Steve Jobs famously said, “It’s not the consumers’ job to tell you what they want.” His remark startled some people, but it neatly summarized his approach to innovation.
Of course it’s important to listen to consumers, because they can very clearly tell you whether or not they’re satisfied with what you have to offer, as Netflix recently learned. But consumers are rarely able to envision improvements that have yet to be invented because they base their suggestions on what they know.
The designs of the most successful consumer electronics, automobiles, household appliances, and many other products are based on observations about the way we live—what we do rather than what we say. This approach is much more informative than organizing focus groups, because despite their best efforts most consumers are ill-equipped even to accurately describe the status quo. If asked to describe how they perform a certain task, most people will relate an idealized version of the process, omitting details that they consider trivial, irrelevant, or unflattering. But through direct observation, design researchers can discover how a process actually works (or doesn’t).
When Procter & Gamble wanted to explore the future of floor cleaners, the company asked the Boston design firm Continuum to investigate, and a team of design researchers arranged to watch people mop floors. What they discovered was surprising: They found that people were spending more time taking care of the mop—rinsing it, wringing it out, and storing it—than they spent mopping the floor.
The researchers began to wonder, How can that time be shifted away from the mop? It wasn’t just a mathematical question; it was a question of asking, What form will drive people to a different behavior? They decided that the mop head shouldn’t be precious, something that needs care. At the same time, they concluded that most household dirt is dust, which can be removed without water.
Only when a problem is identified is it possible to design solutions, and only through close examination of the human requirements can we gain the insight to remedy the most persistent flaws in our everyday business tools.
The designers’ solution was a lightweight mop with disposable dust cloths shaped to trap particles of dirt. Proctor & Gamble called its new product Swiffer, and later reported first-year sales of $200 million. Some consumers reported that their children liked to play with it.
Had Proctor & Gamble polled a focus group, it’s unimaginable that consumers would have asked for lightweight, waterless, disposable dust cloths that their children would like to use. They might have said that they hated the mess of mopping, or disliked bending over, but I’d be surprised if anyone said, “I hate to clean the mop,” because they probably would have viewed that as self-evident or irrelevant. They might have thought that cleaning the mop is just something that has to be done.
Recently we visited bond traders for a client who produces business software. The client believed that one of their products could use some updating, but felt that overall the product was doing what people wanted it to do. After all – customers were renewing their licenses annually. When we visited with traders and looked over their shoulders we found that an important part of the client’s product had been replaced on the traders’ screens by free, less robust Web applications. We asked the traders why they weren’t using the client’s product – a tool far superior to the free apps and already paid for by their employer – and they told us that they didn’t know the client’s product could display this information. But when we showed them the feature they had missed and watched them use our client’s product, we discovered that the data was presented in a format that wasn’t useful to them. As we stood there watching, the traders started up those free apps.
Only when a problem is identified is it possible to design solutions, and only through close examination of the human requirements can we gain the insight to remedy the most persistent flaws in our everyday business tools. If we can eliminate some of the drudgery that plagues these systems, we can reduce the time people spend wrestling with these tools and apply that time to the fulfillment of business goals and the pursuit of innovation.
Most people can’t imagine how much better our business software could be. It’s so much work to operate these systems that it doesn’t occur to people to ask for them to become a pleasure.
Steve Jobs didn’t ask people how he might make computers more convenient or more fun to use. He asked himself those questions—just like a fellow visionary who transformed our popular culture by revolutionizing another industry more than a hundred years ago. It was Henry Ford who said, “If we’d asked them what they wanted, they’d have asked for faster horses.”
A hundred years from now people will be quoting Steve Jobs in the same way that we quote Henry Ford—and by then maybe everyone will appreciate just how right they were.
Read about what Henry Ford’s horseless carriage can teach us about our electronic business tools.
Harold Hambrose is the founder and CEO of Electronic Ink, an international design consultancy specializing in business systems, and the author of Wrench in the System: What’s sabotaging your business software and how you can release the power to innovate (John Wiley & Sons).
No comments yet. Be the first to write a response.