Microsoft recently conducted ‘Mojave Experiment’, a focus group study where MS took 120 users (of Mac/Linux/Windows users who never used Vista) and showed them the ‘new’ operating system (code-named Mojave.).
The participants delivered an overall satisfaction rating of 8.5/10 (while Vista is 4/way 10) and were pleasantly surprised to hear that Mojave is actually Vista!
And Microsoft has jumped to the conclusion that Vista is all set to storm – that a PR campaign can improve the overall brand image.
And this is where I have a serious concern regarding such focus group studies.
But before I share my opinion, here are a few facts from the
research:
- All participants were either Mac, Linux, or users of versions of Windows that came before Windows Vista. Respondents were chosen from the focus group organizer’s database, called at random, but then selected based on having a low perception of Vista (<5 rating on a scale of 1-10).
- The participants were given a demo by a trained retail salesperson - geared towards the experiences they seemed most interested in following a series of interviews. While the retail salesperson drove the demo, it was geared by the interests and direction of the participant.
- We did not use some geeked out or custom built PC. We used an HP Pavilion DV2500. It had 2GB of RAM and was running an Intel Core 2 Duo CPU T7500 @ 2.20GHz. The OS was a 32 bit version of Windows Vista Ultimate.
- Of the 120 respondents polled, on a scale of 1:10 where 10 was the highest rating, the average pre-rating for Windows Vista was 4.4. After they saw the demo, respondents rated Mojave an average of 8.5. [Vista blog]
Basic flaw in the entire research – the trained retail salesperson, which to me looks like a guided ploy (i.e.show perfect features that have a wowy appeal and put a cover on the sucky ones!)- a normal user will never ever use the system the way a trained retail salesguy would. Most of us need to install whole lot of softwares/drivers and Vista starts sucking bigtime then (Office 2k7 is 0 value add) – apart from the hole it burns in your pocket (for the extra hardware req).
Moreover, focus group studies (at a corporate level) are meant to be a tool to reinforce what you already believe in!
As one of the commenter point out:
I don’t think this really proves anything other that someone at MS can edit video. If an OS needs an MS profession there to show you how to use it then I think something is wrong.
Don’t get me wrong. I have always run MS OS’s and they have always been great products. I was excited to run Vista when it came out and I have been using it for over a year now. However, after more than a year on it I am looking at buying a Mac now. I spend far too much time waiting for Vista, every click seems to have a period of waiting after it and I’m running it on a pretty powerful machine.
It’s a bit sad but I’m not loyal enough to MS to loose that much productivity
If Microsoft’s understanding is correct – what feedback do they want to take back from the experiment? That ‘Vista’ has a negative connotation attached?
Can a PR campaign (and not better design/engineering?) improve the product’s perception of inferiority? I really doubt that!
Are you on Vista? What”s your opinion?
Check out the Mojave Experiment site.
The problem with Vista is not what you find in your first hour of usage; in fact, it does look very cool when you first see it, but only after an extended period of usage, you realize how every bit of it is poor. Focus groups won’t reveal that. If heavy users of MS think it sucks; it sucks unequivocally. MS should just accept it and move on.
I have used Vista for a few days on someone’s PC and it sucks bigtime. I am not sure why the world hates it but I found that nothing is intuitive. All the obvious things have changed for cool look and feel
Prateek
They should take feedback from the very same people *after 100 hours* of usage. If they still give a 8.5 rating, then it is credible.
Currently, the rating is not about Vista, it’s the effectiveness of the salesperson.
Firstly it is less of an ‘experiment’ and more of a marketing campaign,mainly in response to the getamac ads and second the idea is to reinforce how going by hearsay and hype can be wrong. It is difficult to judge the fidelity of the process through the video so I am not sure if the trained salesperson is right or wrong.
And again, this is not a focus group. In a focus group participants interact in a discussion with a moderator asking some high level questions to set direction. That was not the case here.
To summarize, it is just an ad,cleverly disguised as an experiment.
Hopefully should remove some of the negative PR surrounding Vista
I love how they state, “We did not use some geeked out or custom built PC”, and yet they used computers with 2GB of ram. Granted that isn’t a crazy large amount, but the only people I know that have more than 1GB of ram are gamers and heavy computer users. Heck my parents, who have no technical knowledge whatsoever, bought a cheap PC that only had 512MB… It takes literally 3-5 seconds to open a explorer window. Based on my experience with Vista and what I’ve heard from others is that it’s a resource hog, but as long as you have a fair amount of ram it isn’t “that bad”. Just my two cents.