In order to play a safe game most products have a low acceptance level. It used to be common to add a feature, a new specification, which brought us a new sales story. Today it seems that this way of thinking doesn’t work anymore.
We therefore have to approach the ideation process in a complete different way. Feature counting is over, we have to come up with stories which describe a new user experience. A great opportunity to reconsider values, vision and mission.
As soon as our stories/ideas are ready we start investigating which of them are worth putting more efforts in. Once we present them to our customers in many cases they decide to choose for the solutions close to the ones we know already today. It’s always surprising to me that we we’re asked to come up with new products, but in the end the real new ones, in most cases, are eliminated from the shortlist.
It’s clear that there’s such a thing as dominant design. Most products have been the same for ages and until today they still do so. I want to clarify that I’m not speaking about artifacts. It’s clear that some things are the way they are and questioning them is a waste of time. I still believe in the function of a wheel….
We see that there are much more possibilities if you start looking to the real function they have to perform and approach them with an open view, taking important aspects like technology, materials and sustainability in consideration.
I believe it doesn’t make sense to design the 50th generation of a product in the same way it was done already 49 times. I also believe that the world need new products and that people understand the urge of rethinking everything.
In most cases the products are still the same as when they where designed the first time. They’ve been accepted and nobody ever questions why they are like that and if they’re still logic in our new world today.
Why is a car still a car? Since Henri Ford designed is T-Ford around 1900, nothing really changed. Cars today are better engineered and made of much better materials and perform better, but on a concept level it’s still exactly the same car. Even the way they’re produced and assembled didn’t change.
Why is that we’re still following the market leaders of the past? Which where able to set their products as a standard thanks to their position at that time. In some cases they didn’t even offer the best option. We where all using VHS as the standard not because it performs best, but because of porn. I’m wondering every day again why some technologies and products have won. Hopefully also for good reasons.
According to recent research 80% of the products we will use in ten years do not exist today. I believe this is a great opportunity to rethink a lot of these existing concepts. Thanks to the possibilities to communicate about them, sell them through new channels, creating new markets, new standards will be build. Are you ready for real change?
Het bericht What about dominant design? verscheen eerst op Studio Peter Van Riet.