Minimalist Products: Value based product experience

We live in a world of mindless excesses, driven by competition to give, get and ask for MORE! Product designers in almost every industry are asked to pack as many features as possible into every product release. Whether its cars, consumer electronics, software products, multi-vitamin tablets or houses, the emphasis is on more "functionality". At the very least new products are released with more "packaging".

Over the years, this has reached extraordinary proportions of competitive "wastage". In an era where costs of doing business has been increasing (in spite of cost savings through increased efficiency, outsourcing & off shoring), this competition, to mindlessly provide more! has had a cascading effect on costs and has clouded clear thinking of what a particular product was really meant for. Perhaps the concept of FAB (Feature Benefit) analysis, so dear to all MBAs, hasn't helped in reducing this undue emphasis on number of product features either!

MINIMALISM - the term was coined rather abstractly yet profoundly (several minimalists quoted here) - as a means of describing in laudatory terms, or in a reductive and strongly critical manner, the works by protagonists of the American scene in the late Fifties and Sixties. In the field of architecture, the term Minimalism was used, at times with caution and at others with determination, to connote the works of architects from profoundly different origins and cultural backgrounds, who had based their own work on a reduction in expressive media, a rediscovery of the value of empty space and a radical elimination of everything that does not coincide with a programme, also with minimalistic design overtones, of extreme simplicity and formal cleanliness. Preventing products from being corrupted, or hidden, by the incidental debris of paraphernalia of every day life.

The Japanese describe Minimalists as, er.... Essentialists. Probably says it all!

Today's Excesses

Driven by excessive competition to differentiate through MORE features, size and colour!, almost every sector and product category that you see in the market worldwide, has a huge excess of features, size or packaging that remains unused by more than 80% of the consumers. The marketplace is a virtual graveyard of dead features and excessive resources that could be better used to offer more "useful value". Most telecom equipment vendors in the 80s and 90s produced PBX switches with features in excess of 5000! Most customers used 10 features, seldom used 25, and never used 4900! Colour TVs, VCRs, DVD players and their host of features - most used, PLAY, FFWD, EJECT and on the remote control of the TV which has 25+ buttons, most used CH++, CH--, POWER! Cars have tons of features that most owners never get to know of or try them only on the day they drive home from the car dealer. Same with refrigerators, ACs, music systems and mobile phones. Even architecture and house construction has been deeply affected by this, where "doomsday design" makes architects and builders design the full house around a air-conditioning system that would probably be used for 60 days in the summer, rather than designing for fresh air and cross ventilation that would be useful all through the year.

Computer Software products are still worse, with the relative ease with which new features can be added. Probably about 50+ % of features are seldom or never used.

The pressure to pack more!

Excessive competition, convenient thinking that more features are the only way to differentiate products and pressure from the sales force that's only trained to sell on the "we've got more" credo puts pressure on product developers and packagers to pack in more. Conventional thinking, lack of a sales strategy based on "real usefulness", lack of customer education with data on usage levels of various types of features, keeps the pressure going. Some of this pressure, spills over beyond product features to more and wasteful "packaging". Bigger boxes, with more print, manuals, etc. All this costs money (a lot of it) and seldom provides satisfaction or value to customers, beyond the day when they bring the product home.

The need for Minimalist Products
"Minimalist Products" that give the best value to customers and focus on the product experience over its entire life cycle is the need of today. Minimalist products will bring down development costs and speed up time to market at a strategic level (not just through productivity tools that cost a lot of money). Besides, consumers will have a much better product experience, will find it easier to use, not being overwhelmed by its features, and will not "feel cheated about being sold useless features". This "truthful" experience over the entire life of the product will perhaps bring consumers back to the company that sold the product, to buy their next genre of products. The minimalism in the product experience can be stretched from product features to limited user manuals, minimal packaging and even over more user friendly pricing such as "pay per use", "lease rental" and "community shared" pricing, etc.

Managing and Marketing Minimalist products

How is this change in strategic product management thinking to be managed? By imbibing cost consciousness, value assessment in every transaction, especially amongst senior managers of a company. Every product spec. should be carefully reviewed to clearly rank features from the "essential" to the "frivolous" and product development funded for only the "essential". Product development should include a limited launch phase for "Feature trials & feedback" - thus dropping more features from the final product that are not essential. The product architecture should be clearly layered, so that customers who need additional features will get them when they pay for them, whereas those who do not need them don't. Sales & Marketing needs to focus on marketing a new philosophy, a new practicality, the offer of value based, right priced product and on the complete product experience over its entire life, weaning customers away from frivolous one day experiences that don't mean much the very next day.

India - Perfect place for minimalist products

Be Innovative, Think Out of The Box! much touted corporate mantras. Thinking out of the Box, is often possible "when you live out of the box". The box referred to here is conventional (or legacy) thinking of products as developed in advanced markets. India, with its emphasis on "value for money" products, consumers not wanting to pay for "frivolous packaging" and by virtue of not having a legacy of having all product genres with a host of (mostly useless) features already, is best placed to show the world how world class, minimalist, yet useful products can be built at low costs and sold at high margins! This as long as minimal doesn't get to mean Shoddy!

Tata Motors, Nano has perhaps shown us the way, for all other sectors to follow.