2 Enable Your Stakeholders
In 2000, Amana, one of America’s oldest brands, had a difficult brand revival problem: The company had a quality product that no one seemed to notice. Several major retailers had dropped its appliances, and the company was on the verge of idling one of its plants. It had millions of dollars in consumer research done by leading agencies. After months spent isolating the cause of decline, Amana knew the problem was that its design did not capture consumers’ attention. It also discovered that its brand was virtually unknown to a new generation of buyers. Beyond that, it was unsure about how to move forward. John Herrington, the project leader and VP of marketing for Amana, summarized the problem by saying, “We had come to a point where we had men designing appliances that were primarily used by women and we were trying to keep pace with cost-cutting. We were having too many discussions about performance and not enough attention was paid to how the consumer actually interacts with the product….”1
Amana was eager to win back consumers and market share. Executives who had invested heavily in creating a quality product were aware that the conversation in the marketplace had changed. Aesthetics and new features were becoming more important to consumers, especially those with larger homes and dedicated laundry rooms. However, redesigning during lean times left little room for error, and speed was a critical consideration.
Amana’s story is just one example of a scenario being played out in every industry. Brands and entire categories find themselves in decline despite good quality, functional performance, and competitive pricing. Although all these factors remain important, they are no longer enough to create sustainable growth and build connections with consumers.
New Stakeholders, New Process
Breakthrough design does not happen in a vacuum. It’s not something that can be tacked on at the end of the product development process. The complexity of new product introductions, diversity of consumers, and global competition means that far more people in every organization are invested in the design development process. To truly innovate, executives, marketers, engineers, and designers must work in concert from the start. Unfortunately, few business tools focus on creating collaboration among disciplines. Although some large organizations have found ways to break down organizational silos, it remains the exception rather than the rule.
Design involves a deep understanding of the consumer and a clear understanding of business implications of various approaches. Executives often take the blame for being focused on the bottom line at the expense of the consumer, but that is rarely the reason for poor outcomes. If companies weren’t interested in listening to consumers, market research would not be a $19 billion dollar industry.2 Top companies such as Procter & Gamble spend more than $200 million a year studying consumer behavior.3 It is obvious, however, that endless amount of demographic data, financial projections, and anecdotal information rarely add up to great market insight. In fact, many design failures can be traced to an inability to make sense of contradictory information.
Finding a way to enable communication, create consensus, and ultimately build confidence and alignment among stakeholders is critical. Surveys of executives suggest that aligning strategy with consumer experience remains one of the toughest organizational challenges to contend with.4 Succeeding in this effort requires sustained effort from people with very different ways of looking at the world. Designers work by instinct. Engineers rely on numbers. Executive and marketing decision-makers require a rational basis for their design decisions. Simply bringing together a group of bright individuals and asking them to be open-minded rarely bridges these gaps. We need a methodology to enable effective collaboration.
Why It Doesn’t Happen Naturally
Sadly, much of the debate about design and design thinking has centered on playing up the differences between intuitive and rational thinkers, creatives, and “suits” for dramatic effect. This is unfortunate, because both bring vital knowledge and experience and both constituencies must answer to the market. However, there are legitimate reasons why managers and designers can’t always communicate effectively. These fall into three main categories:
• Size and fragmentation of the design industry— According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are 48,000 commercial and industrial designers in the United States (with an estimated 30 percent of them working independently) and approximately 4,000,000 business professionals including management consultants, market researchers, and top executives. There simply may not have been enough opportunities for these groups to work closely together in the past.
• Education and training—Learning styles and education also play a role in communication. Most designers have backgrounds in art and learn through observation and prototyping. Designers can adjust to cost and manufacturing requirements, but they often rely on intuition and subjective aesthetic sensibilities that can be difficult to translate into business terms. Engineering professionals are, by nature, very methodical and practical, whereas executives and marketing managers need to understand demographics, market factors, and the bottom line.
• History—In the not-so-distant past, designers were brought in when strategy—or even a nearly finished product—was already in place. The design effort focused on aesthetics to enhance an existing product. Today, the conversation is not just about how to design something, but about what to design. Companies have realized that design needs to be involved from the start, but processes for doing so effectively are few.
Essential Ingredients for Alignment
Several key elements are required for teams to move beyond these barriers to consensus building. The answer to breaking through the clutter doesn’t require more research, data, or spreadsheets. It requires reorienting priorities. Consumers, after all, don’t make decisions based on the same criteria as companies do. Their purchase behavior and loyalty is largely guided by emotion. Tuning into their decision-making process can help all parties understand the larger context of the marketplace. Aligning stakeholders requires these essentials:
• Establishing a common language—Collaboration among stakeholders is still hindered by the language barriers between departments and teams. In international summits, headphones for simultaneous translation are a common sight. The complexity of the issues involved—disarmament, climate change, and terrorism—already make resolutions difficult. If the stakeholders didn’t have the ability to hear the arguments in their own language, the consensus required to move forward would simply not happen.
Although the situation inside most companies is not quite so dire, the direction of the company is often at stake. Stakeholders need tools to communicate effectively and efficiently about what matters to the consumer. Rather than employing teams of unseen “translators,” a highly visual approach is needed to overcome these challenges.
• Quantifying emotional demands—At first blush, emotions seem too complex and hard to pin down. How can you possibly rate or value one emotion over another? The solution can be found in studying how consumers change in response to their circumstances. It’s an elemental part of the human psyche that we must first meet our most basic needs—safety, security, shelter. We need these to survive. But as each level of needs is met, consumers evolve, aspiring to become more. To be loved, to feel validated, to become empowered. These needs can be identified and understood in ways that resonate with all stakeholders.
• Visualizing as a means to success—Quantification helps executives and engineers incorporate emotions into decisions, but numbers alone don’t speak to designers. Mapping the emotions and interactivity levels (covered in detail in Chapter 3, “Map the Future”) speaks to both left- and right-brained stake-holders. When consumer, product, and brand maps are aligned, the clear market opportunity is revealed. When the common goal becomes clear in this way, the team can move beyond mere alignment into laser-focused action.
• Mobilizing the brain trust through inclusion—The most critical task in the early phases of most projects is to capture the implicit knowledge of the team involved in implementation. After the completion of the appliance projects, John Herrington, the project leader from VP of Marketing for Amana, reflected on his experience with this methodology: “Our success with the process was as much about including people as anything else. If we hadn’t done this and had an identical strategy, I’m still not convinced that we would have been able to implement it….” Trying to rally the troops around an idea after the concept has been developed rarely works. Reversing this process—mobilizing the troops to develop the idea—is a far more effective and efficient approach. Providing a context for stakeholders to see their data and expertise in the context of consumers’ emotional responses is the backbone of successful collaboration and design.
© RKS Design
Figure 2.1 Bandwidth of all the senses
Process in Action—Amana
In Amana’s case, everyone was committed to doing what they thought was important—and the result was an emphasis on quality. However, the singular focus on performance failed to take into consideration the design factors needed for consumers to make an emotional connection with the product. This contributed to consumers’ lack of interest in the brand. Amana knew it needed to make changes and make them quickly if it was to avoid closing factories. A targeted approach to reviving the brand was the only option.
An Accurate Diagnosis
The first step was to observe interactions of consumers in a retail setting with the different washers and dryers. It was soon apparent that there wasn’t much to distinguish one brand from the other. It was the era of low-cost manufacturing, and the challenge seemed fairly straightforward: Stand out in a “sea of white” showroom.
Laundry is about cleaning and renewal, but the dull paint finish didn’t communicate that. The control panels were devoid of color, reinforcing the idea that laundry was a chore. Aside from the convenience of having a washer and dryer in the home, the machines themselves offered little in terms of experience over going to the Laundromat.
RKS Design didn’t have the time—or the mandate—to redesign everything. Ironically, quality, the trait Amana prided itself on, was not communicated to the consumer. There was nothing about the washers that called attention to valuable details such as the stainless steel tub. These features mattered only if consumers could be motivated to actually open the machine. How could an “Intel-inside” type of message be created in this segment?
Given the urgency of the design effort, RKS designers focused on attraction and engagement. Observation had shown that, when consumers did stop to interact in the showroom, they played around with the dials and studied the control panels. Because these areas attracted consumers, three immediate priorities were chosen for the design effort: badging, knobs, and graphics.
• Badging—A small badge that said “stainless” was introduced to communicate the added value of the stainless steel tub. The Amana name badge was also redone in a stainless steel finish to further underscore this long-lasting feature.
• Knobs—Soft-touch knobs were added to make the controls inviting and more user-friendly.
• Graphics—In a big departure from the rest of the industry, the design team focused on creating easily understood graphics using bright colors for the control panel.
Though RKS Design felt confident that this was the right approach, the proposed changes added an estimated $0.30 to the cost of goods sold and would not add functionality. It would be difficult to convince Amana’s engineers, marketers, and executives to make the investment. It would be pointless to merely “tell” the other stakeholders how to proceed. It was critical to show them that the new approach would be effective in the marketplace. As Tom Matano, creator of the Mazda Miata observed, “The ultimate is to have a combination of aesthetics and experience, what I like to call empathic design. But aesthetics is important in calling attention to what is important about the design. If you’re in the newspaper business and people keep missing the headline, there’s a problem. Design has to act as the on/off switch; a signal about where you are.”5 Here, the validation had to come from the consumer.
A New Focus on Consumer Testing
Typical focus group testing—where consumers are brought in, shown a design concept, and asked to give feedback—would not be enough to turn the tide. This kind of consumer testing gives consumers an experience of being a “research subject” and is a poor predictor of actual market performance. To be relevant, the team knew they needed to give them a “buying experience.” A fully developed design model was placed next to competitive products and the team watched to see how the consumers would react.
When the consumers came in, they were quickly attracted to the design changes. The color graphics made the products stand out in the “sea of white” and the soft-touch knobs created immediate consumer engagement with the design, far more than observed with competitive products (see Figure 2.2).
© RKS Design
Figure 2.2 Redesigned Amana laundry console
Seeing the enthusiastic response to the new design, Amana agreed to proceed with it. In the end, that $0.30 increase in the cost of goods increased perceived value significantly and translated into a price increase of over $100 at retail. Retailers who had dropped the brand began to sign on again. Amana realized more than $20 million in annual profits from the new designs and embraced efforts to redesign other categories.
Payoff also came in terms of feedback from the market. Changing the graphics on the washer and dryer from gray to color not only engaged consumers at retail, but mothers also reported that the color-coded dials made it easier for them to teach their children how to do laundry. The brand equity generated by the emotional connection created by empowering women to teach their children cannot be overstated.
Building Confidence, Building Success
Upon seeing measurable results, the team developed confidence in the methodology and themselves. Buoyed by success, the framework streamlined the design process as efforts began to revamp other segments in the Amana product line.
The next order of business was to re-create Amana’s refrigerator and other major appliances lines. Both the design and corporate teams were eager to build emotional connections based on consumer insight. One line of refrigerators featured a “Kid Zone” on the inside of the refrigerator door (see Figure 2.3). Located on the bottom third of the door, this playful, engaging zone allowed mothers to store their children’s snacks and drinks at a height within easy reach for them.
© RKS Design
Figure 2.3 Amana refrigerator with Kid Zone (penguin)
Playing on the fact that the kitchen was often the “heart of the home,” some fridges included a voice recorder that enabled families to leave messages for one another, rather than writing notes—an early iteration of the “intelligent appliance.”
The results of the redesigns succeeded in the marketplace far beyond anyone’s expectations. Amana recovered from being invisible in consumer ratings to being ranked second out of seven brands considered. More important, people were interested in the company again. As John Herrington put it, “There was a huge impact inside the company as a result of this process. The whole organization was energized…people enjoyed making cool products instead of just struggling. And we were able to attract more talent as a result….”6
What made the designers the happiest? When asked the highlight of this project for them, the response was unanimous: “We saved jobs by keeping the plant running.” It was clear that the executives and designers did more than empathize with each other’s challenges. They made those challenges their own. Emotional connections are not for consumers alone.
Eventually, Amana was acquired by Maytag following its brand revival, and the signature badge was later imitated by other brands. However, the success of the design process was not simply a matter of the right sketches and embellishments. It involved as much change inside the company as in the appliances. Finding the right touch points allowed the company to reconnect with its core consumers. It also allowed the time, freedom, and financial standing to create and execute bolder concepts that built on the momentum from the laundry segment.
Moving Forward
The stories of companies competing—and winning—by using design are increasing in number. We see that the state of design is undergoing the kind of transformation that the IT revolution brought a decade ago. Then, there was a period of intense experimentation and rush to install “the latest and greatest.” Many of these concepts faded into obscurity when they didn’t respond to any real needs and desires of consumers. Today, the platforms that people have adopted—Facebook, LinkedIn, Google—have become part of the lives of those who use them. People trust, share, and evangelize these platforms.
These changes weren’t just because of better tools. Inside companies, too, managers learned how to ask the right questions, guide the implementation process, and make choices that fit with their strategies and brand promises. We believe that the same dynamic is possible with great design. Tom Matano goes further, saying, “In medieval times, the arts flourished because kings were patrons of the arts. In today’s world, managers can be patrons of design…. They must understand that the product is ultimately the billboard of their corporate strategy.”7
Psycho-Aesthetics helps to create that bridge between design and strategy. It fosters communication between individuals and departments and, ultimately, with the consumer. By giving everyone a common, visual, quantifiable vocabulary that has a basis in both logic and emotion, teams are empowered to make meaningful emotional connections with consumers.
Creating Meaning
Design changes, even aesthetic ones, have the power to profoundly change and shape the consumer experience. Understanding the implications of various alternatives in emotional terms enables stakeholders to make decisions that support the interests of the firm and consumers. Too often, difficult trade-offs are made based on financial metrics because they seem more concrete. However, basic emotional responses apply to all consumer behaviors, and these responses can and should be analyzed objectively. Establishing an emotional context to harness the implicit knowledge of teams not only creates a common language, but it also creates a stage for meaningful dialogue—and design—to happen.