MAYA principle, the secret behind many FANG companies
The MAYA Principle: Design for the Future, but Balance it with Your Users’ Present
Learn to design for the future, while balancing your design with your users’ present stage of skills and mindset. This is called the MAYA Principle and it’s the secret behind the industrial design of the Coca-Cola bottle, spotify Discover weekly and Apple.
M.A.Y.A : “Most Advanced, Yet Acceptable”
This principle was given by Raymond Loewy (1893–1986), also known as ‘The Father of Industrial Design’ gave the world many famous designs, including the Coca-Cola bottle.
“The adult public’s taste is not necessarily ready to accept the logical solutions to their requirements if the solution implies too vast a departure from what they have been conditioned into accepting as the norm.”- Raymond Loewy
Apple and the MAYA Principle
Apple’s first tablet platform Newton Tablet was launched in 1993 and cancelled in 1998 as it was a financial disaster for Apple. The Newton tablet did not become a hit for many reasons, but one of the key reasons may well be that the Newton tablet was launched without a digital personal assistant being familiar to consumers.
As in 1990s everyone would carry a 5$ notebook than 700$ tablet, it was way ahead of its time and people are not ready to use that complex technology at that time.
But Apple was no fool and it learned from it.
The early iPod is a good example of how Apple applied the MAYA principle. The iPod’s designers gradually pushed the product design further and further as the iPod gradually lost the extra buttons and got a more streamlined interface. It is very likely that this gradual development from the first iPod in 2001 was what made the iPhone acceptable to users when it was launched in 2007. By applying the MAYA principle, the designers at Apple provided the users with the most advanced design within the boundaries of their acceptance.
Story of Spotify Discover weekly Feature and MAYA Principle
Spotify’s Discover Weekly Feature is one of the main reason why it became this big, and why everyone loves using Spotify ( including me too 😉)
But it was not smooth in its early days.
Discover Weekly feature was meant to provide you a list of new unheard songs to you every week but due to some issue in their algorithm due to which there were some repeated songs which you have already listened too were appearing in your Discover Weekly list, but the audience didn't mind that and it was fixed in next update.
But with the new update in which only unheard songs were appearing in Discover weekly, the audience went crazy.
The audience liked the buggy Discover Weekly which had some already listened songs in them. So, Spotify had to go back to the buggy discover weekly feature.
And how this is an implementation on MAYA??
The buggy Discover Weekly Feature was Mostly Advanced ( contains some bugs ) but was, Acceptable by audience.
What’s in it for you??
Maybe you can use MAYA principle in one of your project or idea, you will be able to reach more audience with it !!
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