Article by Gareth Loudon of Light Minds Ltd

Statistics on the success rates of new products show that for every four new products that enter development, only one becomes a commercial success. In the UK, at least 50% of new products fail within their launch year. The healthcare sector is particularly challenging.

Previously I described the importance of meeting a customer need and the benefits of using ethnographic research to discover new product opportunities or to evaluate existing products. But you still need to translate these insights into product solutions.

There are three very simple but key elements that you must consider when designing your new product solution.

Firstly, your new product must have a clear useful purpose and address a need from patients, carers or administrative staff. This purpose can be derived using the ethnographic research approach described previously. If your product does not have a clear and useful purpose that meets a need you are going to struggle.

Secondly, the use experience of your new product must meet or surpass expectations. It is not good enough just to have a clear use for the product. The design of the product must to be easy to learn and use.

Thirdly, your product must be desirable and appropriate. This affects not just the physical design of the product but everything associated with the product from packaging to marketing.

When you are creating and designing a new product you must consider the use of the product (what does the product do), the level of usability of the product (how does it work, can it be used comfortably) and the meaning that the product conveys. Meaning refers to its aesthetics, cultural messages, inherent symbolism and the metaphors it incorporates. Well-designed products consider both function (use and usability) and meaning as both affect a person’s total perception of the product. “Often the product’s meaning is most influential in the customer’s purchase decision and in the creation of a positive ownership and use experience”, (Sara Beckman & Johannes Hoech, Harvard Business Review, 2000).

However every product that you create should also have a consistency with regard use, usability and meaning covering product development, design, manufacturing, marketing, branding, advertising, packaging, etc. You cannot create a meaning of quality and elegance through design, packaging and advertising if the product’s use and usability are not of equal quality and elegance. As Michael Barry (an inventor of many successful products) puts it, “a successful product is the physical embodiment of a strategy that aligns users, technology and culture”.

When you are creating and designing your new product, take a step back for a moment and ask yourself about its use, usability and meaning. I think you will find it a useful exercise. All elements have to be spot on in order to create a successful product solution. The next article in the series will comment further on the power of prototyping, role play and product testing and how they can be used to study the use, usability and meaning of your new product.

By Gareth Loudon, co-founder of Light Minds Ltd