The Future of Product Design Jonathan Follett The Future of Product Design by Jonathan Follett Copyright © 2015 O’Reilly Media, Inc All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Published by O’Reilly Media, Inc., 1005 Gravenstein Highway North, Sebastopol, CA 95472 O’Reilly books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promotional use Online editions are also available for most titles (http://safaribooksonline.com) For more information, contact our corporate/institutional sales department: 800-998-9938 or corporate@oreilly.com Editor: Angela Rufino Production Editor: Melanie Yarbrough Copyeditor: Octal Publishing Interior Designer: David Futato Cover Designer: Randy Comer Illustrator: Rebecca Demarest May 2015: First Edition Revision History for the First Edition 2015-05-15: First Release 2015-06-17: Second Release See http://oreilly.com/catalog/errata.csp?isbn=9781491928172 for release details The O’Reilly logo is a registered trademark of O’Reilly Media, Inc The Future of Product Design, the cover image, and related trade dress are trademarks of O’Reilly Media, Inc The cover image is “3-D printing,” by CuriosityII, via Wikimedia Commons While the publisher and the author(s) have used good faith efforts to ensure that the information and instructions contained in this work are accurate, the publisher and the author(s) disclaim all responsibility for errors or omissions, including without limitation responsibility for damages resulting from the use of or reliance on this work Use of the information and instructions contained in this work is at your own risk If any code samples or other technology this work contains or describes is subject to open source licenses or the intellectual property rights of others, it is your responsibility to ensure that your use thereof complies with such licenses and/or rights 978-1-49193-824-9 [LSI] Chapter The Future of Product Design Jonathan Follett A Product Design Renaissance The world is changing The lines between software and hardware blur; fresh approaches to manufacturing reduce the time from idea to market; and new smart objects and systems herald our connected future.1 A product design renaissance might be on its way, but despite all this potential and promise — or maybe because of it — the ride could well be a bumpy one The human aspect of the equation remains the x-factor And, how we work together as participants in this product revolution, both as people and as organizations, will play a key role in the outcome There’s never been a better time to be a product designer, although there’s also perhaps never been a more confusing time, either Today, the combination of emerging technologies and powerful new resources and methods — from open source reference designs to crowdfunding — are democratizing innovation, compressing the design cycle, and reshaping the relationship between consumer and product If the amalgam of user experience (UX), software, industrial, material, and engineering design had a name, it would probably be product design — although it’s likely that product designers themselves wouldn’t agree on it In this report, we’ll examine from a product designer’s perspective the ways in which these changes are disrupting design and the product lifecycle as well as considerations for people and companies looking at new ways of approaching product innovation and creation This is not an all-encompassing overview; rather, it’s a snapshot of a rapid evolution, as seen from the trenches of product design Is This the Third Industrial Revolution? Twenty-first century product design is being disrupted by factors both cultural and technological The confluence of crowdsourcing, new manufacturing methods, and other emerging technologies has set the stage for what we might call a Third Industrial Revolution In a prescient article2 on the next wave manufacturing phenomenon, The Economist postulated the following: the cost of producing much smaller batches of a wider variety, with each product tailored precisely to each customer’s whims, is falling The factory of the future will focus on mass customization and may look more like weavers’ cottages than Ford’s assembly line In this new revolution, economies of scale and the mass production required to reach these are replaced by the efficiency and leverage of highly targeted, rapidly developed, and, hopefully, less wasteful products that retain an artisanal value for the consumer Manufacturing for the mass market will no doubt remain for the many products that have a universal appeal, but for those items that truly intersect with our unique needs — that seem to have our personal imprint in them — these individualized products will grow and flourish in a new period of craftsmanship at scale In this burgeoning new era, the designer’s understanding of the user will be paramount — an in-depth comprehension that goes beyond typical use cases, workflows, or trite personas and begins to resemble something more like a relationship that grows over time This understanding of the user DNA will drive product personalization And we’re not talking personalization in a trivial way, such as printing a child’s name on a toy, or a family’s photo on a coffee mug; this new personalization will be the creation of objects that fit into our daily lives with impeccable ease For example, for the busy parent perhaps a set of connected home appliances that help to measure the overall nutrition, caloric intake, from freezer to refrigerator, to oven for each family member’s meals; or for the avid athlete, custom training gear that adheres to changing body measurements and adjusts over time The “return to craftsmanship” will be transformative economically, as well Research from McKinsey Global Institute indicates that by 2025, additive fabrication alone could have an impact of $550 billion3 as it changes forever the manufacturing industry Add this to the trillions of dollars of market disruption for the Internet of Things (IoT), robotics, and so on, and we can begin to appreciate the scale of change that is coming Reshaping the world If past is indeed prologue, we must come to terms with the fact that although the emerging technologies of the Second Industrial Revolution — from the automobile to electric power — reshaped the world, they did so in many ways that were negative as well as positive From rampant pollution to the abuse of our planet’s natural resources, the environmental consequences that are the Second Industrial Revolution’s legacy remain critical areas with which we must contend Fast forward to the twenty-first century: If we consider the massive number of new objects that a product renaissance — propelled by the IoT and 3D printing — could bring, introducing millions of new things into our world, it’s clear we must also consider design not just for mass adoption, but also for mass decline and return to the stream of natural resources Everyone can sketch on a napkin How are new products imagined, created, tested, and produced? Generally speaking, this was once the purview of specialized professionals, backed by large companies, who had the resources and knowledge to invest in timeconsuming R&D cycles, complex manufacturing lines, long supply chains, and expensive marketing and distribution And even though there were certainly plenty of upstart startups and disruptors, these were far from the norm Emerging technologies are not just changing what’s being made or how fast it’s being developed, they’re also changing who is capable of making it The ambitious entrepreneur who understands an audience — the young mother who has an idea for improving products for her baby or the coffee fanatic who can see the future of specialized brewing — are enabled to move their ideas from mind to reality, from napkin sketch to use by an appreciative audience And, as these technologies evolve and mature, we can expect more democratization to come Figure 1-5 LEO, The Maker Prince (Photo courtesy Carla Diana) But where the book really shines, at least from a design standpoint, is as an example of a product as dialogue Readers share their works on the book’s website and Diana makes ongoing adjustments to the designs based on input from them So, the book in some sense, is always being updated, and Diana is having a conversation with the book’s readers through the medium of a physical product One reason Diana created a children’s book about 3D printing was to put virtual objects such as those in Figure 1-6 out in the world as an experiment to see who downloaded them, why they downloaded them, and what they did with them “That was a fascinating moment for me,” says Diana, “because I felt like, ‘Wow, you could have never done this before.’” “People commented to me about some of the prints They said, ‘Oh, this particular part grows more successfully for me standing upright.’ I worked as hard as I could to try to get the objects to print as well as they would with a typical FDM at-home printer That was a really interesting moment for me, too, because I felt like, ‘Oh, I can try this and I can just change the file.’” Figure 1-6 All of the characters from the book can be 3D printed (Photo courtesy Carla Diana) “I did that because I am envisioning this future where it comes to distribution: A designer, manufacturer, entrepreneur no longer has to think about, ‘Okay, well how many parts of this I have to make and where does it get warehoused? Where does it get distributed and what retailers is it going to? There’s that whole dream of the streamline distribution and I think it’s very realistic,” states Diana enthusiastically A Tale from the Trenches: Understanding Consumer Decision Making How does a company know when it’s time to place a bet on emerging technologies? “I think disruption for disruption’s sake will never win,” says Ellen DiResta, a strategic design advisor for companies like Sanofi and Becton Dickinson, and former Managing Director for innovation consultancy Design Continuum DiResta goes on to say, “Every single client I have, I always love the moment when I say to them: ‘Nobody wants your products No one wants to buy an extra thing Nobody wants to think about your stuff The people who think the most about your products are you guys That’s it You have to give them something You have to enable them to something If you don’t know what that is, and you’re busy just focused on your thing, you will miss the mark eventually.’” The relationship between the designer and the user of products is becoming ever closer Understanding the intrinsic motivations of the population engaged with your company is paramount to facilitating those relationships going forward In many instances, companies base their product portfolios and their future plans on emerging technologies and how they expect those technologies to evolve But the product-based relationship you have with your customers can be deeper and potentially longer standing DiResta suggests that companies need to avoid being seduced by the functionality of a potentially disruptive technology; instead, they need to ask, “How can these capabilities better enable our customers?” At the same time, the product designer needs to understand the full extent of a technology’s capabilities, because from this knowledge, she can help define the desired user experiences Companies can err by going too far in the opposite direction, as well — expecting consumers to tell them what to and what to design When, in reality, the motivators driving a consumer’s choices might be something that they’re not ever going to be aware of, let alone be something that they can articulate Decision Motivators “When I worked with a housewares company, I was interviewing women at home who had kids in school One lived in a very depressed area and another person lived in Wellesley, Massachusetts, which is very affluent,” DiResta elaborates “They had very similar values Their choices were very different because their means and their circumstances were very different The woman in Wellesley sent her kids to public school, because she grew up so privileged and isolated and segregated She felt like she lived in a bubble She wanted her kids to have a chance to be more normal Wanted and picked Wellesley and had a very, very nice house — but by her background standards, very modest — because she wanted her kids to be normal.” “The other woman home-schooled her kids, because she felt that the school in town was just bad Her house was not that great, but she said, “I can’t send my kids to this school and expect them to ever get out of this town.” DiResta continues, “So you would say they are very, very different But the way they made decisions and how they chose, if you reversed the two people, they would be making the same choices as each other The values that those products or services had to speak to had to be the same.” The disruptive technologies that will be the most successful will enable people to what they want to from the beginning — just in better ways that fit with their changing context “That’s really what Apple did,” DiResta says “Nobody wants to interact with technology Apple provided technology in a way that you can work through technology to the things you want to do.” Part Design for End-of-Life Sooner or later, a product will reach the end of its useful life As overall usage declines, a company will gradually reduce support for it, and eventually “sunset,” or phase-out, that product If one of the natural outcomes of a Product Renaissance will be a great many new products imagined and brought into the world, designers will increasingly need to be concerned about the entirety of the product lifecycle including its decline, and perhaps most important, with what happens to the product after people are no longer using it Although we as designers might not like to admit it, the fact is that design and pollution are inexorably connected The design activities in which we engage at the beginning of the product lifecycle inevitably create positive or negative environmental outcomes at its end-of-life To effect positive outcomes, we can and should ask: “What are the considerations for sustainability and environmental impact?” This is not a new idea in design; rather, it is one whose time has come The Design for Environment (DfE) program, put in place by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as far back as 1992, includes as a part of its toolkit the lifecycle assessment (LCA), “a systems-based approach to quantifying the human health and environmental impacts associated with a product’s life from ‘cradle to grave’.” Today, using software tools such as thinkstep’s GaBi, designers can complete a product lifecycle assessment to determine its carbon, water, and overall environmental footprint, along with resource and energy efficiency for its manufacturing and usage We can select materials that are environmentally friendly early in the manufacturing process, because recently there has been great innovation in materials such as biodegradable plastics From a recycling standpoint, the biggest opportunity might lie in Design for Disassembly (DfD), making electronic products much easier to separate into their core components — from circuit boards to metal and plastic parts — and sending each of these into their appropriate recycling streams Perhaps one day, hopefully in the not-too-distant future, we will have printed circuit boards (PCBs) designed for easy component removal, minimizing the need for desoldering and exposure to heavy metals Design for Remanufacturing (DfR) is a similar strategy that strives to remove durable components of a product at the end of its lifecyle, reprocess them, and use them once again in a newly created item Even though this kind of design for a product’s end-of-life — whether it be for disassembly and recycling or remanufacturing — does take more effort, there is a tremendous opportunity here for product designers to take responsibility for and control of the aspects of the product lifecycle that were overlooked during previous eras For both startups and large companies alike, this systemic view of product design is worth remembering, when encountering the pressures to release something quickly and just get a product on the shelf On-Demand Production In the future, we can also consider that there might be no need to phase out products if manufacturing can be generated on demand and the price for creating individual versions is low Today the print-on-demand segment of the publishing industry ensures that books with an audience will never go out of print The digital files for any book can be stored in the cloud until a customer orders it, at which point the book is printed, bound, and shipped It’s not hard to imagine a similar scenario for more complex products There are already 3D printing platforms today, such as Shapeways, for creating simple objects on demand In a similar way, distributed manufacturing is becoming reality as crowdsource services such as 3DHubs give makers access to an extensive local network of 3D printers We can imagine how distributed fabrication for business might be accomplished with such a system: add together enough 3DHub providers in an area and you could quickly complete a modest run, depending on the availability of the network Conclusion In this evolving world of emerging technology and product creation, designers who can create objects that are both compelling to the consumer and within the bounds of manufacturing capabilities will be exceptionally valuable Understanding your materials — what they can and what they can tolerate — is key, be they plastics and metals or pixels and code With such an understanding, product designers can offer their insight, not only to envision future products, but also to think about the process for getting there How we approach product design and the evolving product lifecycle? Here, inspired by Dieter Rams, the influential industrial designer known worldwide for his landmark product designs for Braun and Vitsoe, we’ll conclude with three principles for good product design in this brave new world of emerging technologies: Good product design serves as an enabler for people To make a product useful and understandable, our understanding of the user must be of primary importance Good product design is innovative in process Drawing on new ideas for working together — from crowdsourcing to open source reference designs — we can stand on the shoulders of others to create better products Good product design is environmentally friendly As we design, we must take into account end-of-life planning that enables disassembly, recycling, and even remanufacturing Companies, Products, and Links Throughout this report, we’ve discussed a variety of companies and products to illustrate important concepts in and approaches to product design for emerging technologies Table 1-1 lists these companies and products, ordered alphabetically, along with relevant links to further information Table 1-1 List of companies discussed Product Company Link 3DHubs 3DHubs http://www.3dhubs.com Arduino Arduino http://www.arduino.cc Fusion 360 Autodesk, Inc http://fusion360.autodesk.com GaBi thinkstep http://www.thinkstep.com GitHub GitHub, Inc http://www.github.com GrabCAD GrabCAD http://www.grabcad.com MakerBot MakerBot Industries, LLC http://www.makerbot.com/ OnShape OnShape, Inc http://www.onshape.com Roomba 880 iRobot Corporation http://www.irobot.com/For-the-Home/VacuumCleaning/Roomba Shapeways Shapeways, Inc http://www.shapeways.com SolidWorks Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks http://www.solidworks.com Corp Tessel Technical Machine http://www.tessel.io Upverter Upverter, Inc http://www.upverter.com For a fabulous overview and vision of this universe and the technical trends driving it, check out the report “Building a Solid World” by O’Reilly editors Mike Loukides and Jon Bruner http://www.economist.com/node/21553017 (accessed April 20, 2015) Disruptive technologies: Advances that will transform life, business and the global economy About the Author Jonathan Follett is a principal at Involution Studios where he is a designer, business lead, and internationally published author on the topics of user experience and information design His most recent book, Designing for Emerging Technologies: UX for Genomics, Robotics, and the Internet of Things (O’Reilly) was published in December 2014 He is also a co-author of Beautiful Data: The Stories Behind Elegant Data Solutions (O’Reilly) Over the past decade, Jon has written for online and print publications including A List Apart and UX Matters Throughout his 15-year design career, Jon has contributed to beautiful, usable software for enterprise, healthcare, and emerging technology clients, from the Fortune 500 to the market leaders of the future Jon is a classically trained pianist who dreams of one day having a family rock band with his two sons Find him on Twitter at @jonfollett Acknowledgements The universe of possibilities presented by emerging technologies, from the IoT to robotics to additive fabrication, is vast and intimidating but also inspiring Product design is changing so quickly that there can be no shame in admitting that even those of us closest to it can only guess where it’s going The designers, engineers, and product folks who were kind enough to talk with me and inform and refine my thinking for this report include Drew Carlton, Carla Diana, Jeff Champagne, Ellen DiResta, Craig Mauch, Jon McKay, Scott Miller, and Ben Salinas I couldn’t have put this together without them As usual, the O’Reilly Media editorial team was fantastically supportive Both Mary Treseler and Angela Rufino have pushed me to articulate the promise I see in the design field of the twenty-first century I should say, as well, that my wife Jen tolerates my late night writing binges, of which she has supported more than her fair share Let’s make something great The Future of Product Design A Product Design Renaissance Is This the Third Industrial Revolution? The Evolution of Product Design New Ways of Working Part Hello, Market! A Tale from the Trenches: Prototyping at iRobot Software and the Speed of Sharing Part Growth and the Difficulties of Production in Volume A Tale from the Trenches: Technical Machine and the Prototype-to-Production Problem A Tale from the Trenches: Dragon Innovation and the Challenge of Going from One to Many The Request-for-Quote process David meets Goliath: Achieving Innovation Speed for Enterprise Companies Risk Taking and the Enterprise Small Pilots Developing Infrastructure Part Product as Dialogue A Tale from the Trenches: Making LEO, The Maker Prince A Tale from the Trenches: Understanding Consumer Decision Making Decision Motivators Part Design for End-of-Life On-Demand Production Conclusion Companies, Products, and Links ... The Future of Product Design Jonathan Follett The Future of Product Design by Jonathan Follett Copyright © 2015 O’Reilly Media, Inc All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America... capable of making it The ambitious entrepreneur who understands an audience — the young mother who has an idea for improving products for her baby or the coffee fanatic who can see the future of specialized... about the details.’ I think that’s incredibly enabling for the prototype.” Software and the Speed of Sharing The speed, agility, and open ethos of the software world have made inroads into product