Scott Berkun Profile picture
Sep 14, 2020 13 tweets 6 min read Read on X
1. The product world has an odd relationship with "designing for humans". Often it's designing to sell rather than designing for actual use.

Take this clever "have a look" feature - it briefly raises toast so you can see how done it is.

Another design that solves this...
2. Is this one. By just making the toast visible you don't need a button or any extra engineering to raise the toast.

It *eliminates the need for interaction*, which is often a better experience.

But wait... what problem does all this solve? Somehow that question gets lost.
3. The implication is "making toast is unpredictable and I don't want it burned".

Really? Maybe a new toaster take a few attempts to calibrate. After that u just leave it at the right level.

These designs imply a problem u probably don't have but... helps sell the toaster!
4. Toasters, like most of our tech products, promote all sorts of cool seeming but mostly useless features we will never use. Look! A croissant warmer! (wait, wha?)
5. Or.. have trouble removing hot toast from the top? No worries!

"CONVENIENT: Toast slides through the bottom onto tray - ready to serve!" (wow! but wait a second... and also, that's a crazy amount of butter, yo).
6. I'm sure all the #toastophiles will be up in arms about this thread so far, as they take toasting seriously and that's OK.

My point is "design for sale" wants you to think, at the point of purchase, that you need something you probably don't.
7. In How Design Makes The World there's a whole chapter about toasters and how we get distracted by features instead of quality.

Marketers know it's easier for us to evaluate QUANTITY of features, rather than QUALITY of solving our problems. So that's what they emphasize!
8. Of course if watching your toast get toasted, or having a toaster with a touch screen, or that burns in a smiley emoji makes you happy 4ever, that's lovely.

But many features r quick hit sugar by design. Sounds cool! Gets you excited to pay $$! But r used once & rarely again.
9. In the end, what makes a product sell the best isn't necessarily *the best* design for actual use. Often far from it.

This means "best selling" is often taken to mean "the best in most ways for most people" and that's often not true.
10. Designing for humans in truth means starting with people first. What can we observe in how they toast to see what the real problems are?

Products are often engineered the other way "I have this cool technology!" "I have this cool idea!" which is feature first thinking.
11. Example: this Kitchen Aid Pro automatically and gently reheats toast if it sits there too long. No button. No interaction needed. It just quietly does what is probably the right thing without bothering you.

But...
12. The Kitchen Aid Pro cost $500!

Good design is a kind of quality. It's fair to pay more for quality. But not this much more for a simple appliance for most people.

Yet: when u deal with a "bad design" in a product you bought based on low price, why are u surprised?
13. I confess I'm toaster obsessed - it's a way to think on design, marketing, culture and how weird humans are.

If you want a reco: this multi-review by @GebAndrew is fantastic and has the thoughtful and #toastnerd details you're hoping for.

cnet.com/news/should-yo… #designmtw

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More from @berkun

Sep 15, 2021
Study decisions, not just ideas. It's decisions and the people who make them that define how ideas are evaluated.

If you only care about ideas you'll stay mystified and angry about why "the best" idea never gets chosen.

Study decisions. Learn how to influence them.
I've read many books on decision making but this one had the most powerful impact on me.

For the approach he takes alone, studying front line workers making life and death decisions, it's a worthy read.

Sources of Power, Gary Klein
Have you ever kept a decision journal? Here's how it works.

When you have a big decision:

1. Write down your thoughts about your options.
2. And your rationale for deciding.
3. Then decide.
4. Experience the outcome.
5. Review 1 & 2 - what can you learn now? write it down
Read 4 tweets
Jul 22, 2021
1. We have 5 basic senses - then why don't designers and experiences use all of them?

It's always fun to step back and ask this question, which often leads down the path to SMELL-O-VISION. Image
2. It sounds like a joke but Smell-O-Vision was one of many attempted innovations to improve the movie theater experience.

Like many attempted innovations, many approaches were tried. Some tried to pump in scents into the theaters, but the timing was a problem. Image
3. Others tried a simpler approach, using "scratch and sniff" cards - Instructions would appear on the screen telling you when to use which one. Clever. Image
Read 7 tweets
Jun 16, 2021
1. All of the ideas in How Design Makes The World are encapsulated in these four questions every product team should ask regularly. #design #ux #designmtw
2. Many projects have requirements, schedules and cool ideas, but forget to focus on improving something specific for real people. Or get lost along the way.

Good teams refresh the real goals often, like a lighthouse.
3. We're all prone to forgetting our biases and designing for ourselves.

If we don't go out of our way to study our customer's real needs, and how they differ from our own, we will fail them and possibly not even know until it's too late.
Read 7 tweets
May 13, 2021
1. Have you been frustrated by how little your coworkers understand about the value of what you do?

If you're a UX designer, you're an expert. But there's a trap in how this expertise is taught that works against you.

This thread explains what to do about it.
2. Design books/courses are design-centric, but the world isn't. Orgs are business, tech or mission centric. Collision-warning!

"I have to explain my value? And work uphill for respect?"

Yes. The sheer numbers make this likely! But do not despair.
3. We imagine our coworkers should *already know* about design. But how could that possibly happen? Who would have taught them?

We're trained with the presumption non-designers should magically know things - but is that how we approach designing products for people?
Read 11 tweets
Apr 27, 2021
If requirements define the problem, how can a designer succeed if the problems they are supposed to solve are poorly defined or the wrong ones?
If the person writing requirements knows nothing about good design, why would anyone expect good design to be a possible outcome?

It's like someone who has never cooked writing a recipe.
Requirements:

- car that goes 1000mph
- lasts 1000 years
- cures cancer
- creates world peace
- makes selfish people generous for 10mile radius
- easy to use
Read 4 tweets
Apr 14, 2021
1. When people say "innovations happen faster today than ever before" ask:

Does this person know anything about the history of innovation?

It's an impressive sounding statement rarely challenged since we like to hear it. But it's misleading in several ways that I'll explain.
2. The pace of change is not the same as scale.

For example:

The shift from hauling water on your back to indoor plumbing is HUGE. The shift from iPhone 10 to 11 is SMALL.

Have there been shifts as transformative to your quality of life as plumbing recently? I doubt it.
3. We love Amazon for Prime delivery and consider it a breakthrough, but in 1900 Sears had the same business model: huge catalog + ship anywhere (thx to new railroads).

You could order an entire kit for a house and thousands of Americans did.
Read 9 tweets

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