Pleasure Principle
In 2009 I wrote about my visit to Jimmyjane, a company that designs non-crappy vibrators and scented candles and the like. While claiming to evolve intimacy, they lacked any point of view on either the mechanical or the emotional aspects of sexual and sexy.
I’m excited to learn about another company, Minna Life who say they are “bringing user experience innovation to the pleasure product space.” They have one product already (Ola) and are raising funds on indiegogo for another (Limon).
It’s hard to trace the source of their “innovations” – which might just be cool features (or at worst, feature-creep) such as change-how-hard-you-squeeze-to-change-how-hard-it-vibrates, highly multi-purpose form, and recordable vibration patterns.
What’s very cool, specifically with Limon, is that there’s a video that includes people discussing what they like about using it (no, it doesn’t show them using it!) and the text of the site includes quotes from “early testers.”
My initial reaction (e.g., from looking at their site) is that Minna Life is making incremental improvements in their category. Of course, how hard is it to recognize innovation? I’m not a user of these products, so what do I know? Does an innovation have to smack you in the face (if you will)? Do you look at it and immediately understand how it changes everything about how you have been going about a behavior? Or does it sneak in the back door (if you will), arriving in a recognizable form but ultimately enabling something dramatically new? I remember thinking that the iPad was just a comically large iPhone. While I can’t say what in fact it turned out to be, it so clearly was not that and has indeed proven to be something dramatic.
At worst, a company in this category is taking a user-centered and creative approach. At best, there’s a perspective about facilitated sexuality that will bring significantly new experiences to the world.