by Peter Merholz

"You press the button, we do the rest."

In 1888, an inventor named George Eastman designed, manufactured, and marketed a camera that changed not only photography, but consumer products—forever.Four years earlier, Eastman invented a new kind of film, roll film, that was much easier to handle than fragile photographic plates. Now, had Eastman taken a typical engineering approach to designing a camera that used roll film, he would have copied the typical camera of the time, just on a smaller scale, providing an incremental improvement on his predecessors. Instead, he focused on the experience he wanted to deliver, captured in his advertising slogan, "You press the button, we do the rest."

At some point, product categories require a quantum evolution—beyond technology and features—to the satisfaction of a customer experience. The VCR begat the DVR, and TiVo, the leading DVR brand, is successful because they began with an experience mindset, and developed the product to suit that.

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. What Flickr, Kodak, Apple, and Target all realize is that the experience is the product we deliver, and the only thing that our customers care about.

Visit Click to Open Web Page to read more.

© 2003 - 2008 by TAXI Design Network. All rights reserved.