Josh Miller, co-founder and CEO at The Browser Company, talks about the way we talk about products-or more specifically, why some products can be hard to talk about: the strategy surrounding them, design that goes into them, and how we use them-or don’t.
Early iPhone Ads
Apple’s early iPhone ads mostly just showed off random workflows.
- One early TV spot features a protagonist watching a movie scene with a giant sea creature in it, which then inspires them to search for restaurants nearby with seafood on the menu (in the Google Maps app).
How could I have possibly compared this to my Blackberry phone?
The iPhone was clearly a glimpse of the future.
- Even after holding the iPhone in my own hands, I was at a loss for words – how could I reduce something so new to only a snappy marketing statement?
At worst this worldview can lead to the esoteric, or the novel for novelty’s sake
At its best it can feel liberating-permission to “disregard the words” and just build what feels exciting. Trusting that the words will follow.
Snapchat was not a social network. It was not even a word processor with better embeds.
It opened to the Camera, did not have a News Feed, and did not allow Likes or Comments.
- Everything disappeared after you looked at it.
- The app was yellow and silly and had a dancing ghost.
- It was clearly not a text messaging replacement.
Josh Miller is the founder and CEO of The Browser Company.
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The search for the right words
How can you describe something that is genuinely novel? What happens when something is so fundamentally different that it fails our shared vocabulary?
Don’t get so caught in the words, and forget to disregard them
The truth of what is happening-what actually exists in the real world underneath-is much more nuanced and complex than these pithy statements
- Our shared vocabulary may feel incisive but it obscures the reality hidden underneath
