Ethnography, Experience Design, Industrial Design, Strategic Innovation, Technology, Uncategorized

What does a product designer need to do to create things that people desire? Things that jump out from the sea of sameness and justify a premium price? Can design change the elasticity of products and shape the demand curve? If yes, then what’s the use of conducting quantitative research when consumers are not inspired by possibilities?  You can ask 500 moms if they want to buy a video game console (and the answer is no) versus if they want to have a Wii. The problem with market research is misapplication, resulting it it often producing misleading data. This is worse than not having any at all.

What makes product desirable? What makes them desirable to an extent that people are attached to it (like the Blackberry, iPod or Birkin)? What is the basis of that emotional bonding? Is it based on the brand or the product or a combination of both? If they would go to the extreme to repair it, or even keep it after buying an updated version, it affects multiple ownerships.

To extend the psychological life span of products could be instrumental in reducing the demand for scarce resources and solve many sustainable challenges. Up until now, the role of the product and its design in stimulating the degree of attachment experienced toward this object remains quite obscure. As the product is under the designer’s direct control, understanding these issues is valuable for designers. Industrial designs have strong technical rational and that sometimes limits them to be reflective.

Donald Schön’s book The Reflective Practitioner (1983) discusses the crisis of professional practice. This crisis relates to the fact that professions such as architecture, design, medicine and psychology are strongly dominated by technical rationality and its positivist epistemology (PE) of practice. The problem is that PE cannot solve the dilemma of “rigor versus relevance” that professionals are confronted with. This is because PE is based on analytical, empirical and logical propositions of truth within an objective world. However, professional knowledge involves experiences, feelings and subjective evaluations, which are non-existent in PE.

The “fuzzy front end” is usually what matters and makes the most difference.  This early stage of product development often gets off to the wrong start. Too much emphasis is placed on the cost and volume trade-off and there is not enough thinking around how to turn products into a personal tool. Perhaps a tool to get work done or too to tell other who you are. In the case of a forklift, a cell phone or a toaster, you should not start with how to produce the most number of units for the lowest price while getting them into the hands of the most people.  This should come from the sales people, not the product design team. What people value most is the way that they interact with a product and what meanings it carries. This goes beyond price. The visual form, the way that they handle it, and how it makes them feel and think are all part of the design strategy. In the end, product design is simple:

- Understand the core feature that a user wants and then relentlessly reduce complexity and unnecessary elements until you get a simple user experience.
- Map out the product’s sociability – its affiliation with social groups and any product or, its category and how it is connected to different social groups or product groups.
- Look hard to find memories that are related to the product. Find pleasure that is directly and indirectly associated by using the product. Hire an anthropologist to help.

Image Source: http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2006/07/ideck_touch_screen_music_player.html; http://www.flickr.com/photos/23703702@N00/378586732/sizes/o/