paper & pencil

Engineering the Products People Need

"Engineering the Products People Need", a Business Week Online article, discusses qualitative methods engineering students are beginning to learn and that organizations should learn and use.

Engineers find their comfort zone in making technology work. They are very comfortable thinking about how to refine and improve a design until it is optimized or at least functions well under a set of given conditions. But a well-optimized design is worthless if it does not meet the desires, or at least needs, of the customer.

These methods and techniques are to sharpen the innovation skills of identifying opportunities for new products and understanding those opportunities well enough to carry through the design process.

These methods nicely complement any traditional approach to engineering design. Similarly, they work with any stage-gate process found in most companies. The stage-gate process of meeting certain design requirements as you go, in order to progress through the process, emphasizes lean manufacturing and efficient timing to launch. However, it lacks an understanding of how to navigate through the early gates. Our approach gives structure and method to this early design process, making the later stages more effective and productive.

Google's Focus on Users

Listed on the coporate philosophy page on Google's web site are the "Ten Things Google has found to be true" with focus on the user being #1:

1. Focus on the user and all else will follow.

From its inception, Google has focused on providing the best user experience possible. While many companies claim to put their customers first, few are able to resist the temptation to make small sacrifices to increase shareholder value. Google has steadfastly refused to make any change that does not offer a benefit to the users who come to the site:

• The interface is clear and simple.
• Pages load instantly.
• Placement in search results is never sold to anyone.
• Advertising on the site must offer relevant content and not be a distraction.

By always placing the interests of the user first, Google has built the most loyal audience on the web. And that growth has come not through TV ad campaigns, but through word of mouth from one satisfied user to another.

New Zealand Companies Better By Design

Better By Design is a program in New Zealand that helps companies integrate design into their business. Their web site, betterbydesign.org.nz, includes case studies, resource directory, programme information, events, design news, and a series of articles on "Why Design?".

From their Quotable Quotes section:

“If we are to compete with the rest of the world, design is critical. And that’s design in the holistic sense – product, brand, messages, supporting tools – everything we use to offer product to customers. Design is not just sketching drawings – it’s about businesses coming up with solutions to problems that they might not even know they have.”
Rick Wells, Chairman of Formway and member of Better by Design Advisory Board

Thoughts on Multifunction Devices

Lada Gorlenko posts a December 6 Forrester article, "Devices, Media, & Marketing First Look",  on the IxDA Discussion List.

The article includes some rules for "portable multitasking":

No. 4. Watch users carefully. In his book Democratizing Innovation, Eric von Hippel cites that depending on industry, 10% to 40% of customers modify products for their own use. Keeping a close eye on the habits of these "lead users" is critical to innovating quickly and avoiding the risk of multifunction overload. One interesting example is the iPod shuffle. After seeing that lead users of the iPod were using the shuffle feature with great regularity, Apple decided to actually strip down features to better serve these users at a lower price point. This is a great example of consumer-driven innovation — going against the multifunction device tide — with great success, by keeping a close eye on users.

The Need for New Interface Metaphors

Amy Wohl writes in IEEE Spectrum on the need for new interface metaphors and how some of these have begun to surface.

Sources for interface metaphors abound. In the past, we leaned heavily on the world of the office and its folders and desktops, because we thought we were building interfaces mainly for office workers. But today, information work and information workers are everywhere. The FedEx carrier is an information worker, collecting data on packages picked up and delivered and submitting it to FedEx's giant, very accessible, online database. Retail store clerks may be information workers when they enter new inventory into the store's database as they stock the shelves. Nurses are information workers when they feed notes previously scrawled on illegible or inaccessible charts directly to digital systems, making the data available to the patient as well as the doctors anywhere, anytime.

This means new metaphors. Many will come from life sciences. Others may come from the health care or other industries, as these become information-dense environments. An interface for a next-generation technology might come from the gaming world, where fast visualization metaphors abound. What is sure is that someday our great-grandchildren will look back and laugh at the unsophisticated ways we accessed and navigated data.

The author goes on to describe new interfaces being researched and developed that fall under three types of interfaces:

1. Browser
2. Navigating large collections
3. 3-D

(via Montague.com Knowledge Base Editor)

Website Development Process

PingMag, "The Tokyo-based magazine about 'Design and Making Things", has a really great post describing the basic process for designing and developing web sites. Each step is supported by some very cute photos. I'm very glad to see the design and planning steps are emphasized.