Wolfram Alpha and knowing your market

It was kinda a mixed feeling when I was reading the latest blog on Joel on Software about Wolfram Alpha's failure. It stroke me it has been weeks since my first trial of Wolfram Alpha allured by its overwhelming PR. Gee..., I can't believe I fell behind again, that was my first reaction.

First thing first, WA just really got it wrong that who are their target customer, target market. In other words, they do not know who will be using this. I am certainly not able to get much out of it with ten of my search keywords. Yeah, this makes me look very bad, and that's why I stop using it. Who wants to be made like an idiot in front of a machine which is supposed to be considerate and understanding. Most of my inputs have been given the answer as "Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input". Okay, after a deep breath, I thought we need some scientific spirit here. After all, it is still a young child. There are the claims made on the page:

Wolfram|Alpha answers specific questions rather than explaining general topics. - I guess this is supposed to be where WA wanted to penetrate the overflown search markets, originally at least. However, I did not see the evidence that this has been emphasized, nor been circumvented in any formats. This might be what would happen when you are over ambitious and do not know where you stand when it comes to product introduction.

You can only get answers about objective facts. - To whom? Is this online version of engineering handbook? We are all in the flood of information and knowledge updating all the time. In a short period of 50 years, look how many changes have already been made about our existing science and engineering 'facts'. To me, everything has a life span. Within it, yes, many assumptions we made about nature or explanations to problems might stands, but I do not believe in eternity in answers. Instead, people who create solutions, who explains mystery with their own eyes and hands are there to tell their findings, present their opinions, answer or challenge each other's theory or questions. If WA was targeted to replace our high school science book then fairy enough. However, even first grade university student knows that other than some fundamental formula (which have not yet been proved otherwise), most of the study is about critical thinking, finding unique solutions to problems.

Only what is known is known to Wolfram|Alpha. - No other comments, but WTF!

Only public information is available. - Okay, what else are we supposed to be expecting?

And the suggestions offered by WA to its users are:

"If Wolfram|Alpha is still not sure what to do, try the following:

• Don't use long complete sentences; just enter the minimum number of words needed to communicate
• Try different words or notations
• Use whole words instead of abbreviations
• Check your spelling"

We all know sometimes we use workarounds or tips sections as vehicle to achieve a good balance between development cost, time and quality. I really can not see how these group ever going to achieve this trade off other than drive users away after first trial out. Patience as beauty is gradually fading out from our society as the close button paint on the elevator. People really can not afford to be nice and offer many chances to decide what search portal can help them out when they are desperately to get over this bit after information is retrieved. I am not saying Google has figured it all out. But it surely has understood the fact that to lure end users to your product, the way to do so is to do as much as jobs for them, in a subtle way still protect pride while simplify the input requirements from end users to the last drop. I already have tips for WA:

1. Do not assume user inputs and it is certainly not a good idea to assume a superior status to your end user in the product design. Customer is always right!
2. Clearly identify your market (maybe the market has potential is where Mathematica has been sold to, or more specific search products with institutes, education bodies etc.) After all, it needs a profitable business model to sustain. To replicate Google's Ads might not be such an easy idea here.
3. Get more data! Before than, make it clear about the product boundary. It can not be claimed be claimed a global distributed product when I could not even get house price data in Cambridge or London.

Just a happy ending to this story, finally, after 10 mins with a piece of paper, I have my search results with WA on "inverse Fourier transform sin(x)"......