Guy Kawasaki presents DICEE, five qualities that separate great products from mediocre ones: Depth, Intelligence, Completeness, Empowerment, and Elegance. He uses Ford's MyKey feature as an example of intelligence, and argues that depth means anticipating user needs while completeness includes the entire ecosystem of software, support, and updates.
Chapters
You need to create something what I call dicey. Dicey is an acronym. The D stands for depth. Great products, great services, great ideas, great causes are deep. Lots of features, lots of functionality. They have anticipated what people will need as they come up the power curve. Great products are deep. They are also intelligent. When you look at them, you say, ah, somebody was thinking. Somebody has even perhaps understood my pain better than I have. Has articulated my pain better than I have. I'll give you a great example. I want to buy a Ford Mustang. Specifically, I want to buy a Ford Mustang that's called a GT500 Shelby Mustang. This Mustang has 450 horsepower. It goes 0 to 60 in 4.4 seconds. Okay, so I have an issue. However, I know that if I bought such a Ford Mustang, I, your classmate, my son, will inevitably end up driving it. It is not clear to me that I should put into the hands of my son a Shelby GT500 Mustang. Ford, however, has a very intelligent product. They've created something called my key. And what you can do with my key is program the top speed of the car. So I could give my son the keys to the Mustang and. And he could not go faster than 55 miles per hour. You could tell him that part. Now it is true that my key does not control how long it takes you to get to 55, but it does limit you to 55. I think that is a very intelligent product. The C stands for completeness. You know, when all you guys and gals start software companies, do not consider your product the download, the digital installation. The totality of your product is the product, the documentation, the online support, the string of enhancements. It's the totality of the product, not simply the executable code. Great products, great services are complete. They are also empowering. They make people feel more creative, more productive. They make people have a peace of mind. They bring joy to them. Powerful products do that. And the last thing is elegant. Great products have a great user interface. Somebody cared about the user interface. So as you get ready, ask yourself, are we creating something that's deep, intelligent, complete, empowering and elegant? Are we rolling the dicey.
