Product Behavior

Many of the medical-technology companies I work for ask us to develop interfaces that use no text–icons only. It’s one of my least favorite conversation with a client. We sit in front of a very long list of product features; I envision a very simple menu system, organized to let the user easily find what he needs; the client says, “of course, we want to sell this in Europe and Asia, so everything has to be icon-driven. My heart sinks.

Many products communicate like apes do: they tell me what to do next. Better to treat me like a person: give me the information I need to understand the job at hand and participate in getting it done.

Often when clients come to us with a “consumer segmentation,” they’re looking horizontally. This type of consumer has these issues to address; that type of consumer has these other issues. The product is designed to speak to both groups, or mainly to one and only opportunistically to the other.

But they forget the vertical segmentation.