Ben Strutt , Head of Design at Cambridge Design Partnership, writes: However evidence shows1 that businesses that continue to invest in their new product development programmes, even in the face of the alleged gloomy outlook, are reaping the benefits. Last year’s R&D scoreboard from The Joint Research Centre (JRC) which lists the top 1,500 global R&D investors claimed ‘the 2011 overall growth figures for R&D investment (7.6%), sales (7.1%) and profits (9.7%), confirming the upward trend which started in 2010, following the 2008-2009 economic and financial world crisis’.
Many of the highest-performing companies have R&D resource focused on ICT and health sectors and growth is evident in consumer as well as industrial markets. Innovative product appearance and user experience is proving a major battleground for the consumers’ hard earned cash as highlighted through high profile Intellectual Property (IP) cases such as Apple and Samsung’s courtroom tussles.
So why are many R&D-led businesses ignoring the doom and gloom of the wider economic conditions? And why in particular does so much value seem to pivot on innovation around the ‘softer’, human interactions and User Experience?
Forward thinking companies such as Braun, steered by Dieter Rams and his ‘principles of good design’ realised long ago that people had to be placed at the heart of any business, process or technology offer. Products and services had to appeal to humans in an emotional way, solve problems by offering genuine benefits over previous or competitive products, and reduce perceived or actual experience ‘friction’. To the probable disgust of most electronics engineers most of us are unlikely to care what spec of microprocessor is powering our smartphone as long as the device enables us to access the benefits we want, and when we want them. This is why a patent relating to a tactile ‘tap’ interaction, or voice search function has so much potential, indeed actual (as demonstrated by recent rulings and pending Court cases,) market equity. Could it be argued that Apple is losing its touch, or is Samsung now getting the hang of connecting more effectively with future consumers?
While successive updates to the i-phone have underwhelmed even the most committed Apple advocate, Samsung have launched a rapid-fire series of smartphone models that reduce experience ‘friction’ and offer step-change benefits (enabled by R&D fuelled technology) that seem to be resonating with consumers.
As users we now expect technology to make our lives easier, more convenient and more enjoyable. As consumers we expect companies to pre-emptively and intimately understand how new products will fit with our lives, will make our interactions more seamless, and help achieve our tasks more intuitively. Take the recent announcement from Samsung about its successful testing of a 1 gigabit-per-second download speed for wireless networks – in which a full-length movie could be downloaded in one second2. Even though it is expected to be some years away from home roll-out, this is an example of a technology that clearly delivers value to the consumer.
If product and service companies are to successfully motivate frugal customers to consume their latest offerings, the initial phase of New Product Development has to holistically optimise the whole user experience. This is not just about investing in future sales performance, it is about managing total risk by making products people want, not making people want products. Consumers might not be able to directly tell you what your next products and services should be, but with the help of a range of techniques they can certainly help you work out the ‘DNA’ of a future product.
Finding unmet needs can be achieved in many ways, and generally a programme of research can be tailored to most budgets, from relatively informal qualitative insight activities, to in-depth ethnographic immersion by a design and research team who observe users and stakeholders in their normal environment across multiple territories. Task maps provide a detailed multi-stage breakdown of not only the physical and functional processes involved with completing a job, but also the many cognitive and emotional considerations. This methodology can be as easily applied to the sending a text as to self-administration of a dose of insulin. Such a granular dissection of the activity typically highlights multiple opportunities for improving the user experience such as reducing in-use error, taking out confusing steps, elevating operational cues and enhancing emotional appeal.
Empathy mapping, trend mapping, co-creation, and possibly sensory or ‘organoleptic’ matrix (sight, sounds, smell, touch) all have their place in understanding the current and potential user experience. Our team use a number of techniques to understand how form impacts not only usability, but emotional response to and expectations of product performance.
These types of initial investigations are just the start of the process of managing risk in a rigorous product development process by continually involving users to validate the emerging design solutions.
Ignoring this sort of detail dramatically raises the odds of a launch failure. Companies of any scale can get it wrong as demonstrated by the recent reporting of the slump in PC sales, which is being blamed in part on the new Windows 8 Graphical User Interface (GUI). The lack of a start menu, a familiar feature of the software since Windows 95, has been a user experience leap too far for PC users, and led to announcements of a major overhaul of Windows 8 just months after the launch. The crisis of confidence is being compared by the media to a disaster of marketing magnitude comparable with ‘new Coke’ of the mid 1980’s. Tami Reller, the head of marketing and finance for the Windows business, said in a recent interview with the Financial Times, “The learning curve is definitely real.”3
Without doubt this retrospective learning will come at a heavy price in terms of damage to reputation, and the cost will be several orders of magnitude larger than that of a lean, timely programme of risk reducing user research and engagement.
Companies many, many times smaller than Microsoft enjoy well deserved success every day following the launch of their own new products, and in many cases success will stem from diligent user engagement throughout the development process.
Ben Strutt is Head of Design at Cambridge Design Partnership, a technology and product development consultancy based in the UK. The team are highly experienced in structuring front end research and insight activity, developing new user experiences and interfaces, and administering consumer and healthcare validation processes involving users.
1 http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/jrc/index.cfm?id=1410&dt_code=NWS&obj_id=15810
2 http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2013/05/13/samsung-claims-5g-mobile-breakthrough/
3 http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/330c8b8e-b66b-11e2-93ba-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2ShUr0A63
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