Skin & Teeth

“It’s indicative of what happens when the public makes decisions about how their products are designed: 9 times out of 10 what the public collectively wants is just plan awful. The fact is most people just aren’t very smart, and the more you have in a group, the dumber they get. When you have a focus group of grandmas and parents and kids all sitting in a room together, and you ask them a question like “would you like to be able to customize your website?” most of them are going to think yeah, that sounds good! without even realizing what that will entail. The sad thing is, the people who made all those gaudy, flashy, obnoxious myspace sites liked them, but then they all went to Facebook because Facebook let them do what they wanted to do with as little bullshit as possible, and it turns out they didn’t really want what they thought they wanted. This should be a cardinal rule for every business: people, for the most part, have no fucking idea what they want until it lands in their fucking laps.”