The business and sustainability conference Opportunity Green, held this past weekend in L.A., was an amazing experience. As we watched the various films and presentations, my wife and I moved from fear (How will the world survive?) to guilt (Look how we've polluted our planet!) to the hope that we can all work together, connected by the belief and passion that we will find a better way.
One of the presentations that struck me most was when sustainability expert Annie Leonard shared her film, "The Story of Stuff." The animated work takes a hard (yet humorous) look at the pitfalls of our consumer society. It has developed quite a following, with more than 7 million views to date. After watching it, you come away wondering if it's possible to have a consumer-based economy and achieve true sustainability.
This is something that both industrial designers and their clients have to consider. Traditionally, we are dependent upon consumers to buy the things we create. Shifting the consumer paradigm has to begin with a fundamental shift in the way we think, the way we do business, and the way we all live our lives.
This syncs up well with a point cognitive anthropologist Dr. Bob Deutsch has been making for years now. According to Deutsch, we need to do a "search and replace" in the way we speak, and to move from talking about "consumers" to talking about "people." Perhaps this is the first step on the path to finding ways to thrive in business without consuming ourselves and our world into oblivion.
There are many aspects to consider in building a new paradigm for sustainable products, practices, and business models. But perhaps the most important piece of the puzzle is creating sustainable experiences. The experience is where we connect with people. If we create products or services that are terrific for the environment, but which fail to empower and delight, people will not use them. To truly be sustainable, a product or practice must feel more like a reward than like something we "should" do. If it feels like penance, we may do it once or twice, but it won't become a part of who we are.
The viral videos of The Fun Theory (a Volkswagen initiative) are a terrific example of how appealing to key emotions (in this case, joy and surprise) can be used to create positive change in behavior. In the videos, a staircase is turned into a huge piano keyboard to encourage people to take the stairs, the "world's deepest bin" encourages people to use a trash can instead of littering. In the video below, the simple act of recycling is turned into a fun arcade game. In each case, people were enticed to change their behavior not because it was the right thing to do, but because it was a more fun and engaging experience.
Opportunity Green showcased several fine companies who understand the power of emotion and who know that empowering people is the first ingredient in finding a better, more sustainable way. Still, it's clear that we are at the beginning of this paradigm shift. And it is equally clear that to make a shift of this magnitude we will all have to work together to find new ways for companies to continue making money while making a difference.
Ravi Sawhney is the founder and CEO of RKS, a global leader in strategy, innovation, and design. RKS has helped generate more than 150 patents on behalf of its clients, which include HP, Intel, LG, Medtronic, Seiko, Sprint, and Zyliss, among others. Sawhney invented the popular Psycho-Aesthetics® design
strategy, which Harvard adopted as a Business School Case Study. He lectures at Harvard Business School, USC's
Marshall School of Business, and UCLA's Anderson School of Business. Sawhney also helped found Intrigo (computer accessories), On2 Better Health (health products), and RKS Guitars (reinvented electric guitars).
Taking the time to teach is one of the most rewarding ways of contributing to the growth of our profession. Through the years, I've been fortunate enough to teach and speak about design and design thinking at schools that include Harvard, SCAD, and Art Center College of Design.
This past spring, I was honored to be invited to Savannah to speak at Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD). It was no surprise that I was impressed with the students in the program run by Victor Ermoli and Tom Gattis under the leadership of Paula Wallace [one of Fast Company'sguest bloggers]. Like at SCAD, I see the quality of graduates from all design schools getting more impressive every year. But what's different today is that the instructors of these programs are helping to redesign the direction our industry is taking.
Tom Matano of the Academy of Art University, Karen Hoffman of Art Center College of Design, Imre Molnar from the College for Creative Studies, and Patrick Whitney of Illinois Institute of Technology are among the leaders with whom I've had the privilege of working, and the chorus I hear echoing in the halls of design academia is that we have entered a new era. This resonates with my perception that employers are less interested in a designer's ability to sketch, and more interested in their ability to think and communicate strategically. Gone are the days when industrial design was merely about creating a more beautiful product. Today, our industry is called upon to provide experiences that connect consumers to brands, for it is these connections that propel brands.
By recognizing and propelling this shift in paradigm, design educators provide unprecedented leadership to the profession by producing the most state of art programs possible, not through technology alone but also through new levels of thinking among the educators and the graduates. Indeed, design educators are producing the most valuable product possible--the design thinkers of tomorrow.
Ravi Sawhney is the founder and CEO of RKS, a global leader in strategy, innovation, and design.
Since founding RKS nearly 30 years ago, Sawhney has earned a variety
of top honors in the design industry, and assembled a client list that
includes HP, Intel, LG, Medtronic, Seiko, Sprint, and Zyliss, among
many others. In the process, RKS has helped generate more than 150
patents on behalf of their clients.
In 2004 Sawhney was named chairperson of the Industrial Design
Excellence Award program, where he created the IDSA/BusinessWeek
Catalyst award for products that generate measurable business results.
Most recently, he was named Executive Director of Catalyst to direct
its evolution into a program to develop case studies illustrating
design's power to effect positive change.
Sawhney also invented the popular Psycho-Aesthetics® design
strategy, which Harvard adopted as a Business School Case Study. He is
a regularly featured lecturer at Harvard Business School, USC's
Marshall School of Business, and UCLA's Anderson School of Business,
where he teaches this business-driven design tool.
In addition to RKS, Sawhney has played an integral part in the
founding of several other businesses, including Intrigo, an innovative
computer accessory company; On2 Better Health, a health products
company; and RKS Guitars, best known for its reinvention of the
electric guitar.
As I watch the debate over health care reform, I've begun to see clearly how designers can create a solution that wouldn't be such a bitter pill for so many and would help quiet the level of disagreement currently being experienced by so many.
Here's how my plan would work.
A top-tier design "dream-team," comprised of members from our industry's leading firms would be brought in by the administration to fully leverage their ability to understand the range of complex issues and transform them into meaningful, relevant "experiences." Market segments would be profiled and personas constructed of not only patients, but health care providers, insurers, and other industry participants. While these personas would initially review demographic market compositions, they would go deeper, identifying pleasure and pain points of various health care experiences. Day-in-the-life and week-in-the-life scenarios would help us uncover previously overlooked elements of the problem.
The current emotional uproar has revealed that the debate over health care is about much more than mere economics alone. To be certain, much of the positioning relates to financial exposure. But when you listen to the town hall meetings, you hear the debate is supercharged with emotion. Understanding those emotional needs of the various stakeholder constituencies is what will make it possible for designers to design positive experiences from process, financial, and emotional perspectives.
By employing a full designer's toolkit of methodologies, designers would understand and analyze our health care system and arrive at insightful solutions that go beyond logistics and economics.
Channels of delivery and engagement of health care services would also be examined. This should include the traditional doctor's offices, urgent care facilities, emergency rooms, and hospitals, and then push further to include emerging centers of wellness, including homes, workplaces, gyms, grocery stores, and restaurants. For, truly, these are the frontlines of health care where the decisions we make everyday can have a meaningful impact on our individual and collective well-being. In this way, we would help establish the U.S. as a thought leader and contributor to global wellness.
Then, a comparative competitive analysis would dive deep into both the economic and experiential efficacy of health care systems around the world. What cautionary tales can help steer us clear from making things worse? What positive lessons can be learned?
Clearly, we're already too far into the process to start from to the beginning--at least for this round of reform. But there is still time to instill a sense of order that can be agreed upon by all groups. We'd start by identifying the groups themselves and key triggers for all based upon emotional persona type: The Doubters, The Caregivers, The Fearful Fighters, The Blindly Optimistics, The Realists, and so forth. From there, emotionally relevant stories and experiences would be crafted to communicate and connect with the each group. Design, in the form of communication design or storytelling, will target the transformation of a bad situation into a range of positive experiences for all.
It's true, bringing in design to try to fix things now is a little like trying to treat a patient who hasn't visited the doctor until after he has pneumonia. However, design, like the best health care systems, can offer effective solutions both at the early preventative stage, as well as in the intensive care ward. With a top-tier, bipartisan design team supporting the White House, all interests of each stakeholder group can be addressed, problems solved, and great advancements realized.
Ravi Sawhney is the founder and CEO of RKS, a global leader in strategy, innovation, and design.
Since founding RKS nearly 30 years ago, Sawhney has earned a variety
of top honors in the design industry, and assembled a client list that
includes HP, Intel, LG, Medtronic, Seiko, Sprint, and Zyliss, among
many others. In the process, RKS has helped generate more than 150
patents on behalf of their clients.
In 2004 Sawhney was named chairperson of the Industrial Design
Excellence Award program, where he created the IDSA/BusinessWeek
Catalyst award for products that generate measurable business results.
Most recently, he was named Executive Director of Catalyst to direct
its evolution into a program to develop case studies illustrating
design's power to effect positive change.
Sawhney also invented the popular Psycho-Aesthetics® design
strategy, which Harvard adopted as a Business School Case Study. He is
a regularly featured lecturer at Harvard Business School, USC's
Marshall School of Business, and UCLA's Anderson School of Business,
where he teaches this business-driven design tool.
In addition to RKS, Sawhney has played an integral part in the
founding of several other businesses, including Intrigo, an innovative
computer accessory company; On2 Better Health, a health products
company; and RKS Guitars, best known for its reinvention of the
electric guitar.
Singer-songwriter Dave Carroll's United flight had just
landed when he heard a passenger behind him exclaim, "My god they're throwing
guitars out there." Members of his band, Sons of Maxwell, looked out in time to
see their guitars being tossed by baggage handlers. When Carroll later
confirmed that his beloved guitar was a casualty in the melee, it wasn't just
his $3,500 Taylor guitar that was broken. His heart was broken, too. He was
able to have the guitar repaired for $1,200, but it will never be quite the
same. "It plays well but has lost much of what made it special," says Carroll.
When nine months of calls and emails failed to net Carroll compensation
for the $1,200 of damage to his guitar, he took matters into his very talented hands
and wrote "United Breaks Guitars." Carroll posted the incredibly creative and hilarious
music video on YouTube, where the infectious tune promptly went viral.
According to the Times
of London, "...within four days of the song
going online, the gathering thunderclouds of bad PR caused United Airlines'
stock price to suffer a mid-flight stall, and it plunged by 10%,
costing shareholders $180 million. Which, incidentally, would have bought
Carroll more than 51,000 replacement guitars."
Can United's 180 million dollar loss be chalked up entirely
to a song on YouTube? Probably not. Did the song have a very real and very
negative effect on United's brand equity? Absolutely.
What can you learn from this great David versus Goliath
story that will help your business? Know
this: Consumers will talk. And with the
power of social media, their voice is louder than ever before. You can't stop
the chatter, but you can have some control over whether they're saying
good things or bad things. Companies have to be tapped in to social media to quickly
right wrongs and head off bad press before it spins out of control. Carroll
gave United every chance. When, after nine months of calls and emails, United finally
shut the door on his communications, he wrote them one last time, telling them
of his plan to write three songs, video them, and post them on YouTube. His
hope was to get a million views over the course of a year. His first song
passed by the 1.5 million mark within four days of posting. It's now been
viewed more than 4.3 million times and is still spreading. After the video went
viral, United finally tried to make things right with a $3,000 donation to the
Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz--a goodwill gesture that was way too little
and too late to stop the viral spread of the story.
Carroll himself has become an unexpected hero. He's been
featured on Today, CNN, and Jimmy Kimmel, and interviewed by news agencies from
around the world. Best of all, the song "United Breaks Guitars" has made it to the
number one Country Western song on iTunes UK's download chart.
Meanwhile, Taylor guitars just landed themselves a PR
windfall. Talk about creating products consumers love! Whether providing a
service or creating a product, the end goal of any successful business has to
be creating an experience that consumers love--one they want to talk, write,
and even sing about.
Now, just to contrast what United is up against, check out another video, made by Gory Bateson: "Southwest Never Broke My Guitar":
Ravi Sawhney is the founder and CEO of RKS, a global leader in strategy, innovation, and design.
Since founding RKS nearly 30 years ago, Sawhney has earned a variety
of top honors in the design industry, and assembled a client list that
includes HP, Intel, LG, Medtronic, Seiko, Sprint, and Zyliss, among
many others. In the process, RKS has helped generate more than 150
patents on behalf of their clients.
In 2004 Sawhney was named chairperson of the Industrial Design
Excellence Award program, where he created the IDSA/BusinessWeek
Catalyst award for products that generate measurable business results.
Most recently, he was named Executive Director of Catalyst to direct
its evolution into a program to develop case studies illustrating
design's power to effect positive change.
Sawhney also invented the popular Psycho-Aesthetics® design
strategy, which Harvard adopted as a Business School Case Study. He is
a regularly featured lecturer at Harvard Business School, USC's
Marshall School of Business, and UCLA's Anderson School of Business,
where he teaches this business-driven design tool.
In addition to RKS, Sawhney has played an integral part in the
founding of several other businesses, including Intrigo, an innovative
computer accessory company; On2 Better Health, a health products
company; and RKS Guitars, best known for its reinvention of the
electric guitar.
Back in the day--and by "the day," I mean the legendary days of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center and legendary computer scientist Alan Kay--we would say, "We spend millions in research and development figuring everything out, and then the first consumer who walks up to the machine can tell you everything that's wrong." Today, market research is a $19 billion industry and focus groups are one of the most expensive types of market research. The question is, what role should design play in the process?
Designers are keen observers, just like researchers. But designers are very different animals who process information in a unique way. We seem to pick up signals from consumers that differ from the ones researchers observe. This capacity, combined with the collaborative nature of the design discipline, allows designers to fuse together research insight into winning solutions.
Long before our design concepts are tested, consumers are watched and engaged through everything imaginable, all in pursuit of the holy grail of profound market insight. But here's the problem: What consumers do and what they say they do are very different things. Even what consumers think they do and what they actually do are different. This is where market research is greatly aided by including designers in the research process. Being involved during all stages of research triggers something in designers that would otherwise simply be lost in translation, no matter how it's communicated. This is the ultimate way to design from the first person perspective.
Once you've transformed market insights into design concepts, it's time to brave that sometimes bone-chilling experience of focus group testing. And yes, it can be Garbage In, Garbage Out. But there's a little-cited corollary to that adage: Gold In, Gold Out. Focus groups are like anything else; you get out of them what you put into them.
Rarely have I seen focus group members tell us what they want. But they sure can tell us what they like and dislike. And, if we ask, often enough they will open up and tell us why. I've seen the best results when the design concepts are contextualized into the consumer's framework and leave little to the imagination. For example, when we tested cooking range concepts we found that our best conceptual renderings couldn't generate valid answers from focus groups. But when we placed our fully-developed design model next to competitive products, we started to see real answers about consumer likes and dislikes. Furthermore, these answers contradicted what the prior subjects had said about the designs when merely looking at artists' concepts. The lesson was clear. Don't give your subjects the experiences of being research subjects. Give them a consumer experience and they'll give you real, valuable consumer insight.
So, do your research by observing subjects in real consumer situations. Ask them the right questions and develop the empathy and insight needed to fuel your design process. Then create authentic prototypes. Once you've crossed the line of believability, when you can give your subjects a real consumer experience, then you should go to a focus group.
I love focus groups. I love them a lot. Why? Because, when we do our homework right, the results are overwhelmingly positive, validating our concepts, and, on occasion, giving us key insights into minor modifications than can amp up a design another degree to make it even more of a market success. Who couldn't love that?
Ravi Sawhney is the founder and CEO of RKS, a global leader in strategy, innovation, and design.
Since founding RKS nearly 30 years ago, Sawhney has earned a variety
of top honors in the design industry, and assembled a client list that
includes HP, Intel, LG, Medtronic, Seiko, Sprint, and Zyliss, among
many others. In the process, RKS has helped generate more than 150
patents on behalf of their clients.
In 2004 Sawhney was named chairperson of the Industrial Design
Excellence Award program, where he created the IDSA/BusinessWeek
Catalyst award for products that generate measurable business results.
Most recently, he was named Executive Director of Catalyst to direct
its evolution into a program to develop case studies illustrating
design's power to effect positive change.
Sawhney also invented the popular Psycho-Aesthetics® design
strategy, which Harvard adopted as a Business School Case Study. He is
a regularly featured lecturer at Harvard Business School, USC's
Marshall School of Business, and UCLA's Anderson School of Business,
where he teaches this business-driven design tool.
In addition to RKS, Sawhney has played an integral part in the
founding of several other businesses, including Intrigo, an innovative
computer accessory company; On2 Better Health, a health products
company; and RKS Guitars, best known for its reinvention of the
electric guitar.
There's a tale often told in design circles of how, in the heat of the space race, NASA paid over a million dollars to develop a pen that worked in zero gravity. The Russians, however, took a different approach. They used a pencil.
It's the kind of story we want to believe. How great would it be if there were an inexpensive, head slapping, "why didn't I think of that" solution to all of our design problems? It's true that we can fall into a trap of "over-innovating" --finding complex solutions when a simpler solution would do. After all, from the perspective of most users, simpler is better. Who wants to spend hours devouring a manual on a new product or software package? What we want is to have something so elegant, easy, and intuitive to use that no manual is needed.
But there's the catch. Simple and elegant are not one and the same. While elegant may look simple, it's usually the result of a lot of development. Elegant performs and is simple to use. Simple doesn't always perform. What we really need is a simple user experience, not a simple product.
The power of design is that it gives us methods to approach solutions from all angles. You don't arrive at elegant from the bottom up. You start by establishing requirements, adding in all the necessary features and qualities. Midway through, you may actually have an incredibly complex product. Then, much like a sculptor, you strip away what's unnecessary. You combine parts and pare away superfluous functions. Innovation teams work incredibly hard to get the right kind of solutions in the right spots to arrive at an elegant solution.
Take Microsoft's Project Natal, an amazing new gaming interface that debuted earlier this month at the gaming conference E3. Natal looks like no other game controller you've ever seen. There is no controller. At least not one you can hold in your hand. Natal uses a sophisticated scanning system that not only recognizes how you move and who you are, but how you feel. In this demo, the fluidity with which the virtual character Milo interacts and even converses with the human player is truly remarkable. The potential for Natal beyond gaming is astounding. Imagine a virtual companion so aware that it could recognize when a shut-in was depressed or non-responsive and call for outside help. To the user, Natal's interface looks simple. There is no learning curve. You just interact as you would in real life. From a design perspective, Natal is incredibly complex, combining next gen facial and voice recognition, motion capture, and artificial intelligence to arrive at an incredibly powerful and transparent user interface. Elegant and genius.
And that Space Pen story? It's simply not true. Pencils were problematic for both Russian and American astronauts. Pencil tips can break off and float away, potentially blinding an astronaut or causing a short in electrical equipment. The Space Pen itself, is very real. Paul C. Fisher of Fisher Pen saw the need and developed it on his own, investing a reported million dollars in the project. The result was the famous Fisher Space Pen which employs a pressurized ink cartridge. It's been used by both American and Russian astronauts since the late '60s. It also became a huge commercial success, still selling forty years after its development.
A case of "over-innovation"? Hardly. I'd say they got it justright.
Ravi Sawhney is the founder and CEO of RKS, a global leader in strategy, innovation, and design.
Since founding RKS nearly 30 years ago, Sawhney has earned a variety of top honors in the design industry, and assembled a client list that includes HP, Intel, LG, Medtronic, Seiko, Sprint, and Zyliss, among many others. In the process, RKS has helped generate more than 150 patents on behalf of their clients.
In 2004 Sawhney was named chairperson of the Industrial Design Excellence Award program, where he created the IDSA/BusinessWeek Catalyst award for products that generate measurable business results. Most recently, he was named Executive Director of Catalyst to direct its evolution into a program to develop case studies illustrating design's power to effect positive change.
Sawhney also invented the popular Psycho-Aesthetics® design strategy, which Harvard adopted as a Business School Case Study. He is a regularly featured lecturer at Harvard Business School, USC's Marshall School of Business, and UCLA's Anderson School of Business, where he teaches this business-driven design tool.
In addition to RKS, Sawhney has played an integral part in the founding of several other businesses, including Intrigo, an innovative computer accessory company; On2 Better Health, a health products company; and RKS Guitars, best known for its reinvention of the electric guitar.
In my last post, I shared five short-term strategies for surviving the downturn by using design thinking as a roadmap to connect your business with consumers. Once you've weathered the worst of the economic storms, it's time to plan for the future. To survive and thrive into the next upturn, you must innovate now. Innovation fueled by consumer insight will propel your company into the future, empowering you to rocket past your competition.
Here are five ways you can position your company to thrive as the economy recovers.
Reduce Costs and Fortify Branding Through Design: Structural engineering can be used to maintain or increase strength while reducing material costs. Smart badge redesign can decrease costs while increasing perceived value. Intelligent engineering and design that ensures a common design language across product lines can increase the use of common parts in a way that both minimizes tooling costs and fortifies your brand.
Make Every Shot Count: When resources are limited, you can't afford a shotgun approach to innovation. Instead of developing a half-dozen new products, you have to focus on one or two. This makes it even more essential to laser-focus the product development process. Design thinking can crystalize insights from consumer research and develop strategies that minimize risks and maximize returns.
Collaborate: Don't have the cash to launch an entire design program? Shop around. In this climate, companies must think creatively about partnerships and royalty deals. And if fees are even partially royalty-based, your partners have that much more incentive to make sure your new product or brand strategy is a home run.
Find The Greener Side of Green: Some businesses look at environmental issues and see dollar signs--ones they'll have to spend to "go green." Others look to the increased demand for green products and see opportunity. Take Arm and Hammer's new Essentials line of cleaning products. The starter kit comes with an empty spray bottle and a concentrate. The consumer just adds water to get a powerful, biodegradable cleanser. The refill pack of two concentrates uses 80% less packaging than two pre-filled spray cleaners, and those extra bottles don't end up in the landfill. The company saves transportation costs by shipping empty bottles and refills, the consumer saves money purchasing the refills, and we all reduce our carbon footprint. It's the kind of win/win/win story that makes consumers remember and seek out brands.
Create Emotional Connections: It may be possible for others to knock off the functions your product serves, but you can hold your competitors at bay by creating an emotional connection. Creating a connection by fulfilling an emotional need is what gives your product meaning and resonance. It's what makes people love your brand. This emotional bond between consumer and brand can't be counterfeit. Using design thinking to create this bond is the key to bulletproofing your brand and propelling your company forward.
Just as steel comes out of the firing process tempered and stronger than before, design thinking will empower you to guide your company through the recession to emerge stronger than it was pre-downturn. And when you show consumers you're part of the solution, they'll not only support you, they'll evangelize your brand.
Ravi Sawhney is the founder and CEO of RKS, a global leader in strategy, innovation, and design.
Since founding RKS nearly 30 years ago, Sawhney has earned a variety of top honors in the design industry, and assembled a client list that includes HP, Intel, LG, Medtronic, Seiko, Sprint, and Zyliss, among many others. In the process, RKS has helped generate more than 150 patents on behalf of their clients.
In 2004 Sawhney was named chairperson of the Industrial Design Excellence Award program, where he created the IDSA/BusinessWeek Catalyst award for products that generate measurable business results. Most recently, he was named Executive Director of Catalyst to direct its evolution into a program to develop case studies illustrating design's power to effect positive change.
Sawhney also invented the popular Psycho-Aesthetics® design strategy, which Harvard adopted as a Business School Case Study. He is a regularly featured lecturer at Harvard Business School, USC's Marshall School of Business, and UCLA's Anderson School of Business, where he teaches this business-driven design tool.
In addition to RKS, Sawhney has played an integral part in the founding of several other businesses, including Intrigo, an innovative computer accessory company; On2 Better Health, a health products company; and RKS Guitars, best known for its reinvention of the electric guitar.
History has shown that hard times can provide as much opportunity as pitfalls. Want proof? Motorola, Hewlett-Packard, and Xerox are just three innovation-driven companies that were founded during the Great Depression. More recently, both Apple and Microsoft began in the midst of an economic trough in the mid-1970s.
In this post and the next, I'd like to share ways in which design thinking can provide a roadmap that will help you position your company to not only survive the recession, but thrive through the recovery.
OPPORTUNITY MINING
When we look to our customers for insight, we find that within every consumer problem there is a business opportunity waiting to be mined. And for once, businesses don't need to empathize. We sympathize, because every pinch our customers are feeling we're feeling too. Strategies borne of consumer insight will empower you to look ahead with informed foresight and create a plan for coming out the other side in a better position.
Here are five ways that design thinking can help you survive the short term and connect with consumers.
Be Flexible: Give consumers your current products the way they need them. This can mean offering smaller sizes to accommodate the cash-strapped, or changing packaging shapes from round to square to slash supply chain costs. Resurrecting layaway plans can keep credit-crunched consumers in the marketplace. Product lines, supply chains, and service offerings must all be re-examined with an eye for creative solutions to respond to today's consumers' needs.
Adjust Your Pitch: Sometimes it's not your product or service that needs re-designed, it's your marketing pitch. Has your product's relevance shifted along with consumer needs? Take the iPhone. With the change in the economy, it's evolved from a status symbol to a money-saving replacement for multiple devices--a home phone, a media player, a game console, and an on-the-go computer. The "cool factor" is still there, but the change in messaging allows consumers to feel responsible while buying what was once perceived exclusively as a luxury item.
Get Back to Basics: Examine your product line with an understanding of how each item satisfies the needs of today's consumers. Where can you cut back and simplify your product lines and offerings? Where can you eliminate overlap? Which offerings have lost relevance? Done right, these trims leave consumers with fewer, but better, more distinct choices while you save money by reducing costs.
Communicate: The internet gives us a myriad of affordable solutions for communicating directly and indirectly with consumers. Smart companies let people know what they are doing to keep their prices low and their doors open. Communicating with honesty and optimism is essential to building and maintaining brand loyalty.
Listen, listen, listen: Communication is a two-way street. Social media like forums, blogs, Facebook, and Twitter give us new ways to listen consumers. Dell's Ideastorm blog is a brilliant case in point. Created in part as a way to overcome negative comments in social media, Ideastorm has not only helped substantially decrease negative social media commentary about Dell, in 2007 alone, 35 Dell product introductions were attributed to consumer submissions to the IdeaStorm site. Communication helps people feel like they matter to your company. And when they know they matter to you, you're going to matter more to them.
In my next post, I'll share five ways you can position your company to thrive as the economy recovers.
Ravi Sawhney is the founder and CEO of RKS, a global leader in strategy, innovation, and design.
Since founding RKS nearly 30 years ago, Sawhney has earned a variety of top honors in the design industry, and assembled a client list that includes HP, Intel, LG, Medtronic, Seiko, Sprint, and Zyliss, among many others. In the process, RKS has helped generate more than 150 patents on behalf of their clients.
In 2004 Sawhney was named chairperson of the Industrial Design Excellence Award program, where he created the IDSA/BusinessWeek Catalyst award for products that generate measurable business results. Most recently, he was named Executive Director of Catalyst to direct its evolution into a program to develop case studies illustrating design's power to effect positive change.
Sawhney also invented the popular Psycho-Aesthetics® design strategy, which Harvard adopted as a Business School Case Study. He is a regularly featured lecturer at Harvard Business School, USC's Marshall School of Business, and UCLA's Anderson School of Business, where he teaches this business-driven design tool.
In addition to RKS, Sawhney has played an integral part in the founding of several other businesses, including Intrigo, an innovative computer accessory company; On2 Better Health, a health products company; and RKS Guitars, best known for its reinvention of the electric guitar.
Over the past decade, driven by an ever-more sophisticated consumer, design has gone from being a bonus to being an essential ingredient in almost every market sector.
Target earned itself a spot on Fast Company's 2008 Fast 50 list by hiring designers like Michael Graves to bring design to the masses. Motorola shook up the world of cell phones with the Moto Razr. Consumers have evolved far beyond accepting products based on function alone. They've developed a hunger for design and even the current financial crisis isn't going to cause them to lose their appetite.
Today, if you truly want to compete, design must be part of your brand's DNA. It's a little like surfing--the trick is to catch the oncoming wave of consumer demand. Like surfing, business success is about preparation and anticipation. If you wait for the wave to start to break before you begin paddling (or, in this analogy, designing), consumer demand will have passed you by. If you wait to see what your competitors do and rely on "me too" design, you'll always be a beat behind; you'll never get your company into position for breakout success.
Companies that don't invest in design will inevitably find themselves dead in the water. To succeed today, you need consumer insight and design strategy to predict when and where the wave will peak, and you need design to propel your brand and put you in the right position to capture the market, just as the wave breaks.
Hyundai is an amazing example of using design to catch the wave of demand. It wasn't long ago that Hyundai was a punch line for the late night comics. Its brand image was low price, low value. But in the past half-dozen years, Hyundai has used design to turn that image on its head.
To be sure, this transformation could not have been accomplished with design alone. First, Hyundai improved the quality of its product line across the board. But Hyundai also understood the evolving consumer. It had watched Target's example and knew that now, even bargain-hunting consumers crave design. So Hyundai invested in building a new design center and set about connecting with consumer aspirations. The results have been nothing short of astounding. In January, the Genesis won Hyundai its first North American Car of the Year honor.
Just this week, Hyundai earned AutoPacific's Rising Star award by jumping 11 positions in overall brand satisfaction. And, perhaps most impressively, while other car manufacturers were suffering through the downturn, Hyundai sales were up an impressive 14% this January over January 2008. Hyundai drivers are no longer the butt of jokes--they're smart consumers with an eye for great design and an appreciation of excellent quality at a good price. By delivering designs that elevate, Hyundai has propelled its brand while others are struggling to keep from drowning. Now more than ever, design is no longer a luxury; it's an essential tool for business success.
Ravi Sawhney is the founder and CEO of RKS, a global leader in strategy, innovation, and design.
Since founding RKS nearly 30 years ago, Sawhney has earned a variety of top honors in the design industry, and assembled a client list that includes HP, Intel, LG, Medtronic, Seiko, Sprint, and Zyliss, among many others. In the process, RKS has helped generate more than 150 patents on behalf of their clients.
In 2004 Sawhney was named chairperson of the Industrial Design Excellence Award program, where he created the IDSA/BusinessWeek Catalyst award for products that generate measurable business results. Most recently, he was named Executive Director of Catalyst to direct its evolution into a program to develop case studies illustrating design's power to effect positive change.
Sawhney also invented the popular Psycho-Aesthetics® design strategy, which Harvard adopted as a Business School Case Study. He is a regularly featured lecturer at Harvard Business School, USC's Marshall School of Business, and UCLA's Anderson School of Business, where he teaches this business-driven design tool.
In addition to RKS, Sawhney has played an integral part in the founding of several other businesses, including Intrigo, an innovative computer accessory company; On2 Better Health, a health products company; and RKS Guitars, best known for its reinvention of the electric guitar.
In professional industrial design, designs aren't really for the designers. They aren't even for the clients. They're for the end-users. I believe we get the best results when we "design from the first-person perspective" and really immerse ourselves in the user experience. When we understand the touch points the user identifies with, the needs that drive them, and the benefits they seek, we can create designs people crave. The more we're able to focus on the user, the more we're able to create deep emotional connections.
One instance where we can especially benefit from a "first-person perspective" approach is when the job at hand is a redesign. It's easy to want to completely re envision the design. It's only human to want to leave your mark. And designing from a blank slate can be liberating. But rather than a clean slate, why not start from a thorough understanding of the user experience with the original design? What do they love? What do they hate?
An often overlooked key of design is understanding what not to change. We might be able to come up with a completely new and innovative way to design a scalpel, but if it changes the way surgeons have to work, the design will likely fall flat. Surgeons have years, often decades, involved in developing and perfecting their technique. If you fundamentally change their grip or how they handle the scalpel, you may well alienate them. But when we start from understanding the user experience so completely that we can see the design through their eyes, we can find ways to better facilitate their needs. By uncovering what not to change, we can suddenly see what can be changed.
I believe this approach led Shimano to one of the most significant developments in cycling technology in the last quarter century. Before introduction of Shimano's STI integrated brake/shift levers for road bikes, brake levers were on the handlebars and shifters were on the down tube, between the cyclist's knees. Less-experienced riders would often suffer in the wrong gear rather than make an awkward reach for a shifter. When Shimano set about re-designing, they did so with a great understanding of the cycling experience. Shifting is important. Braking is essential. When you're flying down a mountain at 45 mph, your brake levers need to be right where your hands are. This could not be changed. By integrating the shifters into the brake levers Shimano fundamentally changed cycling for the better. With STI integrated levers, shifting is intuitive, effortless, and instinctive. Shimano bonded cyclists to their brand by making cycling far more enjoyable.
When we keep the focus on the user and creating a better user experience, we can create emotional connections that propel brands.
Ravi Sawhney is the founder and CEO of RKS, a global leader in strategy, innovation, and design.
Since founding RKS nearly 30 years ago, Sawhney has earned a variety of top honors in the design industry, and assembled a client list that includes HP, Intel, LG, Medtronic, Seiko, Sprint, and Zyliss, among many others. In the process, RKS has helped generate more than 150 patents on behalf of their clients.
In 2004 Sawhney was named chairperson of the Industrial Design Excellence Award program, where he created the IDSA/BusinessWeek Catalyst award for products that generate measurable business results. Most recently, he was named Executive Director of Catalyst to direct its evolution into a program to develop case studies illustrating design's power to effect positive change.
Sawhney also invented the popular Psycho-Aesthetics® design strategy, which Harvard adopted as a Business School Case Study. He is a regularly featured lecturer at Harvard Business School, USC's Marshall School of Business, and UCLA's Anderson School of Business, where he teaches this business-driven design tool.
In addition to RKS, Sawhney has played an integral part in the founding of several other businesses, including Intrigo, an innovative computer accessory company; On2 Better Health, a health products company; and RKS Guitars, best known for its reinvention of the electric guitar.
As I watch the debate over health care reform, I've begun to see clearly how designers can create a solution that wouldn't be such a bitter pill for so many and would help quiet the level of disagreement currently being experienced by so many. 
The current emotional uproar has revealed that the debate over health care is about much more than mere economics alone. To be certain, much of the positioning relates to financial exposure. But when you listen to the town hall meetings, you hear the debate is supercharged with emotion. Understanding those emotional needs of the various stakeholder constituencies is what will make it possible for designers to design positive experiences from process, financial, and emotional perspectives. 
Then, a comparative competitive analysis would dive deep into both the economic and experiential efficacy of health care systems around the world. What cautionary tales can help steer us clear from making things worse? What positive lessons can be learned? 
Back in the day--and by "the day," I mean the legendary days of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center and legendary computer scientist Alan Kay--we would say, "We spend millions in research and development figuring everything out, and then the first consumer who walks up to the machine can tell you everything that's wrong." Today, market research is a $19 billion industry and focus groups are one of the most expensive types of market research. The question is, what role should design play in the process?
Rarely have I seen focus group members tell us what they want. But they sure can tell us what they like and dislike. And, if we ask, often enough they will open up and tell us why. I've seen the best results when the design concepts are contextualized into the consumer's framework and leave little to the imagination. For example, when we tested cooking range concepts we found that our best conceptual renderings couldn't generate valid answers from focus groups. But when we placed our fully-developed design model next to competitive products, we started to see real answers about consumer likes and dislikes. Furthermore, these answers contradicted what the prior subjects had said about the designs when merely looking at artists' concepts. The lesson was clear. Don't give your subjects the experiences of being research subjects. Give them a consumer experience and they'll give you real, valuable consumer insight.
And that Space Pen story? It's simply not true. Pencils were problematic for both Russian and American astronauts. Pencil tips can break off and float away, potentially blinding an astronaut or causing a short in electrical equipment. The Space Pen itself, is very real. Paul C. Fisher of Fisher Pen saw the need and developed it on his own, investing a reported million dollars in the project. The result was the famous 
Reduce Costs and Fortify Branding Through Design: Structural engineering can be used to maintain or increase strength while reducing material costs. Smart badge redesign can decrease costs while increasing perceived value. Intelligent engineering and design that ensures a common design language across product lines can increase the use of common parts in a way that both minimizes tooling costs and fortifies your brand.
Listen, listen, listen: Communication is a two-way street. Social media like forums, blogs, Facebook, and Twitter give us new ways to listen consumers. Dell's Ideastorm blog is a brilliant case in point. Created in part as a way to overcome negative comments in social media, Ideastorm has not only helped substantially decrease negative social media commentary about Dell, in 2007 alone, 35 Dell product introductions were attributed to consumer submissions to the IdeaStorm site. Communication helps people feel like they matter to your company. And when they know they matter to you, you're going to matter more to them. 
Today, if you truly want to compete, design must be part of your brand's DNA. It's a little like surfing--the trick is to catch the oncoming wave of consumer demand. Like surfing, business success is about preparation and anticipation. If you wait for the wave to start to break before you begin paddling (or, in this analogy, designing), consumer demand will have passed you by. If you wait to see what your competitors do and rely on "me too" design, you'll always be a beat behind; you'll never get your company into position for breakout success.
Just this week, Hyundai earned AutoPacific's Rising Star award by jumping 11 positions in overall brand satisfaction. And, perhaps most impressively, while other car manufacturers were suffering through the downturn, Hyundai sales were up an impressive 14% this January over January 2008. Hyundai drivers are no longer the butt of jokes--they're smart consumers with an eye for great design and an appreciation of excellent quality at a good price. By delivering designs that elevate, Hyundai has propelled its brand while others are struggling to keep from drowning. Now more than ever, design is no longer a luxury; it's an essential tool for business success.
