A product used to be a physical object. A thing you made and sold. A tractor has four wheels, two of them bigger than the others. Then they got smart, and we got confused—are we designing smart products? Connected products? Service systems? In Megan Neese’s EPIC piece “What is a Product?”, she argues for a product-design methodology rooted in place:
Traditionally, if we were planning a new product we would start with market segmentation based on an interesting demographic cohort or emerging mindset. This would allow us to identify a target customer group, such as “business people,” whom we could then study ethnographically to uncover opportunities that we could address with a new product. For example, commuting is a relatively complicated driving scenario often fraught with functional and emotional needs.
By understanding the complexity of a daily commuting situation we could have a clear problem for which to solve using the design process. But then, as we began to consider our problem space in the broader context of the future of the city we realized that this research and design process needed to change. Now that we are starting with a place, our segmentation is based on cities rather than mindset groups or product categories, our ethnography is based on that place (e.g. Jakarta) rather than a persona, and concepts are developed from a systems view rather than a problem space.
By beginning such research with places instead of personas, the systems view is more naturally assumed. Facilitating this perspective within the culture of a project team is critical—this does not happen by accident, as there are many half-measures that can distract an organization from a full systems view. Neese refers to a framework put forward by Michael E. Porter and James E. Heppelmann in a Harvard Business Review, article titled “How Smart, Connected Products Are Transforming Competition”:
The increasing capabilities of smart, connected products not only re-shape competition within industries but expand industry boundaries. This occurs as the basis of competition shifts from discrete products, to product systems consisting of closely related products, to systems of systems that link an array of product systems together.