How you set your stall out matters. Even the small things make a huge difference to what your customers think and the way they act. The design critic Donald Norman made the point beautifully in his book The Design of Everyday Things
Are the controls and gas rings arranged like this:
Or are they more like this?
Which one will frustrate you next time you light it?
Which will you get right every time? And which one will you fluff?
Service Design
What is true for product design is also true for service design. Do you make things easy for your customers, or frustrate them?
If you enjoyed this post click here for free updates
Watch another opinion
Image by Harshit Sekhon
Hello James
I loved reading that book and did get me present to the vital importance of the small stuff as viewed/experienced by the human being.
The same kind of thing was drilled into me years ago when I was writing a manual for a computer application: “write it assuming that a five year old child is going to read it!” That was my mentors way of saying that I should assume that the person had no prior knowledge and could only make sense of the simple.
Great design requires mindfulness, connection to the being human of humans, diversity and attention to detail. Now, which kind of context calls that into action?
maz
Hi James,
I struggled with your picture exercise as it has been a long time since I used a gas cooker and my dials were on the side.
However, I get your point and agree that the small stuff really matters. It is the small stuff that will frustrate us, make us feel something and make us remember.
As Maya Angelou once said “People will seldom remember what you did or what you said but they will always remember how you made them feel”. Great saying and a powerful reminder but doesn’t just apply to service design either don’t you think?
Adrian
The controls on my cooker are exactly as you show snd experience doesn’t make it any better I have been switching on the wrong ring for years it shows how important it is to think about what your customer wants early and up front – Karen