Design for Just One Person

If you want to create a product that satisfies a broad audience of users, logic will tell you to make it as broad in its functionality as possible to accommodate the most people. Logic is wrong. You will have far greater success by designing for a single person.

Imagine that you are designing an automobile to please a wide spectrum of people. You could easily identify at least three subgroups: the soccer mom, the carpenter, and the junior executive. Mom wants a safe, stable vehicle with lots of space and big doors for hauling the kids, dogs, groceries, and other stuff. Joe, the carpenter, wants a rugged vehicle with all-wheel drive and abundant room for ladders, lumber, bags of cement, and tools. Seth, the young executive, wants a sporty car with a powerful engine, stiff suspension, convertible top, and only enough room for two.

The logical solution is shown in the illustration. It's a combination vehicle with a little bit of what each driver wants: a convertible van with room for kids and lumber. What a goofy, impossible car! Even if it could be built, no one would want it. The correct solution is to build a minivan for Mom, a pickup truck for Joe, and a sports car for Seth.

Making three different products in software is a lot easier than making them in steel. Whereas there really must be three vehicles, one software product can usually be configured to behave like three different ones (with the caveat that the job of configuring it must not be dumped in the user's lap).

Every time you extend the functionality to include another constituency, you put another speed bump of features and controls across every other user's road. You will find that the facilities that please some users will interfere with the enjoyment and satisfaction of others. Trying to please too many different points of view can kill an otherwise good product. However, when you narrow the design target to a single persona, nothing stands between that persona and complete happiness.

Robert Lutz, the chairman of Chrysler, says that 80% of people in focus groups hated the new Dodge Ram pickup. He went ahead with production and made it into a best-seller because the other 20% loved it. Having people love your product, even if it is only a minority, is how you succeed.

The broader a target you aim for, the more certainty you have of missing the bull's-eye. If you want to achieve a product-satisfaction level of 50%, you cannot do it by making a large population 50% happy with your product. You can only accomplish it by singling out 50% of the people and striving to make them 100% happy. It goes further than that. You can create an even bigger success by targeting 10% of your market and working to make them 100% ecstatic. It might seem counterintuitive, but designing for a single user is the most effective way to satisfy a broad population.

The Roll-Aboard Suitcase and Sticky Notes

The roll-aboard suitcase is a good example of how powerful designing for one person can be. This small suitcase with the built-in wheels and retractable handle revolutionized the entire luggage industry, yet it wasn't designed for the general public. It was originally designed just for airline flight crews, a very narrowly defined target user. However, the product's design purity pleased this group enormously. The rest of the traveling public soon saw that it solved their luggage problem, too. Carrying it through crowded airports was as easy as maneuvering it down airliner aisles or stowing it aboard planes.

After the roll-aboard succeeded in its target segment, it was launched into other markets. Now you can buy double-sized roll-aboards, designer roll-aboards, armored-equipment roll-aboards, and kids' roll-aboards. Today, purchasing luggage without built-in wheels and a retractable handle is difficult.

As another example, an adhesive engineer at 3M named Art Fry used his own very specific requirements as a basis for creating what is arguably the most widely used and widely appreciated office tool. When he sang in the church choir, paper bookmarks always fell out of his hymnal, making him lose his place. Unwilling to damage the church's property with sticky tape, he looked for a better solution. He remembered an adhesive that he had worked on a few years earlier that was discarded because it didn't stick well enough. He used that failed adhesive to coat some small squares of yellow paper for bookmarks. This is how the 3M Post-it Note was born.

Happy users make remarkably effective and valuable assets. By narrowing your focus, you can generate fanatical customer loyalty in your target market. As discussed in Chapter 5, "Customer Disloyalty," customer loyalty can sustain you in difficult times. Not only will loyal users climb mountains and wade rivers to purchase and use your product, but they are the most powerful marketing tool known. Loyal users will personally recommend you to their friends. After you get buzz going about your product, you can build on it and extend your product into other segments of the market.