Product Behavior

It’s been pretty interesting lately to look at how companies have been aiming technology products at an aging population. Two I’ve noticed lately are the Jitterbug cell phone, and the Jumbo Univeral Remote.

We like to talk about “the brief” as those instructions we get from a client that tell us what we’re designing: its value to the consumer, what features it needs to be successful, whatever regulatory constraints we’ll be working under, etc. But the reality is we rarely, if ever, get anything so neatly packaged, and more often than not, we don’t really get any real direction at all beyond a generic description of the product.

I’ve previously written about making products “approachable.” The ukulele is my favorite approachable product: it’s recognizable, it’s safe, and it’s direct. As a “culture product,” the uke instantly fits in with your crowd - it’s like the funny guy who shows up at the party. Even if you don’t want to hang out with him for an extended period, he’s fun to have around.

So what do we make of products that seem to be the opposite of approachable?

One issue I see with many clients is that it’s not always clear why to do consumer research. It seems like a good idea - if we’re making products for people, we ought to go out and meet some of them. They’ll tell us what they want, or we’ll see what problems they’re having. But the “magic” - the “design thinking” - how do we get that out of consumer research?

“The Story of the Product,” a simple tool I wrote about a couple of weeks ago, can be easily altered to help understand and support the issues around a product’s Archetype. Recall the Star, the Hero, and the Genius - your product can be one but can’t be all of them. So use Stories customized [...]