As originally published in BusinessWeek, this is the fourth installment in a series about decision-making and design. Part One. Part Two. Part Three.
Without Apple’s willingness to keep modifying and enhancing the iPod, even though it was already successful, we wouldn’t have the marvelous current manifestation or the likely further enhancements that we may not yet be able to contemplate.
It’s uncommon for corporate decisions to have such a smooth and steady enhancement path after deployment. Rather, it’s more likely to be seen as a sign of failure rather than success if a decision is revisited and altered.
In summary, great design is characterized by deep user understanding, visualization of creative resolution of tensions, collaborative prototyping to enhance solutions, and continuous modification and enhancement after launch. The result is design solutions that are easy for users to adopt, delightful for them to use, and likely to get better over time.
Corporate decisions, in contrast, are likely to be driven more by producer desires than user needs, accepting of unpleasant trade-offs generated without intensive involvement of users, and applied inflexibly. As a result, decisions tend to take a long time to make, often unravel, take expensive and time-consuming “buy-in” procedures, and are lower quality than they could be with greater user understanding and input.
With the recent uproar about the redesign of Facebook, is the modification and improvement of existing designs always a good thing?
Read this story in its entirety at BusinessWeek.com
October 2nd, 2008 at 12:09 pm
New improvements are certainly NOT always a good thing. Think New coke or Crystal clear pepsi. Apple computers inc. has had its share of flops as well (think Apple III or the Lisa) and the jury is still out with regard to Windows Vista……
I have no idea why its good in some cases and bad in others… but there is no doubt that product improvements/modifications can be a risky business.