Design is how it works

The title of the new book, Design is How it Works, on the power of “Big D” Design comes from a Steve Jobs quote: “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” I haven’t read the book (yet), but something struck me as I was reading the Core77 review quoted below.

What Greene does differently than most other business book writers is dig deeper, not just repeating the story anecdotally but interviewing the key players to try to find what drives them. The OXO case study is supportive of one of his main theses, that the way to craft successful products that drive sales is to pay attention to users on the fringes of the customer base. Greene calls these users outliers, but REI, Clif Bar and Nike might call them extreme athletes, while Virgin Atlantic has its road warriors and Porsche has speed freaks. For OXO the elderly or the arthritic may be sensitive to form factors that healthy and youthful users might ignore. Correcting the product for the needs of that outlier population actually enhances the product for the rest of the user base.

Outliers… It’s a good idea, if not a new one. Designing for outliers equates to designing for people who are particularly sensitive to the performance of your product. The difficult thing about this particular design principle is that the maxim isn’t complete. At least as important as designing for the outlier, is selecting the right one. To which aspects of your product should your outliers be sensitive? Your outlier might be the extreme user who will push your product to its limits (REI), or the frequent user who spends the most time with your product (Virgin Atlantic), or the user who struggles the most using your product (OXO).

It’s a nuance, but it’s one that determines the difference between success and failure. Designing for the wrong outlier can be as catastrophic as designing a bad product. How do you understand which of your users are the right outliers? Well that’s where the research comes in.

Although almost all of the companies profiled by Greene eschew focus groups in favor of ethnography and a guiding corporate structure, each case demonstrates that when the customer is ignored or misevaluated, problems occur. The clearest lesson of Design is How it Works is that the end-user must be listened to, if not in focus groups, at least in spirit.

A good lesson. But which outliers should I “listen to.” I’m looking forward to reading the book to see if and how this question is addressed.

References

Book Review: Design is How it Works: How the Smartest Companies Turn Products into Icons, by Jay Greene – Core77.