I like this thought from Andrew Crow, head of design at Uber, on the difference between being scrappy and shipping scrappy:
There’s no such thing as minimal viable quality. Each product iteration must stem from a principled approach of creating great experiences regardless of scale or milestone. If it’s a mockup, the level of fidelity typically indicates the level of “doneness”. If it’s a prototype, the level of detail needs to be appropriately matched to the sophistication of the hypothesis you’re testing. If it’s an MVP, the quality put into the product must be at a level that results in the maximum learning for that stage of development. The quality of product you finally ship reflects the caliber of your company and is a measure of the respect you have for your customer.
I think of this as being thoughtful. Every interaction you design should be made with care and respect for the user’s time and attention. Details make design and there isn’t a detail too small to pay attention to.
As Andrew points out, not spending the time and attention on details at early stages can be detrimental in unexpected ways as it might provide you with bad data back on usage (ultimately design choices and brand effect experiences). I think there’s an important lesson here that most people don’t consider (and came up in the old brand vs utility debate). Ultimately things like brand, utility, and design in products are entirely too closely coupled to disconnect. In fact, utility is actually a measure of the relative satisfaction a person gets from consuming something. Since satisfaction is about how much something fulfills your expectations, the utility and brand are inextricably linked.
December 8, 2014 // This post is about: Brand, design, marketing, Utility
This critique of Zimbardo’s famous Stanford Prison Experiment is really fascinating. Basically the author, who writes intro to psychology textbooks, suggests that the experiment was flawed because it urged students to act in the way they thought typical guards and prisoners would act. Here’s an excerpt that captures it pretty well:
In a nutshell, here’s the criticism, somewhat simplified. Twenty-one boys (OK, young men) are asked to play a game of prisoners and guards. It’s 1971. There have recently been many news reports about prison riots and the brutality of guards. So, in this game, what are these young men supposed to do? Are they supposed to sit around talking pleasantly with one another about sports, girlfriends, movies, and such? No, of course not. This is a study of prisoners and guards, so their job clearly is to act like prisoners and guards—or, more accurately, to act out their stereotyped views of what prisoners and guards do. Surely, Professor Zimbardo, who is right there watching them (as the Prison Superintendent) would be disappointed if, instead, they had just sat around chatting pleasantly and having tea. Much research has shown that participants in psychological experiments are highly motivated to do what they believe the researchers want them to do. Any characteristics of an experiment that let research participants guess how the experimenters expect or want them to behave are referred to as demand characteristics. In any valid experiment it is essential to eliminate or at least minimize demand characteristics. In this experiment, the demands were everywhere.
I find stuff like this really interesting. I think most research is flawed in that it asks people questions they aren’t really prepared to answer and in turn forces them to come up with a conclusion. I thought about this a lot when I made Brand Tags and people were asking me to put up logos that no one had seen before so they could get feedback. I would always argue that this was measuring brand perception and if no one knew your brand they would just comment on your logo, which isn’t particularly helpful. Brands, ultimately, are the sum total of all the experiences one has and no one ever experiences one by just seeing a logo on a blank page. They hear about it, see it on a shelf next to another product, or any number of other contextual clues. Obviously this situation is pretty different, but I think it’s part of a very broad mistake research makes in not controlling for context (or lack thereof).
November 3, 2013 // This post is about: Brand, experiment, Philip Zimbardo, psychology, Psychology Today, research
The data here is sort of interesting, but I’m not sure I buy the premise:
Ask Americans if they are willing to spend more to buy American-made products, and nearly half say they are often willing to do this. But in the latest Economist/YouGov Poll, the country where a product is made trails price, quality, and even convenience, as an important factor in consumer decision-making. The public gives even less importance to a product’s brand, its impact on the environment, or the political leanings of the company that produces it.
Basically it breaks down that 76 percent say the price of the product is extremely important, 85 percent say quality is extremely important and only 31 percent say the brand is extremely important. I think the price thing is probably right, quality sounds like something people like to talk themselves into (if we cared that much then why do we buy so much Ikea furniture?) and brand seems like a classic case of people not understanding their own motivations. Sure, it might not seem like it, but when someone walks down the aisle and buys Crest instead of store-brand they’re choosing brand over quality and price and probably not even thinking about it. In fact, to most people I’d guess that brand equals quality.
[via Marginal Revolution]
April 28, 2012 // This post is about: Brand, consumers, research
