Subtracting Features to Enhance Products: We're Biased Against Doing That

Source: Wikimedia

Diana Kwon recently wrote a Scientific American article titled, "Our Brain Typically Overlooks This Brilliant Problem-Solving Strategy."  She opens with an anecdote about how kids learn to ride a bicycle today versus in the past.  When I was a kid, my father installed training wheels on my bike, as many other parents did.  Today, more and more parents are opting to purchase balance bikes for their children.  These two-wheel bicycles have no pedals.  Kids learn balance and coordination on these bikes. Many say that these bikes are much more effective than training wheels.  Kwon asks the question, "Given the benefits of balance bikes, why did it take so long for them to replace training wheels?" 

To answer that question, Kwon describes a fascinating new research study published in Nature by Gabrielle Adams, Benjamin Converse, Andrew Hales and Leidy Klotz.  The article is titled, "People systematically overlook subtractive changes."  The authors found that people tend to focus on adding components and features when trying to improve a product or service, rather than considering how they migth subtract features and attributes.  This bias toward addition appeared quite strong in their research.  

For me, this interesting research has implications beyond product design.  It explains a great deal about the strategic mistakes that firms often make.   In strategy, we often talk about the power of choosing what not to do.  Great firms make tradeoffs, rather than trying to be all things to all people.    Choosing what not to do means subtracting features.  Southwest took away assigned seats and first class cabins.  Ikea took away furniture assembly and delivery.   Trader Joe's took away branded products, extensive product selection, self-checkout, and loyalty cards.  Edward Jones took away investment opportunities in penny stocks, options, and commodities.   Stihl took away distribution through big box retailers.   Why do firms struggle to make tradeoffs.  We have often said it's because managers become enamored with growing the top line, and they want every customer they can get... rather than thinking carefully about how to create a distinctive, difficult-to-imitate position in the market, tailored to a particular customer segment.  Now this research explains that there may be a persistent bias against subtraction inherent in the way that we think about improving existing products and services. That may be getting in the way of making good strategic tradeoffs. 

Put Your Work (and Yourself) Out There!

Source:  Needpix.com

Last week, Renee Fleck authored a blog post titled, "The best creative advice of 2019: Words of wisdom for every designer."   There are some gems in there from various design professionals.  My favorite is from Lisa McCormick, a freelance illustrator and graphic designer.   Her advice:  "Be a factory, not a warehouse."   Here's the explanation:

“My college professor said this and it really stuck with me. It’s a reminder to not be “too precious” about your work and hide it until everything is absolutely perfect (that day will never come). Swallow your pride and put yourself out there and share your work. Keep making things, try new ways of creating, and take risks. It’s better to keep creating and putting yourself out there so you can get honest feedback and move forward.  So, be a factory by continuously creating and putting your work out there. Don’t be a warehouse, storing work in a dark corner that never sees the light of day.”

I concur completely.   Unfortunately, many of us await perfection before putting our ideas and our work out there.  We lose precious opportunities for feedback, adaptation, and iteration.   We censor ourselves because we are afraid of the judgment of others.  If we want to boost our creativity and our learning potential, we have to overcome this self-made obstacle.  

Apple's Jony Ive on Team Trust & Listening

Fast Company published some excerpts this week from Rick Tetzeli's interview of Apple design chief Jony Ive.   I especially loved Ive's comments on building trust within his design team, and how that helped them overcome the common problem of self-censorship.  Here's the excerpt:

In 30 years time, we’ll look back at, with such fondness, the way we worked, not necessarily what we did. I think the advantage is we have so much trust as a team that we don’t censor our ideas because we are nervous and scared that they will sound absurd . . . Very often it seems to be you listen to the biggest, loudest voice. A lot of this process is about listening, I think. What we’ve found is very often the very best ideas come from the quietest voice. And if you’re not listening, you’re going to miss that.

And also when you have trust, it’s not a competition. We don’t have to deal with the bizarre game of all of the problems involved with a thrusty sort of ego. Our interest isn’t some leaf table with points. What we’re interested in as a team is, we’re genuinely, genuinely trying to figure out how we can make the very best product possible. And of course, there are many occasions where we don’t get there. But that’s our sincere hope.

Marketing Your Products as Designed by Users: Benefit or Hindrance?

The Boston Globe reported this weekend on the fascinating new research of Vienna University Professor Martin Schreier.   He studied the marketing of crowdsourced products.  Schreier found that marketing an item as user-designed tended to increase sales more than marketing a product as created by a firm's own designers.  Why this positive effect?  Schreier discovered that, "People believe their peers understand their needs better, and therefore, come up with better solutions."   Moroever, Schreier found that people tend to react more positively if informed that the user-designers had something in common with them.   For instance, female consumers tended to prefer user-designers who were women similar to them.  

Is there a potential downside to marketing a product as "user-designed"?  Schreier found that the effect does not appear to be positive for luxury items or high tech goods.  Why?  For technologically sophisticated products, the consumer trusts experts with high levels of knowledge and expertise more so than fellow users.  As for luxury items, the explanation is quite different.  In those cases, consumers "want to set themselves apart."  Thus, they tend not to prefer something sourced from the crowd.  

Bad Design Ruins the Miss Universe Contest

Was Steve Harvey just a terrible host for the Miss Universe contest, or is there more to the story?   By now, most of you have seen the awful and embarrassing gaffe at the end of the competition.   Host Steve Harvey mistakenly announces Miss Columbia as the winner, when in fact, she was the runner-up.   After the crown is placed on her head, Harvey must deliver the bad news... Miss Philippines is actually the winner of the beauty pageant.  

Image from @cthagod

Eric Thomas, senior partner at Saga (Detroit-based marketing agency), has a great LinkedIn post today about the gaffe.  He describes the problem as an example of bad design.   I've posted a photo of the card  given to Harvey as he announced the winner.   Here's Thomas' analysis of the card.  Talk about a bad user experience!

"There isn't any logical order to this. Sizing, placement, and organizing is all over the place. Why is “Miss Universe” all the way to the right, but “Philippines” is centered below it? The actual winner, compositionally speaking, was essentially just cast off to the side. It looks like a footnote. And even though this document was created so that the names could be added later, they could have at least made the letters bigger. Microsoft Word can certainly adjust font sizes."

Image from Eric Thomas

I've posted here both the original card used in the pageant and the newly redesigned card by Eric Thomas.    I think you can see how bad the design actually is, and how easily one could improve the user experience.  It's too bad it took an epic failure to highlight the weaknesses in the existing design.  Fail often to succeed sooner... yes, but not by experiencing what Harvey and the contestants had to endure last night!   Fail often to succeed sooner is all about testing and experimenting so that you don't have a major catastrophe on your hands at a later date.

Google Changes Its Logo: Does it Matter?

Google announced today that it has changed its logo (see the before/after comparison here).   While the shift may not be substantial, it did cause me to ponder the impact of a logo change.  After all, some companies spend considerable amounts of money on logo redesigns.  Does it matter at all?  I found an article from several years ago in Business Week that addresses this topic.  It describes research by Rice University Professor Vikas Mittal, West Virginia Professor Michael Walsh, and Penn State Professor Karen Winterish.   The scholars found that customers with high brand commitment tend to have the most significant negative reaction to logo changes.  These high commitment customers also reported that they would be less likely to buy that brand in the future.  Casual customers did not have this type of strong adverse reaction to logo changes. Mittal explained how managers must apply this research as they redesign logos from time to time:  "One strategy may be to manage the reactions and expectations of strongly committed consumers by actively soliciting their input and perhaps pre-notifying them before the changes are revealed to the broader public. Giving the strongly committed such a feeling of being an 'insider' may strengthen their self-brand connection and mitigate the potentially negative effects of logo redesign."

Steelcase CEO on Office Design

George Bradt has a good article at Forbes in which he describes his recent interview with Steelcase CEO Jim Hackett.  Steelcase, of course, designs excellent office furniture and workspaces.  Hackett explained that modern offices need a "range of settings to accommodate focused, collaborative and social work in both open and enclosed environments."    Hackett emphasizes the collaborative "we" spaces a great deal, because many offices lack those types of environments conducive to bringing people together to accomplish a group task.  Here is an excerpt:

Now, instead of designing traditional offices, Steelcase creates “we” spaces around the three-four most important meta issues. According to Hackett, executives don’t need homes, “command-level projects” do. So there might be a project room for a team working on a merger, product launch or a recall. Instead of people bringing information into meetings with executives, the information stays in the project rooms and executives travel to it. As Hackett explains, they made this shift because:

Innovation requires collective ‘we’ work. To this end, it’s critical to design spaces that not only support collaboration, but augment it (with) spaces that promote eye-to-eye contact, provide everyone with equal access to information, and allow people to move around and participate freely.

The idea of "war rooms" is very appealing to me.  I think they create a powerful sense of group identity,  as well as proving that all-important equal access to information.   I think executives do need personal "homes" too... there is some focused, solo work that still needs to be done.  People sometimes need time without distraction, as Susan Cain has argued.  However, collaborative work often can be done much more effectively if "war room" type space is available.  

The Shops at Target

As we all know, mass merchandisers and department stores face stiff competition these days.  Online retailers continue to disrupt the brick-and-mortar retailers.  Moreover, many of these firms face intense price competition with their rivals, and they sell many items at steep discounts.  For years, Target has fought to differentiate itself, to do more than just sell the same goods others do.  They have tried to avoid direct price competition on some items, by selling exclusive designs and premium private label products not found at other retailers.  Now, they have launched Shops at Target - an interesting innovation in the mass merchandiser industry.  According to the company,

Through this ongoing program, Target will partner directly with the shop owners of specialty stores and boutiques to co-create affordable, limited-edition collections for its guests.  The first flight of The Shops at Target features five exclusive collections from five U.S. specialty stores: The Candy Store, Cos Bar, Polka Dog Bakery, Privet House and The Webster.

The innovation here is that Target is NOT partnering with well-known designers in these situations.  They are partnering with small, independent specialty shops.   In so doing, they avoid the competition to sign up those well-known designers, while also offering something even more unique and off-beat.   After all, other retailers have raced to sign up designers for exclusive collections, imitating Target's strategy.  As that has happened, the expense associated with this "arms race" has become quite high.  This strategy tries to find a way to move beyond that arms race.

 The limited-edition nature of the collections seems intended to drive traffic too - "Come now to see what's here, because it won't be here for long."   As we know, increasing frequency of trips is crucial for retailers.  When a shopper comes more often, they tend to buy other items perhaps not on their list.  In the end, the question will be:  Will shoppers pay premium prices for these products, and will Target be able to avoid deep discounting associated with slower-moving items in these collections? 

Learning from Improv

Russ Meyer has a great article on the Fast Company website.  Meyer offers some solid recommendations for how companies should go about trying to design better customer experiences.  For instance, imagine that you are trying to provide a better after-sale service experience for your customer, or you are trying to redesign the check-out process in your retail store.  Meyer draws on the lessons of Improv comedy to offer his advice to you in these types of efforts.   For starters, he argues:

"In improv, this means don’t disregard premise, no matter how outrageous... In experience design, you can’t start by denying what could be: 'We can’t change the check-in process because...,' for instance. For a great new customer experience to come to life, it will have to break some of the conventions of the current experience. Make sure you’re open, especially at the beginning of a process, to accept what may be an outrageous premise or idea."

Meyer also argues that "thoughtful watching" should be the approach one takes toward discovering a better customer experience.  In Improv, people concentrate intensely on what others are saying, and they listen actively.  Meyer explains, "Sitting back, watching, listening and concentrating on how people are presently experiencing the brand (while leaving yourself open to the outrageous) can identify moments where the experience could be improved."   Similarly, I've argued that systematic observations of customers and front-line employees yield powerful insights regarding your firm's problems and deficiencies, as well as how to improve in the future. 

Does Google need an auteur?

The New York Times published an interesting article this weekend about Google and Apple. The article describes a theory outlined by blogger John Gruber at MacWorld Expo two years ago. Gruber argued that innovative firms need an auteur, someone like a film director who calls the creative shots... Like Steve Jobs does at Apple. The article suggests that Apple's auteur approach (Jobs as ultimate design arbiter) excels relative to Google's collaborative design process (many people weighing in on key choices).

I have two problems with this argument. First, I think it downplays the level of true collaboration at Apple, and discounts the true contribution of people such as Jonathan Ive. More importantly, though, I think we have to consider whether we should be generalizing based on observations of Apple. Perhaps it is a very unique firm that cannot be easily emulated. Moreover, perhaps it would be problematic to bet on the "lone genius" approach in a wide variety of other firms based on this auteur argument.

Recently, Bob Lutz made a similar argument regarding car design. He argued essentially that a dictator approach beats design by committee. However, that assumes a really capable dictator. What if the dictator is less than spectacular?