Tag: Product

Analysts are Wrong — the Nintendo Switch is a Brilliant Product Decision

Jasper ChengLeave a comment

There’s been a lot of chatter on the market about the Nintendo Switch. So far, gamers, investors, and analysts alike haven’t been impressed — as shown by the downward push on NTDOY’s stock price every time they release new information. The critics are clamoring about how the entire product has been a mistake— its size, its lack of pure hardware power compared to its Sony and Microsoft rivals, and the shrinking size of the console market in general. They’ve lambasted the company for being so late to go into mobile, the largest growing games market. Then punished it heavily when Super Mario Run didn’t repeat the same success of Pokemon GO.

Image Credits to Newzoo

But they’re wrong.

And it’s for the same reasons they’re criticizing it for. Continue reading “Analysts are Wrong — the Nintendo Switch is a Brilliant Product Decision” →

What Pokemon GO Needs To Evolve Beyond Hype

Jasper ChengLeave a comment
Image Credits to DigitalTrends.com

— The 3 Deep Content Developments That the Augmented Reality GameChanger Needs To Stay a Giant

Raising Nintendo’s stock by 25%, eclipsing Tinder and (maybe even) Twitter in user activity, and skyrocketing to the number one spot in Android and App stores within a single day— it’s hard to call Pokemon GO anything other than a roaring success. I’ve been playing the game since the night it launched in the US and it’s already made me walk more willingly in the past 4 days than I have in the last 6 months. I’ve sat at parks in Manhattan for hours because of lures, eschewed subways to walk for Pokestops, and poured through endless Google searches for tips and tricks to play — so I’m a fan.

But being a gamer my entire life, I’ve seen my fair share of releases and hype to notice that Pokemon GO is not without its flaws — no, not the frequent server crashes or easy to point out bugs. But ones which if left unchecked, will leave it as just a July hype-train and nothing more. Continue reading “What Pokemon GO Needs To Evolve Beyond Hype” →

Let Your Users “Cheat” You

Jasper ChengLeave a comment
Photo Credits to Space Invaders and Gizmodo

Why It’s Not Only Fine But Important to Include Imperfections in Your Product — Especially if They Become User Exploits

What am I talking about? I’m talking about designing and including a loophole purposefully into your product. A mistake. A Vulnerability. Whatever you want to call it. As long as it’s not something that poses a security risk or is too big in scale, I want it to be included in the product. Something that lets users feel like they’ve discovered a product hack, would ordinarily be thought of as an edge case — but can catch fire and ramp up engagement dramatically.

Let me give a shameless example. Continue reading “Let Your Users “Cheat” You” →

Bringing Back Depth in Design

Jasper ChengLeave a comment
Photo Credits to Norton Gusky and Flickr

Design For Simplicity Has Gone Too Far and We Need to Fix It.

The design revolution, sparked by a decade of complicated and labyrinth-like UIs, has resulted in our current worship of minimalism. But now we’ve gone too far. Instead of “make things simpler,” we’ve moved onto “make simple things.” In our pursuit of design simplicity, we’ve lost sight of the larger picture. Continue reading “Bringing Back Depth in Design” →