. Um, and so it's remains to be seen if the, this is a form of fan service. This product is great. Finding those ex BlackBerry users who've just been coerced into using touchscreens with not much choice. Uh, and, and giving them an option to bring back the good old days. Uh, um, and, and have a physical keyboard attached. So, it'll be interesting to see how that goes and how that plays out. So, in a way that, that points to a direction that if you are doing fan service, then maybe there's a way to find these products that can have. potentially some success. But, so I'm going to start with just more of an anecdote. Um, and it was something that I was watching a video on complex, which is of course that sneakers, um, well, the sneakers media empire, and they have Um, they go sneaker shoppings with celebrities and one of them was Jana Jackson, their most recent episode from a couple of weeks ago. And they go through her history with sneakers and sneakers. She's purchased for work for life. And then they go through the store and they pick sneakers that, and she talks, you know, anecdotes and a little interview at the side. So one of the first shoes she mentions is her wrestling shoe that she wore during one of her music videos, The story behind the choice was that it had to be practical. It had a, if you've seen a wrestling shoe, it has a very thin sole. So it gives you grippiness. You can have a feeling, uh, of the, what is under your feet. You can get kind of grippiness. You really can dig into the ground. And as a dancer of her level, that was such a big deal. And it looked really cool. Um, and so I was thinking to myself, there's a cool story here. There's a narrative around Janet Jackson. First of all, you know, incredible musician, incredible dancer has made it through ridiculous things and ridiculous fake problems with Superbowl performances and all those things managed to somehow survive all of that. So there's a story there of an incredible artist. And then there's this product that's attached to her. And here I am just watching a YouTube video going, Oh, man, I think I need wrestling shoes. Now, I don't need wrestling shoes, but there's something about this story that's really piquing my interest. And so I was thinking in the context of our conversation, in a sense, I am kind of some sort of fan now, you know, I should be able to tell Adidas, Hey, I want that wrestling shoe again. But then that got me thinking about what is it that I really want? I don't want her original shoe. That's not, that's not it. It's the story that surrounds the shoe that I like. And it's the vibe, basically, you know, the, the emotion that surrounds what it is. The shoe was chosen for its utilitarian value as well as its style. It wasn't just a thing that she wore. She was telling me something about why it was valuable to her. And I was looking for that connection with a shoe that maybe has the silhouette of a wrestling shoe. Anyway, the reason I mentioned all of that is part of me wonders in the product domain, whether we could misunderstand fan service where someone will say, we need to see X, Y, Z. If you take that model, the Disneyfication model, I guess is maybe the way to call it. And then you say apply it to products and you deliver exactly the thing that a person wants in that product domain. I don't think you're going to hit the note. I think you, what we're trying to get at is the vibe. We're trying to get at the emotion and the story and the narrative, and that's what you should be leaning on. So when I think about fan service in the domain of product innovation, I think of it, maybe the way to move it forwards and make it productive is. ask and interrogate what it is the fans actually want. I don't know if they want exactly the same thing. They want something that gives them that feeling. And so fan service is a really cheap way. of pretending that you're listening to your customer, but all you're trying to do is reissue something or do something that you've done in the past again. And so I think the, when we lean on fan service, when we lean on just old modes of having done something. This was successful back then and people are hankering for that thing now. I think what that is actually pointing at is a failure of our communication to our customers. the number of companies I speak to and consult with and discuss how they pass information from their customers is incredibly indirect. You know, they don't build protocols from the ground up that let customers speak clearly. Everyone says, vote with your money. I can't vote with my money. I can't say to you, I want the vibes of the Janet Jackson wrestling shoe. I have no. Way of communicating that to the market. Um, and so if you want to get at fan service and you want to have the market speak, then part of product innovation means I think you need to develop ways of communicating, uh, in a scalable way with some discip. To your customer base and let them send you real signals back instead of having to infer what you think is going on and build some very convenient narrative that lets you lean on, you know, old molds or whatever it is that lets you, you know, replay old, old hits, or just, take their drawings as given and say, that's the, that's the shoe that they want. We'll just give them exactly that. And then move on. I think at its, at its essence, there's a communication problem. I feel that way about like, um, cars as well. Like when, uh, you know, everyone wants the BMW M, right? M is like the. pinnacle of BMW's engineering prowess. And there was always a very clear labeling of that. There's the three series. So there's an M3 that is top. Then there's the five series. There's the M5 and that was it. And now, if you go, especially on the European market, where there's so many more variations of BMWs, you've got the M Sport, Which is just, like, a 3 series with, with some M y stuff happening. And then you've got the M340, which is not an M because it's not M3, but it's got an M in it. And it's kind of fanservice, everyone wants the M, but no, maybe you can't spend 100, 000, you know. sometimes they will do these things in service of the customer base, but at the same time destroy what made the thing desirable and powerful in the first place. It's the vibes. M three is the vibes. I mean, M is motorsport. It's supposed to be sporty. And when you see an X5M, it feels really strange. It doesn't make sense. It's supposed to be a sports car, but instead it's this huge SUV and a tank. But yeah, my broader point is really about communication. Think the businesses that do this are willfully ignoring the communication that their customers could give them. They could be working on ways of actually getting that information from their customers. So that's kind of my angle. Where are you coming from? you picked this topic, so you must have had something in mind. what were you
Ernest:yeah, yeah. And actually, what came to mind for me too was the automotive space. And yeah, you've brought up the example of BMW, I think a brand that's actually managed this tension well is Porsche, where If you look at Porsche fan communities, you see everyone railing about how much they hate the SUVs, the Porsche SUVs, the Cayenne, and then now the, it, Macan or Macan?
Joachim:McCann? Yeah. I never know how to pronounce those things. Yeah. Yeah.
Ernest:that's fair. If you're a purist, then obviously you're going to want that small original 2 plus 2, um, 911, And I think the great thing that Porsche has done is they've said, yes, and, you know, we're going to keep doing that pure driver's car. And we're going to do these SUVs that are going to be the best driving SUVs on the market. We're going to bring that, you talked about earlier, I think the fan service approach tends to be very surface level. So they said, we're going to kind of take into what. people really care about what makes a Porsche a Porsche and bring that as far as we can into these other classes of vehicles that the market is obviously telling us they want. and I think the thing that has helped them is they've, you know, quietly but effectively communicated to the fan base that And the thing that enables us to keep making these 718s is the fact that we do these SUVs that generate the revenue that lets us invest in these small cars that on their own are just not a big enough market for us to be able to survive as a going concern. So, um, I think it shows you that you can do both, that you can continue to serve this, you know, base of your most impassioned fans while still, you know, delivering on the needs of the broader market, continuing to stay relevant and viable, uh, as a company. So I always love it as an example showing that you can, can do both things. Another example that is even more recent in the automotive space is actually, um, Hyundai. And this kind of speaks to, again, in the automotive, you know, ultrafan community, everyone says they want a manual transmission. Uh, and you know, I think everyone recognizes though that if a company were to come out and say, oh, we're only going to do manual transmission cars, they would just, it's just completely unviable proposition. But I think Hyundai has done a really great job of again, mining that and saying, okay, what is it about this that people love? And I think what they've understood is, is it's the sense of control that you are truly in control of this vehicle. And it creates this sort of symbiotic relationship and engages you in the driving experience in a way that an automatic doesn't. And so they've brought that feeling and those principles into this new IONIQ 5N, I think it is, which is their motorsport version of the IONIQ 5. And I think, Maybe not coincidentally, the person who brought that concept to Hyundai was the former head of BMW's M division, who went over to Hyundai, since retired, but he's still involved in Hyundai now. And, um, I think it took someone with, of his stature to bring what I think, Many would have considered to be a crazy idea into the electric vehicle space because, you know, if you know your electric vehicles, they actually don't require any gearing at all. So the IONIQ 5 has no gears. That's one of the great attributes of EV motors is that they have no need for gears to get max torque at zero RPM. Um, And, you know, that can create some interesting experiences, but you lose that, that feeling of control that you get from a manual transmission vehicle. So Hyundai and this new IONIQ 5N have brought artificial manual control into the five. And when I initially heard about it, I thought it was ridiculous. It was such a crazy idea. But as I read more about it, and as I've started to see reviews from people who've had a chance to drive, um, uh, kind of had initial early drive experiences, it sounds like they've actually implemented it in a way that delivers on that That core thing that made, you know, that make people want manual transmission cars. So I think that's another great example showing that you can deliver on this if you take the time to understand, as you were saying, that core thing, the core reason that, that fans are as are fans of that thing, you know, rather than just do the surface execution of just giving it to them as is understand why, and then bring that to them. to your product in, in a new way that's more going to be more broadly viable and help you reach more, um, potential customers rather than continuing to limit you over time. Because that is to me fundamentally the risk of fan service is that over time it's always going to limit your opportunity because just invariably those, um, Those little nuggets, those Easter eggs, the audience that understands them is going to just get smaller and smaller with every incarnation. Um, to the point where, you know, like Blackberry, you just have no one left to address. So, um, it's just always going to be a dead end proposition. But, There's a way that you could take that core nugget and use it actually as a growth opportunity, which I think, you know, we've seen in Porsche and we've seen in Hyundai. I think we're, all indications are that this Ioniq 5n is going to be a huge success for them. Do any kind of more contemporary examples come to mind for you?
Joachim:Yeah, I think you're right. When I was thinking about all of my examples, I was thinking about automotive examples as kind of the, the fans of this one. And yes, the 911 was one that, that came to mind as well for me. Um, but I was, yeah, I was going to go a little bit on this ionic path. Um, because I think what we're getting at is fans give you signal on something. Yeah. But it's not necessarily the thing that they're shouting about, right? It's something that is, as I was calling it, just generically the vibe of the thing. And so like you pointed out, the manual transmission is connection to the car. That's it. you want connection and you don't want to have a mediator in there. So I think that comes back to, maybe, a product innovation strategy isn't really about figuring out what the fans want. it's more like building the platform that enables them to communicate those things out. And I think if you follow the path of more, what is the vibe? What is the emotive bit that people are attached to, then it will prevent you from going down a very narrow conservative approach, right? Fan service is in my mind, a very conservative approach because fans are people that are already customers. And I think that's kind of the. The downside of the fanservice part is it turns you into a very conservative beast. And you, I don't think you really push the envelope so much. I think again, it's, it just comes back to if you take it to literally what the customer is saying, you're going to make a mistake because we, as customers, speaking for myself, I don't necessarily have the language to express exactly what it is that I want. I'll, I'll know it when I see it and it's your job to give me this thing that I haven't seen before, right? That's the problem with fan service is that if you listen to me and I tell you what I want and you give it to me, I go like, ah, it's not quite that. Um, It reminds me of that, um, way back when, that Simpsons episode where Homer meets his brother who runs a car company. Is that what the story is? Like some of his twin brother and his, so he runs this huge automotive manufacturer and Homer is allowed to design his car. and they say yes to everything that he wants. And when the car is revealed, it's an absolute abomination. and so that's what it reminds me of is like, if you listen to the customers. Specific words, as opposed to what the essence of it is that they want. Because if you're a customer, you're not trained in the language of design, you're trained in the language of consumption and you lean on what you've seen before by that nature. But if your job is to think of the possible future, then it becomes more abstract. I'm wondering, you know, as a, as a person who is a signal generator, you know, I remember we going back to one of the episodes where you described, what does it mean to be a product line manager? You know, there is that essence of you're the signal extractor. You need to infer what the true story is. That's coming out of, of the customer base, as opposed to exactly what it is that they're saying.
Ernest:Yeah, that is a great point. And I did experience that firsthand. Exactly what you've outlined. Where we were, um, we had this idea that there might be an opportunity for a new kind of product, but just like you're saying, you know, your customers don't have the language to describe what that is because that's not what they do. And so just like you're saying, they fall back on the things that they do have access to, the things they've seen already. And so it can be so easy to fall back on that. And in this project, our teammates in sales all said, you know, see, they're all saying they just want these things. So let's just give them those things. And And they're right, right? If you're literally just taking what people say, yes, that is exactly what they're saying. The challenge with that is, you know, you do that for one thing, those products become stale and undifferentiated and uncompetitive over time. And if you just continue to do that, then, you know, you end up in a bad place. so as a, you know, someone making products, your job is really to dig into. So, not just what they're saying, but what they mean, which is, you know, something you talked about earlier as well. Um, and that's not easy, uh, but that's the job, and, it is, it is something that I absolutely have had first hand experience with. And what I've found to be very successful for helping people is, oftentimes people struggle with, verbalizing what they want, but they might be better at articulating it through other ways, or if you can give them something to react to, a prototype. So I found in the past that that's always been very effective, because you might have a long conversation with people about something, and they'll say, You know, something very specific, and then you show them a few things, and then they'll say things completely different. And it's because, you know, they just don't have the vocabulary to actually articulate what it is they're looking for. But if you show them things, then they can react to them and give you much more useful feedback. So, um, insofar as possible, I think it's incredibly useful to, um, show things, um, you know, whether it's digital mock ups, physical mock ups, but give things people to react to so that, they don't have to just fall back on the things that they already understand. I think that is a great observation though, because, you know, you talked earlier about the fact that we can't, as customers, always vote with our wallets, because the alternatives just don't exist. So we have no way to articulate what it is that we actually want, because it doesn't exist out there. Um, and, and I think that's the challenge within an organization, is that, Folks in sales are always going to see and say, well, you know, people are buying this existing thing. So why don't we just keep doing that? Um, and it's just, you have to understand that there's only a certain amount of, um, runway you have with a, a given solution. Um, there's always going to be competitive forces that are going to force you to evolve that over time and to get better at solving that underlying need versus just, you know, Continuing to offer that kind of greatest hits from the past.
Joachim:That makes me think more a little bit about the digital domain and an example that comes to mind there of breaking fans service, maybe to a certain extent is, is Reddit. Reddit comes to mind because their product is fundamentally a place where fans can come together. You know, people can build community. So if your product is heavily indexed on Reddit. Communities finding each other, the ability to connect, communicate, and, you know, build an ecosystem where everyone exists. Um, then if you ignore them, then you ignore the thing that made your product cool in the first place. Um, and so I think Reddit is, has been in the news recently. It has IPOed. It's a very big deal that they have basically been looking for. Sources of revenue that ignore what made it such a funny space. Now, let's be clear. Reddit is also an incredibly toxic place. You know, there's lots of stuff that was very bad. Like if you look at the early years of Reddit and the subreddits that were popular, I mean, they're bordering on the illegal or potentially actually illegal. So it's been a, it's taken a long time to get to this state where enough communities exist that you could say. People have found themselves and found each other. And it's been very, you know, potentially net positive for a lot of people. And the moderators have gotten so good at stopping bad behaviors, that it's very effective, but that's what made Reddit special is there are moderators as community. There are super users. There are people that are attached to your product and they like the product the way it is. Now, on the other hand, there's the business guy who's saying, you got to grow this thing. Like I got to go beyond this super fan and I got to grow this thing. So what do I do? I've got to just try and turn it into something beige, right? Something that I think everyone's going to like, and that's going to be very safe for advertisers, or I'm going to sell data, which is the other angle of attack that they're going for. But in some sense, they're kind of breaking, they're breaking their community and breaking their fan base in order to be able to create, you know, safe. Spaces online and, and, you know, when a business talks about making their website safe, what they mean is safe for brands. Brands want to feel that they're not going to show up next to something funky and, um, and then have to worry about that. So brand safety is what they actually mean by safety. Not, not, not community safety, which is what has already emerged out of the complex behaviors on Reddit. And so that feels like a bad choice. Because they're not really interrogating the essence of what it is that created that community in the first place. And really what you want to do is, you want to have a way of using that community to bring in the next group of people. As opposed to somehow forcing people to join Reddit and then playing all kinds of games with, Oh, here's where you can find blah, blah. I don't know even know what it is that they're going to try and do to attract news because Reddit is such a quirky corner of the internet. So the only way they could widen the net is make it less quirky. I think, from the top. down if it has to be a centrally controlled thing. Um, but that misses the point of the product. The product was a bottoms up, moderators fix their own thing. There are subreddits. They organize around those subreddits. It feels much more like a federation as opposed to a central platform. So I think in that sense, I can see a service breaking itself because it ignores what its fans or its, its power users or its regular users are looking for from that platform. If it is about the community, if something is community driven or built on community or on that crowd of people coming together, um, then you can't ignore their voices. Instead, I think it comes back to, you should be building tools that give them more ability to express themselves, all the users, you know, and it's difficult, obviously it's difficult, but that's why, that's why we do it, right? It's more interesting to solve this complex problem of, well, how do I serve these people and also You know, lean on them to help me get to the next level, because I think it's exactly what you were mentioning before. It's the same dilemma that Porsche faced. We have the 911 fans. That's what Reddit is right now. But, we can't sustain ourselves just on that. So, guys, and people, generally, Hey, people, We need to work together to figure this out. this is a community driven project, your work is in here, and we are making money off that as well by going public. But now we want to give you back some agency and, and to be part of that process of actually, um, figuring out where do we go from here? How do we make this a space that's sustainable? You know, maybe that's the starting point. Um, and so. That could that's an interesting different strategy where you're trying to really you're leaning on that fan base. But again, you're trying to build a protocol or communication channels that allow you to get to the essence of what it is. And now you're enlisting their help to grow the market. So, yeah, you're trying to help instead of just, you know, Let's make an SUV type of thing and you get your 911. I don't think there's a way to do that on Reddit because of the nature of websites and technology. I think it has to be done differently. But the equivalent of that, the analogy is exactly that. There has to be something that can be done. And everyone in this community agrees that this is the right way to do it. Especially because so much labor is So much labor that Reddit is leaning on is unpaid labor. People's just spending time on the website. And it's this magic bit of community that's developed. I think in those environments of highly complex ecosystems with emergent behaviors and complex behaviors that come out of that. That's subtly different than just, do I want to buy this? Do I not want to buy that? Give me the green thing. Give me that. There's more complexity there because it has to do with the social interaction. Um, and so that I would say any product that involves, you know, interaction with others, um, that also becomes important to think about that community. I think we talked about this separately. We were lucky enough to meet in person a couple of weeks ago. So we got to chat just about Actually, it sounded like an episode almost, because we were just chatting about the same stuff. But, um You had mentioned Vollaback. I think I'm pronouncing that correctly. Um, who leans heavily on narrative to kind of set up their products. And I think today or tomorrow they're announcing a new product. And the tagline is simply, Imagine something that has the power to weight ratio of Ant Man. And, you know, there's just, their products are so expensive, so niche. But I'm already a fan. Like, I feel connected to this brand. I was, I texted you that the other day. I was like, I just can't get these guys out of my head. What is going on here? And so there's, I'm not a customer yet. But again, it's this. Indirect vibe. I'm feeling something here. I feel like you guys are innovators and you're trying to push fabric to the next level and the apparel is something special. And yes, it's very, very expensive, but there's only going to be a handful of those made. And then you move on to the next frontier of whatever it is that you're going to develop. Um, so I think in that domain, you know, the I am technically a fan. I just haven't purchased yet. So if they started moving away from that thing, I think you would lose the magic of that weird community of people that are geeking out about having something that has the same power to weight ratio as I'm at. I don't even know what that means. I don't even know if I, I didn't know I needed that, but I somehow need it now. It doesn't. And that's exactly the thing that we're talking about. The fan service here is you're feeding me this vibe that I like, that's one of those brands where I think they've leaned into the narrative and they're building a community of people that are engaging with that narrative before they even buy the product. So again, it comes back to our, or the point that we were making, which is generally, Customers like the language to do these things and you have to, Show and tell and, and build narrative around those things, and then, um, And then their voices will make more sense because now they're anchoring on this story. They've opened up a very different communication pathway for this stuff. So,, that, that came to my mind.
Ernest:You know, they, um, I love Vollebak as well. I can't wait to see what it is that they're actually talking about. Um, but. I think the point you made earlier about brand safety in the context of, um, Reddit was really important as well. And it reminds me of an article I think I shared with you. It was an interview with Jack Dorsey, just following, uh, his departure from BlueSky's board. Uh, and he also, he talked about, the fact that they focused so heavily on brand safety and prioritized the voices of their brand partners over the voices of their end users. And that in his opinion was what led to their decline. I think that that's a really important point to make here because when we talk about the perils of fan service, we're definitely not saying don't listen to your customers. Uh, you know, and we're not saying don't listen to your most avid customers. So that's still vital. And it is also really important to think about who it is that you're going to prioritize when you, when it comes to listening, for example, Reddit and as they were approaching the IPO really prioritized the voices of their brand partners. And, you know, with Twitter, once they went public. Um, and I'd say, for example, in like a wholesale business, a business where. You're technically your customers are not the end user, they're actually the retailers who are buying the product and then reselling it or in the context of automotive, your customers are actually the car dealers, not the end users. But you have to be aware that, at least in my experience, the people you need to prioritize in terms of listening to are those end users, that is the voice that ultimately matters the most. And, you know, also recognizing that those. gatekeeper voices, the folks in the middle, the, the dealers, the salespeople, the brand, uh, representative folks, they're typically going to be talking from, uh, you know, a very different perspective and with very different interests in mind. So, you know, I would say center your customer's voices, but, you know, just echoing what you've said earlier, I think the vital point is. don't take what they say literally. dig into the intent of what they're saying, not just the literal words that they're saying. That's what I think tends to lead you to bad places where you end up with that terrible Homer car that you talked about earlier, which is such a great example. We'll, we'll provide a, a link to an image of that at the least. Um, but, but there is nuance to it, right? I mean, I don't think there's a There are black and white rules that we can put up against this, there's definitely nuance, there's definitely, um, interpretation in terms of, how do you interpret this feedback that you're getting, uh, in a way that can be, applied more progressively versus just looking back at the past, being regressive with it. So, you know, I wish we could provide hard and fast rules around that, but I guess ultimately, at least from my perspective, it is that idea of listen for the meaning, not just the words. because if you do that, that opens up a lot of opportunity beyond just, you know, regurgitating what you've done in the past. Right.
Joachim:episode, exactly like this is the era of fan service in the media domain. Like, it is literally, uh, please make this movie. Okay, here it is. It's a movie about, God knows what, something that someone out there really, really wanted a remake of, Pick whatever. Um, and so, and I think Netflix is kind of the, this, this is the thing. Someone pointed out that almost every episode I have like just crapped on Netflix and I think maybe that's going to be my thing. So I have to, but I was thinking about, uh, in this context, like the Russo brothers, the movie, the gray man, and it's just, the title is perfect. Cause it is the color is just. It's so lame, the whole thing, it's just so lame. Um, and it has everything right, Oh, I want a film with Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans. Two incredibly handsome people in a film. Let's just put, let's just smash them together. Cause that's what Avengers was. Bunch of good looking people being really superhuman. And we'll just do that again. No, I don't think anyone even cared about this film. And so, sorry, Netflix, you missed the point. You forgot what it was. It was the vibes, Actually, you know, I don't know if it was Soderbergh who said this, but I feel like he's a good example of this. If you follow, as a consumer, if you follow more the creator as opposed to the output, then I think you will be rewarded more with this. And you will start learning the language of how to Get out that thing that you actually enjoy, right? I enjoy a lot of Steven. I mean, Steven Soderbergh is prolific. He just makes so many movies all the time. And yeah, some of them are a little bit odd. Some are very good, but I still follow him. I just want to know what he does next. I don't care what the project is. I care that his eye is on it. his lens is the thing that I want to look through. Um, and I think that's exactly what it is with a product thing. It's exactly, it's the lens that you want, not the. The specifics of it, but anyway, I feel like there's something about. The discipline of how you, um, how you consume stuff will also help you start formulating exactly what it is that, that appeals to you, uh, in a product. And then hopefully you'll have a way of expressing that back into the. Back to the marketplace, which is really difficult. And that's like, that comes back to my earlier frustration, which is always, why are we not leaning on this technology to build greater ways of communicating. what it is that we're thinking about as an innovator and how we can get the customer to say, Oh, that, that sounds very cool. I would love to see something a bit more like that. Right? So there's this, it's more about, I'm going to paint the picture of what's possible. And now I want you to imagine what else could come from that. And if this is something that appeals to you, uh, and the more abstract the better, um, Oh, actually, another call out to, to Nate Grubbs, who talked about progressive disclosure. He talked to me about thumbnail sketches a long time ago and the value of a thumbnail sketch. and literally just a crappy drawing of the thing that you were interested in making. And he said, the interesting thing that comes from a poorly rendered image is that people misinterpret what it is that you are doing. And then you get a new idea from the original idea. and so again, that speaks to this idea that, you know, sometimes even if you're a skilled designer of some kind, leaving enough fuzziness in there gets that Feedback from someone else that lets you point it into a new direction. So, I think that's, that speaks to the idea that we just, we need better protocols. We need more of these ways of getting that fuzziness across that fundamentally human thing. Um, and, and let the designers speak, have that dialogue back and forth, you know, at scale. Because these, you know, we'd like this to operate for billion dollar companies, obviously.
Ernest:love that point. I think, I'm so glad you brought that up. That's such a great point about leaving room for interpretation, whether it's a digital prototype or a physical prototype. That's so good. And I do think that's a concern that I have around. the use of AI based, generative AI based tools for prototyping is that you end up with things that end up looking too finished and don't leave that space for interpretation that, helps you then take these leaps into these new territories that you just never would have pursued otherwise. So yeah, absolutely. That's such a great point to, to, when you do prototyping. Don't make them look perfect. Make them fuzzy, because they're not meant to be a finished product. They're meant to get you from here to somewhere else. I love that. Um,
Joachim:I think, I think we had discussed this a while back, way, way, way back when we were just talking about this. I think it was in the context of something like Kickstarter. Kickstarter is a good example of fan service, right? It is, someone has an idea in isolation. They have an idea for a machine or something, and then they go out there and And then they ask, is there, do you guys want this and people put money behind it and, and so on. So that, that is a good example of a rudimentary communication
Ernest:yeah.
Joachim:between the customers, the potential customer base and the maker, and not only communication, but also investment vehicle, right? It becomes an investment in the future of that product to exist. Um, And so a lot of interesting things can come out of that. So. Kickstarter is a good example of, you know, maybe we need more types of things like that. Maybe not the full investment into the completion of the project, but maybe directionally giving us, giving the customer the voice and saying, yeah that's the vibe, that's the thing that we're going for. Um, as opposed to this exact specification, the customer has said this sneaker, this many millimeters, that color, and it has to be, laced exactly this way., there's definitely something about the fuzziness of it all as well as very valuable and having these open communication platforms and having the ability to, yeah, I think that's what it is. I think what we want is a platform where the fuzziness can be communicated and everyone hops on there and knows. This is fuzzy. It's okay. You know, we'll, we'll, we're going to work together to refine exactly what it is that you want, the, designer's vision and then the mangled interpretation of the customer base, and then pushing that back to the designer and then having this be a cycle that can go around and around until something magical comes up and then do that for everyone. Everything, everywhere, all at once. Um, and then using the text favorites phrase at scale. Billions of users.
Ernest:Um, well, I think we could actually go into a whole big side of our conversation of one of the big, big problems these days being this desire to, to achieve scale overnight, you know, and the definition of success being measured in billions of users. Um, but we can reserve that for another day.
Joachim:Oh, actually what I was going to say is, yeah, it is still related. It's the fact, the fact that I think we've hinted at this in other conversations. Maybe you do just want to serve your fans, right? Maybe there is a niche and it's just them, but they're repeat customers, you know? Uh, and again, I think apparel is a good example. Like you always need apparel. And. Maybe there are only 500 people that really like it and maybe that's okay, you know, and that becomes the thing they are. It's such a small number of people. You can actually communicate with them and you can actually extract what it is that they want and what they like and you build a community around that. So now, instead of it just being an apparel producer, you're an apparel producer with a community that is very committed to you and committed to the brand. And. There are ways to make that more formal. But I think that's also something quite interesting. So niches, like you're saying, like everything billions in that scale, it's such like, why, where did this come from? Where did the small business. There's no small businesses anymore. Everything's a startup. Like, no, it's not. It could just be a small business. Maybe it is only 500 people, but that's enough to sustain the business for that person. And, um, it could be, you know, again, you have a loyal fan base. Um, and that is, you know, You're serving them and someone will show up and say, Hey, what about me? I want the thing. And I want it to be a little bit like, no, this, I serve this community of people again, reminds me a lot of those small bars in Japan where you try and hop on and everyone's like, Hey dude, this is, this is not for you. There are loyal customers here. There are three seats and the guy who's going to sit there is coming in five minutes and you better back off. I don't want to, I'm not going to make you another spot here. I don't care. You know, I'm, I'm a capacity with three or whatever. So. There's also some, some romantic appeal to that that focus on this is what I'm good at. I could do those things and don't go too far. It's, it's, it's, this is a small business. It's not a startup.
Ernest:What I love though is that construct you introduced earlier of trying to cultivate, um, a relationship where you fall in love with the creator and their vision, but not the output. So, you know, you're not stuck in this one moment in time. Instead, you know, you're buying into this journey with this person whose vision you're, you know, you really align with and really vibe with. Um, I think that could be a really exciting place and, you know, to your point, it doesn't have to be giant. It doesn't have to be at billions of users scale. Um, all right, well, I think we're actually just getting started, but in the interest of time, um, now that you've heard our perspectives, we want to hear from you. Please share your thoughts with us at learnmakelearn at gmail. com. let's move on to our recommendations of the week. Joachim, do you have any recommendations you want to share?
Joachim:Yeah. I have two actually, one is directly related to what we've been talking about, which is, it's another YouTube channel that I, enjoyed watching. Uh, it's, they're called secret galaxy TV, and this is fan service, 100 percent fan service. Uh, this channel basically is just a nostalgia, nostalgia trip. Like there's nothing, there's nothing innovative here. This is just, let me tell you the history of obscure cartoon from the 1980s or 1990s or obscure kids TV show. So this is a channel that just tells you the secret history of a thing that you watched when you were a kid and the toys that went along with it. So they have, of course, all of the big ones, but then there are TV shows that, uh, I don't know how many people watched. So I was obsessed briefly with Galaxy Rangers. There's an episode of Galaxy Rangers. I don't know. That show is so bizarre. Um, I played the theme tune to my son the other day. He said, what is this? This is awful. Um, and I said, no, it's actually very, very cool. Okay. Um, and then they also did an episode on Brave Star. Did you ever watch Brave Star? Uh,
Ernest:never, heard of it. Uh,
Joachim:are some pretty weird animation shows that exist. I think people just had these ideas and it's about this Native American guy who can channel the power of bears, hawks, wolves, and the speed of the Puma. I think he has those powers so he can tap into some magical power and, but it's an outer space. So he's out in outer space fighting the good fight. His horse can transform from to a bipedal. Gunslinging horse. Ernest is, by the way, Ernest is losing it right now. He's can't focus cause it's such a ridiculous, it's so insane. I don't understand. I love that show. And it turns out Tina, my wife also loved it. So we, we. We reconnected on that. Anyway, this YouTube channel covers all of this obscure stuff. Oh my God, they talk about Bionic Six. No one cared about Bionic Six. I watched Bionic Six. It made no sense. It's a family of special people. It's like a sequel to the Bionic Man, but it's his family. It's so, it's so great. So if there is a TV show that you remember from your past, I guarantee, almost 100 percent guarantee that Secret Galaxy TV will have an episode on it. And, um, it's very, it's done really, it's just very fun. It's very, it's just a nostalgia trip. There's nothing else to it. Um, But sometimes they uncover some pretty interesting little factoids about the development of a show, how it came about, the conflicts that emerged from that. I recommend the channel. I think if you just want something light and, and nostalgic and don't want to tax yourself too much, this is exactly the thing to do. Um, and then this other thing is that I want to recommend this article that I. Uh, stumbled on that really just, it made me chuckle and then I read it and I thought actually this is, this is pretty cool. So it's, it's a slightly gross topic, um, but it's about treating, uh, warts, you know, W A R T, the, um, and this was a randomized study where they were experimenting whether Generally, the people, what people do is they freeze them off, uh, so they'd freeze it and then a couple weeks later they'd freeze it again and then hopefully it'll be dealt with that way. Now, it's very painful. Some people thought, what if we just, um, not what if we just, but they tried occlusion therapy, meaning they put duct tape on it for like a week or something. And then they let it open for 12 hours and then they seal it off again with duct tape. Anyway, this paper, spoiler alert, duct tape is better than cryotherapy for Verrucas and warts. They're really centering these children's pain that, that comes out of these cryotherapies. They're really trying to avoid that. And the solution is cheap, very easy to implement and looks like the sample is tiny, but. Looks like it does better than the, the other therapies. So I think it's just a really interesting read to see the thought process. It's an academic article, but it's pretty, it's understandable. And, you know, they try and be serious and rigorous about what they're doing there. And, I just found it quirky and strange. So I thought I'd share that with everyone here. Yeah, it's, it's interesting. And again, it's the, speaks to the power of duct tape and the references in there. The authors are from the children's hospital in Cincinnati. So they're not just like in the middle of nowhere. They're like really trying to figure something out here. So anyway, I leave that with, uh, with our listeners and with you now, Ernest. So you get to read that. Um, what, what's, uh, what's your rec for the weekend?
Ernest:Uh, well, mine, I, I, Is somewhat related to our topic from today, maybe we could talk through some of the connectivity at the end, but I want to share a blog post by someone named Ernie Smith at the Tedium newsletter, and he shares a fantastic new tool for heavy users of Google search. Smith's blog post is in response to the new AI overviews feature that Google started adding atop their search results this week. This is a feature that's been in testing for the past year and is just now being rolled out to US based users of Google search. Now, in case you're not familiar with them, AI overviews differ from traditional search results in that they attempt to answer queries directly via generative AI technology powered by Google Gemini. The overview system provides a few snippets of a quote unquote answer based on its understanding of your search query. And then the sources used to generate that answer are displayed below that AI overview response. Um, and then below that and a bunch of other cruft Google displays, it's traditional search results. Uh, the reaction from many in the tech community to the AI overviews has been, I guess, let's say mixed. Uh, for example, quoting Ernie Smith from Tedium now. Quote, if you're using Google to actually find websites rather than get answers, aI overviews suck. Uh, but in the midst of all this, Google quietly added something else to its results. A quote web filter that presents what Google used to look like a decade ago. No extra junk. While Google made its AI focus changes known on its biggest stage during its Google I/O event, the web filter was curiously announced on Twitter by search liaison Danny Sullivan. As Sullivan wrote, we've added the web filter after hearing from some that there are times when they'd prefer to just see links to webpages in their search results. Alright, so coming back to Ernie Smith now, quote, The results are fascinating. It's essentially Google minus the crap. It looks like the Google we learned to love in the early 2000s, buried under the More menu, like lots of other old things Google once did more to emphasize. It's worth understanding the tradeoffs though. A simplified view does not replace the declining quality of Google's results, largely caused by decades of SEO optimization by website creators. The same overly optimized results are going to be there, like it or not. So, it's not Google Circa 2001, it is a Google Circa 2001 presentation of Google Circa 2024. A very different site. If you understand the tradeoffs, it can be a great tool. But is there anything you can do to minimize the pain of having to click the web option buried in a menu every single time? The answer to that question is yes. Unquote. Um, and in the remainder of the post, Smith explains how to configure the built in search functionality in your browser to make this new web filter your default for Google results. Smith's instructions are based on Vivaldi, which is his browser of choice. I was so intrigued by this feature that I installed Vivaldi just to give it a try. And first, that browser is actually really cool. I hadn't heard of it before. And I, I look forward to spending more time with it. It's highly customizable. It has some really interesting features to it based on the Chromium engine. But as for the web filter, um, it really is as, just as Smith describes it, a Google Circa 2001 presentation of Google Circa 2024, which to me is a huge, You know, still a huge improvement over the standard presentation of Google Circa 2024. I didn't realize just how much cruft has accumulated atop Google search results over the years. So seeing the results without that cruft was really striking and genuinely refreshing. Now, in addition to Vivaldi, I was able to configure Chrome to show the results in this new simplified web filter view by default as well. And Smith also provides links to instructions for Firefox and Safari on iOS. Unfortunately, for the time being at least, there's no way to set this new web filter view as the default for Google results in Safari for macOS. so a blog post titled, Does One Line Fix Google, is my recommendation of the week, and we'll provide a link to Ernie Smith's blog post in our show notes. And the, the way I saw this connect again with our topic is, you know, I guess you, some could argue that this, web filter view is kind of fan service, right? In that it's servicing those, you know, handful of people who want that old 2001 view of Google. Um, you know, versus the new AI overview, which is, you know, what I guess Google would argue is what people really want, which is answers to their questions. Um, so I'm willing to kind of get pushback on that and, you know, um, to maybe spend some time thinking about whether that's the case or not. But I think to me, at least Smith's point is valid in that Google has ceased to do what it was intended to do, and which most people go to it for, which is to help you find, um, resources, uh, based on queries that you enter. Um, and so this new web filter view gives you a way to just get back to that actual original functionality. So I guess I would argue it's less, fan service and more actually, you know, this platform getting back to doing what it was meant meant to do and originally did. Um, but I think it's, uh, something that maybe could be argued.
Joachim:Yeah. I think that's the, as, as you and the author of this blog post point out, it's, we're still in the hellscape that is the SEO over optimized set of Google search results. Like that's, that's not going to go away. We kind of, we've lost that, that earlier period of the internet where things were heavily websites and people just used websites. And now we hop between two or three walled gardens. And everything is cross posted now as well across those walled gardens. Right. TikTok videos are on YouTube. YouTube shorts are on Instagram, Instagram, TikTok. I mean, it's all just like the same stuff. So to a certain extent, it's not surprising then that the Google search is no longer the thing that it needs to be, you know, actually. I think you can see in the, in the platform battles and the platform wars, as I just alluded to the fact that people just cross post videos everywhere. That's the thing that's so bad is when TikTok was taking off and everyone was convinced that this magical top secret algorithm was operating there and could read your mind and knew exactly what content it was. People forgot that the only thing that was going on was it was a fresh platform with no advertising and people were not optimizing for that platform yet. There's nothing to optimize against. People just tried it out and it was the same weird. Internet that we always know is like the full mix of human stuff, right? And then, um, so that just a side note on human creativity showing up on TikTok, but then immediately getting in shitified and advertisers and stuff. But the joke being then that's the, you should know that that's the natural, the natural trajectory of platform. So what does YouTube do? Oh, we need shorts. Everyone needs to make shorts now. So you get more money if you make shorts. What do you do? You're chasing this TikTok thing. What? And then Instagram. Oh, oh, reels, reels, everything's reels now. Okay. And so in a sense that that is the worst type of fan service. It's just, you're just trying to show up and say, Hey kids, we're cool too, come and post. But, um, I think that is also this, that could be construed as listening to the customer and following them. You've missed the point again, right? The point was not short form video is the future. Well, the point was, uh, was a place where people felt that they could share stuff and people would find it. You know, if you're trying to pull fans from one service to your service, that's very foolish, right? That's, I think that is just a total dead end. You're not doing anything. You're not innovating. You're trying to convince them that your thing is better. Yeah, I do wish that this, I think it's the, sorry, general point. The business model of the internet is just so, so broken, you know, again, it's, what would that look like in a healthy way in this technology, technological context? It's very hard to see because the business model is so predicated on scale and selling eyeballs. Anyway, yeah.
Ernest:Uh, man, there's a bunch of stuff in there we could talk about in future episodes as well. Um, but for today, I think that does it for us. Um, thank you so much for joining us here at Learn. Make Learn as we, always say we want to hear from you. So please send any questions or feedback to learn, make learn@gmail.com and tell your friends about us. In our next episode, we're going to discuss how you, as someone in the business of making products, can escape the weight of history. The two most powerful forces in any organization are inertia and history. Inertia is easy to understand, and it is a cousin to history, in that history is the pressure that develops within companies to beat, or at the very least, repeat history, as in the previous year's sales for a given product. This leads to a tendency to fall back on the tried and true, what you know works, because last year's numbers are always looming in your rearview. But, ultimately, this leads to stagnant products and puts you at risk of disruption by more nimble competitors who aren't weighed down by your historical baggage. We'll share our own experiences and perspectives on how to counter the weight of history on the next Learn Make Learn.
