• Griffin designers explain their product development process – An idea that passes the initial "sniff test" gets assigned to a Category Manager, who shepherds it through a more formal proof-of-concept process. They discuss it with industrial designers, engineers, user researchers, the sales team, even packaging. The goal is to thoroughly vet the product to make sure that it's a good fit with our customers, our capabilities, our strategic priorities, our distribution channels and our financial requirements, before it gets the green light for resources to be allocated.
  (via Core77)

I took my last ride in my 1977 Datsun 280Z today. I’ve sold the car, and the new owner is picking it up tonight.

On this last drive, I patted the dashboard and said something like, “Sorry I have to sell you.” Which made me think about how some objects in my life are things I have relationships with, and some are just things.

I can’t even imagine what it must be like to have to give up a pet, or a baby, when I feel sad about just seeing my car go.

I really don’t want to own it anymore-it just doesn’t serve my daily needs-but on a deeper, emotional level, I have a warm feeling towards it, and something significant is going on around giving it up.

This feeling about my Z is totally different from the way I felt when I got an iPhone, which was nonetheless strong as well. I woke up early the morning the contract with my old provider expired and drove right to the Apple store. This was like a consumer electronics booty call. Object lust.

But now my phone is just a thing I use. I feel more emotion about my Swiss Army knife.

And I never felt a thing for my computer, even though I probably spend more time with it than anything–inanimate or animate–in my life.

What’s up with that?

Actually, I’ve got some pretty good ideas about why all of this is the way it is, but I’d rather hear your comments about things you

• love
  
• lust after
  
• hate
  
• feel indifferent about

Harley-Davidson President and CEO Jim Ziemer, Harley-Davidson Annual Report, 2007

My latest interactions column, Ships in the Night (Part I): Design Without Research? has just been published.

While user-research-eschewing Apple is everyone’s poster child for “design for yourself,” I find Harley-Davidson to be a more compelling example (although I may be comparing Apple(s) and oranges). At Harley, Willie G. Davidson is the grandson of the original Davidson. Senior vice president and chief styling officer, he is known as Willie G. And he looks exactly like a guy who rides a Harley: big, bearded, and leather-clad. If we judge a bike by its fairing, the designer is the customer. That’s part of the Harley brand: In a recent Harley-Davidson annual report, executives appear next to their bikes, and we know that they all ride. A crucial part of Willie G.’s role is to preserve the legacy of the brand; the company communicates that it is (and always has been) part of the culture for which it’s designing. People at Harley, we believe, use the products and live the lifestyle. But underneath it all is a sense that Harley-Davidson, through its history, has created the brand (i.e., the products and their meaning) in partnership with its customers. For all the tribal connectedness Apple has facilitated, the company itself is not a participant. It is a benefactor.

Get a PDF of the article here. To receive a copy of the article, send an email to steve AT portigal DOT com and (if you haven’t given us this info before) tell us your name, organization, and title. We’ll send you a PDF.

Related: Steve Portigal speaks at User Research Friday – Design and Research, Ships in the Night?

Update: Ships in the Night (Part II): Research Without Design? is now available

Other articles

• Persona Non Grata
• Everybody’s Talkin’ At Me
• The Journey Is The Reward
• Hold Your Horses
• Living In The Overlap
• Some Different Approaches to Making Stuff
• Poets, Priests, and Politicians
• Interacting with Advertising
• We Are Living in a Sci-Fi World
• On Authenticity
• The Hard Work Lies Ahead (If You Want It)
• What to Expect When You’re Not Expecting It
• Elevator Pitch
• Kilroy Was Here
• Never Eat Anything Raw
• Content, the Once and Future King

I had to email iTunes the other day about an issue with my account. I composed and sent my message using their web-based contact system, and a little message box popped up.

The message said that since there was a chance iTunes’ response to my inquiry might end up in my Spam box, a test message would be sent within 15 minutes. If I didn’t get the test message, I was given several steps to take, including adding the iTunes email address to my contacts so that the real message would get through.

I’ve never had a site pre-troubleshoot like this for me, and I thought it was a really elegant and collaborative way of making sure I got the communication I was asking for. Nice job on this one, Apple.

It’s interesting to see workaround strategies like this evolving when things like spam filters–conceived as solutions–become problems.

In The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less and The Substance of Style we learn about the dramatic increase in choice for so many products and services, why that is, and what it means to our experience with those products and services.

But let’s not forget that things go other way as well. Like the banana convergence I blogged about before, apples are a paradox of limited choice.

The United States was once home to more than 10,000 named apple varieties, but nowadays it’s hard to find more than a handful, even at farmers’ markets.

Although theories like those authors put forward (and I’ll throw in the Long Tail too) are useful lenses to help make sense of out what we see there often completely opposite gravities occurring simultaneously. But hey, culture is a complex beast, isn’t it? Because both of the contradictory trends are indeed true.

Monday night at the Computer History Museum, Robert Brunner, Jerry Manock and Bill Moggridge held a chat about Apple‘s design history. When¬†asked about the future of design, Jerry talked about reaching the limits of miniaturization. He held up his hands, spread his fingers, and pointed out that we¬†are already technologically able¬†to produce devices that are so small as to surpass¬†our physical ability to use them.

That comment¬†caused me to drift¬†off into a¬†little fantasy in which I imagined people being genetically engineered to be smaller and smaller, in order to be able to continue using increasingly miniaturized devices.¬†Luckily, I was able to¬†reality-check myself with an emergency dosage of¬†late 1970’s design.

Atari Game Console, 1979

Cisco and Apple were in a dispute over the ownership of the iPhone name. There was news that a deal fell through right around the time of the announcement. One might assume this is Cisco raising the stakes a bit, trying to push Apple to make it all go away. Because this is certainly confusing the issue.

I’ll be picking out a few images to share here later, but for now, my photos from Macworld yesterday are here.

I’m quoted in today’s Boston Globe

NEW YORK – To those who dwell in the design universe, Apple Computer has accomplished the near-impossible: making nerdy computing products seem hip and friendly.Sleek, ergonomic, and accessible, first their computers and now their iPods have gained raves and a cult following, and they have brought terms like ‘nano’ out of geekdom and into everyday use. ‘I think every designer in the world has been in a meeting where someone announces that their printer, toaster, telephone, breakfast cereal should become the iPod of its category,’ says Steve Portigal of Portigal Consulting, a California firm specializing in design and business strategy.

Now, with the opening of an architecturally audacious retail store in Manhattan, Apple has crossed another design threshold. The Apple Store Fifth Avenue a mammoth underground docking station for Macs, iPods, and accessories has made the ultimate statement of design and product packaging by morphing the design of Apple products with the design of the building that houses them.

‘It’s difficult to think of other companies that have such design coherence,’ says Paul Thompson, director of New York’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. ‘Everything comes together under one design vision. Anyway you cut the apple, design is driving it.’

Article also quoted here.

Two interesting stories about fruit!

Popular Science offers an interesting history of the banana. Although we think of banana as an atomic concept (i.e., we don’t think of varieties as we do with tomatoes or apples), the banana that consumers eat – the Cavendish – is the only banana there is. But in fact, there are many varieties, most not viable for growing/shipping/storing/eating. Way back when, the Big Mike was the banana available in grocery stores, but was effectively wiped out by fungus. It tasted different.

That alone is a bit mind-blowing for me – if I summon up the banana flavor in my brain, it feels like a universal constant. But 40 years ago, that constant was different! Wild. I’d love to taste one.

The story relates the efforts to prevent a similar fate befalling the Cavendish, and focuses more on challenges in the development of the Cavendish’s successor.

The Washington Post relates how growers of Red Delicious apples have selected for other attributes (hardiness and color) more than taste, and have turned one of the most popular apples into an also-ran. Some intersting insights into the production and distribution methods. Growing up, I certainly remember that most fruits had a season and you couldn’t get some things at different points in the year. The implication here is that consumers have a more consistent supply of produce, but that methods for storage preservation (i.e., Red Delicious apples can sit for months after harvest, in order to create a supply for after the season ends) may also lead to a decline in quality.