Well-Designed: How to Use Empathy to Create Products People Love
From Design Thinking to Design Doing

Innovators today are told to run loose and think lean in order to fail fast and succeed sooner. But in a world obsessed with the new, where cool added features often trump actual customer needs, it’s the consumer who suffers. In our quest to be more agile, we end up creating products that underwhelm.

So how does a company like Nest, creator of the mundane thermostat, earn accolades like “beautiful” and “revolutionary” and a $3.2 billion Google buyout? What did Nest do differently to create a household product that people speak of with love?

Nest, and companies like it, understand that emotional connection is critical to product development. And they use a clear, repeatable design process that focuses squarely on consumer engagement rather than piling on features for features’ sake.

In this refreshingly jargon-free and practical book, product design expert Jon Kolko maps out this process, demonstrating how it will help you and your team conceive and build successful, emotionally resonant products again and again.

The key, says Kolko, is empathy. You need to deeply understand customer needs and feelings, and this understanding must be reflected in the product. In successive chapters of the book, we see how leading companies use a design process of storytelling and iteration that evokes positive emotions, changes behavior, and creates deep engagement. Here are the four key steps:

1. Determine a product-market fit by seeking signals from communities of users.
2. Identify behavioral insights by conducting ethnographic research.
3. Sketch a product strategy by synthesizing complex research data into simple insights.
4. Polish the product details using visual representations to simplify complex ideas.

Kolko walks the reader through each step, sharing eye-opening insights from his fifteen-year career in product design along the way.

Whether you’re a designer, a product developer, or a marketer thinking about your company’s next offering, this book will forever change the way you think about—and create—successful products.
1118897552
Well-Designed: How to Use Empathy to Create Products People Love
From Design Thinking to Design Doing

Innovators today are told to run loose and think lean in order to fail fast and succeed sooner. But in a world obsessed with the new, where cool added features often trump actual customer needs, it’s the consumer who suffers. In our quest to be more agile, we end up creating products that underwhelm.

So how does a company like Nest, creator of the mundane thermostat, earn accolades like “beautiful” and “revolutionary” and a $3.2 billion Google buyout? What did Nest do differently to create a household product that people speak of with love?

Nest, and companies like it, understand that emotional connection is critical to product development. And they use a clear, repeatable design process that focuses squarely on consumer engagement rather than piling on features for features’ sake.

In this refreshingly jargon-free and practical book, product design expert Jon Kolko maps out this process, demonstrating how it will help you and your team conceive and build successful, emotionally resonant products again and again.

The key, says Kolko, is empathy. You need to deeply understand customer needs and feelings, and this understanding must be reflected in the product. In successive chapters of the book, we see how leading companies use a design process of storytelling and iteration that evokes positive emotions, changes behavior, and creates deep engagement. Here are the four key steps:

1. Determine a product-market fit by seeking signals from communities of users.
2. Identify behavioral insights by conducting ethnographic research.
3. Sketch a product strategy by synthesizing complex research data into simple insights.
4. Polish the product details using visual representations to simplify complex ideas.

Kolko walks the reader through each step, sharing eye-opening insights from his fifteen-year career in product design along the way.

Whether you’re a designer, a product developer, or a marketer thinking about your company’s next offering, this book will forever change the way you think about—and create—successful products.
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Well-Designed: How to Use Empathy to Create Products People Love

Well-Designed: How to Use Empathy to Create Products People Love

by Jon Kolko
Well-Designed: How to Use Empathy to Create Products People Love

Well-Designed: How to Use Empathy to Create Products People Love

by Jon Kolko

Hardcover

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Overview

From Design Thinking to Design Doing

Innovators today are told to run loose and think lean in order to fail fast and succeed sooner. But in a world obsessed with the new, where cool added features often trump actual customer needs, it’s the consumer who suffers. In our quest to be more agile, we end up creating products that underwhelm.

So how does a company like Nest, creator of the mundane thermostat, earn accolades like “beautiful” and “revolutionary” and a $3.2 billion Google buyout? What did Nest do differently to create a household product that people speak of with love?

Nest, and companies like it, understand that emotional connection is critical to product development. And they use a clear, repeatable design process that focuses squarely on consumer engagement rather than piling on features for features’ sake.

In this refreshingly jargon-free and practical book, product design expert Jon Kolko maps out this process, demonstrating how it will help you and your team conceive and build successful, emotionally resonant products again and again.

The key, says Kolko, is empathy. You need to deeply understand customer needs and feelings, and this understanding must be reflected in the product. In successive chapters of the book, we see how leading companies use a design process of storytelling and iteration that evokes positive emotions, changes behavior, and creates deep engagement. Here are the four key steps:

1. Determine a product-market fit by seeking signals from communities of users.
2. Identify behavioral insights by conducting ethnographic research.
3. Sketch a product strategy by synthesizing complex research data into simple insights.
4. Polish the product details using visual representations to simplify complex ideas.

Kolko walks the reader through each step, sharing eye-opening insights from his fifteen-year career in product design along the way.

Whether you’re a designer, a product developer, or a marketer thinking about your company’s next offering, this book will forever change the way you think about—and create—successful products.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781625274793
Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
Publication date: 11/11/2014
Pages: 224
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Jon Kolko is Vice President of Consumer Design at Blackboard Inc. He joined Blackboard with the acquisition of MyEdu, a start-up focused on helping students succeed in college and get jobs. Jon is also the founder and Director of Austin Center for Design. His work focuses on bringing the power of design to social enterprises. He has worked extensively with both start-ups and Fortune 500 clients, and he’s most interested in humanizing educational technology. Jon previously held the roles of both Principal Designer and Associate Creative Director at frog design and was also a Professor of Interaction Design and Industrial Design at the Savannah College of Art and Design.

Table of Contents

Introduction: From Design Thinking to Design Doing 1

A New Way of Developing Products 3

The Nitty-Gritty 6

1 By Design 11

The Scope of a Product 12

Wait, That's Really Someone's Job? 14

What Is Design Thinking? 16

Bringing Design Thinking to Product Management 23

An Interview with Joe Gebbia, on Creative Roles and Intuition 26

2 Product-Market Fit: Finding Broad Appeal 35

What Is "the Market"? 38

Seeking Signals from the Market 42

Frameworks to Synthesize Product-Market Signals 50

An Interview with Josh Elman, on the Process of Product Management 59

3 Behavioral Insights: Identifying Latent Needs and Desires 71

Observing Human Behavior 72

Seeking Signals from People 74

Frameworks to Synthesize Behavioral Insights 82

An Interview with Gary Chou, on the Spirit and Soul of Product Development 95

4 Product Strategy: Sketching a Playbook of Emotional Value 113

Understanding Design Strategy 114

Identifying the Emotional Value Proposition 117

Developing a Product Stance 119

Considering Analogous Situations 126

An Interview with Mark Phillip, on Restraint in Product Decisions 129

5 Product Vision: Crafting the Product Details 139

Defining the Product 140

Exploring, through Iteration and Variation 160

Recruiting People to the Product Vision 162

An Interview with Frank Lyman, on the Career of Product Management 164

6 Shipping 177

Building and Leveraging a Product Road Map 178

Sweating the Details 190

Taking a Proactive Stance 198

An Interview with Alex Rainert, on Growing a Product and a Business 205

Conclusion: The Future of Product Management 217

Notes 219

Index 223

About the Author 235

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