Intentional Design – Lean Product Playbook

Why Intentional Design

The Lean Product Playbook: How to Innovate with Minimum Viable Products and Rapid Customer Feedback, by Dan Olson, offers insight into the lean process of product development. Olson first looks at achieving market fit through this lean product process. A clear, overarching value percolates to the surface of his argument: design must be intentional.

Olson says it this way: "When you design if you aren't making decisions explicitly, you are making it implicitly. Leaving important aspects up to chance." Design should always be intentional. Whether the design is brand-related, a digital product, a physical product, or as simple as a user manual, design requires conscious consideration.

Unfortunately, everyone has been at the mercy of a product that lacked intentionality. Perhaps the software didn't work correctly, the font was hard to read, or the device was difficult to handle. Whatever the case, when design isn't deliberate, it is potentially disastrous. You cannot unintentionally design because designing is a deliberate act.

As Steve Jobs points out, "The design is not just what it looks like and feels like. The design is how it works." Design can get a bad wrap of being the aesthetic aspect of a product. However, the look and feel are just a single aspect of the overall design of a product. For instance, TurboTax software is just as much about the simple layout, font choice, and clean style as the logical path the software leads the user through to help them complete all of their tax duties. It is easy to imagine a company that builds a beautiful interface but jumps from random question to random question. Design should always be about the holistic product.

Clever Vs. Common Sense

Why would anyone put the questions in an illogical order? Unfortunately, the answer is as simple as a lack of common sense applied to the product. A common misconception is that a great designer must be incredibly clever to provide a great user experience. Though there are certainly moments of design inspiration because of the genius of the solution, most often than not, bad designs stick out because they lack common sense – they lack humanity.

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Wash for 20 Seconds

Recently I was traveling through airports, and inevitably before and after the flight, I needed to use the restroom. After taking care of business, I went to wash my hands. Cleverly, someone came up with an automatic sensor so that people wouldn't need to touch the handles with their dirty hands – we are all thankful for that. As in most bathrooms these days, all the bathrooms I entered had the sign stating it is best to wash your hands for at least 20 seconds. However, quickly it became clear that washing for 20 seconds would be next to impossible. Most facets took an awkward hand gesture just to start the water. After a few seconds of trying different movements, I finally got the water to flow. Yet, the timer on the facet was about 3 seconds meaning that I would need to repeat the awkward gesture around 7 times just to get to the preferred 20 seconds.

No one needed to be clever to have the facet stay on for 20 seconds. That design does not take a genius to accomplish. Instead, it takes someone simply using common sense and consideration to implement it. A designer could imagine themselves walking through the desired outcome of their sink:

Desired Outcome: Have people adequately clean their hands to stop the spread of germs.

Steps to accomplish:

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1. Minimize direct human contact – especially when hands are soiled
2. Encourage people to wash for at least 20 seconds with soap
3. Allow people to dry hands, so they don't create dangerous, slippery surfaces in the bathroom

In the case of one of the airport bathrooms, the soap dispenser and the paper towel dispenser were not automatic. How could common-sense fix this? If the designer imagined themselves working to accomplish the desired outcome, they would probably:

1. Make all dispensers automatic.
2. Put a marker on the soap dispenser "#1" and put a marker on the facet "#2" to encourage people to do both (people tend to follow explicit instructions."
3. Make the sensors incredibly easy to turn on. Consider adding a color-coded marker to indicate the space to activate each sensor. Yes, a more sensitive motion sensor may waste more soap or water, which would cost the airport more. However, the desired outcome is not to be as cost-effective as possible for the airport but to reduce the spread of disease.
4. Have the water, once activated, stay on for 20 seconds. This timer would more clearly indicate that the people washed for the proper amount of time. Also, it would indicate to others that if they stopped early, they didn't do a proper job. These two aspects would apply the right incentive to nudge the person toward the desired action.

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Why 3 Seconds?

The reason the facet only flowed for 3 seconds is either:

1. The designer didn't use common sense and just set a default time that seemed reasonable to them
2. The airport is stingy and adjusted the time so that people would use less water
3. A reason that is not easily discernable and therefore confusing to the general population

The first is unintentional and therefore isn't really design. The second undermines the original purpose of the handwashing station. The final is opaque and also undermines the purpose of the handwashing station.

Ultimately what is missing in the handwashing station is intentionality and empathetic design – that's it. If the designers used the product in the wild and considered whether it was accomplishing the goal, they would quickly realize they needed to update their design.

Design With Intentionality

Olson understands that products may sell even without intentionality. That is abundantly clear as many products leave end-users in want. Those who are building off of a product's legacy may get away without intentionally. Airports need commercial sinks at the right price point. That market doesn't have a lot of disruption driving it forward. So it seems reasonable that without competition, the designers of those products aren't required to bring thoughtful innovation (or even thorough design) to their products. However, if the product is coming from a startup and it is in the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) stage, the intentional design will determine the product's success.

There is no reason to wait for someone to disrupt the industry to start innovating for products that are staples in the market. There should be a sense of pride in providing the best product available to your end-user, even if that costs a little in profits. Going back through how your product is used, clarifying the desired outcome, and applying empathetic design means we all get to live in a world with superior products that better serve our needs. Removing that friction for end-users is reason enough to add more intentionality to your product.

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