The Art of Designing Products

Michael Gartenberg | May 16, 2007, 09:50 AM

I love watching excellence in motion. Watching Fred Astaire dance, reading a poem by Robert Frost, watching Michael Jordan play ball or opening a product built by Apple. They all share one thing, these folks make it look so easy. The result of hard work and tireless practice is that the performance appears almost effortless.

I had an interesting discussion yesterday about users critiquing product designs and acting as designers. I'm not sure I agree with the notion of end users as designers. It's just not as easy as it appears. There's a complex iteration between features, form and cost that is more than just trivial. It's easy to create niche products that are only designed for a few users. Designing something for the mass market requires lots of work. It also requires talent.

But having said that, I'm amazed at the level of badly designed products out there. You don't need to be a genius to know that some of this stuff just won't work. It isn't rocket science, it's just focusing on the basics and this is where much of the criticism is warranted. If it takes three days to configure a music phone to sync, you don't need to be an engineer to critique that process. While hitting the mark of super excellence is hard, it is possible and reasonable to get the basics right. If more folks spent time on the basics, they would do better overall and other folks would shine less by comparison.