I don’t want to let this month pass by without a second posting … did I say I’d want to do “one posting a week minimum” at the beginning of the year? well, I do take care of providing you with design management news more often next month; promised ;-)
today I’ve recalled an article I’ve read discovered earlier this month. “Mobile PC” a US magazine has made a list of the “TOP 100 gadgets of all time”. interestingly the jury hasn’t been assembled by a mixture of designers, managers and sociologists. in contrast the editorial staff of Mobile PC laid down the criteria for becoming eligible to be on the list. their criteria have been the following:
- It has to have electronic and/or moving parts of some kind. Scissors count, but the knife does not.
- It has to be a self-contained apparatus that can be used on its own, not a subset of another device. The flashlight counts; the light bulb does not. The notebook counts, but the hard drive doesn’t.
- It has to be smaller than the proverbial bread box. This is the most flexible of the categories, since gadgets have gotten inexorably smaller over time. But in general we included only items that were potentially mobile: The Dustbuster counts; the vacuum cleaner doesn’t.
guess which product/manufacturer has been set on #1? you bet: the APPLE POWERBOOK 100, 1991!
“the PowerBook 100’s greatest and most lasting innovation was to move the keyboard toward the screen, leaving natural wrist rests up front, as well as providing an obvious place for a trackball. It seems like the natural layout now, but that’s because the entire industry aped Apple within months.”
by the same token #3 deserved its rank: the SONY WALKMAN, 1979!
“We’re not saying the iPod isn’t one of the coolest devices ever made, but Apple’s little music monster would never have been possible without Sony’s groundbreaking Walkman. … this portable cassette tape player made the dream of a mobile music collection a generation-changing reality and put Sony in the technological catbird seat.”
what does the design manager of today learn from this? “Keep it Simple (Stupid)” [KISS] and challenge dominant designs! there are many examples around where innovations and the resulting successful products haven’t been the best technological solution available.
products like the “Intel Centrino Microprocessor” or the “Apple iPod” are not the fastest or most complex products, but rather demonstrate an efficient respect of consumer “needs” (not necessarily “wants” ;-) this certainly is a part of their success story and one critical element of disruptive innovations! but this is a topic for a future posting. however have a look at some of my previous postings about disruptive innovation.
