Should the developer/investor focus on the ROI over the previous investments/products to mature and till what time.

Or the customers should dictate a cut off/end of life for a product that has not recovered its ROI.

I am simply advocating for a consumer-maturity-deterministic-approach that would ensure (to a measurable extent) that a new-experience-product would not bounce back simply because the consumer base was not ready at large. That’s what determines your P&L optimization whether now or in future.

We know that there a lot of technological advances in terms of possibilities and even prototypes that are not commercially released but kept for the right time. Or that new technology design is used where it would give the expected returns i.e hi-tech industrial products. The customer based here is pretty determined and profiled and ROI clearly visible. Thus the quicker the NPI.

When we talk retail, we talk about not a handful, ever welcoming advanced customers because the prodution capacity requires a certain minimum (that is pretty large) for justified cost optimization and “profit margins”.

I think its got to do a lot with technology management. At the industrial scale since the users/customers are themselves at the edge of technology and its output it gets easier to innovate. However when we talk masses, minority of advance users (quick maturing) makes this a big question mark.

It is not enough to say “People want laptops, so lets build those”. A Camera / MP3 player is not going to let you differentiate yourself.

I am sorry but this line of thinking produces no value in products — although they do make “safe” products with a “reasonable expectation of return”

Also I strongly disagree that running ahead of the consumer is not fruitful in ROI — if that were true we wouldn’t have telephones, televisions, cars, electricity, etc etc etc.

Now that said, yes in the incubating phase of an idea ROI is very hard to find — however that is WHY you product design consultants like me who can clarify long-term ROI from a completely unheardof concept or product.

Again, I dont work or think from a marketing perspective because that is safe but only has marginal ROI — in a competitive environemnt such as consumer electronics marginal ROI is not feasible.

Good product design understands how to create economic value for consumers — that can include user experience design, value-chain management, operational efficiency, financial tricks and more.

Yes the “not have been done” are less frequently tried or slowly introduced for economic reasons and also of the industrial perception of the end users absorption and acceptance pace.

Running ahead of the consumer may not be fruitful in terms of ROI and neither would running after. I think running with the consumer hand in hand is the best deal.

“Developmental Research” and “Innovative Research” must go hand in hand. Both the trends are necessary. One helps in bringing about improvements in current designs and enhancing value. The other helps in re-creating or re-defining values and their satisfaction. This where takes societies forward also place them on totally new levels/orbits.

Developmental Research thus more frequent and “Innovative Research” lesser in happening and is kept in labs even if achieved for the returns over the previous investments to mature.

One thing common in both however, they are both driven by “user experience”.

Product Design is NOT about looking at user preferences — that is how marketing will define products.

In other words, if your competitors make a thin phone (RAZR) which is successful, you will try and make a thinnER phone (Samsung) to try and outsmart them?

How does that differentiate your product, guarantee its success, and steal market share away from competition?

It doesnt. User preferences give some security in terms of “what are people already buying” but still not guarantee that your me-too attempt will succeed.

Product Design that will differentiate yourself in a competitive environment (iphone etc) starts by asking “What are people NOT able to that they want to?”

That is something that marketers are fundamentally unable to find out because it is an economic / value-chain question — what are the transactions costs of doing what the user is doing + the cost of switching to something else VS the benefit of the other thing?

Again, “Unleashing the Killer App” and “The innovator’s dillemma” are two books that can help frame this perspective.

That’s what product desiging is all about, knowing end user’s preferences. Yes, finding out the latent preferences that may completely out-date the existing models by way of providing users a whole new design of doing things and deriving greater value never has been in dispute. That however requires a whole lot of industrial infrastructure/technological integrattion than simply coming up with a new life-changing design. There are technology, economic, infrastructure, awareness level, distribution/retail & lifestyle considerations that must be taken in before stirring up any such situation.

IPHONE is a whole different level and a totally different business design, which has not been fully emulated by anyone in the industry, globally. You know that better than I do.

I think it is the progress & development of the systemic design of the wider environment in which such a new-orbit-product shall have to find its place. The point is would the gate keepers (monopolists/giants) permit that before they think that the current designs have achieved their full maturity and their profits have started declining. This also is directly related to the consumer awareness level and the pace with which the lifestyle requirements and absorption for new-exprience-products validate success of such NPI.

Which is that all of your points, and wikipedia articles — while perfectly valid from a marketing strategy pov — talk about what has already happened, rather than what should happen.

People who build products based on “Well its been shown that people like thinner phones, hence we should be thin too” are the reason the cellphone and consumer electronics industry has been stagnated by me-too designs and poor innovation.

It is also the reason 90% of all IT and web businesses in Pakistan follow a Xerox-the-large-american-web-company strategy to make a localized ebay, amazon, etc rather than actually creating value.

The reason you hire someone like me and pay him over $450/hr is when you want to make the iPhone.

I.e. when you dont want to look at what’s already been done, but what should be done that the people aren’t telling you — what product will disrupt existing models

I would recommend the book “Unleashing the killer app” which describes how to frame the mind for this perspective. It was written when companies were first beginning to think about their online strategies in economic value, but the same rules apply to think of all disruptive technology.

I still hold that this LG phone can shift things — if for no other reason but polarization (which is also a product design strategy) — but naturally the market will be the ultimate deciding factor here.

AX490 by LG: The eyes shall however have to process contrast (shape+color+tactile-feel). This is an additional process burden.

Nokie/Conventional: Known is the simple fact that starting with numeric key 2 there are 3 alphas in sequence till num.key 9. In dictionary mode all you do is to write what you want and most of the times sentences comprise a popular list of words simply shuffled in sequence. Means that the dictionary auto-fills are mostly correct and altenate words available at one push of a button. Very convenient!

Ergonomics: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergonomics)

Physical: Mobile Phones they are popularly called due to their “mobility feature”. Used more frequently while on the move, standing in bus/tram, driving a car (handsfree in but still majority is conventional).

Second almost all, except intrigued kids perhaps, use one hand to dial or write sms. he LG-AX490 has keys so widely and awkwardly spread that it will be quite a “palm-tiring” and “finger-bending” task to especially write an sms unless one uses both. That is a value depletion actually.

Cognitive Ergonomics: User-interactive learning makes it even more “user specific” and permits the user to get more efficient in his/her own specific style everytime they use the tool. E.g. Aslam yaar how are you. Abey kahan ho tum? One written and accepted by user resides in the dictionary list and the next time comes as a priority option. This is efficient, puts lesser burden in terms of physical and mental challenge and lets the user do things the way they want to!

At the end of the day the market performance of the product shall show choice of the customer.