The IC3 Blue Train - A little journal about design, marketing, sales and other matters

The paradigm takes shape and form.

The following pictures show a unique ‘physical’ prototype of the design yardstick that we have presented in previous entries. Just for fun! Click on the thumbnails to view the pictures.

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The design tool introduced on August 19 in this blog goes in the limelight.

IC3 officially launches its intriguing design yardstick, a practical tool helping engineers, product developers, marketers and other professionals to balance the rational and emotional aspects of a design. Read the IC3 Letter 10 in the News Section of the IC3 website .

A fourth example of how to use the Design Yardstick introduced on August 19.

Two days ago, we used our design yardstick to analyse a product leaflet from a customer point of view, then from the manufacturer point of view. Naturally, the reading is different for each point of view.

The yardstick also yields different results depending on which stage you’re at experiencing a product. As an example, you will gauge a PC differently when you are installing and setting it up for the first time, than when you use it on a daily basis.

At installation time, a ‘good’ Microsoft Windows-based PC looks like this from a customer point of view:


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Then, after a few days, the same customer sees it like that:


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Generalising, it is reasonable to admit that the reading from our design yardstick is fairly time dependent, not only during the life cycle of a product (as demonstrated above), but, over years, during the evolution of a product family/platform. We shall illustrate this latter point in a future entry devoted to the Macintosh, from 1984 to present times.

The purring entry of emotions into our design yardstick.

For many years, I have focused on usefulness and usability as the two main criteria for designing ‘good’ products and services. My awareness of the importance of the complementarity of these two factors arose when I was heading the corporate marketing, then the European R&D, of Apple’s networking and communications products ***. I used to talk about the virtuous spiral in presentations and speeches. The computing and communications virtuous spiral looks like this:

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Later I added completeness as third factor, to stress the importance of getting all needed parts to set up a system (like a PC) and all functions expected by a reasonable user. That was satisfying my engineer genes. However, at the same time, I was also listening to the sirens singing the virtues of look & feel, elegance and attractiveness. The few Italian nucleotides of my DNA have always reacted enthusiastically to the designs of coachbuilders like Pinin Farina and Bertone . Aesthetics are obviously a critical factor in design.

Then came emotions. Who denies that Intel’s ubiquitous jingle adds a ‘dimension’ to the company’s branding? ‘Look’ at how many ads create emotions through appropriate music (e.g. “Cocktail for Two” in the latest ad for Schweppes). ‘Look’ at how good you feel listening to the nice thud of your new car’s doors, at the nice smell of its leather seats, and at the smooth feeling of its wooden steering wheel.

That’s why feelings became the fifth factor in our design yardstick . That’s also why, with “ Emotional Design ”, his latest book, my ex-Apple colleague, Don Norman , closes the loop. Emotions are the fifth element that every designer has to integrate.

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*** That’s why my cats, above, are called Mac (the tabby boy) and Tosh (his black sister). They were born in 2004, on the 20^th anniversary of Apple’s Macintosh launch.

A third example of how to use the Design Yardstick introduced on August 19.

Today, let’s use our yardstick to gauge a ‘traditional’ product leaflet that you can get from thousands of manufacturers around the world. How many times were you swamped with indiscriminate and endless details in (so-called) product ‘briefs’ including a fine mess of benefits, applications, functions, characteristics, features, specifications, technologies, and … the proverbial kitchen sink? What are the characteristics of a ‘good’ product leaflet?

The answer is: it depends. It depends on who uses the yardstick. In the previous entries on a corkscrew and on amazon.co.uk , I have taken a user point of view. From such an angle, the evaluation of a good leaflet looks like that:


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However, as marketer working for the product manufacturer, I have quite different criteria to gauge the leaflet. The evaluation looks like that:


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The two sets of results/requirements are not necessarily incompatible, by far. If the design is user-centred (for both the product and its documentation), the customer will be satisfied (or even delighted), and the manufacturer will reinforce the brands of both the product and the company. Is that convergence or is it a win-win situation?