An Introduction to Product Design
Last night I went to a corner liquor store to buy some toothpaste. While the beer and candy aisles of the store were heavily trafficked, the back “household goods” section was not. And that’s where I was, searching for Crest among reams of dust-covered carbon paper for typewriters nobody now uses; scissors made in China with finger holes too small for toddlers; and paper-thin polyester argyle dress socks hanging like petrified bats from plastic hooks.
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All these products were uncomfortable, ugly, hard to use, and obsolete—–so useless that nobody had ever wanted them. And since they rolled off the production lines 10, even 20, years ago, they have rotted beneath the flickering fluorescent lights of this liquor store and thousands like it, grimy unmarked gravestones in the cemetery of bad product design.
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James Nestor
As part of his research for writing "Product Design 101", James Nestor attended a seminar titled "Sell Out," wherein he learned that to ensure a product sells, one must gratuitously promote the product at every given moment.
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