Product Behavior

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.

Yes, I love bacon. I’m a firm subscriber to the “Anything is better with bacon” rule. Here are a couple of bacon-related products that tell different stories about themselves.

Many of my clients have too narrow a view of the competition. They tend to only view products that sell on the same shelf, in the same store, as their own as competitors.
A few years ago I did some work for a power-tool manufacturer trying to revamp a product line. The devices sell in places [...]

I collect remote controls. I take pictures of them when I visit clients, and I have a large assortment of old/dead remotes from colleagues. My favorite is this one:

It’s from a Pioneer laserdisc player from (I’m guessing) 1985 or so. It’s nothing to write home about design-wise, but it has on feature that I [...]

A few weeks ago I met with a prospective client. It’s an interesting project, the client seems very reasonable, and I would like to do the work.
It is extremely common for folks like this to say, “it should be as easy to use as an iPod,” or something like that–in fact, it’s a rare sales [...]