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As more and more products turn into sleek little rectangles, here's a disturbing thought collated from several sources noting product trends: What if in the future, the importance of industrial design takes a backseat to "product ecosystems?"
Consider: The monster product hit that is (has been?) the iPod is a success largely because of its ecosystem. You've probably heard the story of the iPod's invention, whereupon "Tony [Fadell]'s idea was to take an MP3 player, build a Napster music sale service to complement it, and build a company around it." Which is all fine and good with us, because even though the iTunes ecosystem may have had much to do with the product's success, the iPod still had stellar design and was produced by a company that clearly champions the importance of design.
Then we look to Amazon's Kindle and get to the worrisome part, as pointed out by Bruce Nussbaum: "Peter Mortensen at Jump [Associates, a growth strategy consultancy] hits it right on the head when he says that Kindle's success is due to an ecosystem similar to Apple's iPod/iTunes ecosystem, not product design." And as Nussbaum himself states (boldface ours),
...in terms of basic usability, [the Kindle is] an absolute bear. The page-turn buttons are awkwardly located, and the display can be very slow to update when you flip a page or browse Amazon over the wireless connection. For pure reading experience, the Sony eReader is a better design.So why is the Kindle absolutely destroying Sony's offering in the marketplace? It's what you can't see - the "WhisperNet" 3G data connection that pulls down books, newspapers, and magazines seamlessly over the air without the use of a computer. The people running the Kindle project for Amazon recognized, correctly, that the problem with all previous eReaders was not the physical device or even the screen quality. It was the process for loading them with content. They all stunk, and they didn't have a good back-end.
...Kindle is a break-out success right now. But I would argue this is at least in part in spite of its physical usability issues - not because of its industrial design.
Uh-oh.
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Comments
why doesn't the notion of design encompass the design and behavior of the entire end-to-end service, not just the device? Amazon correctly intuited that a great end-to-end service was important and spent their design budget on that. as a kindle owner i am pretty happy with that decision. and this is an important principle of device design going forward -- one needs to consider the end-to-end usage scenarios at the most fundamental level, and design the service and design hand-in-hand
This isn't a danger to industrial designers but a clear invitation for us all to embrace the idea of making more inclusive, thoughtful ideas. I'm going to school for design because I like the idea of having to learn about new problems and how to solve them all the time - this "eco-system" thinking fulfills that urge to diverge at a whole new level by encouraging us to learn about a new TYPE of problem.
Let's embrace this change, or else we'll get left behind.
Daniel Erwin
MDes Candidate 2010
IIT Institute of Design
The Kindle is not an "absolute bear" in terms of usability. That's just false. Kindle owners are passionate advocates for the product, including the user experience of it. It's a 1.0 product from a company with no hardware experience, which is pretty impressive.
A little off topic, but I can see this really busting out if the dual touch screen OLPC comes out. It is completely interactive and is very much like a real book. If anything, I think this can enhance design opportunities and make this nifty motion books, newspapers, and newsletters from Harry Potter a reality.
A product is not considered well designed only by the way it looks, but by the way it is experienced. It seems that this model of looking at a product as being part of a larger experience is much more logical than simply ignoring everything besides product.
I feel that designing services is similar to designing product and it is a field that industrial designers should be a part of. The "design mind" can easily be applied to designing the experiences of users and creating "product ecosystems," as well as the designing the product.
Why a better interaction with products could be seen as an Uh-oh baffles me. Isn't that already what we are trying to do?
Michael Clare
RISD '10
Mikeclaremikeclare.com
Amazon is the key to Kindle's success with context, convenience and accessibility that Sony cannot touch without significant investment beyond delivering a 'better' design. The tangible end-product, not matter how influenced by the end-user needs or desires, has no value unless you can connect the end-product to 'that' end-user. Amazon has the upper hand through the concept of 'Retail as Medium'.
It's no secret that our economy has been shifting from product based goods to service based goods. There is far more longevity and more money and to made in services then there are in products. Like everyone else, industrial designers will have to adapt. eReader's are also a brand new product category. As history has shown, the first few products that enter the market in a brand new category don't tend to have the best designs. Worry not
This is only worrisome if you judge the quality of design by sales numbers. The Toyota Camry sells a lot of units. Is it the best design in that market segment? Of course not.
The Sony might be better looking, but aren't we just splitting hairs there? Take a loof at c77's 1HDC results for some truly better eReaders:
http://boards.core77.com/viewtopic.php?t=14530
Amazon are approaching the kindle as a piece of Service Design rather than from a product design perspective. In Service Design terms, the product-service system works as a whole, and the product design can sometimes take a back seat. Its sad to see people reviewing it as if it is a pure design object.
Isn't it time Nussbaum understood Service Design. He has written about it often enough!
For another piece of great Amazon service thinking, look at their frustration free packaging (www.service-innovation.org)