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2.23.00
i hate marketing people. actually, i hate not being able to communicate with
marketing people. why is it that when i say "if you do x, your users will
hate you", i get in response "well, we'll just have to wait for the focus
groups to see about that". don't you guys *understand*? i can tell you more
about your audience than a focus group. if i couldn't, i shouldn't be doing
the job i'm doing and you'll have a lousy interface and your product will
suck, so you might as well take that little risk, and believe what i tell you.
so, we have a functional spec, and a deadline, and some ui mockups, and
we're ready to really start coding this thing any day now, and marketing is
doing focus groups. a little late to get any *useful* information, but who
am i to tell them how they should allocate resources. *except* when they say
they're going to use my ui mockups in the focus groups.
"uh uh. no way. no how. no can do. i don't want you turning your focus
group into a usability test, you won't get any valuable feedback by showing
the mockups." "but, we need the mockups to explain the product." "you mean
you can't explain it abstractly, it's this and it does that and this is why
it's cool for you?" "nope. how is this different from showing it to vc's and
partners?" "duh! vc's and partners need to see the technology and the
implementation in order to do due diligence on us, they need to see we're
not talking out our asses."
it went downhill from there. the conclusion being that it wouldn't be
too bad if the mockups were shown at the end. which i could live with, but
the vp "reserved judgement" on. and after he left i got a thinly veiled
lecture from the other marketing person about how i made them feel stupid,
of course unintentionally. i was proud of myself, i managed to bite my
tongue on the "it was intentional" comment.
i wish for the mythical company where marketing people listen to other
peoples' input and don't blindly follow launch patterns that applied 5 years
ago and...
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