The Only Truly Failed Project

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Wow, some great comments.

I must agree with some commentators who point out that the corporate process is a major hindrance, particularly at Microsoft.

I was working as a PM on Bob 2.0 when we got word that the product was cancelled.

I came on the product on 2.0 and was fascinated to learn the project history. It was originally called “Utopia.” It was designed from the ground up to have the computer work for the user in a natural way, the natural evolution from the command line, to WIMP to Utopia. As such it tried to present things in a way for which humans are adapted.

In particular, it let you save documents and program icons in rooms. This reminded me of the Method of Loci. This is an excellent idea. Your checkbook is available in the den or office. The information about each child is stored in their bedroom, or in the kitchen. The point is, you get to pick what makes sense to you, and you get to put things, even rooms as I recall where you want them. It’s a natural way for people to work.

It tried to have the computer work as an assistant. This is not a bad idea, and there was much to learn in terms of how best to present assistance. (A lesson still not learned by the time the technology was used in Office.) Never the less, it was user-centered and coaxed the reticent computer user into more frequent interactions as well as to explore the capabilities of the product. I still use the basic ideas from Nass and Reeves to this day:

Another goal was to make the product fun, like a game. The characters worked well for that, too.

Before the 1.0 product was released it was extensively tested by end users. The end users reported enjoying and using the product a great deal, finding it intuitive, fun to use, and productive.

Then the product was released. The name was Bob.
The use of a personal computer signaled that one was technology savvy, intelligent, and successful. The use of Bob indicated you were an idiot who couldn’t use a computer. It was embarrassing to admit if you did like it. And certainly no one who liked Bob felt qualified to stand up for it. The name and the marketing changed everything. Instead of the vanguard of the future, it became as marked a failure as the Edsel.

This pervasive failure had nothing to do with the basic tenets or performance of the product, but had to do with a disconnection between the product, the product goals, and what management tried to shoe-horn it into regardless of real world user concerns.

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A philosophical angle to success and failure:

"The only truly failed project is the one where you didn’t learn anything along the way."
Life! 1000 failures and counting, but still no good GUT.

The problem is not short-term failure and The Great Panacea IS NOT long-term success.

The problem is that the system is closed source, cant be hacked, modified or reprogrammed, is often hard-wired, and almost always hidden behind varied and multiple layers of emulation and VMs.

We’re basically blind and trying to picture an elephant. We dont want consolation, give us EYES to see the elephant. Without that, anything the system designs is self-defeating.

If you’re saying the System Lords are running the system like MS Bob, i.e., an entirely acceptable failure just to improve future games or projects, well, then I dont know what to call sych an attitude.

Your blog, and indeed the fame and status of this blog and its author would be impossible if there were no opensource. The web runs on opensource.

Why then must most components with end-user interaction be fixed, binary, and closed source?

Most of us users do not have the money in the (karma) bank to ask for a read-only source license. We are poor. And in need of a good open system. Forcing us to earn big money to buy a license to just READ the source, while using closed tools to earn the money, is not what built the internet and your blog and status.

Why the partiality? I’m not targetting any blog or author specifically, it’s all the same. Consolation2.0 is no substitute for a right to freedom and self-rule.
Well, is that the famously hinted hypocrisy? :frowning:

If we’re just watching the computer play the game’s trial run and we’re not allowed to change it, it’s only a simulation, not even a game. That makes things very different.

Mistaking this simulation for a realtime game is the oldest most standard mistake in the system. What really needs to be free and open, simply isn’t.

Please dont take personally, but it’s more like “Divine Comedy” than anything else.

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Hey all, see this on proggit:

I just thought that someone might want to work with the guy… It is an analysis on failure of his startup and I think the guy is a fairly good hacker.

StackOverflow, ServerFault, SuperUser… StartupCrash.com?

I think a day job is good thing these days…

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Hi Jeff,
This post inspires me. Keep up the good work.

“Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.” -Winston Churchill

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In general, I agree that failures are important.

However, I don’t really see the comparison between Microsoft Bob – which was sort of a bad idea any way you diced it up – and the pinball guys. The pinball guys were given a huge and impossible problem, solved it technically, but ultimately lost out because of the machinations of business. Microsoft Bob was a big, bad idea that was poorly executed and lost out mostly because it was a bad idea.

It’s not quite apples to apples…

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I like that “What mistakes have you made recently?” question. Alas, most interviewers don’t ask it. Instead, they ask “What is your greatest weakness?”

In other words, instead of “What have you learned to do differently?”, they’re basically asking “What is it that you keep screwing up, and that you’re still going to screw up while you’re here?” It’s a stunningly offensive question.

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not sure if this has been said yet but, personally I think the only project that truly fails, is the one that never gets started.

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This post reminds me a lot of the talk that Mythbuster Adam Savage gave a few weeks back at Defcon. Great fun to watch and a very similar message:

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Of course, you must consider what Bob replaced. Compared to Windows program manager, it seemed like a great improvement, haha.

Program_Manager

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Pinball is so great. I want to play one of those “new” pinball games.

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LOL, never heard of MS BOB! This product is hilarious. Okay, it looks horrible IMHO, but the concept itself is not bad. The graphics are bad and some of the menus are bad… but a similar concept is found in other products and those were not total failures.

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people think it is ok to be stupid. thats the biggest problem of mankind these days.

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Wonder what happened to clippy? he met Cthulhu! (see link)

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I’m probably going to get some jabs over this, but I actually enjoyed Bob. It’s actually one of the few things I remember fondly from my beginning days of using a PC.

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Slightly off topic, but I love pinball, and I hated Pinball 2000. I used the play the original Revenge From Mars all the time in college and I completely hated the new one that came out.

Now granted, thats not why Williams killed pinball, but Pinball 2000 just lacked that special something that great pinball games have. I think what I always loved about pinball is that feeling you get working with something physical and real. I don’t want to roll the ball towards digital images.

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"invent a new form of pinball so compelling that it makes all previous pinball machines seem obsolete… – they succeeded. "

No they didn’t. Pinball 2000 sucked compared to real pinball.

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Before you can talk about failure, you need to have a good, reliable definition of it. Your discussion is amusing, but you have used a variety of definitions of “failure”, and “failed” to stick to one of them.

Where you have defined failure as “decisions made for business reasons”, such as shutting a “successfully completed” project down without even selling it, your argument that failure teaches necessary lessons becomes highly suspect. What did they learn, exactly? They learned new ways to create and write programs from their technical success, not their project failure. The actual “failure” (i.e., shutdown) of the project might have taught them that “technical success means nothing in the face of business failure”, or that “technical people do the work, business people make the decisions”, or any of a number of personal/office lessons, but hardly the kind that are going to propel them to technical success further down the road.

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Hey Jeff, watch your French, “de rigeur” is actually spelled “de rigueur”. That’s a quite ironical mistake ( as only those who do not have enough “rigueur” do mistakes) !

Tu as manqué de rigueur sur cette expression.

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Ahhh Bob!
It looks so innocent :slight_smile:

I wish Software companies would try something like this again.
Oh wait… it kind of exists in the form of Windows XP.

“8054 useless time-wasting widgets & programs will get in your way and help you to loose track of everything.”

:wink:

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IMHO the reason most projects fail is due to the collective incompetence of a business. If the individuals running an organisation do not have enough knowledge to make informed decisions about developing software then failure is almost inevitable.