Toss your razor ! A design story for ladies and gentlemen
- ray.kuo
- May 13, 2019
- 4 min read
What is the link between dashcams and the lady below, advertising the (not so) obvious obsolescence of razors ? ... if you want to know, have a look further !
"What should we do next ?"
Have you ever heard this little song around the office ? It regularly comes back every 5 years ... when a company is starting to see graphs flattening up. A first image that comes to mind is the treasure hunt. Digging here and there, you will surely end up meeting your luck !
Resarch & Design : backbone of business development
Miluxy is one of those little holes we dig hoping to find the treasure. Looking at the past and at our dummy samples drawers, we quickly realize the supporting efforts from the design team to nurture business development.
"Why not selling fridge and toaster ?"
I remember one senior designer a few years ago, jokingly asking this while debating once more about our business strategy. In Mitac, It took a while to focus on automotive industry and aiot, yet we should not stop investigating new opportunities and to observe market mutations.
...Developed by a group of lady employees... (but not only)
The idea of giving opportunities to women to develop more emotional and cognitive products seem to be attractive. Looking at development teams, among engineering teams, women are still under represented, and surely our products could be developed faster and for a better outcome if ladies would be more actively involved. Things change but slowly.
so why not entering in skin care industry ?
Think Big, Progress step by step.
At start we identify opportunities, understanding better about users expectations and their feedback about competition products. Yes we want to make it better. can we ?
What will be our competitive advantage if we do it worse than others ? should not we target to solve 1 or 2 key items that our competitors are being blamed for ?
"Make it quick and dirty !"
Often heard from one of our design lead in the past. No need to say it was not really easy to accept for everyone (okay, me essentially) this idea from him. but after a few years, i discovered he meant Efficient, Effective. Let's use the resource we have to deliver a product to the market on time. At least we can start business, work our channels, distributors, get feedback from users. Sometimes the solution a company brings to users is incomplete or not perfect. it's not because they did not find out the problems, or were not able to fix it, Most likely they did not have much better alternatives. We learn from experience and improve next generation ...
IPL technology : Safe but not without risks.
To make it simple a big camera flash. to remove your hair, you need to flash every area of your body skin that you would like to treat for removing hair.
Simple to use, but not for everyone. Philips lumea comes with a 30 min to read before to use leaflet. One of them is to avoid sun exposure 1 month before 1st treatment. How disappointing! Every product we design, we like to try and experience for our own. With my sport routine in Taiwan, there is no way i can actually try. This maybe explains why professional cyclists still use the traditional razor (but probably because razor is much more efficient than IPL technology. if you want to know why cyclists shave their legs, watch below ! :) Credit : GCN show
Practically off the Shelves !
What's the quickest way to deliver to market a hair removal "device" when your company only knows about GPS navigation and Dash Cameras ? Yes you have no time ! Find a good vendor, by preference in China. Those guys are preferably the vendors for one or two of the "slick legs" market top players.
Limitations for the best and the worse !
Without limitations no good ideas ! Another saying that cant' be applied to all situations Now it's time for you to study all those components, we call it "placement". despite some time spent over the phone chatting with vendor, it's time for you to realize, you will not be able to achieve your dream concept to deliver the best user experience : a dream mix of design language, usability and interaction. Sorry, Mate that's what you have to play with.
Beware of design traps !
It looks simple. Fun to do, a bit round, a bit colorful and here you go. ttttt.... developing the right design language with adequate attributes might be more challenging than what we imagined.
Color Blind !
The more you develop your concept, the more you understand your product does not look like a solution to help you get rid of your hair and be a beauty queen, but rather like a hairdryer or even worse a sex toy !
Ladies and ... Gentlemen
our research showed that more than 35% of users are men (estimation). a bit of a surprise for us here, in Asia, where to be honest, hair are not the biggest cosmetic concern ... Fair skin would be definitely one. Now would it be more strategic to develop a non gender specific product, or to target specifically each group ?
Enjoy the Adventure !
Those investigations are a healthy business breathing pattern showing that a company does look into opportunities to keep developing their business. Some of your projects will surely end up in a folder, within another folder, within a hard drive. Sometimes you will see working samples, sometimes mockups, sometimes nothing ! Rather than frustration due to the time and efforts allocated, we should enjoy the opportunity to work on different products and industries for a little while. a bit of a holiday under the sun, for us to get tanned, forget about home and work, and later get back to business with fresh ideas !
What about your company ? does many of your projects are kept unborn in the dark ?
MILUXY 2017 / Team : Sonia Chan (Sales) Emma Yeh (PM) Mac Lu (ID) Zhijuan Wu (ID) Matthieu Gerard-Goddet (ID)
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