11 Aug 2006 1209H

Idealized design

This came off an IA listserv I’m on, a story about how Bell Labs created the telephone system we know and . . . well, I use the cellphone almost exclusively these days, so I can’t say I really love it. . . .

Anyway, I know this sounds crazy, but there are people in this world who believe that the design of things, to be used by other people, begins with how it will look. That’s crazy. It’s wasted effort, because the requirements haven’t even been gathered and tested yet. People should be thinking about how, ideally, something should function, and who will use this thing, what their needs are, and so on. Because you start with nothing. You will find out who you are trying to sell to. You will find out what those people need to see in a device like this. And you will make it hassle-free. Out of that, the design of a thing emerges. If you want to make a baroque version of the iPod, that’s fine. Just tack on ornaments once you have come up with the basic design, the core requirements. Perhaps I’m still a kind of stickler about this kind of waterfall methodology. In fact, what the smart, smart people at Wharton have validated is precisely this kind of thinking, which they have called Idealized Design, and which the rest of the world now calls New Product Development. By the by, the iPod itself is now five generations old, and it took a while for it to become this latest form. But the most important thing is that leadership recognized and made an effort to keep on improving the product.

I think this also speaks to something else that I’ve been thinking of, which is that in cases of ambiguity, strike out boldly. You have to define the space. Even if it is not the be-all, end-all of designs, you have to iterate. “Good enough,” actually, largely is, so long as you try to continuously improve the product.

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