Diagnosing the discordant nature of physical-digital products
Reflecting on why there is a lack of harmony between physical products and digital services
This is the second of a series of reflections around bridging the physical-digital divide. I recently presented a 45 minute overview at Interactions 14 in Amsterdam on 8th February 2014. You can find the slides here, some feedback on storify here, and a video of the talk (for full effect) here.
In my previous article, ‘A lack of harmony between physical products and digital services’ I explored the lack of harmony between physical products and digital services and why it was important.
In this article I will explore the reasons for this lack of harmony.
There are four main reasons (and one huge elephant in the room) I believe there is a lack of harmony between physical and digital design — primarily focused on hardware and software teams. I covered the four in my talk, but not, number five, the elephant.
- Hardware is being commoditised
- Timelines and production methods differ
- Teams don’t understand each other
- Teams are separated
- A lack of investment in physical-digital innovation
1. Hardware is being commoditised
With the ever-growing and changing digital industry, hardware is becoming more commoditised.
Hardware is being commoditised
As with any industry, costs are being driven down by competition, but the biggest competition is throughout Asia. China, for example, is giving away Industrial Design to get the bigger manufacturing gigs. If the design talent was scarce in those regions, then that might not be a problem for the west, but Chinese design students are getting better and better, growing in numbers all the time.
Clients are obsessed with what’s behind the screen than around it
Most clients of Industrial Design these days are struggling to see the value of what sits around the screen compared to the value, engagement and loyalty (albeit short-term) of what sits behind it. It’s hard for them to think beyond touchscreens because there is little else offered in most visualisations of the future. Anything else seems like heresy given the popularity of the iPhone, after all.
Objects are becoming more transient
There was a time when you’d buy a kettle or toaster and it would last a lifetime. If anything went wrong you could fix it. In part this is due to the commoditisation of hardware, and an ever increasingly fickle attitude to products (just think of the smartphone you upgrade every 18 months to two years). But also, the moaning from the older generation around how things not being built like they used to be, has some truth in it. These products are not designed to last like they once were.
2. Timelines and production methods differ
Hardware and software teams have to operate on different schedules with different production methods
Hardware and software design operate on vastly different production schedules
The traditional model of electronic production development would have software development beginning after the physical hardware and its related controls have been locked-in. There is often no way of changing a feature of hardware without retooling, and incurring large delays and ever-increasing costs
It takes a minimum of 18 months to design and manufacture something genuinely new (much longer if you need to do material selection). It used to take much longer, but the commoditisation and pressure to be first to market has put more stress on the industry — again, mostly to the Asia’s benefit and the West’s loss. In some cases, the Chinese can see something on Monday, analyse it on Tuesday, redesign it on Wednesday and manufacture it by Saturday, ready for the next week. While this is impressive, it is mostly around tweaked versions of existing products rather than new products — it still takes a long time to create something good.
Software development can take a long time, but mostly when there is an older system to replace, with a lot of legacy data and systems. These days, software is being developed in months not years, with weekly, daily or even hourly releases. When software has to interface intimately with physical hardware, eg, as firmware, this has to be completed upto two months before launch, and then it can be hard to update if you don’t own the firmware upgrading distribution channel like Apple does. Many people could be stuck with the original firmware they got with the device for as long as they keep that device.
Software-based Agile and Lean startup approaches are seemingly incompatible for production-ready hardware
Various form of Agile or Lean Startup have infiltrated more and more software development, but can these approaches really work for hardware?
How can you continually iterate hardware once it has shipped and is in people’s homes?
Are you going to be able to send someone around customers’ houses to upgrade their devices?
Although, this isn’t a new idea it is something that doesn’t really scale for the masses. The reality is that both Agile and Lean Startup approaches put too much emphasis on finer development being so close to the original requirements for them to work with the delivery of well-engineered hardware. The sort of detailed engineering drawings, consideration for possible abuses, and iterative tweaking of the tooling ready for mass manufacture just can’t be achieved with such rapid and focused approaches.
That’s not to say these approaches can’t be used with software development teams working with hardware teams — this is still valuable. And, there are potential opportunities to employ Agile and Lean approaches within the research and concept development stages of a project to keep the team focused and efficient.
3. Teams don’t understand each other
A lack of engagement, appreciation and respect
The biggest challenge to overcome regarding the cause of a lack of harmony is a lack of engagement, appreciation, and respect between teams.
Most software people have no idea what an Industrial Designer does, and likewise, Industrial Designers are intimidated by the complexity of, or are dismissive of the skill involved in, developing software. There is so much jargon, and hype that you could understand why — hardware people aren’t very good at promoting themselves and speaking out.
Industrial Designers, like many other people who User Experience designers have to work with, find the whole field increasingly confusing. The same job titles can mean different things in different organisations — sometimes requiring visual design skills, sometimes HTML and CSS. Sometimes, one person can’t do one other aspect of User Experience that another person can. But the real problem is that there is a real lack of stability within the UX field itself around what to call people, whether IA, Interaction Designer, UX consultant, Experience architect, UI engineer, or any combination of these.
A pay gap that is hard to stomach
In the rare event that Industrial Designers have to work alongside a digital User Experience designer, the pay gap is a considerable challenge for some to overcome. At a renowned Industrial Design consultancy that was trying to grow its User Experience capabilities, the plan was aborted when they found out that a UX designer with fewer years experience than a particular Industrial Designer whom she may be working alongside was being paid almost double. This was an extreme case in San Francisco, but it is indicative of a huge pay gap in the market place between those that deal with the bits and those that deal with atoms.
4. Teams are separated
Software and hardware teams rarely work together
Of the people that I have spoken to so far it seems like the hardware teams are generally separated for large periods of time from the software teams. In some agencies like Frog and SmartDesign, there is greater cross-working, but that assumes that one of thse integrated agencies will be doing both parts of the work.
Agencies compete with other agencies who have overlapping skills
One of the biggest challenges that an organisation has is working out who they need to engage. Traditionally, software teams may have their preferred suppliers, and likewise hardware teams will have their’s. As agencies have recognised the need to build integrated capability, many may end up working on different parts of the problem. Due to the nature of competition, for future work, IP, and talent, these agencies may be reluctant to work closely together, even though deep down they know they need to in order to create a better product.
Agencies are sometimes separated from in-house teams
A common occurrence is the separation that external agencies may have from the in-house teams that have to live with the decisions. This is sometimes setup in such a way by the senior executives who may procure the services from outside, but is something that any respected design agency should challenge to ensure that the ideas they conceive can be delivered all the way through to launch.
In-house teams are divided within their own organisational silos
One of the most common challenges is that the organisation has been setup in a way that means the hardware R&D teams are often separated from the software teams. This may be a new phenomenon as one organisation may only have recently grown one side, but it leads to a lot of discontinuities in terms of communication, alignment to the product vision and how individuals are motivated to deliver against that vision.
5. A lack of investment in physical-digital innovation
A point that I cut out of my presentation in Amsterdam, but formed the basis for a lot of my questioning over how to address the challenges, was that of investment. It’s usually the elephant in the room in discussions of ideal approaches to deliver great products and services.
You can’t have everyone in the same room throughout the project
[pic of big party]
The obvious answer that I heard people I interviewed was that you need both Industrial Designers and User Experience designers in the same room, working together on the same project from the start. This makes some sense, except that there are parts of the process when they will need to work independently — eg, what’s the UX person going to be doing when the engineering details for manufacture are being developed? Where it doesn’t make sense, is that you would also need mechanical engineers, electronic engineers, business strategists and software developers working together as well. That’s an expensive room of resources, and doesn’t consider the demands that an individual may have outside of a particular project.
It’s hard to involve multiple parties when you don’t know what you are doing
Where it gets even more complicated, is that for real innovation projects it is rare that you know what you are going to do from the outset, so how do you know who to have in the room in the first place?
Most of the time, you have a pretty clear, but often misguided, brief
Most designers aren’t given the apparent luxury to have a fuzzy problem to firm up, clarify and innovate around. Most of the time we are given very clear direction on what a client wants. Not from a requirement perspective, but from a solution perspective. This is when designers moan about their role being around stylists or pixel pushers — metaphorically putting lipstick on a pig of an idea, or polishing a turd, dependent on how graphic you want to be. It is hard enough in this situation to challenge the brief within the scope of what your team can deliver. A software project may have to stay a software project, a hardware project may have to stay a hardware project. It is difficult to justify the addition of someone with expertise ‘from the other side’ in a project where the client has an already fixed view on what the solution might be.
Constant collaboration isn’t that effective or efficient
The other challenge is that constant collaboration as seemingly advocated by so many people, can be a great weapon of alignment but cancerous to quality thinking and execution. People need time by themselves to craft their thinking of design solutions. The challenge comes in knowing when to divide and when to come together.
Organisation and teams need to recognise the longer-time value of collaboration at key stages
The biggest challenge right now is an appreciation from all parties of the value of different team members. Knowing why having Industrial Designers are useful at the start, why User Experience designers need to be involved in decisions around hardware controls or even the physical ergonomics of a product. Clients have to understand this, but the designers themselves have to better educate rather than over-stretch themselves.
A lack of harmony caused by five core factors
So, if you follow the above outline, the lack of harmony seems caused by a mixture of organisational, client, and designer misunderstanding and lack of appreciation. Any will for greater collaboration has to fight against he challenges of investment in ideas. Innovation is risky, and it’s hard to take a leap into an unknown future where there is very little precedent.
So what can Industrial Designers and User Experience practitioners do, to encourage greater harmony?
I’ll be exploring this in the next series of posts — the meat of the challenge, but there will not be silver bullets — just an early indication of ways we can start doing something to help bridge the physical-digital divide.
Watch this space for more, or follow me on twitter, check out my slides for a sneak preview or check out Plan, where I work to get in touch.
