Design for behavior change

September 30th, 2010

824202_flying_basketIn one of my early blog entries (“Small car? Half priced parking!”) I talked about finding the right incentive to change people’s behavior. The case was cheaper parking for smaller cars.
Now, it seems, there’s an emerging field called ‘design for behavior change’. This field touches upon the exact same thing: finding the right incentives as a motivation for a new behavior.
This is very exciting stuff – not only when looking at mass behavior change (like getting kids to wash their hands in kindergartens and schools) but also looking to change the behavior of your customers.

A good example is something that has existed in web sales for a very long time: sites giving away free shipping if your purchases reaches a certain amount. I for one, find myself filling the basket until I reach the free shipping limit, and to me this proves, that it’s possible to work with incentives that motivate certain purchase behavior.
I’m sure this could be exploited in many new ways especially if combined with some of the social media services.

But I think there’s another part of ‘design for behavior change’ that could be equally exiting. It could be a great mission for product design companies to make products that have built in incentives towards the purchase (e.g. the purchase contributes to global causes, or to local community causes like a new playground) and at the same time motivates the customers to a certain new behavior through the design of the products (e.g. doing something great with your kid, getting more exercise, reduce waste or conserve energy). Of course the product should also fill a need and meet a market, but that goes without saying.

Maybe this could be a path to success for some?

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Design for Designers?

September 10th, 2009

3D concept

It’s always interesting being introduced to a work domain that you haven’t been in previously. Trying to understand how people think, work and interact in the product design community makes me see a lot of weird things going on. One of my first realisations was that a great deal of product designers are designing stuff that never reach the public. Maybe they see their design as an art form more than a practical tool in the development of a product…maybe they just like to show their design to other designers which in turn will acknowledge their designs.
It’s not entirely unlike the open source computer programming community: people share code pieces that are so far from being a proper program, that you really have to live within the community to appreciate it. It’s essentially raw pieces of code, just like raw pieces of design is just that: an unfinished part of a greater whole.

For me, the design is just one of many important steps in a product development process. I understand and acknowledge the importance of design … but at the same time you have to acknowledge the equal importance of e.g. production, sales and distribution as parts of a product development process.

And I shrivel each time I hear someone say “great design” when seeing some crappy 3D design sketch rendering and when that design sketch is being promoted as the next big thing. C’mon let’s focus instead on the successful designers – let’s find the designers that have successfully managed to make great product designs that resulted in great products that you can buy. After all…the product is the goal, not the design, right?

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Improve or don’t

September 1st, 2009

MagSafe.jpg

When making industrial design products you’re very likely also trying to innovate or even invent new concepts (unless you’re solely into ’styling’). And while that is certainly the goal for many, and although ocassionally you stumble upon some true innovative concepts, in my opinion you’re most likely looking at “micro innovation” or – more plainly – improvement.

Improvement in products is important, because when you, as a consumer, are replacing a product with a new one, you expect added features – you’re looking for that piece of innovation that justifies the purchase. The case is clear when you’re replacing something that is a commodity: replacing a bicycle is much more fun if the new bicycle has some added feature that the old one didn’t (e.g. drive belt instead of chain).

And it’s also why it sucks so much replacing your old laptop with a new one: it’s fun to feel the added speed when you open your favorite apps to begin with, but very soon you start feeling sorry you spent €2.000 on something that’s essentially identical to what you had before. Unless it comes with some innovative feature (Apple did it right when they introduced the magnetically attached power cord “MagSafe”).

I really don’t believe in new products that just look better and don’t bring any improvement to what the product needs to do and to the people using it (unless what you’re replacing is fugly). So basically: Improve your products or don’t sell any!

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Leverage the potential of your ideas

June 12th, 2009

Quirky.com

It’s a well known fact that ideas that are kept in the drawer never reach their potential. Ideas need to be brought out into the open, discussed, elaborated upon, shown to people, tossed and turned etc. etc. until the idea transforms into a business opportunity, a product, a concept or whatever.
This proces of refining the raw idea into something usefull is being optimised in a variety of ways. A common buzz concept is crowdsourcing which intend to reduce the risk of creating products that people don’t really like. Another concept is userdriven innovation which is similar and by no means a new invention – except maybe in the product design world where designers traditionally have been sitting behind closed doors crafting their designs without any interaction with the end consumer.

One startup that builds on these new concepts is quirky which call themselves a ’social product development company’.

The idea is brilliant and also very simple: a) submit your idea, b) pay a small fee, and c) let the community (i.e. registered users) decide which product to take into production (they are currently rallying votes for product # 5).
If your idea is chosen, quirky and the rest of the community will help develop, build, and sell the product and part of the revenue goes back to you and other users that influenced the product.
There’s a lot more to the concept, so go check it out!

It’s all about sharing your idea, and making money. Excellent concept – and perhaps one for you to transform to the European market?
Or maybe just submit your 4-year-old-idea-in-the-drawer and make tons of money?

Posted in Blog, Industrial Design, Inventions, Product Design, Product Design Companies | 2 Comments »

The Bug Factor

June 4th, 2009

The Bug Factor

So, you bought that painting half a year ago and you were quick to decide where to hang it; then why is it still standing on the floor leaning towards the wall?
And those new wooden panels you installed over a year ago, why haven’t they been painted yet?
And why didn’t you fix the gears on your bike? Or the creaky door hinge that bothers you so much?

These are examples of something that bugs you on a daily basis, but it doesn’t bug you enough to actually make you do something about it. Even though the amount of time and work you would have to invest is fairly small, you still don’t do it.

Then at some point – out of the blue – you overcome the obstacle and you fix ‘the bug’. It only takes you a couple of minutes, and then you’re done. Bug fixed.
This point is called ‘The Bug Factor’:

               [WORK/TIME] << [IRRITATION/BUG] x [THE BUG FACTOR]

It is – in other words – a point in space and time where the irritation (or ‘bugginess’) is so much bigger than the work and time you have to invest (by the factor of ‘bug’) that it seems reasonable to fix the bug. Since irritation builds over time, the bug factor also tells you how long you can expect a bug to remain unfixed.

Right, so how is this tranferred to product design? Not in any way particularly. But it’s strikingly often that you find yourself using a product that bugs you A LOT. Whether it’s a wine opener, a stereo, a printer, a hair dryer etc. you’re often never quite happy. Something bugs you. But – and this is the important part – it doesn’t bug you so much that you go out and replace the product! The product is, in other words, kept below ‘the bug factor’.

Now, a lot of companies actually meassure their products by this: they know they haven’t created a great product, in fact it’s barely good enough, but it’s below ‘the bug factor’ so they know that the consumers wont go out and replace it after they’ve bought it (and they will buy it thanks to all the marketing they’ve sacrificed on the product).

This is a consequence of rushed design processes and rushed go-to-market strategies – all of which is believed by a lot of people to be neccessary in order to make money and be succesfull.
Luckily not all companies think like this, and this is why it’s possible to find and buy bug free products.
More product design companies should make products that don’t bug us at all. They should make honest products that don’t pretend to be something they aren’t, that are easy to interpret and are easy to use. And they should make sure that this was the company backbone.

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Everyday improvements

May 12th, 2009

I read an interesting article this weekend. Supposedly Danes are very good at coming up with ideas to solving everyday problems, like the invention of the induction bicycle light Reelight that solves the problem of replacing batteries.
I guess the reason for Danes being good at this, comes from our profound ability to grumble about almost everything. We love the opportunity to tell how much we hate when this-and-this happens, or how annoying it is when he/she does this etc. etc. It’s an integrated part of our culture…

Luckily this can actually be turned around to something positive. In product design a well known tool is the ‘bug list’: every time something annoys (or ‘bugs’) you, you write it down on the bug list. Whether you have the list on you or your just taking a mental note and writing it down later is not important (as long as you don’t forget it). The important thing is the reflection itself, and the effect it has: a) it makes you feel good to delve in the fact that you are annoyed and are able to pinpoint exactly what annoys you :), and b) it gives you a list of ideas that each could develop into an invention or a new product.

And since we are very good at being annoyed, it is quite easy to come up with a long list of things that need improvements – from door knobs to bicycle locks.

Who knows, maybe one of your ‘bugs’ might actually be something worth exploring further (if you live in Denmark there is a lot of help to find at www.opfind.nu on how to take your ideas a bit further).

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