MXSF 2007: The Role of Metrics in Whirlpool
by DanSara Ulius-Sabel
Whirlpool is probably bigger and more complex than you probably realize. We’re now the world’s largest manufacturer of home appliances. It makes us less complacent and more vigilant, knowing other company’s are gunning for us.
Have a huge portfolio of brands and are often competing against ourselves. Forces us to think about product development in a different way. Design locations in six locations around the world. Each region focuses on regional design, but we all have to share best practices and things that have global implications.
It’s not just about being usable. We also need to be useful and desirable. User needs for us have been fairly stable for many years. This made us pretty complacent. Why need to research how people wash their clothes? But we had to shake the organization up and say that there might be something better out there we could be offering.
The sea of white: commoditization of appliances. Starting to erode the paradigms of more features (27 cycles on a washing machine!). Consumers don’t need this.
How we approach usefulness: addressing unmet needs. Getting beyond the washing machine. How do you add utility without adding things like more cycles. We do it through research and ethnography. Environments, rituals, processes. What is missing? What are they doing now that is a strange behavior? We found loads of compensatory behaviors. What we did was make a series of products that are outside the machine and that is about the laundry process experience. Simple products, but a big step for us.
How we approach usability. Historically, usable always followed useful. It’s only recently that the usability team has been able to make recommendations to the engineering team. Lots around ergonomics and ease-of-use. Also taken on perceived quality. You need confidence in the appliance (the whooshing sound when you open the refrigerator door). Not only about can everyone use it, but what is the experience using it. Making sure people feel satisfied.
Help users understand the process. Help people build a mental model of what the machine is doing. People want to know what is available to them and the combinations they can create. Make it seamless and in the background–like it was meant to be there all along. Everyone can benefit from accessible design.
Desirable. Why would anyone lust after a washing machine? It’s not rational. It’s something about the product that makes you feel good. By owning the product you took on the characteristics of the products. Products–appliances!–can be desirable. We should seek this out.
Can desirability be added systematically? Contributed by the features, aesthetics (sigh, tough, smell). Not static–as new competitors and new technology comes on the market, it might not be desirable in the future. Want to make it less a fluke. Which is where my role comes in.
My title is design metrics manager. Metrics are a way to communicate design to the rest of the organization in a way they can understand. We use the metaphor of health: checking the health of products.
Each brand has to be something different for different people. How do you drive people to different products, sometimes on the same platform? The users all need a refrigerator, but which one? We need to find the dimensions that trigger an emotional response. Trying to drive different experiences with different brands. Point of the project is to make someone fall in love with products, not better engineering.
Pressure is about measuring vs. creating. Not only having to convince upper management, but also convince the designers that metrics are ok. Not grading their designs.
Question for everyone: how do we sustainably get to Wow? As the competition comes after us, we have to force ourselves to continue to move forward, where every product is capable of triggering wow.
Q: Can you tell us some of the design metrics?
A: They are proprietary, but they are all user facing. Asking multiple questions that help differentiate the products.
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February 14th, 2007 at 6:36 pm
I’m doing some research at the moment on servicization (for enhanced ecological sustainability) of ‘clothes care’ (already a big conceptual and behavioural shift from ‘washing’) - something that has already been ‘foresighted’ as part of the SusHouse project and implemented as a a few more or less successful business innovation by Electrolux. Two lateral paths then in response to your whirlpool encounter:
1) think laundromat not washing machine; brand the (most efficient and highest quality) outcome, rather than the means; convince the company to go follow the ‘profit pool’ (the higher margins of service delivery) rather than hope that this or that look or this or that feature will save them from the ‘death of demand’ in the over-saturated whitegood market. Study the behaviour of laundromat usage, the fact that so many (in places that historically obstruct residential private laundries) find them so convenient, and end up with something like Fluidshare. Remember that when urbanisation started happening in a big way, a group of material feminists cheered because it would at last mean the industrialisation, ie re-socialisation of laundering, allowing women to gather around collective and efficient facilities, and possibly even get paid for domestic labour - see The Grand Domestic Revolution by Dolores Hayden.
2) wonder why washing machines, no matter how sexy their design, are located in the worst parts of any house/apartment - the basement, some cupboard, the toilet. Do a time-motion-map of the washing process - collect dirty laundry, sort for washing, wash, dry, sort for folding or ironing, store, wear - you’ll see that you need to walk from one end of the house/apartment to the other several times. Architects (the least user-centred of the design professions?) have almost never thought to design houses around one of the their 3 key functions (clothes care, in addition to eating and sleeping). Perhaps the design innovation comes from thinking about the laundering system in association with the interior built environment - eg washing machines closer to wardrobes; drying cabinets and airing/refreshing facilites. Or in association with the fashion industry - eg spot cleaning, removable components.
February 16th, 2007 at 1:15 pm
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