Ask the Expert

Products all have basic quality standards to meet. Cars shouldn’t break down. Food should be fresh. A wireless phone should have clear sound and decent battery life. But none of these things are what make consumers enthusiastic about products. The truly good products, the ones that people come to crave, embrace the intangible aspects of human nature. Customer responses to products, environments, services aren’t always rational and analytic. Instead, they are fraught with emotional, sensory, ego, cultural, and symbolism issues that are very important.

This idea is the basis of an unusual course that I teach every winter called ME314: “Good Products, Bad Products.” As an engineering class, it is unusual in that it does not involve math. There are a lot of ways to use statistics and systems analysis to improve product quality, but this class is meant to instruct engineering students in design considerations that cannot be so easily quantified: the humanity issues. An engineer involved in bringing a new product into the world who doesn’t believe in the importance of the human aspects of the product and doesn’t have tools to contemplate and discuss those will not be as successful as an engineer who does.

Take a look at Jello. There isn’t much in it beyond water, gelatin and flavoring, but what makes it so popular is its sensory and emotional appeal. Jello has a distinctive and pleasant texture, or “mouthfeel.” It also is fun because of how it moves, or “jiggles.” These aspects of Jello were identified by Talia Brodecki, Mike Camacho, Joe Kirscher, Jonny Lin, and Jorge Marcos who were studying “senses” in relation to product quality in ME314 this past winter quarter.

Another interesting example is a new high-performance electric car produced by a company near campus called Tesla Motors. Tesla’s Roadster looks and behaves like a sports car in that it accelerates rapidly, but it is also different because its motor makes very little sound. Some avid motorists won’t buy the car precisely because they want a car that makes a powerful growl when it charges up the highway onramp, but others will desire it exactly because it doesn’t make a sound. The car’s silent power will set its drivers apart. For all the things consumers must consider when buying a car, it could be the Roadster’s lack of sound that becomes the defining characteristic for many.

One of the most successful products lately has been Apple’s iPod. There are a lot of digital music players and each of them has a different ratio of features to price, but that calculus is not the basis of the iPod’s runaway popularity. More than makers of competing products, Apple has succeeded in convincing consumers that their player offers them creative personal freedom and therefore greater control over their lives. Apple as a company, with its long-standing commitment to mold-breaking industrial design, gives the iPod additional cachet. There is an ego-related aspect to buying most Apple products. They signal something about who you are — a membership in an elite.

Cultural considerations heavily influence the appeal of a product or service. Students in my class have found that text messaging is wildly popular in India because it can facilitate dating even when traditionally minded parents try to discourage it. In Japan, meanwhile, text messaging fits well within a culture where making noise in public is often frowned upon. These examples of culturally appropriate products were presented by Lisa Asari, Parmita Dalal, Michael Wittenberg, Amy Wu, and Harry Zhong as part of their work in the class this past winter quarter.

Meanwhile, a good example of a product with a primarily symbolic appeal is the diamond. Despite their marketing, diamonds really aren’t all that rare. But because diamonds have become symbols of love and commitment, they are truly craved.