pain point

n. a level of difficulty sufficient to motivate someone to seek a solution or an alternative; a problem or difficulty. Subjects: English, Business, Technology, Jargon

Editorial Note: Thanks to Joel Rennich of Apple and AFP548 for tipping us off about this term.

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Citations: 1986 Toronto Star (Canada) (Nov. 20) “Manitoba businesses head list assailing labor law, survey finds” p. E7: Quebec small businesses have the second-highest labor “pain points.”…On a national basis, the survey found 70 per cent of small businesses had serious problems with labor laws and regulations. 1988 Blanca Riemer et al. BusinessWeek (42) (Feb. 8) “The Dollar Is Casting A Widening Pall Over Europe”: The falling dollar is a threat. We’ve reached the pain point. 1992 Terry Costlow Electronic Engineering Times (Oct. 5) “Interest in MCMs still high, sales still low” no. 713, p. 15: At some point, putting things into a subset of the machine becomes too painful to do with conventional technologies.…What frequency or pinout you have to change at is hard to tell; people push technology until it breaks. I would prefer to move quickly so we do not have to hit that pain point. 1994 Gary H. Anthes ComputerWorld (May 16) “Digital helps tighten Internet security” p. 70: Digital “is recognizing that security for corporations using the Internet is a major pain point right now.…But the dilemma is that there is a conflict between the amount of security you provide and the flexibility you give to users. It does limit functionality.” 2000 Scott Leibs CFO Magazine (July 1) “In Your Face”: One school of thought holds that companies should focus on a critical “pain point” and buy whatever software product meets that immediate need. 2002 Paul Desmond Network World (Sept. 9) “IDS tools smarten up”: The biggest pain point, he says, is the false positive issue. Reducing the number of false positives requires users to “tune” the IDS to ignore certain signature patterns that don’t apply to their networks.

Posted 8 Feb 07 | Permalink | Tell a Friend