Adaptive Path MX 2007: Useful, Usable and Desirable: How Whirlpool Finds Balance in Product Development by Sara Ulius-Sabel, Whirlpool

Whirpool is the world's leading manufacturer and marketer of major home appliances Annual sales are more than $18 billion and there are over 80,000 employees. More than 60 manufacturing and technology research centers around the world.

Globally Whirpool markets over 20 brands in 170 countries. One challenge is that they are competing against themselves for market and audience share. This forces them to think about product design in a very different way. Maytag, Kenmore, etc.

Global design locations in six locations; America, Mexico, Brazil, Italy, India, and China. Need to focus on local needs but also share standards globally.

Structure is matrixed by brand and category. Brand studios, etc.

[stepped out for a moment]

Approach to product design is to make products relevant to consumers.

Appliances = Useful

Usefulness is the reason they are in business. But there is a need to go beyond useful.

Core user needs are enduring in this industry. Allows Whirlpool to leverage deep understanding of users and user behavior. This allows the organization to be complacent. Why keep researching how people want their clothes washed?

The tendency was to drive desirability through incremental innovation:

• better
• bigger
• faster
• more

Do you need 27 cycles on a washing machine? Is that progress over 25?

As long as you had more power or speed you could make a better product. With a ton of work this is being eroded. The design group is pushing back against these paradigms by asking why.

Do more cycles differentiate in a way that consumers care about?

How do you address unmet needs? Use in home research. What does the kitchen look like, the laundry room, etc.? Design products like the laundry tower and laundry work-surface. What they found was that there were loads of compensatory behaviors. People would hang clothes on doors, bottles were everywhere, etc. What came out of this was a system of products that had integrated storage solutions and work surfaces. What is the laundry process experience and where does the product fit in?

Another new product is central park. it is an attachment point on a fridge that supports other electronic devices. Digital picture frames, charging stations, tablet pc, tv, satellite radio, etc. Realized that it wasn't a core competency so they partnered with people to integrate preexisting devices in a way that mattered. They knew there was a need for information management and entertainment in the kitchen. How do you get to one system that is a docking device, the infrastructure for other people to bring those solutions into the consumers home.

Usability and user experience design specialists work alongside the other teams. Historically usable has followed useful. Only recently has usability been able to make decisions for the project teams. Instead of reacting to engineering they are coming to the table and making recommendations. Many of this is around ergonomics and ease of use. Ergonomics is seen as a factor of quality. Have the user experience specialists act as change agents.

Glass lids and windows, for example, helps users to understand the process. They can build mental models about what's happening by seeing what the machine is doing. In-home research showed that people were fascinated by this. Marketing and design thought they should hide things and that glass would get dirty but people liked being able to look in, they would watch the whole cycle.

A couple of things about the new design is that you see lots of yellow and green lights. Research showed that people didn't understand why they couldn't use hot water with delicates. It used to beep at them and make them feel stupid. They wanted to know what their options are. The new systems uses the light system to show what is available to the user. You can see defaults, what is available, and what is not. 100% of users in testing got it so much that it was in the background. It helped them understand the machine.

the other thing about this particular project is that they had read an article by the National Federation for the Blind. As things go more electronic you are losing accessibility because you are losing tactile feedback and manual controls.

How do you make this usable by someone with limited or no vision?

The solution is a system of auditory sounds, all of which are unique and scaled to explain the point in the process. Even sighted users started to enjoy the benefits of this by saying that they could multi-task because of the sonic feedback. This was also less insulting to visually impaired users than other systems, like talking systems, because they didn't feel singled out.

Another facet is to make products desirable. You don't think that an appliance can be sexy but think about the KitchenAid. You want one. It looks good, it is something you lust after.

So how do you make an appliance sexy? The KitchenAid is bold and sexy, it makes the kitchen look less bland. It has power and prowess. It conveys a sense of confidence on the owner.

BOOK: Trading Up: The New American Luxury

Desirability is multi-faceted. It is the features, the aesthetics, the sound, the smell, etc. It isn't static. As new things come this changes.

So metrics. They are multi-faceted and intended to measure some of the factors that contribute to usefulness, usability, and desirability. How do you put a number on lust or pleasure?

They use the metaphor of health to define their quantitative metrics. Ask where are you in terms of building an experience. If you are a 25 and you want to be a 75 where can you fill in the gap.

The scale at the doctor's office doesn't tell you what your weight should be.

The advantage of the diverse brand portfolio is that they don't have to be all things for all people. The challenge is that they have to be different things for different people.

If you have three products on the same platform how do you drive different experiences to different customers? The trick is to tease out what the differences are and map that back to metrics. You set targets to differentiate your products from one another. Find the dimensions to trigger an emotional response.

In all of this they seek balance:

• Useful vs. Desirable
• Mass-market vs. Differentiation
• Measuring vs. Creating

So how do you sustainably get to Wow? How do you make sure it isn't a fluke?

Q: Specific examples of metrics? Can you make so when a kid leaves pens in his pocket there isn't ink on everything?

A: Many metrics are proprietary but they are user facing, not business facing.

The design metrics must be concerned with the product experience and they roughly map onto the three concepts of useful, usable, and desirable. An NPV wouldn't quite do it.

Q: How much of this is a brand exercise and how much is product design?

A: A couple of ways. Getting buy-in from stakeholders all the way through the group. Getting them to acknowledge that the metrics are in place and they should drive all products, not just premium products. This way the brand, from product to product, communicates a similar experience, that they engage the consumers in similar ways.

This way it isn't projectcentric but can influence the whole organization.

Q: How has internet marketing changed your strategy?

A: Don't know much about sales strategies but as far as whirlpool and kitchenaid which are online you can't actually buy that much. For the major appliance you still need the in-store interaction.