6 Work the Design Process

Translating research and insight into actual design is where firms can monetize their strategies. A purely statistical interpretation of research is a bit like driving while looking only in the rear- and side-view mirrors. Armed with the maps of the industry, personas, and Opportunity Zone, we can see the road ahead.

With our mapped insights for inspiration, we work through the design process: create, test, re-create, re-test, and so on. As we work through this process, we are guided through this iterative cycle by our understanding of the emotional connections we seek to create for our personas. We are now empowered to create and innovate.

As James Dyson, creator of the top-selling upright vacuum cleaner in the United States and the richest industrial designer in the world notes: “Everyone has ideas. They may be too busy or lack the confidence and technical ability to carry them out.”¹ Success doesn’t come easily even to those, like Dyson, who possess the required traits. The importance of persistence can be seen in his story. It took more than 5,127 prototypes, long years of indebtedness, and several lawsuits before Dyson’s vision became a market success. What began with scissors and duct tape ultimately cemented his global reputation as an inventor.

Whether the design process begins as a result of a strategic initiative or a personal inspiration, the path to realizing the vision is remarkably similar. However, a great design doesn’t always translate into business success. The stakes for declaring a design success have moved considerably. It used to be that handing over a promising rendering was the end goal. Then a model was needed to help teams visualize and later, fully functioning prototypes with engineering detail. Designers soon became involved with the details of production. Today, design strategy needs to illuminate a clear path laid out from the sketch to an empowered consumer. For this to happen, the realities of implementation—business models, distribution, and budgets—need to be integrated into the design process. Here, we share two stories of innovations that won awards and enhanced the lives of consumers. However, minute details of execution resulted in only one becoming a huge commercial success.

From a Guitar Stand to a Guitar

After observing that existing guitar stands were bulky, cumbersome things made of tubular metal and were awkward to use and unattractive to look at, the RKS design team was presented with a challenge: Design a better guitar stand. Jokingly, Project Manager Paul Janowski replied, “Why don’t we design a better guitar?”

The idea was crazy enough to capture the imagination of everyone in the firm—including the nonmusicians. At the time, the electric guitar had been relatively unchanged for 50 years. It was a classic. An icon. How could a design firm with no musical pedigree meet the challenge? This wasn’t an effort that would take a few days to mock up and refine. It would require taking complete responsibility for the design and business decisions in the development process. But the promise was exhilarating as well. Ravi’s motivation was simple: “I was part of a generation that listened to rock and roll and thought of guitars as more than just instruments...guitars are social icons. They are the tools that enable poets and musicians to connect us through the universal language of music. The guitar was beyond this: a rare opportunity for a designer to create an artifact that can outlive them.²

That was the beginning of a long and inspiring design process: a constant cycle of creation, evaluation, and re-creation. Whether you’re creating a song, story, service, or product, it takes the same love of the process, the same tenacity. From simple sketches to complex 3D renderings to proof-of-concept prototypes, the process involves trial and error and evaluating various approaches against the maps. Refinements are made continuously until the team identifies a solution that can resonate with consumers.

Set Up a War Room

The term war room has evolved from its initial, literal meaning to the modern business application: a collaborative space in which to focus on a specific goal. The iterative design process always includes the risk that, at some point in the revisions, the original objective will be lost. The predictable, repeatable success of the Psycho-Aesthetics^®framework depends on the team’s ability to refocus on the common goals established during the mapping process.

Whether you use a physical room, or a virtual suite of tools, the experience of a war room can transcend itself. A war room is truly greater than the sum of its components. Whether you collaborate across a table or across an ocean, the key ingredient is access to the visual tools created during the mapping process: the visual representations of the market, opportunity zones, the persona dashboards, and Day/Week-in-a-Life narratives. As you walk in, you are reminded or told of the stores of the brands and people and lives that will be affected by what you do. Imagine a 6-foot-tall line of posters, 20 feet long that encapsulates the five personas that represent variations in our target audience; on the opposite wall are all the Psycho-Aesthetic maps and Key Attractors. Regardless of the dimensions of your room or the size of your visualizations, having all the Psycho-Aesthetic materials together in one place is powerful. In this way, team members are immersed in the consumer context for their innovations and focused on the emotional connections they seek to create.

Uncovering Aspirations (of Guitar Players)

With RKS guitars, as with any project, the key was to begin with the individual. What single thread runs common to all electric guitar players? A desire to express their unique vision; a passion to share their singular point-of-view with the world. This longing wasn’t limited to professional musicians. Market research confirmed that many adults who had been coaxed into more traditional careers still harbored a desire to be rock stars. Guitar sales more than doubled between 2000 and 2004, and Chinese imports lowered the price point for many entry-level guitars. Beginners and players who wanted to expand their instrument collection with additional guitars accounted for a large number of the new consumers—and market growth.³

How sadly ironic that, despite guitar players loving to push the envelope, electric guitar technology had been virtually stagnant for 50 years. Most of the innovations came from musicians and were rarely incorporated into mainstream designs because artists were eager to hold on to their trade secrets. One exception was Les Paul, the guitar prodigy and creator of the solid body electric guitar. He collaborated with guitar maker Gibson on instruments that shaped the industry for half a century. As legend has it:

“In 1940 or 1941—the exact date is unknown—Mr. Paul made his guitar breakthrough. Seeking to create electronically sustained notes on the guitar, he attached strings and two pickups to a wooden board with a guitar neck. ‘The log’ as he called it, if not the first solid body electric guitar, became one of the most influential ones. The odd-looking instrument drew derision when he played it in public, so he hid the works inside a conventional looking guitar. But the log was a conceptual turning point…the beginning of a sonic transformation of the world’s music.

“The Gibson company hired Mr. Paul to design a Les Paul model guitar in the early 1950s, and variations of the first 1952 model have sold steadily ever since, accounting at one point for half of the privately held company’s total sales. Built with Mr. Paul’s patented pick-ups, his design is prized for its clarity and sustained tone. It has been used by musicians like Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page and Slash of Guns N’ Roses. The Les Paul version is unchanged since 1958, the company says.”⁴

By the dawn of the 21st century, there was clearly room for innovation in the market.

Although rock stars represent creativity and freedom to their fans, they are surprisingly traditional in their choice of instruments. The lead guitarist is often the band leader and most recognized artist in a band, whose reputation is on the line during every performance. They need guitars they can count on. Amateur electric guitar players have less on the line but often mimic their idols’ choice of instruments. The heroic evangelists necessary for getting traction in this segment were already heroes (and rock stars) in their own right. To lure them to try something new, it would have to be a marked departure from what was already out there. If the potential benefits weren’t considerable, there would be no motivation to explore the new design.

Get Started—Fast

The momentum and excitement of innovation can fade if some progress is not made relatively quickly. The team began with a thorough Psycho-Aesthetics analysis of the market, and with the challenges firmly in mind, devised a plan to address them. As they began work, they made sure that the designers included both guitar players and nonplayers. The novices were essential for the fresh perspective they brought. The musicians brought empathy and deep knowledge of the habits, preference, and pain points of the target audience.

Together, the team stripped the concept of a guitar down to its essentials: the resonance chamber or body for producing rich acoustics and the neck that’s home to the fingerboard. Designers took this core concept and developed it into a “core instrument,” crafting an innovative design in which the neck and resonance chamber melded into a slender core unit and combined with a bolted on open-architecture body suspended by ribs extending out from the core. This open architecture, combined with the slimness of the core (which is not much wider than the strings) gives the designers a wonderful opportunity to place the volume and tone controls just below the strings, right at the player’s fingertips in the space between the core and the body shell. The pickup selector was placed in the opening just above the strings, within easy reach of the player’s thumb. These innovative placements worked both to create an uncluttered design and to enhance ergonomics while allowing new moves for the player, such as changing pick-ups and rolling the volume between chords with great ease.

After hundreds of ideas and concept sketches, one design stood out. It combined the sumptuous curves of a female body and exposed structural ribs that evoked those of a human skeleton. It was neither a solid body nor a hollow body; it was an open-architecture hollow body with a neck through the center core. It was a design like nothing on the market, so it was sure to stand out. But the question was, would traditionalist guitar players be receptive? At this point in the design process, it was an idea that captivated everyone and provided the inspiration for further development and experimentation.

The Role of Experts/Lead Users

The core unit, open-architecture guitar design was a radical departure from tradition. The design team was excited about it, but knew they needed professional feedback if they were to develop this concept into a successful product. Luckily, Ravi’s brother Ramesh was friends with Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Dave Mason. Mason, a cofounder of the band Traffic, was known for his collaborations with George Harrison, Paul McCartney, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, and many others as well as his solo work. He was curious enough to stop by RKS to check out its first foam model. Although elements of the design (such as the core unit—construction) intrigued Mason, other features simply did not work for him. This original model lacked a headstock with tuning knobs; these were placed elsewhere. That was a no-go. Mason continued with his critique, giving the team a list of things that had to go, were missing, or needed refinement for the new design to become a “player’s guitar.”

To many, this unvarnished feedback would have been disheartening. But to the designers this was exciting. Feedback is an essential part of the design process, and outside feedback from a recognized expert in the field is even more valuable. The gut-level reaction from someone of Mason’s caliber and his interest motivated the team. So although Mason’s notes sent them back to the virtual drawing board, this new understanding of the problems with the design provided direction to the development process.

Every iteration moves a design closer to reality. With the in-house capability to do design changes and Computer Numeric Control (CNC) working rapidly (to create new models), it was only a couple weeks before Mason’s phone rang again. The team had another model ready for him to check out. Mason was surprised; frankly, he hadn’t expected to hear from them again. He was even more surprised when he saw how much they accomplished in that short period of time. Mason could see the potential and knew they were onto something. Drawn by the excitement and pull of the iterative process, he and the design team kept at it for nearly two years, working the design process and constantly comparing their work against the foundation laid by Psycho-Aesthetics. As new information was brought in from working with Mason, personas, key attractors, and maps were further refined. When they moved into working prototypes, Mason began taking the guitars out on the road, using them in live performances to test and evaluate the positions of the knobs, neck, and body refinements, and more. Regarding the neck, the most critical point of engagement, Mason said, “There was one version where I knew it wasn’t right…for me the judgments are very tactile.” The team went back and checked its measurements and confirmed that they were off—by 1/100th of an inch! That amount of variation requires precise measurement tools to identify, but to a player like Mason who’d been playing 46 years, it was big enough to feel in his bones.

Mason became such an integral part of the process, and such a believer in the guitar, that he became a founding partner in RKS Guitars when it was formed as a separate entity. Mason’s insight into the perspective and passion of professional musicians combined with Psycho-Aesthetics was an essential part of the design process.

Back to the Consumer

Ironically, the passion of designers and enthusiasts can derail a design by taking it too far away from the consumer’s comfort level. Aesthetic improvements can begin to look superficial; new features can start to seem confusing. At critical points in the development process, a reality check is in order.

The question of which innovations are the most meaningful to consumers is never a simple one. Psycho-Aesthetics steers the team toward the most meaningful solutions as it navigates it through the design process.

For highly personal and customized concepts, the role of emotion grows more prominent. The guitar couldn’t just be a test of design skills and creativity; it needed to provide a superior experience for rock stars, fans, and aspiring musicians alike. The focus had to be on sound quality, playing experience, and the rock-star image.

Sustainable Solution to Sound Quality

As the guitar moved from foam prototypes to working models, the team put a lot of time and consideration into manufacturability and materials. The tone wood used in most guitars often comes from endangered sources found in the rain forests. To eliminate the endangered tone woods required, the team looked at using molded plastic for the guitar bodies in combination with farm-raised woods. But the problem was that most plastic sounded “bright” and annoying. No one was prepared to compromise on sound quality.

Luckily, Eastman Chemical manufactured a cellulose-based polymer called Tenite. This was one of the first plastics ever created, based on the original materials founding company Eastman/Kodak used for creating photographic film. Eastman quickly proved to be excited about the promise of something as innovative as the new guitar being developed by the team. They sent samples of various formulations for sound testing.

The cotton and wood fiber in Tenite gave it an amazing resonance—a sound reminiscent of traditional tone woods used in musical instruments, yet still, very unique and desirable. Sourced from these sustainable materials, the Tenite was far more environmentally responsible than traditional tone woods. The structural ribs that remained from the original concept were crafted out of aircraft aluminum. These ribs worked synergistically with the Tenite, transmitting the vibrations from the strings, through the ribs, and into the molded shell. The use of this material meant that these RKS Hollow Body guitars would require no tone wood from environmentally sensitive rainforests, and other models reduced the use of tone wood by approximately 80 percent.

Optimized Ergonomics for a Better Playing Experience

The Psycho-Aesthetics analyses had identified control placement as an important touch/pain point. This told the team that there was an important opportunity to create differentiation by enhancing ergonomics, aesthetics, and the entire experience. The most obvious ergonomic innovations were optimal placement of the volume and tone knobs and the pick-up selector within the gaps above and below the core unit. The Groove Knobs, as the volume and tone knobs came to be known, were placed just below the strings at the player’s fingertips. The knobs were weighted and finished with polished metal to evoke quality and enhance precision. The Posifly Pickup Selector was positioned within easy reach of the player’s thumb to enable on-the-fly changes when wanted, yet keep it safe from unwanted mid-groove pick-up-change mishaps. But these control placements were just the beginning of the ergonomic improvements inherent in the design.

Everything from the neck and fingerboard through the shape of the guitar body was addressed. Most traditional electric guitar bodies have flat backs. But the sensual contours of the RKS guitar design extend to the back of the guitar, creating an incredible guitar-to-player connection. The way the guitar seemingly wraps around the player’s body enables a much more relaxed, natural position and creates a stronger physical connection between guitar and player. Mason’s input was integral in creating this fit. “[The guitar] had to allow me to forget about it; allow me to focus on my music and become an extension of my hands,” he said. In this process, we dropped three pounds out of the guitar, which addressed a concern expressed by players who complained that competitor guitars hurt their backs after hours of extended play.

The Final Result

What mattered most was how the guitar was received by musicians. From first glance, veteran guitar players and novices alike commented on the guitar’s visual presence. Some liked it; some rejected it. The design was polarizing, as we had planned it to be. From the start, we knew we would have to turn some people off to turn others on. We weren’t designing a guitar for every player…we were designing to turn our personas into heroic evangelists. And we did.

Magic happened when people picked up the guitar. The first experience is one of comfort and familiarity. It was designed to feel like an old friend. As wildly new as it looked, it felt familiar. As players got more familiar with it, the benefits of intelligent, empathic design could be fully appreciated—the control placement, the note-to-note clarity and definition, the amazing resonance, and the obsessive craftsmanship. Suddenly, players of varying abilities began to feel like…rock stars. But the appeal of the guitar extended to the musical role models that inspired its creation. Perhaps this is the reason that Mick Jagger adopted the RKS guitar as his personal song-writing instrument and legions of legendary players, such as Glen Campbell, Don Felder, Keith Richards, Ron Wood, and Rickie Lee Jones, joined the RKS Guitar family.

Personalized Experience

Just as innovation can help you connect key targets, it can also help you connect with a wider audience. Though the original RKS guitars were adopted by many top players, they were too expensive for some. Our analysis revealed that the opportunity zone could be expanded and outlying personas could be brought into the fold. To do this, we would need to make the guitar affordable enough for aspiring musicians on a budget. The design team also set a goal to address unmet desires for individuality.

The solution was made possible by the core unit design that was the foundation of the original RKS guitar. The design team realized that the core unit’s architecture enabled the development of interchangeable guitar bodies. The new guitar line, called the Wave (shown in Figure 6.1), gave players the option of switching out various guitar bodies to fit the mood or the music. With the use of just six screws, the player can create a completely different look and sound.

© RKS Design

Figure 6.1 RKS interchangeable body guitar

With the advent of the Wave, musicians could own an instrument that gave them the ability to change to match their mood, the venue, or even just their whims. The elimination of costs associated with the ribs helped make the interchangeable body guitars’ line much more affordable. The option to have one core unit and multiple bodies meant that users could modify a single core unit to have different looks and sounds to create a virtual “stable” of guitars without having to pay the price of having multiple guitars.

The Importance of Execution

Our experience with RKS guitars gave us a visceral understanding of the complexity and details involved in execution. As the guitar was being developed, we hesitated to sell it to a manufacturer before we felt it was ready, knowing that the opportunity may not come again. As it grew into the vision we had, the thought of letting it remain a series of sketches and models that were taken on the road was unacceptable. After weighing many options, RKS took the very unusual step of forming a separate company, RKS Guitars, to manufacture the highly specialized instruments in Southern California.

When the factory opened its doors, the highly artistic process and training involved meant that almost ten people took a full day to produce a guitar. During the 3½ years of operations, this was reduced to about one guitar per person per day. Three guitar bodies were created utilizing the basic guitar core—the Solid Body, Hollow Body, and Wave—that could be assembled into approximately 200 SKUs. The guitars were sold online and in catalogs, with 80 domestic dealers and 30 international distributors. Breakeven was achieved and a 3-month backlog of orders was evidence of the appeal of the product.

Ultimately, however, the reliance on small specialty suppliers for many of the parts curtailed our ability to meet demand. We had to raise money to advertise the guitars, and suppliers were unable to extend credit. Although the team had put tremendous thought and effort into the user experience, it simply wasn’t enough. The needs of the retailers were not adequately considered, and we underestimated the amount of cash required to build the brand. The importance of educating dealers about the benefits of the guitar was not given enough importance, especially in the larger chains. This was particularly difficult for the team who knew that the guitar was understood and appreciated by many consumers.

A great business model can sometimes compensate for a lackluster product, but a great design can seldom overcome business reality. This was the case with RKS Guitars. Although the product was in high demand, there was inadequate funding to propel the brand and meet the demand we had generated. The company suspended production in 2007, but the 2,000 instruments produced are still in strong demand and continue to appreciate in price.

Channeling Our Learning

The experience with RKS Guitars forced us to be consistently explicit about understanding the dynamics of channels as we crafted design strategies. We had done so successfully in our work with Robert Hayman, CEO and co-founder of Discus Dental. He knew from experience the importance of having not just a good product, but the right image and design that would create viral demand. It was a lesson he learned early on in his family business. His father was the man behind the famous Giorgio of Beverly Hills fragrance brand. That experience shaped how he looked at all his later ventures. “The bold yellow and white stripes [on their packaging] just projected the image of Beverly Hills…it was distinctive and immediately recognizable. In a high-end market, it really becomes more and more about emotion,” Hayman observed.⁵

When Hayman founded Discus Dental, with Dr. Robert Dorfman (a celebrity dentist often appearing on the popular TV show Extreme Makeover), the tooth-whitening market was in a period of rapid growth. Sales of oral care products had grown 19 percent from 1997 to 2002 to $4.5 billion in the United States. Whitening and breath freshening products accounted for much of this growth, and in the words of one analyst, “The shift in the market has gone from hygienic to more cosmetic in focus.”⁶ The American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry reported a 300 percent increase in tooth-whitening procedures between 1995 and 2000.

After considering various ways to participate in the market, from infomercial formats to direct sales, Discus ultimately decided to target dentists’ offices. Professional products such as BreathRx and Nite White (a kit with a mouth guard and whitening gel) were successfully launched in the channel. “We always knew we were in the cosmetics business, as well as the oral care business,” Hayman recollects.

Designing a New Way to Market

As a young company, the traditional model of hiring experienced reps to visit dental offices was not financially feasible. However, Hayman insists that being underfunded was key to the company’s success because it forced the company to be resourceful. The founders capitalized on a tough job market and hired fresh college graduates as its sales force and had many of them sell products over the phone. The high performers were asked to refer friends for employment as the company grew. The young, energetic reps were a hit at frequent trade shows and reinforced the association of Discus products with youth and sex appeal. Inside the company, the friendship and camaraderie among the salespeople fostered a strong work ethic. Here, too, emotional connections played a role in the company’s growth.

At the time, a huge assortment of whitening products aimed at baby boomers was entering the grocery and drugstore aisles, from whitening strips to pastes and brush-on gels. These products appealed to many consumers in younger age groups as well. A Rembrandt spokeswoman explained, “White teeth have become a standard of beauty; the market is much broader than its original base.”⁷Teeth were suddenly a high-stakes item in market for youth and sex appeal. Some industry surveys showed 71 percent of Americans saying that they were less likely to marry someone with bad teeth and 33 percent reporting that whitening was the main attribute they looked for in a toothpaste.⁸ The retail channel offered convenience and lower prices than professional products, and Discus chose not to dilute the brand by following the trend.

However, the emergence of BriteSmile, a stand-alone franchise offering tooth-whitening in one hour and a system for dentists, posed the major threat to Discus. Hayman remembers vividly, “It was a time when we knew we had to win—that moment when you either capitulate or compete. We had to find a way to answer this threat.”

But the company was already 2 years behind when it began its effort to counteract BriteSmile. Years of relationships with dentists led them to believe that a significant population of adults were interested in tooth whitening yet impatient with over-the-counter products. They were anxious about walking into a franchise such as BriteSmile. Discus again chose to leverage the valuable relationships it had built with dentists as the core of its strategic response. It began using Psycho-Aesthetics to develop a whitening system that could be performed in dentist’s offices.

Competing by Helping Others Win

The result was the Zoom! tooth whitening system, which is a peroxide-based gel activated by an ultra-violet lamp to whiten teeth. The shape of the Zoom! whitening lamp, shown in Figure 6.2, was specifically designed to reduce patient’s fears and anxiety. The aesthetic was created by separating the power supply pod from the lamp itself, making it far less intrusive and bulky. The lamp also increased patient safety because it is aimed at the treatment area and away from the patient’s eyes.

The Zoom! system produced superior results of whitening teeth up to eight shades in an hour, at 30 percent of the cost of alternative patient therapies. The lamp won several design awards and was a stark contrast to the BriteSmile experience, in which a huge lamp was aimed at the patient, and they were cautioned to “stay as still as possible.” Not moving was so critical to the BriteSmile system that motion sensors were installed to detect patient’s shifting.

By giving dentists an opportunity to compete in a growing and lucrative market and make their patients feel wonderful in the process, Discus rapidly regained lost ground. Patients also had more chances to learn and discuss tooth whitening with a trusted source without feeling compelled to make a decision. When they were ready to have the procedure done, they usually opted to have it done in the doctor’s office. Here, the design team worked with Discus to develop a sustainable business model and channel strategy instead of limiting their attention to the end user. The lamp and patented syringe designed for Discus gave dentists a reliable and cost-effective way to help their patients achieve a goal that was important to their self-image, and Discus recaptured its position in the professional market. After the creation of the Zoom! system, BriteSmile is the last of Discus’s worries: After taking market share away from them for years, Discus purchased the professional portion of the BriteSmile franchise in 2006.

© RKS Design

Figure 6.2 Zoom! whitening lamp and syringe

Finding a Balance

One of the toughest, yet most essential parts of the process is when stakeholders have to come to a decision that they’re ready to take their offering to the market. Over the course of innovating, prototyping, and testing, inevitably some trade-offs must be made— either due to time and budget constraints or to preserve the integrity of the offering.

Without Psycho-Aesthetics, these judgments can be gut-wrenching if left to consumer testing alone. But this framework makes us better testers. It enables us to make sure our consumer audience reflects the personas we’ve built and the market segments we’re striving to reach. It also tells us the relevant questions to ask, so we can see if we’re achieving the desired connections. Throughout this stage of the process, we can compare the results with our highly targeted goals. This is how we can know when and how well our offering will resonate in the market.