Designing Products Consumers Will Buy

In the vast catalog of horribly designed products, one modern electronic consumer good stands out for its clunky ergonomics, poor performance and exorbitant pricing:
The Newton, a personal digital assistant from none other than trendsetter Apple Inc.

Retailing for upwards of $1,100, the 7-inch “handheld” included a notepad, a calendar, an appointment book, time-zone maps, a word processor, a spreadsheet, a Web browser and e-mail capabilities.

Apple reportedly spent more than $1 billion to produce the Newton, which launched in August 1993 under then-CEO John Sculley. Five years in the making, the device never really worked as advertised. It couldn’t, for instance, master the much-hyped handwriting recognition feature.

By the time Steve Jobs, who had been forced out of the company he co-founded, officially returned as Apple’s CEO in 1998, the company had made just $200 million in sales of the Newton. Faced with a money-losing lemon on his hands, Jobs discontinued the product.

Flash forward a dozen years.

Apple is the maker of the hippest electronic gadgets on the planet and today’s torchbearer for design.

“Apple,” notes Tom Kubilius, a board member of the Product Development Management Association (PDMA) and founder of business consultancy Bright Innovation, “is good at ignoring its failures as far as the public is concerned.”

“But,” he adds, “I bet they learned a lot from the Newton that went into the iPad.”

The Newton stands as a cautionary tale on a number of levels, starting with try not to fire your visionary CEO.

The other lesson is the role design plays in product development. The story of the Newton entails a product that was driven by over-engineering. Unlike most Apple products before and since, design seemed an afterthought.

For product developers, design is an essential ingredient that needs to go into the mix early – it’s the flour or the water or the egg in the cake, not the frosting spackled on at the end.

“When I hear ‘dropping in design’ at the tail end (of a new product development project), the hairs on the back of my neck stand up,” says Kubilius, an engineer and industrial designer.

“If you’re going to ‘drop in’ design,” he adds, “it should be the 101st Airborne and be the first in.”

Apple considered the whole lifecycle of the iPod. The player wasn’t only sleek, it was paired with the simple, elegant, easy-to-use iTunes as a way to buy music at a price people were willing to pay. Same thing with the iPhone, which enjoys a harmonic marriage with the AppExchange platform – there’s an app for that!

That’s not to say the iPod or iPhone are perfect.

Critics decry the shackles of digital rights management software on the songs you buy through iTunes, which prevents you from easily transferring music to other computers and players.

Likewise, the iPhone is notorious for dropped calls – although the blame largely rests with AT&T’s overburdened network, a problem created largely by so many people using iPhones.

“Having great technology does not buy you a pass with your customer,” Kubilius says. “Having a great experience does.”

Ah, but Apple has deep pockets, the incomparable Steve Jobs and world-class industrial designer Jonathan Paul Ive. What’s an independent product developer to do?
Behold the potato peeler from Oxo.

What started as a way to make a more user-friendly grip, extended into a line of kitchen utensils and products to enrich the kitchen experience, both functionally and aesthetically.

Oxo’s peelers have oversize, rubberized black grips and were initially designed with the arthritic housewife in mind. They also were a visual departure from the all-metal models that had gone unchanged for decades. Because Oxo’s peelers are easier to use and look cooler than traditional peelers, so they attracted a broader customer base.
Indeed, Oxo embraces what it calls a “Universal Design” philosophy and makes products that are simple to use for the widest possible spectrum of users – young, old, male, female, left- and right- handed and those with special needs.

“They looked at the peeler from an experience point of view rather than the old-school metal one,” Kubilius says. “A lot of thought went into that. So there are some parallels to the Apple music story.”

Product developers and companies often are in a constant tug-of-war among design desires, engineering options and financial constraints.

But a lot of that inherent conflict can be resolved – or avoided – if you design for “manufacturability,” in the words of David Clark, business development manager for Malco Design & Deliver Group.

“Our design philosophy is a focus on manufacturability,” Clark says. “To produce products that can be built in volumes and in prices that our customers can make money on.

“You can have the most beautiful design in the world,” he adds, “but if you can’t make it at a cost that’s able to make a profit, then what’s the point.”

He says the most important thing inventors can do is determine how many units they want to or will sell and calculate the profits from there.

“Volume,” Clark says, “drives every design consideration going forward.”

So, when it comes to design, you have to do the math. Otherwise, you may use materials or add features you can’t afford.

And you’ll end up with a Newton.

by Mike Drummond
Editor In Chief
Inventors Digest & POSSIBLE magazines
Exploring the Intersection of Innovation and Business
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