Feedback Lost — The Ghost City of China
A Concise Case Study of Suspended Feedback
Every human interaction creates some level of feedback by default. But often we chose to suspend feedback while we are developing. When feedback is halted or delayed, systems are often poorly constructed or adoption is slowed.
In a society where freedom and free markets have come to dominate most aspects of life, it is difficult to find examples of suspended systems of any scale or prominence. They simply fail long before they get to that stage.
Fortunately, at least for our purposes today, we have the Chinese government to provide us with some well-known examples… of slow adoption. The lack of feedback in their systems is actually quite well document.
As you read this article, think about your own products and services. Have you designed a product with your feedback systems suspended? In doing so, are you possibly going too far? Well here is a great example to learn from:
Too Much Feedback
Let’s start with a disclaimer, too much feedback can be a bad thing. While Feedback Lost articles are aimed at increasing feedback in most cases, but product and program development can often suffer from too much. Limiting or controlling feedback during these stages can be quite helpful.
Ordos
Along the Yellow Sea in the Inner Mongolia region of China, is a city known as Ordos. The city was constructed over the last decade to house millions, but to-date its population is measured in tens of thousands. Ordos was a planned city constructed under the direction of the Chinese government.
City planning and rezoning efforts are nothing new. But Ordos was planned from the bottom up. There was nothing organic in its construction. It was not constructed in iterative waves. And it was certainly not constructed to meet the needs of homeless masses.
Ordos was planned without the feedback of future citizens. It was the brainchild of a select few. The city was located to be nearer to water sources than other organic cities in the region. It was developed to take advantage of massive coal discoveries. It was built with the idea that once the customer saw the product, they couldn’t help but want it. Only… they didn’t.
The Myth of the Entrepreneur
Both Henry Ford and Steve Jobs are famous for diminishing quotes on customer feedback. Ford implied that customers would have asked for faster horses. Jobs claimed the customer didn’t know what they wanted until he showed it to them.
If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses. — Henry Ford
With all due respect to these two geniuses of industry, neither one actually created anything all that novel. They may have done it without focus groups, but certainly not without feedback. For starters, the automobile existed long before Ford. The feedback he received was that people wanted cars, but they wanted them cheaper and faster.
It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them. -Steve Jobs
Secondly, the first iteration of the iMAC, the iPod, and the model-T were just that… first iterations. Each man was able to garner feedback from their respective customers and build that into subsequent iterations. If feedback never entered into the equation, all cars would still be black and iPhones would still be incredibly small screened devices without cameras.
Iteration
Both Ford and Jobs are famous for iteration. An assembly line is nothing more than iteration in action. Jobs was known for iterative design practices. Iteration provided each man with the feedback he needed, in a controlled fashion.
Iteration is something that did not happen in Ordos. At least not yet. That lack of iteration is now evident in a lack of demand. Ordos has little population and what adoption it has seen is mostly in the form of foreign tourists amazed at the audacity of such a plan and entertained by its apparent failure.
Are you controlling feedback in your development efforts or are you suspending it entirely? Have you adopted the iterative methods of Ford and Jobs or have you fallen victim to the hubris of their quotes? Don’t build the next Ordos. Unlike the Chinese government, you probably don’t have the budget or control to wait out such a slow adoption process.
Quintessentially is an article format created by Corsair’s Institute to increase the reader’s comprehension of key concepts in a quick and engaging fashion. For more articles from Iteration, Quintessentially — click here.
Feedback Lost is an ongoing series provided by Corsair’s Publishing. We seek to provide engaging content that is both thought provoking and entertaining. Other articles on related topics can be found within our other Medium publications.
