Often we find products that don’t work or behave as we think they should do. How do these get on the shelf?
I believe its alot to do with money and large clients insisting on a certain aesthetic because it’s cheap and profitable and do not care about the products life cycle. Also user testing is key do these kind of products get throughly tested?
I’m sure this isn’t the only reason just wondered on your thoughts?
I know some small companies I’ve worked with that don’t do user testing, nor bring in designers for many projects. The results are always difficult to use, and surprisingly more expensive solutions than something well designed. Also, in these small companies, it is not uncommon to have the owner outline the design, even if they don’t have adequate experience.
In large companies it can come down to what you outline. Cel phones are the often mentioned example of this. The companies know that an aesthetic will sell better than a usable design, so they just keep pumping out pretty designs with difficult interfaces.
to add to that. once the product is made, and they may notice certain problems, wether they are aesthetically speaking or human factors related, they aren’t going to go back and re-tool. so they say F it and lets hope noone cares or notices.
Some products are badly designed on purpose, so that they only work well or that you can only finish the task if you also have an accessory or something like that, which obviously means more money to the company.
There’s just too much focus on the company and practically none on the consumer. Even worse is that consumers end up accepting this fact instead of taking action.
Too cheap to hire designers, just want to make quick short term money.
In china town, you always see junk for sell. Made in china and cheap to make.
Let’s say…
X% of all products succeed because they’re well designed, not because of some other Unique Selling Proposition (like being cheaper, or offering a new technology) and…
X% of those are designed by professional designers and not engineers, executives or marketers and…
X% of those are designed by “user centered” designers and not stylists and…
X% of those are actually tested with real users and not selected by designers and their clients and…
X% of those meet the requirements set by Marketing and Engineering (and maybe Design) and…
X% of those are successfully brought to the production phase and not cancelled and…
X% of those are selected by the buyers at the Big Box retailers or are otherwise successfully brought to market and…
If you replaced X with 50% (ie. a coin toss) then you’re left with 1% of all products being well designed and successfully brought to market.
Fortunately it’s better than that, but not by much.