I have been a part
of the introduction of many great products into the market place and I'm proud
of all of them.
- The WordPerfect All-In-1 Integration releases were extremely important and formative for me.
- Aleve with Syntex and P&G was amazing because of the work involved in getting the NDA to the FDA and because of the part I played in coming up with the name.
- The One Touch 2 by LifeScan was great to be a part of because it helped manage their diabetes which my father had and which eventually took his life.
- The Original Lift Walker by Progress Equipment was a challenge and a delight and very fulfilling as people who had never walked before could safely enjoy that experience. Who knew the great digestive benefits of being vertical for parts of the day!
- The Wattstopper was great because we were green before it was popular. It was great to contribute to the bottom line and to make the world a better place by simply turning things off when not in use.
- At Safeway, most of my projects were internal but the Just 4 U was very customer facing and massive in scale.
But none of these
product launches have been as exciting as this one for the Cricut Explore.
The Cricut Explore
and the Cricut Design Space are not going to solve world hunger or global
climate change but they are exciting because of what they allow the human soul
to experience. The deeply rewarding
experience of creating. And what is so
amazing about it is that that same positive karma comes to the person who is
very crafty and will design all sorts of projects or the non-crafter like
myself who will borrow the design of someone else and tweak it just a little
bit to make it my own.
Cricut Explore is a
great machine. We brought in all kinds
of talented people. It was fascinating
to see Electrical Engineers, Manufacturing Engineers, Mechanical Engineers, Marketing,
and Designers coming together to argue over solutions for hours and days. Then to see the QA testers beat things
up. They cut over and over and over
again. They would have the machines
cutting literally 24 hours a day. All
night and over the weekend the machines were cutting. Cutting through paper, cardstock, all kinds
of materials, and the mats they were mounted on. The letter R is popular with the testers
because it has all sorts of angles in a compact space. "R"s of all sizes would be found in
the hallway, on the elevator, and in the parking lot.
Quality is something
we all take seriously but it will never been good enough. Zero defects and 10x improvement were talked
about often but more importantly every member of the team really worked towards
these goals. On the first day of sales
10,000 machines were sold. Even with
99.9% of the machines being of the highest quality that means that 100
customers are going to be unhappy and end up with a machine with something
wrong. If 99.99% of the machines are
perfect there will still be 10 that are not.
That thought just kills everyone on the team. We don't want people to have a bad experience
but Murphy's Law will win out for some despite all our extensive efforts to the
contrary.
Cricut Design Space
is great software. But it is
software. Software by it's very nature
is more imperfect that the people who coded it.
That's just the way it is. My
experience with CDS is that it does tons of amazing things. But there is also a learning curve to using
it. So far every time I think there is
something missing I later find out it is there.
For example, rotating text. It
wasn't where I thought it should be but it was there. And once I found it and realized that
clicking the little icon in the edit panel will automatically rotate it evenly
in increments that was fantastic and it makes a lot of sense.
Some customers will
be upset that you have to have a computer and you have to be connected to the
internet in order to use these great tools.
But that is one of the things that actually makes this software a
powerful tool. It makes support much
easier and makes the user experience better.
The unfortunate thing is that it also means we rely on one big variable
that we have no control over--individual connections to the internet. Two people in the same room could have vastly
different experiences because one could be getting all the bandwidth of the
wireless network they share.
We have many
wonderful and loyal customers. But there
was a period of time with Provo Craft lived as if it could do not wrong and
didn't need anyone else to survive. That
is not the case today. There are some
extremely talented and dedicated people that have been here through that whole
journey and in many ways they are the ones that kept this company from
completely imploding and allowed for the great new products and a new company
to emerge. Still, some will say that we
don't listen to customers because of the internet requirement. Hopefully most will find that their
connectivity through home internet service or mobile data plan is sufficient to
provide a good experience with Explore.
My job is in the IT
department and my role is to see that the Cricut Design Space has the computing
and network infrastructure it needs to run well. We have 10x the network that we think we'll
need. We have 10x the web and
application servers that we think we'll need.
We have upgraded and protected the database in a way that should also
give us 10x what we need for Cricut Design Space. Hopefully that is enough that it will be able
to handle the inefficiencies of the old apps as well. But only time will tell.
Cricut Explore and
Cricut Design Space are fantastic tools.
I think they will provide people with many hours of creative
pleasure. I am proud to have been a part
of the introduction of these great products.
Disclaimer: The thoughts expressed here are entirely my
own and do NOT represent those of my employer or peers, past or present.
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