How listening to users turned a freeware side project into the #1 selling software in the world.
Great UX design is about developing value from a set of features. We took the most trivial (a screensaver) and turned it into one of the world’s greatest software successes.
The Magic story begins
Before you can listen to users, you need to HAVE users. After years designing Mac & PC software, I started a consulting business.
My dev partner, Ian MacDonald, and I toyed with animation and visuals to jazz up graphical interfaces. For a financial app, we rigged up a screensaver to experiment with ways to graph data. That experiment evolved into a completely different animal.
First we share, then we listen
I liked one of the animations with mesmerizing interference patterns, so I posted it online as freeware. In an inspired moment, I called it Magic. We then forgot about it and went back to serious work.
Within a week, letters starting arriving from Magic users. Curiously, they were negative letters complaining that users couldn’t find the price list and sometimes a few bugs to fix. Despite the complaints, all the letters included cash.
The secret of my success
People were paying for something that was free. I’ve learned that negative user feedback always reveals opportunities. It was mind-blowing to get paid for freeware with bugs in it. I was extremely curious. We fixed some bugs and posted a new release to quiet it down. SIZZLE! It didn’t quiet down. The letters doubled and were now fan mail that included money. We iterated the product and added payment information. BOOM! Suddenly our mailbox was overflowing every morning with fan mail and money. I talked to more users to figure out this exciting mystery.
Stumbling into a product pivot
Thousands paid for it buggy.
I knew that millions would pay for it if we made it flawless.
It was a decisive moment. Users were telling me they LOVED the Magic screensaver and were recommending it widely. However, it was taking a lot of time from our other projects. One morning, I pulled the trigger, announcing “Drop everything else. We’re a product company and THIS IS IT.” We went all in to take this opportunity seriously. We reviewed how Magic was being distributed, how people paid for it and did a risk analysis.
Problem 1: the danger of being hooked into everything
There’s always bumps on the road to great success. User bug reports allowed us to understand how dangerous a screensaver was. Magic wasn’t crashing because our code had failed. It crashed because some other app had failed. A screensavers has to hook into everything in order to operate. Therefore, if any other app crashed, it could trigger a fault in our screensaver which could cascade to the whole computer. Our success depended on fixing this problem.
Fortunately, we had experience working on life-critical systems. We knew how to design systems where lives were on the line. We brainstormed solutions to the engineering challenges while I designed and iterated the user interface, animation and customer experience. Many users thought it was named Magic because it seemed to magically sync with music the user was listening to. It was absurd, but instead of ignoring it, I explored that idea by listening to music while I tuned the animation. As I deliberately established beats and rhythm to the animation, our sales and fan mail increased. It looked like nothing as a still, but was engaging as an animated experience.
Solution: relentless iteration
We started a weekly cycle of a) aggressively seeking out technical and user experience problems, b) addressing them, c) testing carefully and d) releasing the next version. We call it Agile now. We made so many mistakes, but they never stopped us. It took 24 version releases to perfect the tech, the interface and the animation.
Results: KABOOM!
Within a month, Magic exploded. Our mailbox was filled every day with dozens of fan letters. Very few bugs and a lot more cheques from all over the world. We hired some help to answer the phones, read the mail, filter new requests and fulfill the orders.
Problem 2: help people buy it
We learned from the fan mail that most of our users worked at companies and many wanted their company to site license it for 50, 500, or 20,000 users. Whoa! The other problem was that we needed to accept more currencies and payment methods. We were making it too hard for people to pay us.
Problem 3: help people justify it (password protection)
Users handed us a dilemma and a solution. They wanted it because they LOVED IT. They bought it personally but couldn’t JUSTIFY IT at work. Users wanted us to add password locking for data privacy since there was NO built-in ability to lock a PC back then. Data privacy was a feature they could sell to management and their IT dept. There was also concern from IT Departments that Magic might slow their computer down. We responded with some unique pro-active engineering to ensure the computer wasn’t slowed down. Each little step was user-driven and tricky, but each step also accelerated our sales.
Solution: Maximize product ROI
If you want to sell to business customers, your product needs a high return on investment (ROI).
The $25 screensaver paid for itself 15x over in a year.
Businesses saved $300-$1000 per PC not replacing burned in screens.
They saved twice as much that by locking down data privacy.
Let me unpack how a screensaver saves you money. A typical CRT screen cost $300-$1000, an expensive asset that was frequently replaced because of burn in. Preventing that burn-in saved a lot of money. When Magic introduced the first way to lock for data privacy, our customers estimated that as worth twice as much. Our customers calculated that Magic, at a cost of $25, returned at 15-20x return on investment (ROI). It was a no-brainer purchase decision, especially since they paid even less per user when they licensed it for thousands of users at once.
Magic was ready to step up once we opened the gates to growth. We made it easier for international buyers and built a sliding fee scale for site licenses. We tuned performance and refined the wrap-around password protection to secure a PC. We also distributed the trial version to every online service, computer book and journalist we could find.
Remove obstacles & money will flow
Our sales leaped several orders of magnitude. We were now reaching much higher numbers of users by selling large site licenses as opposed to individual customers. Here’s the crazy thing: For something that nobody had to pay for, it was still just the tip of the iceburg. Users were finding, downloading, trying, and deciding to pay for Magic on their own. It worked fully and free forever, but would remind users occasionally that it would be pretty cool if you paid for it. No marketing. Users felt compelled to pay for it, including site licenses to Microsoft, Intel, HP, the US, French, Canadian, British, Australian and Spanish governments.
New opportunities: Go further
You might think this was as far as you could take a screen saver. NOT SO. Instead of just riding the money train, we started Magic 2.0 with a modular design for different animations and user contributions. We started building a collection of novel animations. As soon as we informed users that a module developer’s kit was a coming attraction, tons of users requested first crack at the kit to make their own screen savers. It also sparked many requests for us to develop custom screensavers for corporate clients. We had just started setting up deals with international companies to distribute and sell Magic in local currencies.
Solution: What we chose to do
With so much opportunity, we were at a crossroads. I was a designer/architect and Ian was a developer. We wanted to focus on creativity instead of becoming a sales organization. Our fans wanted more animations, a kit to make their own, and we had sales channels opening all over the world. Our fans deserved the best product, so we looked to outsource sales so we could focus on continuing to being the best creative company and making the ultimate screensaver. Part II of this story tells how Magic turned into After Dark.
Design Lessons Learned
1. Great design is the art of interpreting user feedback with creative inspiration and authenticity.
Why did an experiment become a product, make a lot of money, become flawless, and get adopted everywhere? We listened to users. Our product and sales evolution worked because it was the correct response.
2: Doing right by users unlocks greater value. Relentlessly remove obstacles and everyone wins.
Every step we took was to resolve some user pain or need. Each step also increased sales and profit. That’s no accident. If we create something great, its value will be limited by the obstacles users face. When Michelangelo was asked how to make an eagle, he said he started with a block of marble and chipped away everything that was NOT an eagle. Similar relentless, small iterations allowed us to perfect the screensaver.
3: Creative inspiration works best as a riff on something real.
Great design contains lightning bolts of inspiration, but it’s pointless without real feedback. Don’t invent solutions to imagined problems. Negative feedback helps you win by telling where you can unlock value.
Bonus: Given the right framework, people can be pretty awesome.
Every user already had the software for free before paying for it. A screensaver mainly does its thing when you aren’t looking at it. I don’t know how many didn’t pay for it, but I do know that tons of people, companies and governments went out of their way to pay with cash, cheques, bank drafts and site licenses. Sometimes people do the right thing.
What happened to Magic?
Read part II, How Magic turned into After Dark.
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