Do companies fail because their technology is unusable?
Column written for Interactions. © CACM, 2005. This is the author’s version of the work. It is posted here by permission of ACM for your personal use. It may be redistributed for non-commercial use only, provided this paragraph is included. The definitive version was published in Interactions, 12 (4) (July + August, 2005), p 69. In a recent posting on the CHI Consultants discussion list, Kay Aubrey quoted a company CEO as saying: “no company has ever failed because their technology doesn’t work, they failed because they had no sales.” Aubrey reports that when she heard this, “a light went off in my head.” “I have met with so many prospects,” she wrote, “who were worried and embarrassed about their horrendously arcane and hopelessly unusable products, but their companies were successful in spite of this problem.” Just how important is usability? Understandability? Appearance? It depends upon the competitive landscape. Consider the business prospects of two products that are universally
