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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
design is a process, not an event, September 25, 2008
This review is from: Do You Matter? How Great Design Will Make People Love Your Company (Hardcover)
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The two major premises of the book are that design is important and that design should be approached as a process instead of an event. It is not just about the features of the item under design, be it a product or a building. Instead, it is about the whole user experience, physically and emotionally; the latter of which is what defines a great design. (There is a third premise, which is that good design is not easy. I don't think this needs to be argued for.)
The book uses a lot of tech products as examples, many of which I have personal experience with. While the "whole user experience" point is valid, I am not so sure about the authors' judgement on some of the "successes" to the point that I wonder if they have actually experienced those items themselves. (Or maybe I just happen to have bad luck with many tech products, some of which are touted as "it just works"?) In any case, point well taken.
As for the non-tech examples, I find that most of them strike a chord with my experience. The FiveBucks story on p87 leaves me chuckling as an ex-customer. The Washington-Dulles airport experience on p21 and the W hotel story on p150 are both very real. Becoming aware of many things about my daily life is the most rewarding part of reading this book.
Overall, I would say that the book has successfully put together a collection of short stories that argues for its premises. However, I must note one thing that I really don't like about the physical aspect of the book itself: the text is printed too close to the hardcover binding that at times it makes for an awkward reading experience. You would think that a book about design has been designed as well. I am sure the authors won't mind I take one star off because of this less-than-stellar reading experience of their book. :P
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
More than just about Design, February 27, 2009
This review is from: Do You Matter? How Great Design Will Make People Love Your Company (Hardcover)
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As an executive in a large corporation with the responsibility to display to my clients things that differentiate us from other companies with which we compete, I am always reading about ways to achieve this.
Like self-help books, there is a well developed genre of books about how to make your company stand out from the others. I suppose theres a great temptation to read the ideas, run off and implement them chapter and verse, and then wait/hope/pray for great transformation to take place.
But there's no magic pill. And all the great advice in all the greatest books won't make a bit of difference if your company really is different from all the rest.
But there really are ways to stand out. This book is full of ideas. But each idea by itself is not enough to achieve the end goal of making people love your company. And the authors know this well.
From the start they make it clear that having a successful company requires a wholistic approach. Everyone from the very top to the very bottom must be fully committed to a shared vision, with a consistent level of performance to achieve the goals. And the old saw about the customer always being right is constantly reinforced here but in ways that seem obvious when you read them, but may never have occured to you before.
Numerous examples of familiar companies are cited. Their successes and failures are examined in great detail in very engaging ways. These are not boring case studies. These are compelling stories about how companies rise and fall. Ever wonder what happened to Polaroid? Remember them - king of the instant photo? Who would have thought that they'd be left behind by digital photography - the electronic version of the instant photo. But because they didn't have a connection with their customers and the world as it changed, they practically ceased to exist. And certainly in digital photography terms, they don't exist as a major player.
What about Apple? Lots of stories about Apple. Samsung. When I was a young adult Samsung was the ultimate junk electronics company. Crappy products. Dumb designs. Cheap unreliable rubbish. Take another look today. They're near the top of the heap. They found a way to completely transform their company by the way they approached design, and by the way they connected with their market and especially their customers.
The thing that resonates with my experience is the emphasis that is placed on the customer experience. In many ways, the field I am in has very little opportunity to achieve meaningful differentiation. We all sell the same services. We all use the same product vendors. We all describe similar solutions and delivery strategies. But what we all have the potential to do different hinges on what kind of experience our customers have.
At the end of the day, it's all about the people we serve and the way they feel about our products and services. Deliver a wonderful product to a customer who has been made to suffer the whole while and you will not likely get another chance.
For some fields, the reader may at first have trouble connecting with the message. At first I was wondering if anything I was reading would be relevant to my world. But slowly as I read the book, it all started to connect together and make sense. Even before I had finished reading the book I was using the ideas in my daily work. And I am seeing some very rewarding personal benefits.
The biggest challenge is to apply these concepts across a large company that is bottom-line driven. The authors themselves acknowedge how difficult it can be to transform the way a company does business. But notwithstanding my own ability to have such profound influence, I still found this book to be very worthwhile. Don't miss a chance to read what it has to offer. Maybe you work with me and together we can make a difference!
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A good book for those people concerned about their company's relevance, April 27, 2009
This review is from: Do You Matter? How Great Design Will Make People Love Your Company (Hardcover)
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"Do You Matter" took me a while to warm up to. It starts out mostly as an ode to the iPhone, and I have been bombarded by magazine articles, product reviews, blogs, emailed news summaries, radio stories and advertisements all waxing poetic about how the iPhone is so revolutionary. Not that these forums are lying or even exaggerating about the iPhone - it's the only Mac product that I own and it really is amazing. It's just that "Do You Matter" spends a lot of time in the first few chapters repeating what I have heard a 100 times before.
I will say that the list of products and innovators discussed expands after the first few chapters to include some familiar and perhaps some unlikely candidates. Unfortunately the products discussed are mass-market consumer oriented, and the companies are all mega-corporations. This can be a bit off-putting to me, as I work in a relatively small, business-to-business oriented company.
That being said, the overall point of the book is not any one product. Rather, the authors spend a lot of time discussing the principles of wholeness of design. To summarize, most companies tend to focus on mental silos. The accountants worry about cash coming in and out. Engineers have written function lists that cannot be strayed from. Marketing and Sales have their own views, as does the Customer Service department. Individually these groups all focus on what they need to do, and you cannot blame them for that. Unfortunately, sometimes it seems to the outside world that these groups are all working off of a different playbook. For example, you spend a lot of cash on a high-end stereo system. The sales man knows what he is talking about, and you leave the store looking forward to getting it delivered and installed. Unfortunately the guy who shows up is an imbecile who shows up late, doesn't have all the wires he needs and has no idea how to hook up the stereo to your high def television. Then the accounting people pester you about a past due charge that was not disclosed to you before hand. You end up with a terrible feeling about the company that sold you the system, and maybe you even end up not enjoying your stereo system as a result of the experience.
It's a perspective that I sometimes forget about in the midst of hectic days and tangible challenges. What it is like for a customer to do business with THE COMPANY as a whole. What it is like at every interaction point? Where can we improve these interactions and who is responsible for managing such a high-level review?
That's where a book like this comes in handy. Even if you don't care about the individual products, even if your company is not a Fortune 500 monolith, even if you're not designing new products for consumer use, it's always useful to force yourself to adapt a different perspective on your company AND your customers. This book made me do this and we have had a couple of successes as a result of small tweaks I made to our systems.
On one hand, this book's overall goal is one that I appreciate and believe is important. On the other hand, as a person working in a relatively small company, I wish that there were more examples that I could personally relate to. As ratings are deeply personal, I need to go with my own biases and give it 3 stars. That means that it met expectations - I am a believer in tough grading, and to get a 4 you need to exceed expectations. It's times like these that I wish that I could give half-star ratings. It would give it 3.5 stars if I could.
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