QuickVerse Multimedia Life Application Bible
October 1997
I loved this product and hated this shirt. It had short sleeves and I
always thought I looked like a gas station attendant when I was wearing
it.
 The QuickVerse
Multimedia Life Application Bible (a mouthful to pronounce; known colloquially
at Parsons as QVLAB) was one of the only products we worked on that was
designed primarily to sell at retail (as opposed to being marketed
directly to the consumer through direct mail as the typical Parsons
product was). It was the first Parsons product to ship under the
Broderbund brand (Broderbund bought Parsons in September 1997). We
expected Broderbund to sell tons of them based on all the great things
they had to say about their retail marketing capability.
The design goals for this product were interesting for us, primarily
because of their marketing orientation -- though the marketing goals
directly affected implementation. They were:
 | Beautiful user interface (UI). Think about how the screen shots
will look on the box when designing the UI or implementing
individual features within it. |
| Compelling feature list. Again, think about the box.
Prioritize features that make for good ad copy and will be instantly
recognizable to the customer as beneficial. |
| Great out-of-box experience. Give the user no reason to return the
product. Easy installation and instant usability. |
| "Powerful simplicity" or "simple
powerfulness". Keep all the features easy to use, but let the
advanced user discover unsuspected depth to the program. |
Normally after a product ships we schedule a dinner or a party to
celebrate. Of course we always wait until the product is out the door
before we make reservations anywhere. But QV LAB was absolutely required
to ship on October 15 so that we could meet our commitments to the
Broderbund sales staff. We wanted to make a good impression so in
mid-September we announced the celebration event, to be held the day
after the planned ship date. We invited representatives of Tyndale and
Broderbund so the team knew we were committed to that date. Through the
late-night efforts of everyone on the team we hit the date and shipped
on time.
We delivered in spades, but were let down by inept sales at
Broderbund. Their mishandling of this and all their products eventually
led to their inevitable sale to The Learning Company in 1998.
Findex resurrected this product and created The Book CD-ROM in
1999. While it shares the functionality of QVLAB, it lacks the
cohesiveness of the earlier product. |
