I don’t see how it’s obvious people wanted a Segway. Cost is one problem. They’re also large, making them difficult to store at either end of a destination. They’re a nuisance and safety risk for pedestrians. Riders kept toppling them. They’re an even bigger problem than scooters when the battery dies mid-journey. I’ll grant some people were really enthusiastic about them, but I don’t see that translating into mass market appeal.
Even if I’m dead wrong and there’s a throng of people just waiting for a Segway fire sale, it doesn’t invalidate my point. If your product solves the problem by ignoring the economics of your target customer base that’s just as problematic as building the wrong product.
Electric scooters have seen a lot more traction. Both teams can’t use the supposed Henry Ford quote to say the customer doesn’t know what they want. Or, rather they can, but that doesn’t mean they have any more of a clue than the customer does.
My point is maybe we should stop being so antagonistic to the customer. You’ll find no shortage of instances where the customer is wrong. But there’s plenty of others where the customer is right and the product team is wrong. I’m tired of dealing with products that think they know better than me because they think they’re inventing cars.
> I don’t see how it’s obvious people wanted a Segway.
I assume what bryanrasmussen means is: Any city-dweller will see electric scooters, electric unicycles, 'hoverboards' and e-bikes from time to time.
So the makers of the Segway were correct in identifying a demand for an urban transit option other than walking, bicycles, cars, mobility scooters and public transit. They were correct in making it electric, about the speed of a fast leisure cyclist, with a range a little above 10 miles, and operated from a standing position.
However, they were incorrect about the price and size. Segways were 10x too expensive (even ignoring inflation) and at 100lbs+ were too large and heavy to carry inside or on public transit.
> My point is maybe we should stop being so antagonistic to the customer.
I don't see anyone being antagonistic. The attitude you are thinking of antagonism to me is more like: we're treating them like all other humans, namely lacking good articulation skills and rarely going in deeply analyzing what is that they truly want.
And it's not about customers being "right" or "wrong". It's about making a sale. And many customers will not give you several chances.
Hence, the strategy of "do your absolute very best to figure what they really need even if that means not immediately accepting what they say they want as the truth" is optimizing for the very limited amount of tries to get it right.
It's quite logical IMO and there's nothing antagonistic or demeaning in this process.
> People even obviously wanted a Segway in Europe, where the cities have impressive support for bikes.
Maybe impressive by US standards but don’t underestimate us, we managed to transform perfectly walkable / cyclable cities and dense rail networks into car centric cities and highways everywhere in less than a century.
It wasn't just the price point, it was the bulk/footprint of the thing being fairly non-pedestrian friendly and difficult to transport/store. Scooters are a massive improvement in that regard.
Of course, but the problem is the lack of adoption didn't really push it to become smaller or substantially cheaper and more accessible. A modern Segway has a similar footprint.
People even obviously wanted a Segway in Europe, where the cities have impressive support for bikes.
If People hadn't wanted a Segway (but way cheaper) we wouldn't have the streets littered with cheap electric scooters everywhere you go.