At our Masters of Design event Wednesday night at the Chelsea Art Museum, we caught up with some of our expert design bloggers to find out how some of the most creative minds in the business start their day.
1. EMPHASIZE BENEFITS OVER FEATURES: Rather than touting feature sets and specs (how fast or big or slick something is), make the product's benefits clear. Who can it connect her to? How does it make her life easier? How will it save her time?
2. LEARN HER BODY: Women have different bone and muscle structure: Simply shrinking products leads to injury and frustration.
Boobs. The Femme Den talks about them easily and often -- and about the challenges they present to designers. Backpack makers don't seem to have a clue what to do about boobs. Ditto designers of unisex hospital scrubs, famous for their gaping V-necks. "One surgeon told me there wasn't a woman at the hospital whose boobs he hadn't seen," says Femme Den member Whitney Hopkins.
When shopping, men tend to go linear and deep, researching a product in detail and then going in for the kill. Women go wide, gathering information that goes beyond herself and her personal needs.
Most of us are only aware of obvious physical or behavioral attributes that differ between genders. But our differences run deeper--to the way we think, the way we act, and to our primitive desires.
If you have to moderate a panel discussion about sex, Las
Vegas is probably the best place on the planet to do it.So last January, I splashed on a little
Shalimar, hiked up my fishnets, and headed over to a back hall at the giant
Consumer Electronics Show to host a discussion on “Sex and Electronics” with a
couple women from Smart Design, who smartly design female-friendly electronics
products.
Smart Design is, well, one of the smartest design shops we know. You may not know the firm by name, but you certainly know its products: OXO Good Grips kitchen tools, Hewlett Packard Photo Printers, Ford's "Smart Gauge" for hybrid vehicles, and the new line of OXO office products are just a few.
