Products That Don't Suck

Call me pretentious but I want to start a trend. The trend I want to start is for all you designers of electronic items to pay more attention to how the new customer sees your product. Test the product on neophytes and then redesign the product and retest ad infinitum until you are satisfied that everyone gets the value from your product that you are promising.

After many frustrating experiences with digital cameras and kitchen appliances, stereo equipment, cars, etc., I'm convinced that companies do not do enough prototype testing. Here are my suggestions:

• Develop your product so that 90% of your customers do NOT need a user manual to do everything they expect it to do.
• Always (if possible), incorporate an interactive user guide into the product to explain the more advanced functions.
• If there is more than one element, design the packaging to explain exactly what each part is for so they don’t need a manual. If necessary, provide a separate assembly guide that goes step by step GRAPHICALLY.

Stated another way, design your product so it is totally intuitive to operate for all the basic functions, AND so that it interactively guides the customer toward mastering the more advanced functions AND is a piece of cake to put together and/or set up.

Seems like a reasonable goal, right?

Not simple at all. In fact, it adds a tremendous amount of work to the design process. But here’s the thing. That is where the time should be spent, not by the thousands or millions of people who purchase the product trying to figure out how to work it. The whole idea of paper instructions is rapidly being replaced by some sort of digital media anyway. Since memory is now very cheap, why not incorporate the user guide into the product itself and design it to be interactive?

I’m not talking about just loading images of a standard formatted user manual into your digital camera. I’m talking about an AI interface where the camera judges what you are trying to do and asks you relevant questions to lead you to the answer quickly. Cameras are an excellent example of complexity gone wild. Even geeks need help here.

The critical thing is that the controls are designed to make the basic functions simple and intuitive so your customer can immediately start using the camera or GPS unit or DVR. You want them to feel a sense of accomplishment and validation for making the purchase.

Then you want them to become your evangelists, especially the ones who are inclined to submit articles to technology websites where people increasingly go to before making a buying decision. And that is the key to taking the product to the tipping point - word of mouth is more powerful than any traditional ad campaign in this internet enabled society.

But as someone once said, word of mouth marketing is only a good idea if your product doesn’t suck. I’m counting on the instant feedback aspect of the internet to fuel the trend towards intuitive design. It could happen.