Home Depot’s new bucket shows why design matters

Home Depot has a new bucket — and it tells an important story about the importance of user centered design applied to even the most boring corners of your business.

In case you live under a rock, the most profitable company of the 21st century so far has been Apple. How did they make all that money? By rethinking old things that everyone else thought were finished — the PC, the MP3 player (iPod), the cell phone (iPhone), the wrist watch.

The trend is not unnoticed as other companies look on their shelves for items that have not been redesigned in many decades.

Examples:
Nest (now part of Google) built a company around the boring AC thermostat.

And now Home Depot is starting its own line of vertically integrated, high design lines … starting with — the bucket.

Home Depot | The Big Gripper from Lincoln Street Studios on Vimeo.

This bucket is a classic example of user centered design created by observing real users, noting their obvious problems and solving them with obvious solutions. (Obvious and yet neglected for however many decades people have been making buckets and now patented by Home Depot.) I personally love going to these kind of stores. Not only are you surprised and delighted by the innovative solutions to common problems, but you discover something new every trip.