Yeah. A great example of how people go wrong when makers focus on the product they're building rather than the people they're building it for.
As a programmer, my natural inclination is to sit in my fortress of arrogance and build the thing that I "know" they need. But learning how to do user testing, user interviews, and customer development has persuaded me that the important moment isn't when the product ships, it's when somebody actually uses it.
I almost never use my non-phone camera anymore because the point for me isn't taking a picture, it's doing something with it. Which camera companies would know if they treated anthropologists with the same respect as CCD scientists.
That's a nice thought. But the real reason they do it is market segmentation; e.g. when I looked at it two years ago, the Canon T3i was infinitely better and cost less than any IP camera out there. If they let you stream out of it live, it would kill the ip camera market. So they don't.
If they did it only for purposes of market segmentation, they would have long ago made something that about the size of a point-n-shoot but that was as convenient for getting the photos up and out as a smartphone.
They haven't. That doesn't mean they have forced me into buying a fancier camera, and therefore getting more money. Instead they've pushed me into doing almost all my casual shooting with an (inferior) smartphone.
Besides, market segmentation is a good idea only as long as nobody else is going to disrupt your precious segments. If they will, then you might as well disrupt them yourself.
Established organizations have trouble thinking like that, though, because their ignorance of actual use combines with political desire to avoid change. Thus, Kodak.
As a programmer, my natural inclination is to sit in my fortress of arrogance and build the thing that I "know" they need. But learning how to do user testing, user interviews, and customer development has persuaded me that the important moment isn't when the product ships, it's when somebody actually uses it.
I almost never use my non-phone camera anymore because the point for me isn't taking a picture, it's doing something with it. Which camera companies would know if they treated anthropologists with the same respect as CCD scientists.