Wisdom Without Waiting: Designing for the Senses -- Part I
©John L. Mariotti 1999
The competitive environment, especially in consumer products is getting tougher and tougher. Deflation in pricing is present in nearly every category. Where price deflation per se is not occurring, more performance for less money is the norm.
As if this challenge is not enough, the boundaries between once well-defined markets have virtually disintegrated. It used to be simple to define markets by type of product or service, size, segment and so forth. Not any more! Where is the boundary between computers, personal digital assistants, cell phones, Web-TV, and the millions of other variations of computing and communications products. Even geographically defined boundaries are fading.
The implications of this combination of value inflation, price deflation and super-heated global competition are numerous. I would like to focus on one particular aspect of creating competitive advantage--design. By "design" I mean the conversion, representation, and specification of an idea into a three dimensional, producible and commercializable form, both visual and functional.
Many of the critical success factors in business begin with the robustness and aesthetic quality of the design. Quality must be designed into a product or it cannot be produced with consistently high quality. Rapid, flexible customer service is dependent on the use of modular product or service platforms and easily variable configurations to the basic offering, done as close as possible to the end user demand. Cost is highly dependent on the complexity of the design and how effectively the original idea is converted to a commercially viable form.
