[dustingetz]

There's this awesome karaoke bar in Philly where you can rent private rooms with their own karaoke machine. the interface is so bad, that I, a software engineer, was unable to get it to work without getting extremely frustrated, calling for help multiple times. so naturally I start thinking about how I could build a business around karaoke machines with nice UX and rent them. But it turns out a karaoke machine is useless without a library of content, and the company that builds them is a subsidiary of a Japanese label thus can negotiate discounts with content owners. It's just not something that's easy to compete with.

Anyway, I go to this karaoke bar about 6 times a year and drop a hundred bucks each time. I don't think they care to invest in UX right now ;)

anyway, if you extrapolate this idea a bit, it makes you wonder - if software is your business's core competency, and you're competing mostly on UX, maybe you are doing it wrong?