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

247 Pages·2014·2.23 MB·English

by  Jon Kolko

(Continued from front flap) management US$28.00 / CAN$31.00
kolko
Kolko walks the reader through each step, sharing “Steve Jobs’s creativity as a designer was the key to his entrepreneurial genius. But can
from design thinking
eye-opening insights from his fifteen-year career Jobs’s style of ‘design thinking’ be scaled? Jon Kolko shows that it can be—step by step,
in product design along the way. through a set of processes that are iterative, collaborative, and, best of all, easily learned. to design doing
Whether you’re a designer, a product developer, Well-Designed is bracingly practical and deeply inspiring.”
or a marketer thinking about your company’s next —richard florida, innovators today are told to run loose and think
offering, this book will forever change the way you lean in order to fail fast and succeed sooner.
Professor, University of Toronto and New York University; author, The Rise of the Creative Class
think about—and create—successful products. well But in a world obsessed with the new, where
cool added features often trump actual customer
“Great companies are made through great products, and increasingly, great products are
made through design. Kolko demonstrates that product managers must learn to think like designed: needs, it’s the consumer who suffers. In our quest
to be more agile, we end up creating products that
designers; they need to embrace intuition, emotion, and most importantly, empathy.
underwhelm.
This insightful book is a must-read.”
So how does a company like Nest, creator of
—john maeda,
the mundane thermostat, earn accolades like
Design partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers; author, The Laws of Simplicity and Redesigning Leadership
“beautiful” and “revolutionary” and a $3.2 billion
Google buyout? What did Nest do differently to
“Jon Kolko illuminates the intuitive skills of the designer with such clarity, truly
w create a household product that people speak of
describing ‘how’ instead of just ‘what.’ Two millennia ago, Vitruvius’s manifesto on
with love?
great design exhorted, ‘utilitas, firmitas, e venustas.’ Well-Designed expands on this:
ro e Nest, and companies like it, understand
et make things useful, usable, and delightful—and here’s how.”
justin P Executive Director, AIGA, t—heri pcr ogfreesfséio,n al association for design ll d h ve tddheeasvtieg lenomp pomrtoieocnentsa. slA tcnhodant nt fheoeccytui uosensse i ssaq ccurlaeitariecr,la yrl eotpone pcarotoandbsuluecm t er
ajot nB lkaocklkbooa irsd V Iincce. PHrees jiodiennetd o Bf lCacoknbsuoamrder w Ditehs ign “There are books about design, and there are books about leadership. By uniting practical e ow e lo engagement rather than piling on features for
the acquisition of MyEdu, a start-up focused on processes and insightful ideas and interviews, Jon Kolko gives us both: an essential playbook s to opl featIunr tehsi’ ss arekfer.eshingly jargon-free and practical
helping students succeed in college and get jobs. comprising advice, research, and methods for engaged product design leadership.” i): us p e book, product design expert Jon Kolko maps out
Jon is also the founder and Director of Austin —liz danzico, g e e c ts this process, demonstrating how it will help you
Center for Design. His work focuses on bringing m u
the power of design to social enterprises. He Cofounder and Chair, MFA Interaction Design Program, School of Visual Arts; Creative Director, NPR ne pathy to create p r o d aemndo tyioounra tlleya rmes coonnacneti vper oadnudc btsu ialgda siunc acnesds faugla, in.
has worked extensively with both start-ups and
“Product managers are the most important link between great ideas and great products. The key, says Kolko, is empathy. You need to
Fortune 500 clients, and he’s most interested Jon Kolko speaks directly to this critical audience, providing the practical know-how to make d deeply understand customer needs and feelings,
in humanizing educational technology. Jon
design fit within their day-to-day decision making. Well-Designed is the essential guide to and this understanding must be reflected in the
previously held the roles of both Principal
design that all product managers will learn from and love.” product. In successive chapters of the book, we
Designer and Associate Creative Director
—robert fabricant, see how leading companies use a design process
at frog design and was also a Professor of
Cofounder and Principal, Design Impact Group, Dalberg Global Development Advisors of storytelling and iteration that evokes positive
Interaction Design and Industrial Design at
emotions, changes behavior, and creates deep
the Savannah College of Art and Design.
“Well-Designed presents a unique, powerful, human-centered way to design a product and then, engagement. Here are the four key steps:
how to master the important and oft-neglected task of guiding it through the complexities
1. Determine a product-market fit by seeking
of development and delivery. This unique, easy to read, and powerful book is essential for
signals from communities of users.
anyone involved with product management.”
—don norman, 2. Identify behavioral insights by conducting
Director, Design Lab, University of California, San Diego; author, Design of Everyday Things ethnographic research.
3. Sketch a product strategy by synthesizing
jacket design: annie chin
complex research data into simple insights.
ISBN-13: 978-1-62527-479-3
90000
stay informed. join the discussion. jon kolko 4. Polish the product details using visual
Visit hbr.org/books representations to simplify complex ideas.
follow @harVardbiz on twitter
find us on facebook, linkedin, youtube, and google+ hbr.org/books 9 781625 274793 harvard business review press (Continued on back flap)
well-designed
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well-designed
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jon kolko
HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW PRESS
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
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HBR Press Quantity Sales Discounts
Harvard Business Review Press titles are available at significant quantity discounts when purchased in bulk
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Copyright 2014 Jon Kolko
All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted,
in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior
permission of the publisher. Requests for permission should be directed to [email protected], or
mailed to Permissions, Harvard Business School Publishing, 60 Harvard Way, Boston, Massachusetts 02163.
The web addresses referenced in this book were live and correct at the time of the book's publication but may
be subject to change.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kolko, Jon.
Well-designed : how to use empathy to create products people love / Jon Kolko.
pages cm
1. Product design. 2. New products. 3. Consumer behavior. 4. Marketing research. I. Title.
TS171.4.K653 2014
658.5--dc23
2014032507
eISBN 978-1-62527-480-9
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For Jess, my love and my best friend
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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
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viii CONTENTS
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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well-designed
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