- The major symptom: "creeping featurism"
- two forms of product innovation relevant to design
- Incremental (less glamorous, but most common)
- Radical (most glamorous, but rarely successful)
- two forms of product innovation relevant to design
Price, Features, Quality, Speed - important factors a manufacturer can complete
"spirit of the time" - the time was ripe, the competition emerged even before we had delivered our first product
What is a small, startup company to do?
- It does not have money to compete with the large companies
- It has to modify its ideas to keep ahead of the competition
- come up with a demonstration that excites potential customers
- wows potential investors and potential distributors of the product
Distributors who are the real customers, no the people who eventually buy
Where should the company focus its limited resources? More user studies? Faster development? New, unique features?
In every successful product there lurks the carrier of an insidious disease called "featuritis"
Creeping featurism is the tendency to add to the number of features of a product, often extending the number of features of a product, often extending the number beyond all reason.
Most companies compare features with their competition to determine where they are weak, so they can strengthen those areas
To concentrate on areas where they are stronger and to strengthen them even more. Then focus all marketing and advertisements to point out the strong points.
Don't follow blindly; focus on strength, not weakness. If the product has real strengths, it can afford to just be "good enough" in the other areas
Jeff Bezos: 'customer obsessed' approach - Everything is focused upon the requirements of Amazon's customers
Technology is a powerful driver for change. Sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. Sometimes to fulfill important needs, and sometimes simply because the technology makes the change possible
- Investors and founders of startup companies like to think the interval from idea to success is a single process, withe the total measured in months
- In fact, it is multiple processes, where the total time is measured in decades, sometimes centuries
Technology changes rapidly, but people and culture change slowly
It can take months to go from invention to product, but then decades for the product to get accepted
e.g., keyboard, multitouch displays, cars, telephones
- Incremental innovation: It starts with existing products and makes them better
- The design is tested
- Problem areas are discovered and modified
- the product is continually retested and remodified
- Radical innovation: It starts fresh, often driven by new technologies that make possible new capabilities
- Big, spectacular form of change
- They may take centuries to succeed
- Try education, transportation, medicine, and housing, all of which are over due for major transformation
The more things change, the more they are the same
Evolutionary change to people is always taking place, but the pace of human evolutionary change is measured in thousands of years. Human cultures change somewhat more rapidly over periods measured in decades or centuries.
Human activities persist, despite major changes in the technologies that support them.
The book is published in 1988, but the same principles that worked before still apply.
- High-quality professional material: Reliable, where the facts have been checked an the message authoritative
- rough creation: amateurish, incomplete, and somewhat incoherent - but still can serve valuable functions
The mix of technologies and tools makes quick and rough creation easier, but polished and professional level material much more difficult
- Fashion changes every year
- Fashion is not only clothes but automobiles and other technologies as well
- A new model introduced each year
- If you area a designer, help fight the battle for usability
- If you are a user, then join your voice with those who cry for usable products
- Write to manufacturers
- Boycott unusable designs
- Support good designs by purchasing them
- Voice your concerns to the stores that carry the products
- Enjoy yourself
- Walk around the world examining the details of design
- Learn how to observe
- Take pride in the little things
- Realize that even details matter - the designer may have had to fight to include something helpful
Efficient tools that empower individuals
Today, individuals can share their ideas, their thoughts and dreams. They can produce their own products, their own services, and make these available to anyone in the world.
The design principles of this book will not change, for the principles of discoverability, of feedback, and of the power of affordances and signifiers, mapping, and conceptual models will always hold.
Our technologies may change, but the fundamental principles of interaction are permanent.