A new article posted on Core77 has challenged the creation of artifacts in design, instead arguing that designing an experience is of top importance, with everything simply aiding the interaction process that someone has with that experience. Peter Merholz talks about the success of Kodak, Apple and TiVo as prime examples of a company utilizing an experience strategy to create a system that attracts customers through it’s appeal as a brand, ease of use or however they wish to advertise it. It’s a nice read and he point out some good points.
“When you start with the idea of making a thing, you’re artificially limiting what you can deliver. The reason that many of these exemplar’s forward-thinking product design succeed is explicitly because they don’t design products. Products are realized only as necessary artifacts to address customer needs.”
On the whole I agree with him. For a physical artifact, a product, to succeed it can’t simply stop at ideation and realization, there needs to be a major consideration in terms of the user. Obviously you could look at the ergonomics of how someone will interact with it, but more importantly it’s about providing an interaction with the user at a more advanced level. The iPod didn’t succeed because it’s a music player, it succeeded because of iTunes, but you probably know all this. All too often when I scroll through the onslaught of posts on technology blogs like Engadget, I feel frustrated that many of the designers and engineers have simply stopped and not looked further along the path of the technology or service. Now I’m not saying it’s their fault, in fact it’s most probably a question of funds, market research or the big shots just not willing to take a risk, but seeing who can crank out the biggest LCD screen in the world isn’t going to get them anywhere.
Web 2.0 services like Flickr, Last.fm and Facebook are a good example of providing an experience over a service. Facebook could simply be a copy-cat MySpace service but they instead found their own niche, providing a grown up social tool for people to use to keep in touch with their closest friends and family. Gone are the days of hoarding MySpace friends, racing to ridiculous numbers in the name of social networking. The reason they succeed is often down to the designers who created them. Close nit groups of friends experimenting with start ups on services they would love to have. Often frustration at not finding a experience suitable for them, inspires them to create it themselves which by passes technicalities like risk assessment or financial backing. At the end of day comparing the development of social networking system and a product of a new technology is slightly unfair but the consideration of the user should always stay the same.
Via Core77