SubscribeExperience is the Product – Designing Products That Make Customers Happy and Passionated
Published by cornelius on Sunday, December 2nd, 2007 in Entrepreneurship.Tags: adaptivepath, product design, product vision, user experience
Peter Merholz gave an exciting talk about product experience called “Experience is the Product“. He is president of Adpative Path, one of the leading consulting companies when it comes to product experience strategy and design. Why is the experience of a product so important? Why not focus on the technology and many features? The answer is simple, because customers just want and demand it. Who cares about unimportant feature XYZ of a product if it is instead good looking, easy to use and simply attractive or cool. If you can create a product that customers are standing in a line for to buy it, then you are on the right track. Ok, this happens not very often but it gives you a metaphor.
If you develop a product you should start with a product and experience vision where you state the keys that make your product used and loved by everyone. For selecting your features think about simplicity and usability. Experiential requirements are an interesting concept to consider. Use features where appropriate, less is more in most cases. Look for the order winners (i. e. user experience) and not just the order qualifiers (many more features).
“…But the really great person will keep on going and find the key, underlying principle of the problem. And come up with a beautiful elegant solution that works.” Steve Jobs in 1984
You need examples of products with a passionated user base?
- The Nintento Wii is loved by everyone and not just the typical gamers. A great success.
- Steve Jobs, a forward thinker in creating cool products, knows how to design products that users love. iMac, iPod+iTunes, iPhone, iWhatever. Apple fans really love to argue that they use the best devices ever invented. It is definitely the experience and not the feature completeness.
- Flickr - the community for people who love taking and sharing pictures. Many professionals upload their pictures and the quality is superb. One of the best Internet communities and the website is designed to create passion.
- Car manufacturers like Porsche or Ferrari, the Swiss army knife and many more. Unfortunately there is only a minority of the companies that follow this experience principle.
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December 3rd, 2007 at 12:48 am
While there’s no doubt that a passionate user base is an important part of the mix, I feel a passionate creator is the other side of the coin, especially in the case of the solo entrepreneur. Passion for your own creation gives you the power to work endless hours and keep moving in the face of all discouragements. And passion communicate itself to your market, something I wrote about in my recent article here:
http://www.theinternetwizards.com/A-wantyourproduct.htm
March 25th, 2010 at 4:39 am
Wonerful! I love how this blog is always updated with fresh content.I made three of my friends subscribe btw,lol