Walt Mossberg created a much different approach to product reviews
As a product designer, it was frustrating to see a product reviewed and rated based on the number of features it had, even when many of those features would never be used. And I saw how the magazines had influenced the design of new products. Design engineers and marketing people would tend to pile on feature after feature without much thought to usability. That made products take longer to design, harder to use and less reliable.
In 1991, Walt Mossberg created a much different approach to product reviews that not only made it easier to assess a new product but also changed how products would be designed.
He would look at products not based on the number of features but on their practicality and usability. He was one of the first to understand that these products would find a much larger audience among those who might not be technically inclined, and that they needed to be assessed differently. He took a position as an advocate for the user, and found a receptive audience by reminding his audience not to blame themselves for finding a product hard to use, because they were not alone.
When I was writing my book, "From Concept to Consumer: How to Turn Ideas Into Money," I asked Walt to describe the attributes of what he considered to be an excellent product. He told me:
"It is a product so useful in function and clear in its operation that its user, within days or weeks, wonders how she ever got along without it. This is not the same as having long lists of features, specs, speeds and feeds. In fact, my rule is that, if a product claims to have, say, 100 features, but an average person can only locate and use 11 of them in the first hour, then it has 11 features."