Development teams inside Bang & Olufsen are moving their focus from implementing functionality to delivering customer benefits. Bang & Olufsen participation in the female interaction project is a driver behind this improved way of developing.
The benefit orientation redefines the scope of concept development. When you aim to meet benefits explicitly desired by your end users, you may actually have to remove existing product features, Lyle Clarke explains.
“Creating advanced technological products much of our effort has been concentrated on dealing with features and how to implement them. A benefit orientation sharpens the awareness that not all features deliver the desired benefits – in fact some features might even work against them.”
According to Lyle Clarke the role of the concept developer today is comparable with the role of a facilitator, creating a link between engineers and end users. The concept developer has to ensure the benefit approach when other developmental arguments like low costs or easy implementation are aired.
“The findings of female interaction clearly demonstrates that women want the benefit, NOT the feature. It’s not enough to try “selling” her the way a feature is meant to work in the user guide. If the product doesn’t work in a way that makes sense for her, it’s as good as broken. That’s the female consumers’ point of view.”
Low-tech on the surface
To Lyle Clarke the benefit orientation is the next step for the industrial product development and design profession as a whole.
“Even though the products we use daily are increasingly high-tech, there is a significant trend, led by females, to keep technology in the background. A focus on benefits rather than features will increasingly be required to develop successful products in the future. In many cases this will mean having the courage and ability to make products appear and behave more low-tech on the surface than they actually are. However, simplicity is by definition not an easy task: To make a product appear simple to your end users you will have to handle complexity in the background.”
Lyle Clarke is not afraid that a female benefit orientation could mean losing male customers.
“High tech industries have been missing out on potential female customers for years. If the consequence of making 5 new female customers happy is losing a male customer, I still think it’s a good trade off. However, I don’t think it will come down to that, men will also benefit from a benefit-oriented approach to development.”