This thing didn't really make any sense to me at the time.
Did they have customer validation that clearly showed that OLPC was solving real problems in educating children in developing nations? In hindsight it seemed that there were people on the ground that were questioning this already.
Did they have customer validation that clearly showed that their solution was usable by their customers?
Did they measure outcomes from shipped OLPCs and adjust the product based on that feedback? They shipped additional versions of the hardware, but was the hardware actually the solution that was needed? Did they know?
> it seemed that there were people on the ground that were questioning this already.
Is that a good measure? Is there any disruption that’s happened since the advent of speech that didn’t have someone standing to the side opining how this was a dumb and unnecessary idea?
We have the benefit of hindsight here; it's clear that this product failed. So it's reasonable to look back at the dissenting voices and ask a reasonable question: why did the product owners ignore this feedback and did the product owners understand the problem that they were trying to solve? What could they have done differently?
Did they have customer validation that clearly showed that OLPC was solving real problems in educating children in developing nations? In hindsight it seemed that there were people on the ground that were questioning this already.
Did they have customer validation that clearly showed that their solution was usable by their customers?
Did they measure outcomes from shipped OLPCs and adjust the product based on that feedback? They shipped additional versions of the hardware, but was the hardware actually the solution that was needed? Did they know?