Scenerios : Complimenting What You’ve Heard

coupleDeveloping a product that will stand out in the market place is a difficult task.  That task is a little easier when the market place is still developing; as is the case in the tablet market today.  With relatively few offerings to choose from, it shouldn’t be too difficult to make yours stand out above the rest.  But how do you do it?  How do you take your idea to the next level?  How do you compete against the likes of the Apple iPad?

Product development is a straight forward process.  It involves watching and listening to the customer, developing a concept that will deliver their wants and needs, and then optimizing that product to deliver exactly what the customer wants, consistently.  Seems easy huh?  Let’s take a tablet for an example.

You are a product development guy, charged with coming up with the next big competitor to the Apple iPad.  What do you do?  You go out into the world eager to watch and listen.  You purposefully go to places where you know you will see people using similar devices.  You go to places like Starbuck’s, PanaraBread Co., your local busy airport terminal, and you sit and watch.  You watch people engaging in all types of activities like surfing the internet, reading e-books, listening to pod-casts, checking their e-mail, streaming music and watching movies.  Some people are using tablets, some are using laptops, and some are using smart-phones.  Most people have these devices lying on a table or on their lap; deeply engaged in whatever it is they are doing.  So you watch.  You watch how they carry their devices when they walk in.  You observe what else they have in their hands and what they do with it all when they sit down.  After a while you start to get a good feel for what your device can be that will make it stand out.

One thing you notice is that many people set their iPad down and then keep their hand on it so that it doesn’t slide across the table.  OK, your new tablet will have a rubber back so you can set it down and not worry about it sliding off the table, check.  Another thing you notice is that everybody seems to be scrolling up and down pages pretty frequently.  You wonder if you are surrounded by speed readers or are their screens too small.  OK, we will have as big of a screen as we can, check.  You notice most people using headphones if they are watching movies or listening to music.  OK, speakers aren’t all that important so we will put them on the back so as not to take up valuable screen resources, check.

This all seems logical and is probably how Motorola came up with some of the smart features for their new Xoom.  I applaud them for their efforts but have one small criticism; I think they left out a critical step in the “Listen” stage of product development, scenario thinking.  The traditional Voice of the Customer (VOC) activity says to watch customers use similar products and find ways to improve on them.  With scenario thinking, you take the VOC and extrapolate out to similar scenarios where the product might also be used.  In the above situations, loud areas with lots of people, most people who want to actually hear their tablet will be wearing headphones.  This data alone may lead one to believe that speaker placement must not be all that important.  They could get away with having them on the back because most people will be wearing headphones anyway.   However, if you take scenarios into account, you would ask yourself, “Where else might people use this device for these same activities?” Maybe they would use them at home on their breakfast table, maybe while sitting on a couch or a recliner.  What happens then?  Well, as Michael Calore and Dylan Tweney point out in their recent review on Wired.com titled, “We’re Xoomin’, and it Feels Pretty Good”,

“…They sound fine if you turn the tablet around to face the speakers toward you, but if you’re holding the Xoom so you can see its screen, the sound is projecting away from your head. Everything sounds muffled: Movie dialogue is harder to understand, and music just sounds dead and lifeless.”

One could then make the argument that there are docking stations made for those situations.  Wouldn’t the user have the tablet in its docking station while they were eating breakfast so that they wouldn’t have the speakers pointed at the table?  Wouldn’t you have it in its docking station if you wanted to watch a movie on the couch?  Maybe, but they address this issue too,

 “…but when you plop the Xoom into the dock to watch a movie, the dock speakers sit behind the tablet, too. So it’s the same problem all over again, just a little louder.”

So, for all of the good additional features on the Motorola Xoom, they have dropped the ball on what many consider one of the main uses for a tablet, absorbing media, much of which is audio!  Hopefully this one mistake doesn’t hurt their sales too much.

This is a good example of what happens when the development team fails to thoroughly thinking through the many usage conditions of a product during the “Listen” phase of the development cycle.  So remember, don’t just watch and listen to customers at one of many points of use and assume you have seen everything there is to see.  Take and expound on that data with as many scenarios as your team thinks are reasonable.  Always think of new ways and places that you product can be used.  If you can make your product shine in those usage conditions too, then your product will clearly stand out above its competition.

 

It’s Easy

nagoya castleI thought it would be easy.

Transformation of the manufacturing company I worked for seemed simple. I toured and learned from companies in the Toyota Supply base around Nagoya, Japan. It was 1986. The US manufactured goods for both the US domestic and the world markets. The methods I saw and, more importantly, the way of thinking behind those methods could transform any business.

The ideas were simple. Check, act, plan, do: what could be easier? CAP-D! Understand the current state. Set a target. Find the causes. Verify the causes. List the countermeasures. Select the best countermeasures. Plan the implementation. Execute the plan. Go back to check. Document the results of a large sheet of paper. Do again.

The method’s universal. Understanding the current state applies to customers, problems, or work processes. Once you understand the current state, when you see “the actual thing,” then the rest is easy. Spin the wheel. Spin it once, improve your business. Spin it twice, improve some more. Spin it for a decade everywhere in your organization, be best in class. Spin the wheel for 50 years, be the best in the world. But don’t let up. And involve all employees and suppliers.

It’s so simple, so elegant. A simple fractal transforms your business. Just change our thinking.

Almost 25 years later, how did something so simple prove so elusive? Many of our manufacturing companies are gone. Some are downsized. Some are bankrupt. Some are outsourced. Some offloaded millions of dollars in debt to make slim profit margins from decimated product lines. Some are little more than sales organizations for overseas manufacturers.

Not all of this is due to our failure to continuously improve our organizations – not all, but much.  Many of these problems exist or were more severe due to our inability to do a simple, but very difficult thing – give ourselves and our people the methods and the motiviation to improve our work every single day.

Perhaps the simple ideas were exotic plants – they couldn’t thrive in different environments.

I believe we can use the past 25 years of experiences to move forward. Maybe we need our own simple ideas:

  • LISTEN – Observe & Understand.  Go to where it’s happening. Watch and listen. Capture what is really happening. Set the target.
  • ENRICH – Explore & Discover. List and create alternatives. Explore the alternatives. Discover the “best alternative.”
  • OPTIMIZE – Improve & Perfect. Tear it down to details. Combine & recombine. Eliminate future failures & problems. Implement.

We’d like to hear your thoughts about the ways to a higher quality, more productive future for our organizations.

 

 

Adaptive Design

Adaptive crabA fascinating example of a science discovery that will lead to a great conceptual design for lithium-ion batteries is in the article, “Tiny Capsules Can Heal Worn-Out Batteries” posted on “Wired Science” on February 22, 2011 at 10:22 am.

My interest in this advance is twofold: (1) such microspheres might solve a critical weakness of lithium-ion batteries, fires; and (2) these microspheres provide a great opportunity for what I call “adaptive” or “biological” design. “Adaptive” designs use materials with properties that change based on some variable: temperature, pressure, proximity to chemicals (including proteins), and so on. The use of such materials allow engineers to develop products that respond to environmental changes, as described in the article referenced below.

In the article, Devin Powel of Science News writes, “Damage to a battery — or a short circuit between its components — can cause problems other than a shorter life span. Out-of-control electrical currents have been known to create hot spots that grow into a raging fire.

‘It’s not a common occurrence, but when it happens, the consequences are severe,’ Scott White said.

To safeguard against this type of failure, White developed a second kind of microsphere made of solid polyethylene, an inexpensive and widely available plastic. A small quantity of these spheres embedded in the anode and other battery components can function as a safety cutoff switch. If the temperature inside the battery rises above 105° Celsius, the spheres melt into a thin layer of insulating material that shuts off the flow of electricity, preventing a conflagration.”

This is one example of “adaptive” design where engineered materials adapt or react to their changing environment much like biological entities. Elaborate and expensive control systems aren’t necessary in adaptive designs. Avoidance of critical failure modes is built-in. Consistent function is provided to the user in a customized manner.

The challenge now, as it is in many of such “adaptive” material breakthroughs, is to develop products that provide the most stable performance in varying conditions at low cost.

While we’re a long way from developing anything as adaptive as the ghost crab in the picture, engineers now have a chance to change their pespective. They now create devices that react to their environments providing better and safer performance to every customer. Technical people create designs that move toward the goal of providing a unique experience tailored to need of every individual customer – custom-made, mass-produced products.

 

Pay at the Pump

fuel pumpOver the last couple of weeks I have run into the same issue again and again during my morning commute. The situation goes like this, see if it sounds familiar. I get in the car and pull out of the garage only to realize that I need to stop and get gas. There are three gas stations (two of which are the same brand) to choose from, without going considerably out of my way, so it is not like I have an overabundance of choices. I make a choice of brand, drive in and proceed to pick a pump. I slide my card in the reader at the pump and pump my gas. As usual, I take this opportunity to wash my windshield, side windows, back window, headlights and taillights. When the tank is full, the pump clicks off. I deposit the squeegee back into the bucket and return the pump nozzle into its holder. The next question that pops up on the screen is “Receipt? Press YES or NO.” Now, because I like to keep track of my gas mileage (more on that in a later post) and because I have a hard time remembering to tell my wife the amount to enter into the check register, I always press the YES button. Here comes the annoyance. The screen then reads, “Please see cashier for receipt.” ARG! The words on that screen hit me like someone punching me in the stomach. The fact that I have to take time out of my day to walk into the store, wait in line, ask for a receipt and walk back out to my car doesn’t bother me all that much (I certainly can use the exercise). The thing that bothers me so much is the missed opportunity for this gas station to provide excellent customer service.

The invention of pay at the pump gave the decision making power back to the customer. The customer could again decide whether they wanted to go into the store to pay for their gas. This simple invention added value to society by giving people back time into their day. Now that pay at the pump has been around for a relatively long time, it seems that gas stations, at least the ones in my area, are dropping the ball on delivering this one piece of customer service. Maybe they don’t realize the value I place on that 60 seconds of my time. Maybe they consciously or subconsciously want the customers to have to come into the store because they know that customers are more likely to buy something if they can just get them to walk through the door. Maybe they, like everybody else these days, have been forced to cut back on direct labor due to the economic slowdown. Whatever the case may be, they are failing to deliver a critical piece of customer service that I (and I’m sure I’m not alone) look for in a gas station.

There are many different ways I can think of to make sure that the gas pumps never run out of receipt paper. Maybe the gas station owner can start recording replacement rates by pump number and look for signals or trends that would indicate the best time of the day or week to replace the roles. Maybe the cost of throwing away the last couple of feet of receipt paper would be outweighed by the cost of not completely satisfying the customer so that they will return happily every time they need gas. Maybe someone could invent a system to alert the attendant when the paper is running low so that they could take a minute and go out and replace the role with a new one. Maybe each gas station owner could empower their people to come up with the best system that works for them, in their environment, and allow them to iterate through the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle many times, constantly driving towards a better solution.

Whichever solution they choose to implement, I look forward to the day when “Pay at the Pump” returns back to actually completing the transaction AT THE PUMP!

Do you have any ideas on how to improve this process?
Mike W.

Talk Quality

child playsetWelcome to our first post on the power of LEO blog! This post is the first step toward increasing the awareness of quality in our daily lives.

The awareness of quality is noticing the negative effects of poor quality on our lives. The term “quality” is holistic. “Quality” applies to goods, services, our behavior, and relationships with others.

That awareness of quality develops the realization that quality is my personal responsibility. Quality isn’t something that I can delegate. Criticizing the quality of others isn’t productive until I have done everything in my power to assure that the quality of my behavior, relationships, work, goods, and services is of the highest caliber.

Poor quality is a critical issue in our society. Poor quality causes injuries, lost wages, lost jobs, and a 1000 delays and aggravations in our daily life and work. Consider:

  1. The low-quality subprime mortgage investment products directly contributed to the 2008 recession.
  2. “Food-borne diseases cause 76 million illnesses, 325,000 hospitalizations, and 5,000 deaths in the United States each year.” (Center for Disease Control)
  3. “Americans spend twice as much as residents of other developed countries on healthcare, but get lower quality, less efficiency and have the least equitable system, according to a report released on Wednesday. The United States ranked last when compared to six other countries — Britain, Canada, Germany, Netherlands, Australia and New Zealand, the Commonwealth Fund report found.” (Rueters, June 23, 2010)

Or, consider just a few of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission recalls for this year (2011).

  • 165,000 office chairs recalled because “the front seat support part of the chair can crack and fail, posing a fall hazard to consumers.”
  • 540 large fire alarm control panels recalled because “the recalled fire alarm control panels can fail to send a signal to alert monitoring centers in the event of a fire.”
  • 5,700 convertible irons recalled because “the iron can overheat and cause a fire because of a wiring issue, posing a risk of burn injury to consumers.”
  • 58,000 video baby monitors recalled because “the battery in the handheld video monitor can overheat and rupture, posing a burn hazard to consumers.”
  • 4,600 children’s playsets recalled because “the swing seats on the playsets can crack and break in half, causing the user to fall to the ground.”

Blaming companies or individuals for poor quality is not the objective of this blog.

The objective of this blog is to encourage discussion about:

  • How can quality awareness increase?
  • How can quality awareness be converted into a quality mindset?
  • How can a quality mindset improve quality to the benefit of society?

Please join in our discussions.