Episode 22: Design

What’s orange and silver, and seen all over? To find out, listen in as Glenn stumps Doug once again with his hints on the origins of a great business idea, an idea sparked by an unfortunate event that not only led to greater product safety in the re-design, but to an unmissable brand – except by Doug. Let’s roll.

Transcript

Glenn Suart 0:00

Doug Ross 0:12

Welcome to Conversations on Startups, a podcast brought to you by Douglas Ross, author of the book, Spark Click Go: How to Bring Your Creative Business Idea to Life, and Glenn Suart, of Today’s Great Idea, a radio series featuring over 300 origin stories of businesses, brands and inventions that have changed the culture. Welcome to today’s conversation.

Doug Ross 0:48

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Conversations on Startups with Doug and Glenn. I’m Doug Ross, author of Spark Click Go. And this is my friend and colleague, Glenn Suart. How ya doin’ Glenn?

Glenn Suart 1:01

I’m doing great. Today’s Great Idea’s (in Canada) is where I’m from, and I help people start businesses and take action with their ideas. I think that’s really the most appropriate way of saying that because a lot of people have ideas but of course will never do anything with them. So today’s subject, it’s a really interesting one, product design. We’re not focused so much on the business design of how you’re gonna do it and all that, but the products themselves. How do you design something? And why do you design it? Is that a competitive advantage and all that kind of good stuff? Do you have a favorite product there, Doug – resonates with you design wise?

Doug Ross 1:37

One that I like is the EERO, it’s a home Wi Fi mesh system. I like that. It’s very sleek, easy to use, looks good. You plug it in, in various places, various corners that your Wi Fi doesn’t cover… comes in a nice box with very simple instructions which is kind of the way things are done today, you know, so I like that. They even put a nightlight on this little gadget -helps certain trips at certain times of the day. That’s pretty good, you know, what about you?

Glenn Suart 2:16

I’ve been a big fan of the classic Apple design of products, you know, across the board. I use a MacBook Pro, I have an iPhone. Everything is designed as if it was designed for me, it seems, and that’s the elegance of really good product design. It does things well, and it speaks to you, and it works, you know. And that’s the thing I like about Macs… product, generally speaking is that you don’t have to be an expert in any of this stuff. It all works out of the box… great… so very much that way. The design is critical.

Ali 2:49

You’re listening to Conversations on Startups with Doug and Glenn, merci pour nous avoir joindre.

Glenn Suart 2:58

One of my favorite things as a kid and I hate to say it – I don’t hate to say it but I still have a lot of it – is Lego. Lego is a big brand around the world and, you know, pieces that you buy today fit perfectly with pieces you bought 50 years ago. It’s amazing. And the line extensions that they do – another classic example of great design to make things work for the long term and that becomes the business. It’s so perfect. It’s just excellent.

Doug Ross 3:26

They call them Legos here in the States.

Glenn Suart 3:29

Oh, I know. I don’t I don’t particularly like that. It’s not the right terminology from what I understand.

Doug Ross 3:34

Well, we got the numbers so what can I tell you?

Glenn Suart 3:36

Alright. Well, I do have a story about product design. Sam and Anna live in Oregon and they’ve just started a new business and things are going really, really well until disaster strikes. One night Sam is driving along the road towing one of his products, which is painted black, and he’s turning left at a four way stop when an oncoming car hits him… because the driver couldn’t see that, you know, Sam was towing this thing behind him. Thankfully no one was seriously hurt which is good. But the product was, you know, completely damaged. And Sam worried that this would happen over and over again as other people used the product so he and Anna got to thinking, and thought, well, maybe this thing [the incident] is actually an opportunity to change the design, and so they came up with a crazy idea. Instead of painting the unit black, which they had for all, you know, all their products, they change it to the, you know, the bright color of highway signs so that everyone can see them. And, you know, they even put their name on it type of thing, so the rest is history. Any idea which business I’m talking about, or product?

Doug Ross 4:40

So they painted them in a highway reflector type of color, Is that what you are saying?

Glenn Suart 4:41

The thing they were towing behind them was black but now it’s a highway color.

Doug Ross 4:46

It was black but now a highway color? Jeez, I don’t know. What do you tow behind your vehicle.

Glenn Suart 5:00

Perhaps a trailer?

Doug Ross 5:01

A trailer of some type? A hot dog vending trailer or maybe a trailer you just live in? Maybe… maybe one of those silver trailers?

Glenn Suart 5:12

How about an orange trailer? How’s that as a clue?

Doug Ross 5:15

Okay, but I can’t picture any. Winnebago? I don’t know.

Glenn Suart 5:19

How about a U-Haul?

Doug Ross 5:20

Oh, okay, yeah, there you go, U-Haul. I like it.

Glenn Suart 5:24

They started the… it’s a fascinating story about Sam and Anna created U-Haul. Because, you know, it didn’t just spring up from nowhere. But this is one of the big problems that they have. They thought… they were making their own trailers, and they painted them all black, and it actually was detrimental. But by making them orange, they stood out. Obviously, it was safer as a product design but more importantly it stood out when you’re driving on a road compared to all the other trailers out there. So from a design point of view, same trailer as anybody else, but much more noticeable. And worked…obviously… it’s a 3 billion plus business a year now. Who else can compete with them? Because they’ve got trailers everywhere, and trucks. And if you know that orange color…it just works. So to me it’s a great story about product design, because it doesn’t have to be… in this case it came from solving another problem, the product got better. But the product design actually made the business successful. That’s the other thing.

Doug Ross 6:26

Well, and I wonder what they had for objectives there. What were they designing for? When they had that incident did they sit back and say, Wow, what we really need to do is design for safety. Clearly, that was one of the inputs. I wonder if they also thought of this branding component that you mentioned as well and said, Look, let’s do something that’s both safe and that stands out. Because I think that’s essential to any design project that you take on. What are you designing for? And it can be more than one objective? Clearly. [Yeah] So let’s go back to your Apple example just for a second, Unless you had more insights on the U haul one, [No], let me let you answer that, okay. So on the Apple example, when they’re designing their Macs, what would you say would be some of the criteria that they would have? What are they designing for?

Glen Suart 6:40

It sounds obvious, but they’re designing for me. They’re not worried about what they think so much. They also know – we don’t know what we don’t know. We can’t tell them as a consumer what we want. So they have an idea that they start with and then they refine it by testing it on consumers like me who love their product, and, Does it fit, not fit, type of thing. They make mistakes like anybody else. But by having the criteria being: it’s gotta work, and then the client has to like it, or appreciate it, or in fact use it. Very important. I would think that’s a critical criteria. What other criterias do you see?

Doug Ross 8:00

I like what you’re bringing up? Because we’re really talking about, For whom are you designing? So there’s objectives and who are you picturing. So in this case, obviously, Mac… computer, they are looking at Glenn Suart and they’re saying, that is our avatar, that’s our guy! We are designing for him. So it brings that up. So I think ease of use is one of the things that clearly they had in mind, the elegance – a lot of these things – every part of it is elegant. It’s minimalistic, especially now if you think about the iPhones. And Steve Jobs was famous for saying What do you mean, you want a stylus? Are you kidding? You’ve got a finger. Most people have fingers. Let’s not have a stylus. How about a power button? We don’t need one. You know, let’s try and do it. You know, really, and maybe that’s what you meant by elegant? [This sort of the least] Yeah, that really minimalistic sort of approach to get the job done. But I know when when Jobs came back to Apple, he said, Well, look, we’ve got to simplify. We’ve got way too many products here. Let’s do one Mac for Glenn… for sort of the individual and let’s do one business Mac as well. So he really streamlined by thinking about those users and what would be ideal for them.

Doug Ross 9:23

Hey podcast listeners, we’re gonna take a short break now. If you’re enjoying the show, feel free to invite your friends, remember to subscribe, and if you want to help spread the word leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app. Each episode of Conversations on Startups focuses on a single topic. If you want to comment on something you’ve heard on the podcast, or suggest a topic for us to cover in a future episode, send an email to:go@todaysgreatidea.com or douglas@sparkclickgo.com. Glenn and I appreciate you and hope you find our uncut and unrehearsed stories, perspectives, and tips helpful. Speaking of helpful stuff-let’s pick up where we left off.

Glenn Suart 10:09

To your point there, simple product design is great, because if you can get the product right you don’t need as many different SKUs (stock keeping units different, you know, types) and of course because you have then, more products [ughh], that means more inventory and more management, more storage. [More cost] It’s huge. So if you can keep your product elegant and simple, it could actually save your money… lots of business in the long run.

Doug Ross 10:38

Yeah, that brings up this important question. Again, who are you creating this for? Is it for the really innovative customer, and that’s great, and especially maybe at the beginning, but if you’re thinking about growth, you’ve got to be thinking broader than just that innovator who’s going to use your product no matter what and, and you can put a lot of functionality into it and they may love that. But the bigger part of the market, you probably need to go simpler, fewer bells and whistles. Think of your average car today, Do you use every function that’s available to you on your car or in your car?

Glenn Suart 11:16

Not a chance. The biggest problem I have is the nut that holds the wheel. [Yeah] I digress. The key thing I find with product design, it’s never perfect. And you can, you… I’ve also been in situations where people try to make the most perfect product design. It will never be perfect. So the advice I guess would be while you strive for elegance and simplicity and all these things, you can’t wait for it, you’ve got to test what you’ve got. Because you’ll learn that something that’s perfect for your clients today may not be good tomorrow. If you think back to, you know, the iPod or the initial iPhone, very relatively simple in both cases compared to today’s standards but the expectations were different then. And now they’re… they’re much more different. And they’re going to continue to evolve. So when you’re doing product design, you’ve got to think a little bit forward so that your design is ready for the expectations at that point, but also be prepared to keep changing your design over time.

Doug Ross 12:20

Yeah, I agree with that. It makes me think of surfing and you’ve got to look ahead to see where the breakers are coming [Yeah] and design for that. Agree with that. It is a perpetual thing that you’re doing, improving. Of course it varies a lot by industries because in some areas, pick software as an example, you can, maybe not [do] a complete redesign, but you could if you wanted to, completely redesign, for example an app and push it out next week. You can’t do that, if you are building cars. It just takes a longer period of time. And I think that’s part of the discipline to knowing when to lock down your design. Okay, that’s it, design freeze, and we go forward. Now in house, you’re working on that next version, but the commercial part of your business has to… you have to sell something. You gotta lock it at some point. Put it out there, and you’re gonna get a lot of valuable input and user feedback on that design. Hopefully, you’ve done enough on the upfront part so that you’re not taking a massive risk. Hey, we perfected our design. We had this thing in stealth mode, we waited, we put it out to the market and it bombed. You don’t want that. Get it out to smaller groups. Test it on smaller groups before you scale up and do any of that sort of thing for sure. So what about tools? What kind of tools are out there for design you can think of?

Glenn Suart 12:58

Well, that’s a great question. I know that today, there’s lots of tools if you’re doing product work. On our cooler business that we have here in Canada, Michael, our marketing guy who’s also a very effective product designer – he’s sort of a bit of a unicorn that we’ve got [and] – he uses things like AutoCAD and other things to design the products and visualize them. And it works really, really well because then you can communicate the design and you can test some of the ideas with these kinds of tools in AutoCAD. And there’s other…there’s other software that’s very similar, but the sooner you can sort of visualize something and then send that visualization to a manufacturer or tooling expert to get a real physical thing, boy that helps solve your thing… and reduces the time to actually produce a product.

Doug Ross 14:39

Yeah, and it makes a whole lot of sense. So there’s… there’s a term – design for manufacturing or design for manufacturability. [Yes] So, your manufacturing partner can tell you Hey, listen, if we could reduce a couple of parts here, or change the material, I think we could make this to your spec for 40% less, that kind of thing or that would enable us to scale up much quicker, these types of things. So again, it comes back to What are you designing for? For manufacturability, for user experience, for longevity, for wow factor? There’s a lot of these things, but it’s a… it’s a really great thing to become a little bit more knowledgeable about. There’s a whole design school, small ‘s’ or big ‘S’, you know, Stanford has a… literally a design school. I’m sure other schools in Canada do as well.

Glenn Suart 15:34

There’s companies that specialize in helping you, yeah, do this exact thing. [Absolutely] And…but as a startup, you know, you can do this yourself, you know, what products you like and what you think are good. But you can also go to a whole bunch of places to see other examples of very good, high quality products that other people think are good, and, you know, riff off of those ones. Not rip them off but, you know, riff off them and understand… this one makes sense , well How can I apply some of what they’ve done to what we’ve done to make the product better?

Doug Ross 16:07

Yeah, great idea.

Glenn Suart 16:08

The more you understand your product design, the better. But again, you’ll never be perfect but, you know, like Steve Jobs, don’t just accept what other people do. Why do we need a power button? Perfect example. Challenge, the usual norms in your product design.

Doug Ross 16:25

Yeah. And you can stand out. So look, it’s so critical to that company, it was essential from day one, design was absolutely essential. And they knew that they could beat the incumbent, especially in the long term on design – when you looked at clunky, heavy not user friendly [alternative computers]. Remember, even the user interfaces when you and I were going to school? People were using DOS commands. So now we’re talking about the software design and it comes down to the user experience. Okay, we can teach people to learn DOS, or we can come out with WYSIWYG – What You See Is What You Get. Things that work with the human psyche a lot easier. And that’s what Apple did from the from the get go. So you can win based on… on design. So I agree sharpen the [old] skills in this area.

Din 17:17

You’re listening to Conversations on Startups with Doug and Glenn. Thanks for joining us. Let’s get back to the show.

Glenn Suart 17:25

Key things… takeaways from today: Design is really important. It can help differentiate you. It will never be perfect, I think, so you have to be thoughtful about trying to make something work sooner rather than later. There’s lots of great places to go to find great design things to inspire you. What are the things [you remember that] we talked about today?

Doug Ross 17:43

Well, we just talked about designing for a particular… what are the objectives? What are you designing for? And for whom are you designing? Which is essential. So who is that user? What use case do you have in mind? Have you painted a picture of this person and are you designing for that person? Or if you know it has to be… it has to be useful for a lot of people Have you tried it in a range of people? So if you’re making something that’s one size fits all, as an example, you can have more than one sort of image in mind and you should test it on a range of people. People come in all different heights and sizes and with different visual acuity, hearing acuity, there’s a lot of these sorts of things that if you’re designing for a broad group, you’ll want to test for a broad group as well and find something that is ideally loved across that group. So… so yeah, those are a lot of things that we talked about today, about design. Well, I think… I think it’s probably fair to say that companies are getting better at this. I think it has been part of the trend in the last 10, 20 years or more. Companies are getting better at design and you know you’re dealing with one when you can pick up something, figure out how to use it with no or limited instructions, and it’ll do the job it’s supposed to do for you – you know then that you’re dealing with good design.

Glenn Suart 17:56

Yep, very much so. Well, I think we’ve talked a lot here about product design. I think next week we have a very interesting topic that appeals to most people because for a lot of people this is why they get into startups or new businesses. And the subject is, Doug?

Doug Ross 19:29

It’s how do you pay yourself? How should you pay yourself? Compensate yourself and your early employees.

Glenn Suart 19:36

So let’s get that half million dollars annual salary right off the bat. Right?

Doug Ross 19:42

Of course.

Glenn Suart 19:43

Right. Don’t think that’s gonna happen but there are ways to compensate yourself and definitely we want to talk about that next week.

Doug Ross 19:49

Okay, sounds good, Glenn.

Glenn Suart 19:51

I’m Glenn Suart, in Canada, for Today’s Great Ideas.

Doug Ross 19:54

And I’m Doug Ross, coming to you from the United States. It’s been a pleasure. We’ll see you next time.

Doug Ross

Conversations on Startups is a production of Glenn Suart and Douglas Ross. We hope you’re having fun listening but mostly that you take action on your business idea. For more inspiration visit our websites: todaysgreatidea.com and sparkclickgo.com. Another episode of Conversations on Startups will drop soon, or is already available to binge. Thanks for joining us, and remember to subscribe and invite your friends. See ya next time!

Transcribed by https://otter.ai