Customer Reviews

Predictable Magic: Unleash the Power of Design Strategy to Transform Your Business

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Predictable Magic is a book about design and its critical role in establishing a successful product, one that makes both a functional and emotional connection with its customers. The issue of design thinking and design practice is hot right now as companies look to compete in an ever competitive environment where cost alone is not the only purchase consideration. Deepa Prahalad and Ravi Sawhney's book is a solid addition to the body of research, stories and processes regarding design thinking.

This book is both a discussion of the need for design thinking and the demonstration of the author's particular tools to accomplish design thinking. This book is a portfolio of examples for Prahalad and Sawhney's company RKS and therefore its treatment of design thinking is limited to those practices. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but readers looking to understand the broader design thinking movement will need to look to other books.

The tone of the book discusses their (RKS's) success more than how you can be successful with design thinking. While this is understandable, it places the reader outside of the design process as an observer rather than considering that the reader wants to learn more about how you apply these techniques. That is the primary reason why this book is a three star review.

This book is good. Not as good as Tim Brown's Change by Design, which came out last year and really seems to define what design thinking is all about on a broader basis.

Strengths

The book takes a few examples, like the development of a cell phone, and works them through their process. This helps the reader see how each step in their design process.

The tools are helpful and well described. They include a Psycho-Aesthetics Map that positions a product and its competitors across multiple dimensions and a framework for developing a Persona profile. Both tools are explained well and illustrated with examples.

The book is short and focused making the ideas readily accessible in terms of the time it takes to read the book and the focus the book keeps on the topic.

Challenges

The book takes on the form of an extended commercial for RKS, the design firm the authors founded. While the firm must do good work, based on the examples, concentrating on what they know and frequent mentions of the company limit the broad application of its ideas.

The book tends to be encyclopedic in some places providing long bulleted lists and descriptions of aspects of design thinking with limited explanation or application. This makes for a comprehensive book, but one that bogs down in places and leaves the reader to figure things out for themselves.

The book, through its cell phone example, makes the implied claim that RKS developed the iPhone page 84 graphic. While the authors do not say this outright, if it were true than that would be a book in its own right. As it stands as implied it just takes away from the book.

Product Design is mostly considered as an art form. However in `Predictable Magic', Deepa Prahalad and Ravi Sawhney introduces a framework that they call Phsycho-Aesthetics, through which the design process can be aligned to corporate strategy, enabling businesses to come up with successful product designs. Companies like Apple, Google and Amazon have shown how critical it is to build deep emotional connections between their consumers and product brands. But how do we map this process? How do we get business managers, engineering professionals and designers on the same page? Read this book to understand how the Phsycho-Aesthetics approach will help a company achieve this.

In the first part of the ebook, the authors show you how their framework can help in developing user-centric designs through consumer `personas', mapping business goals to product features, targeting specific segments with unmet needs, and develop market winning strategies. In the second part they take you through the implementation of the design strategy and how to continuously engage the customers. With many real life case studies understanding of the framework becomes very easy.

I am not sure if entirely new designs or concepts can be created using the Pyshco-Aesthetics approach, but it will definitely help any entrepreneur, business manager or designer in validating their product design approach. I would strongly recommend this book.

Consumers engage with products and services for emotional reasons and adopt based on rich and fulfilling experience, according to Deepa Prahalad and Ravi Sawhney in this book. That is why it is important to use emotion and experience as a starting point for strategy and design. This enables the designer to create the connection to a product or service that makes people want to spread the joy of their discovery.

The authors go on to describe a design approach called "Psycho-Aesthetics". This includes a two-dimensional mapping process in which the vertical axis shows the degree of need, from essential through to aspirational, while the horizontal axis shows the degree of interactivity from passive through to immersive. Existing products can be placed in their appropriate locations on the map, as can different groups of consumers, in order to identify gaps which might be suitable for the design of new products.

The book describes a number of products which have become successful as a result of innovative designs, many of which have been created by RKS Design, a firm founded by one of the authors. These include a refrigerator, a loudspeaker, a water bottle and a guitar. The stories behind these products show the great amount of research which goes into creating a product which not only looks good but provides a positive consumer experience in every aspect.

However, while the book provides convincing evidence that RKS Design is capable of designing great products, it does not in my opinion fully live up to the promise of telling the reader how to use the design strategy to create "predictable magic". Plenty of research and imagining of the consumer experience seem to be necessary but not sufficient ingredients. The additional magic tricks of aesthetic design and inspired marketing are not fully described, although it may be impossible to do so. Nevertheless, I found the book enjoyable to read.

Design professionals as well as design students can learn from Predictable Magic.

I teach industrial design classes at the Art Institute in LA and I am the chair for the LA chapter of the Industrial Designers Society of America. Teaching students how to design products that resonate with consumers emotionally and creating a compelling user experience is not easy. My design psychology students could not relate to the concepts from other books. Mid-quarter, I introduced the "Psycho-Aesthetic" mapping concept from Predictable Magic. The light bulbs turned on in their heads.

Predictable Magic is easy to comprehend and will be helpful when I give presentations as a professional. It is a great diagnostic tool as well as story telling tool. The platform will be understood by Executives, Buyers, Marketing, Sales, Finance and Design.

One of the authors, Ravi Sawhney, is a member of IDSA and recently gave an overview of the "Psycho-Aesthetic" process at our local design lecture series. I recommend that if you have a chance to attend one of his lectures, you do not pass up the opportunity.

I found this be an excellent book giving a thorough explanation for why a consumer would gravitate towards a design. I found Psycho-Aesthetics to be an easily grasped idea and it was a "Light Bulb" moment for me. I feel this book is beneficial to a wide range of people from students to practicing professionals as well as spanning a wide range of disciplines from designers, to management, to engineers. The author's methodology for creating a bond with customer and product really resonated with me. The real-world examples that pepper the book are quite enlightening and serve to reinforce the concepts being conveyed. There is a bit of a sales-pitch for their firm, but that didn't bother me, I have no problem with a little self-promotion when one has, in my opinion, broken new ground.

Predictable Magic by Deepa Prahalad and Ravi Sawhney promises to help you transform your business through the unleashing of good design. This book states that some products transcend the normal everyday products that we use into something extraordinary and life altering. Examples of these products they state are teddy bears, red lipstick, sports cars because they resonate with us emotionally. When a product resonates with us emotionally, everyone wants this product. Now, the tricky part is how to manufactor the design so this happens consistently.
Through anticipating and responding to consumer emotions rather than churning through data helps the design process. A methodology of product development introduced in this book promises to deliver just this, products everyone can connect with emotionally. While I feel the model is good, and it makes sense, it may not always provide a product that a large percentage of the population will connect with. I feel this book is worthwhile reading, and many powerful nuggets of information can be pulled from this book and put into practice use. I personally, think it is over abitious to state this is the absolute model of how to design "Predictible Magic".

The initial pages of this book almost turned me off, with the authors introducing a Psycho-Aesthetics mapping tool that almost screamed "read this book, come to us with your business and we'll model your product in our mapping tool," but after getting into it, I realized that--although a bit sales-y--the authors have a great approach to product development. Using examples from their own company (RKS Design), they illustrate how existing-yet-unpopular or new products could be geared toward attracting consumers, emphasizing that it's more about how a product makes you feel about yourself that really makes you want to plunk down the money for it. Uses great examples from a wide array of products and companies (Amana washing machine, Zoom whitener for teeth, KOR BPA-free water bottles, Minimed insulin pump and the Flip camcorder, not to mention their own RKS Guitars. This last is rather interesting, because the authors indicate that while the product was popular and accepted as revolutionary, etc., the guitar ultimately failed due to supply-chain and advertising issues.

One caveat is that although the Zoom whitener did become popular, I know people who said the process almost made their teeth scream. Also, if you check amazon.com for KOR water bottle reviews, note that an array of people have issues with its durability (i.e. the cap) and its "leakproof" ability.

Those issues notwithstanding, its definitely a great book for the innovator or anyone interested in design.

Predictable Magic offers a very practical approach to driving innovation within your new product strategy, design and development process. The tools and frameworks can help teams achieve product "newness" and commercial relevance.

I have enjoyed reading this book quite a bit. As another reviewer mentioned it is a quick read and offers good insights into design strategy. I loved the examples provided throughout the book that helps crystallize some of the concepts. As an MBA student I find it to be a great complement to my coursework as well.

In the past, the function of a good totally dominated the esthetics of the form. However, in the modern world, consumers often buy one product over another because it strikes an emotional nerve in them. Among other things, we see this in computers, MP3 players, cell phones, clothing, appliances and handheld computers.
In order to compete in the aesthetic field, the authors have developed what they call Psycho-Aesthetics, a technique that can be used to create and recognize the emotional bonds between consumers and proposed designs. The title references the reality that the success of a new product that seems to magically become a hit is not magic at all but the result of an effective process of research, planning, feedback, consumer testing, modification and only a little luck. Generally the only point where luck is involved is when no other company comes up with as valuable a product and takes market share.
The goal of the authors is to explain how an idea for a product is turned into a design that will tickle the emotions of consumers and prompt them to pay a premium for the product. It is not an easy or obvious process, in most cases the goal is to create a new design that will excite consumers and it is hard to predict this in advance. Nevertheless, it can be done and the authors describe several examples of how the design of new products that were aesthetically innovative was managed.
Since they describe a process rather than a mechanism, the strategy put forward by the authors will work for the development of nearly all new products. While design is still an art, the authors drive it closer to a science as they give examples of some tactics that can be used in the creation of new designs.