{"id":15876,"date":"2009-06-12T15:51:55","date_gmt":"2009-06-12T15:51:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.adobe.com\/jnackdev\/2009\/06\/customers-bullet-holes.html"},"modified":"2009-06-12T15:51:55","modified_gmt":"2009-06-12T15:51:55","slug":"customers_bullet_holes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/2009\/06\/12\/customers_bullet_holes\/","title":{"rendered":"Customers &amp; Bullet Holes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In talking with painter <a href=\"http:\/\/www.greenwichworkshop.com\/thumbnails\/default.asp?a=16&amp;detailtype=artist\">James Christensen<\/a>, Photoshop engineer Jerry Harris picked up an anecdote I found interesting:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>During World War II, Allied bomber losses were high, so the powers that be demanded a fix.  The engineers set out to eyeball every bomber they could, gathering great statistics for each bullet hole.  After a long study they decided to add more armor plating to the areas that had the highest concentrations of holes.  A bit after these improved planes were deployed, they received some startling news: more planes were going down than before.  At this point I thought, &#8220;Did they make them too heavy?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Then the light bulb went on for someone: they had measured every bullet hole in every plane at their disposal, but they&#8217;d failed to realize <em>it was the ones that they did not have access to that mattered<\/em>.  It was the ones that did not return that needed to be scrutinized. They needed to improve the armor in the places that the returning planes had no bullet holes.<\/p>\n<p>Sounds like it might generally relate to product marketing, and user studies: go investigate the customers that don&#8217;t return for seconds, i.e. upgrade.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>I can&#8217;t vouch for the story&#8217;s veracity, but the lesson seems sound.  This is part of why one needs to listen to customers, but <a href=\"http:\/\/www.scottkelby.com\/blog\/2008\/archives\/1641\">only up to a point<\/a>: they&#8217;ll tell you how to please the customers you have&#8211;but not the ones you don&#8217;t have.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In talking with painter James Christensen, Photoshop engineer Jerry Harris picked up an anecdote I found interesting: During World War II, Allied bomber losses were high, so the powers that be demanded a fix. The engineers set out to eyeball every bomber they could, gathering great statistics for each bullet hole. After a long study [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15876"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15876\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}