Duncan Reviews Something Really New

Book summary: 'Something Really New', Denis J. Hauptly

Three product types: appearance, novelty, utility - the book focuses on the latter. Focuses on starting with an existing product to create new ones. Gives a process for analyzing a task, and reducing and simplifying the steps involved to create a new product. Sets out the following steps:
1) Find out what the product is used for. e.g. Shower caps were being used as covers for food bowls – this spawned QuickCovers. Customers do many different things with the kitchen faucet.
Ask customers what they do
Observe customers
Example: Ask people to describe what they use a snow shovel for. Answers include 'shovelling snow from the driveway' (most), 'as a dustpan when sweeping the driveway', 'for removing ashes from a fire pit'. Possibly two new products are required to fill the gap where the snow shovel is not ideal. Then observe the customers, as there may be uses they don't mention. Also there may be tasks in each use case that can be made more efficient (a snow shovel with a deep curve is no good for sweeping up dirt from flat ground for example) – these pains are potential for new designs.

2) Put each use into a statement (one verb, one object) e.g. For a garden hose: water trees, water plants, attach sprinkler to hose, attach pressure nozzle and wash house windows, attach pressure nozzle and wash car.
Then ask can one product serve these uses best, or multiple products? For latter design 5 products, for former, condense the tasks to produce 1 better product, e.g.: water trees and plants, water using sprinkler, water using pressure nozzle. Then condense further still: water with attachment, water without attachment. This process has brought us from 5 uses to 2 or 3 possible products (depending on how much you condense). Be careful not to condense too much, if in doubt, ask the users.

3) This part is the main and most useful point of the book.
For each possible product, remove steps in using the product. Create a list of steps involved in using it. For example there are 20 steps to hang a picture, or for the hose (collect hose, attach to faucet, attach attachment, etc etc). Every verb is a new step, and involves only one object. By removing verbs (actions) we create utility. Each step is an opportunity to increase utility. Look for the sweet spot to combine a number of steps into one or remove a number of steps that produces the greatest reduction in work. How?
He defines net utility as combination of usefulness in achieving a task (how much easier/quicker/more enjoyable it makes it) and ease of learning/using or price. For often performed tasks learning costs and price can be absorbed and usefulness is important, whereas for rarely performed tasks learning costs and price are less readily accepted.
First remove steps that can be, then combine steps that can be choosing the 'sweet spot', the group comprising the highest net utility. For example, hanging a picture: you cannot remove nailing the hanger and erasing pencil lines, but you can remove collecting pencil/eraser/measure etc separately if we have a kit that includes these tools. But the pain is in the measuring of position, not in collecting the tools, so this is the sweet spot. You can imagine a device with a sliding bar and a hook attached that obviates the measurements (in fact there are several possible solutions), and this device reduces (combines) the steps from 7 or so to 4 or so. Consequently the steps are reduced by almost half, the most painful steps are easier and assuming it's not difficult to learn and not too expensive there is high net utility. If market agrees then you're golden.

4) Need to ask customers to see if these are good ideas. May be done by asking the retailers or end users, or as the author suggests a measure of net utility: Create a proto-type, mock up or Powerpoint presentation, present to the customer, then get a sample to fill out a table answering the questions 'This product would, in balance, make my life much easier', 'This product would look good in my house' and 'This product is unlike anything I have seen before' on a scale of 1 to 5.

5) Figure out the following tasks after using the product. Useful for revitalizing a commodity product, or to create a new market by adding to a base product the ability to perform a related task. For example there were bread kneading machines. Then there was a new market – bread kneading and bread baking machines. Observe customers to think of related tasks. Example: Previously you you would put ice in the glass and pour the drink (open the freezer, take out ice tray, take out ice cubes, fill glass with ice, return tray, fill glass)... now you simply use the ice dispenser on the refrigerator.

The book only focuses on products where the benefit is utility, so it offers no insight into creating products that provide aesthetic value. Also the process always seems to start from an existing product to show how it can be made better or spawn a new one. This seems to follow a lot of advice given elsewhere that entirely new products are rarely created, but new products are rather mutations/improvements/combinations to existing products. I suppose the same process could be applied to a task that involves a series of products instead, to create something entirely new. But then we are still creating something that people intuitively know there's a need for, rather than creating a product that solves a problem nobody ever thought they had... such as aeroplanes or televisions, which are the kinds of true innovation that according to some come about very rarely, and are not really fruitful grounds for trying to start a business. For the person trying to come up with new products to start a new business I think it's a good book and would recommend it.

Duncan

Bookmark this post --- Email this post