Product Startup Podcast Episode 188: Use Customer Stories in Product Design

00:00:00 Kevin Mako: Hello, product innovators. Today we learn from a professor of industrial design with a PhD and over 40 years

00:00:05 Kevin Mako: of experience on how to make profitable products by connecting emotionally with your customers.

00:00:10 Narrator: You're listening to the Product Startup Podcast, a show to learn from top leaders in product development, prototyping, manufacturing, product selling, and everything in between.

00:00:18 Narrator: Hosted by Kevin Mako, the leading expert on product development for physical product startups, sponsored by PTC's two best-in-class 3D CAD product development software solutions,

00:00:27 Narrator: Onshape, and Creo, and produced by Mako Design + Invent. The original firm providing world-class consumer product development services tailored specifically

00:00:34 Narrator: to startups, small manufacturers, and inventors.

00:00:37 Kevin Mako: Welcome back, everyone. Today, I'm very excited to introduce Suresh Sethi to the show. Suresh is a professor in industrial design at the University of Illinois.

00:00:45 Kevin Mako: Prior to that, he ran a product design studio for 15 years and before that was a VP and design director at Whirlpool, among many other high-level design roles at various companies.

00:00:54 Kevin Mako: Today, Suresh is going to share some valuable knowledge for inventors, and small manufacturers

00:00:58 Kevin Mako: on why customer storytelling is so important in the early product development phases of designing a new physical consumer product invention and how to best maximize the success

00:01:08 Kevin Mako: of your product through the findings from his PhD thesis on this very subject. Now on to the episode.

00:01:17 Kevin Mako: Hi, Suresh, welcome to the show. Thank you, Kevin. It's a pleasure to be with you today.

00:01:23 Kevin Mako: Well, we're excited to have you on the show today to talk about the storytelling and the importance behind developing a new hardware product, especially these new,

00:01:31 Kevin Mako: emerging hardware brands. There's so much more beyond just the design of the product, which can really lead to a highly successful startup and brand that develops

00:01:40 Kevin Mako: from that startup product. Before we get into all of that, just give us a bit of a background of the 40 years leading up

00:01:47 Suresh Sethi: to the success that you are today as a professor at the University of Illinois in Industrial Design. Thank you, Kevin. It just looks as if I started yesterday.

00:01:56 Suresh Sethi: It's not been because if you enjoy what you're doing, then I think days and time just flies very quickly. I'm still young. I am

00:02:05 Suresh Sethi: still ready to do new things. And being with young minds and young people looking at the world

00:02:11 Suresh Sethi: through their eyes, I believe that keeps me young and ready to take the new challenges that face us all the time.

00:02:19 Suresh Sethi: Having said that, I studied in some of the best design schools. I was at the National Institute of Design, Amdabad, which was a school that not many know was.

00:02:28 Suresh Sethi: established on Charles Eames' report in India.

00:02:33 Suresh Sethi: After finishing that, I went to Dormus Academy in Italy in the early years of Memphis and my teachers happened to be Athore Sotsas,

00:02:42 Suresh Sethi: Andrei Sotsi, to name just few of them. You can imagine these were the best designers. But I was fortunate to have gone through that journey.

00:02:49 Suresh Sethi: But luckily, I joined as a young designer in Phillips as my first job under Robert Blake in the India office in Bombay. Now, early on,

00:02:58 Suresh Sethi: I realized in my first job itself that creating products is about connecting to the business.

00:03:05 Suresh Sethi: If your product is not seen as feasible, and I say feasible, both in terms of cost and its ability to sell in the market, I think you already failed.

00:03:15 Suresh Sethi: Luckily for me, my first product was very, very successful. And why did that happen? Designing lights, as you may say, is not very

00:03:24 Suresh Sethi: easy. We think designing a lamp is very simple product, but when I started working on it, I realized it were not so easy because these lamps were large and heavy and had

00:03:34 Suresh Sethi: to be produced within the constraints, and those constraints could be the manufacturing constraints, people's constraint,

00:03:40 Suresh Sethi: and how the world looked at those products. In those days, early days, I would go back to my design school and share my work with my teacher.

00:03:48 Suresh Sethi: And one of the teachers said, oh, these look very heavy. You're working with light. Remember lightness. That was a profound realization that led me to

00:03:58 Suresh Sethi: start working on products that were light and compact. And in the process, what I did, which I didn't

00:04:05 Suresh Sethi: realize at that point, I optimized the material for the least wastage when I was designing. And what it did was that the packaging size was reduced.

00:04:15 Suresh Sethi: Larger volumes could be shipped in a container, and the company saw substantial profit margins. That was something that I never thought as a designer.

00:04:23 Suresh Sethi: But if you are producing a product, you have to think of those things. How do you make profit?

00:04:28 Suresh Sethi: And to me, it was unknowingly that I did it, just with the word lightness. And that's something that I think people have to keep in mind, even in today, when you talk

00:04:37 Suresh Sethi: of sustainability and you want to connect to the new buswords using less material, using limited time to produce a product. How would

00:04:45 Suresh Sethi: you assemble a product with the least components. So to me, these were the key things that came to me inadvertently while talking to people who had worked on these

00:04:55 Suresh Sethi: projects for a very, very long time, like my teachers.

00:04:59 Suresh Sethi: And I thought that to me, passing on the knowledge. And that's probably the reason that I came into teaching, sharing what I have for so long practiced. But having worked in

00:05:08 Suresh Sethi: Phillips for about seven years, most of my projects were very successful. And almost all of them sold well.

00:05:14 Suresh Sethi: I moved out to Phillips because I thought I didn't know that I was selling or it was Phillips, the brand that was selling.

00:05:20 Suresh Sethi: And I wanted to understand that it was me that was making the difference. I moved out, I set up my own studio and that studio actually

00:05:28 Suresh Sethi: I ran for 15 years working from things like television sets and the largest project was a boat, a Tao. Three floors,

00:05:38 Suresh Sethi: 79 meters, all made in wood. Wow. And to me, to see that boat sailing at the harbor was the most beautiful experience

00:05:47 Suresh Sethi: I've ever had because how could I not being a marine engineer work on such a project, starting with a simple product like a lamp to a boat?

00:05:55 Suresh Sethi: I thought that was an amazing journey that I had transcended. But to me, what was most important was that I had to remove my ego. Every time I would go to a client,

00:06:05 Suresh Sethi: because the first time I would try and understand what was their story, what was their meaning to produce this product, apart from making money, what was going on in their mind.

00:06:15 Suresh Sethi: And I actually realized that I would get an idea in my first meeting. And when I would go back, I would say to the client that this is what you said.

00:06:25 Suresh Sethi: This is your story that I'm bringing a project on. And it really connected because they started believing in that product. And I think that is the most important

00:06:33 Suresh Sethi: part when you're having this relationship, there's a relationship of trust. There's a relationship that it's a teamwork. It's not about you alone.

00:06:41 Suresh Sethi: No product designers can work in isolation.

00:06:44 Suresh Sethi: They have to work in a team and that team is about engineers, it's about marketing guide, it's about creating that ecosystem. And you work together.

00:06:53 Suresh Sethi: It's like sailing a boat. If you're not in sync with each other, you won't be able to go further. So to me, those are the key issues that I think happen to me very easily.

00:07:02 Suresh Sethi: And it's about your ability to understand and to communicate. People always remembered these stories, these first conversation, even

00:07:10 Suresh Sethi: if you look at how Philip Starr designed the juicy Selef, he's talking about his story, how he was eating meal at a restaurant, and then the

00:07:19 Suresh Sethi: idea came, and then he sold the idea to Alberto Alessi. People will remember that product that's a useless product, yet people will remember that product because of that story.

00:07:28 Suresh Sethi: And I also realized when I started my PhD, this idea about how to connect, how to connect, because many times you

00:07:36 Suresh Sethi: You ask the designer, why did you design this? And they will say, I like it. It's beautiful. But they'll never be able to tell you why and what led them to creating that form.

00:07:46 Suresh Sethi: And to me, that question, how you justify the creative act was the reason I went into doing my PhD.

00:07:52 Suresh Sethi: PhD was role of narrative in product visualization. And these stories that I'm telling you are very, very important.

00:07:59 Kevin Mako: And most of the time, you'll remember the client talking about when the designer came to me and he said this and we got this idea.

00:08:06 Kevin Mako: So to me, those are the key reasons that I went into my PhD. You did a lot of work within your PhD to discover that connection between making a great

00:08:15 Kevin Mako: profitable product and the value of the storytelling or that connection that goes along with

00:08:20 Kevin Mako: it. Those two things combined yield these products like you mentioned on this one that sell for 30 years as a highly successful product.

00:08:28 Suresh Sethi: If you could focus on those two things early in the development process, talk a bit more about the thesis and some of the results that you saw in that PhD work?

00:08:37 Suresh Sethi: To me, what was the connection here to the project? It was thinking about starting with the user.

00:08:43 Suresh Sethi: The opportunity was because I thought of where this product is going to be used. Finding the opportunity is important.

00:08:52 Suresh Sethi: And what are the outcome of the research that I did was, what matter is not what someone did with these devices, but what narrative experience they carry.

00:09:01 Suresh Sethi: What they experience and what they aspire for, here lies the opportunity. It's not the idea of a product that I may have that I want to design a fan. What is the opportunity there?

00:09:11 Suresh Sethi: Now, to understand those stories, the narratives that one would have is very important. I believe that communication with the user is the key.

00:09:21 Suresh Sethi: And using narrative and design is a construct that captures the sense of the user experience to conceptualize the product form.

00:09:29 Suresh Sethi: Because these narratives gives you the construct, the form, and the form then only can use lines, color, material to

00:09:38 Suresh Sethi: create that beautiful product. In one of my examples in my thesis was Eto Resortza's typewriter Valentino.

00:09:45 Suresh Sethi: If it hadn't been shown in an American movie, probably it wouldn't have been successful. As successful as it became, I loved his work, I loved his writings.

00:09:54 Suresh Sethi: However, there's always these connections that help sell the product. The moment that thing was shown in a movie, it became an icon.

00:10:03 Suresh Sethi: So to me, that story really holds in some ways. I remember Andrea Branzi in his studio and he gave me a

00:10:11 Suresh Sethi: cup that he designed a coffee cup. And he said every time somebody came to my office, they would remove the cup from the saucer and keep it on my table.

00:10:20 Suresh Sethi: That coffee stained mark would stay on the table because some of the coffee would have poured out onto the plates. He designed a cup that was like a cone so that when you remove it

00:10:30 Suresh Sethi: out of the plate, you actually can't place it on this table. So to me, even if the story was good and it was beautiful, the way he created that beautiful

00:10:37 Suresh Sethi: form, it's always to me that story should not become the ends to the mean. It should always be the next step.

00:10:44 Suresh Sethi: If you look at the larger consumer, the larger user connect to the stories, and we did that at Whirlpool in a good way. I'll take a simple example of color on a refrigerator.

00:10:53 Suresh Sethi: Now, if you look at a refrigerator in your kitchen in America, they will either be steel or white or black, very clean color.

00:11:02 Suresh Sethi: If you have to sell it in India, for example, most of the people would cover their devices, the consumer devices with fabric so

00:11:11 Suresh Sethi: that it stays new forever. It almost created a kind of skin that actually we've started associating those skins with the product.

00:11:19 Suresh Sethi: So I was asked by my CEO to create a new color for a refrigerator, a new design, a pattern for a refrigerator.

00:11:29 Suresh Sethi: And I couldn't accept the fact that there would be flowers on that because the textiles that most people would use have flowers.

00:11:36 Suresh Sethi: And I fought for one year with my CEO and said, no, no, that won't work. Let's do something that's more futuristic.

00:11:43 Suresh Sethi: Later, after a year, I said, let me go back because he wouldn't change. he wouldn't budge. He said, I wanted. So I went and got the best artist, created the best

00:11:53 Suresh Sethi: beautiful design, textile artist, and went to Korea, Seoul, and went to the manufacturer, got the artworks done, and got it produced, brought it back.

00:12:03 Suresh Sethi: And I was actually surprised as a designer because I heard that story and I connected to the stories of the users that why they wanted

00:12:10 Suresh Sethi: textile, how they saw something that's very busy. And I realized that the contextual sense,

00:12:16 Suresh Sethi: when you're looking at the best designers in the world which come from the West and don't look at the local culture which use that product. There's something that's missing.

00:12:25 Suresh Sethi: So when this product was made and those flowers put, it was the best selling product in the market for that year.

00:12:31 Suresh Sethi: Now, this is not part of the thesis. I use storytelling as an idea as part of my thesis and created

00:12:38 Suresh Sethi: surfaces for refrigerator, both in China Studio and India Studio. And the outcome was incredible. I've written paper.

00:12:46 Suresh Sethi: papers on it. I created new refrigerators from idea of stories. I went to design schools. There are students who work on it.

00:12:54 Suresh Sethi: I worked with my designers within the studio. I collected stories from 100 designers all over the world. I always nine of them, very, very, very famous, like

00:13:03 Suresh Sethi: Philip Stark, Ettaresotza, Branzi, and those stories are part of my thesis.

00:13:09 Suresh Sethi: How did they start the project? How did they create the product? And I realized that the products came out of the

00:13:15 Suresh Sethi: experienced their own lives, and that differentiated their products from the mundane, because

00:13:22 Suresh Sethi: almost everybody is redesigning, the idea of invention. These stories bring in a certain character to a product.

00:13:29 Suresh Sethi: If you feel something has to be strong, you'll remember as strong as Samsung or Atlas, you know. So if the moment you get strong, you start getting a familiar

00:13:39 Suresh Sethi: character, and then you build the form and the shape of the product that gives

00:13:45 Suresh Sethi: the consumer that experience, if you're selling a story that my product is as strong as Atlas or

00:13:51 Suresh Sethi: Samsung or Hercules, then how do you create the beauty on your product that relates to that

00:13:58 Suresh Sethi: story? So my thesis was actually to find those qualities from your narratives and that core quality

00:14:06 Suresh Sethi: will then be translated onto your product. So if I tell the story and I show that form, people can relate to it.

00:14:13 Suresh Sethi: And I tested that with a lot of people that I showed a product, talked about a story and says, check which of this you can connect.

00:14:22 Suresh Sethi: And they connected it to the right product. So to me,

00:14:25 Kevin Mako: those were the learnings that I got up on my thesis. And I still feel that it's still very new, very nascent. People don't really consciously.

00:14:32 Kevin Mako: They do it unconsciously, but consciously, a lot of people are not using narratives to build their product. Branding people do that in some

00:14:41 Kevin Mako: ways, but product designers, industrial designers, engineers who design products don't do that consciously.

00:14:48 Kevin Mako: This is so powerful to hardware startups, especially, because the product is usually something that you've identified in the world around you.

00:14:55 Kevin Mako: It's something that matters to the hardware startup. You're the inventor, the person that's bringing this thing to life. So why not bring

00:15:02 Kevin Mako: your story, your narrative, your vision into the product itself? Something why it's so important

00:15:08 Kevin Mako: to go through the process of moodboarding or the process of understanding different design language

00:15:13 Kevin Mako: or understanding really what the end goal for the type of customer you're going to sell. Is it going to be something modern?

00:15:18 Kevin Mako: Is it going to be something rugged or is it going to be something medically oriented?

00:15:21 Kevin Mako: All of these different characteristics of how you envision the product being used can dump into

00:15:27 Kevin Mako: creating the right narrative that matches both the product and the person behind the product. I'm a huge fan.

00:15:33 Kevin Mako: I talk about it a lot on the podcast of bringing your personal vision into the narrative of the business around the product. And of course, the product itself. So if you're

00:15:42 Kevin Mako: an inventor and you've created this product because it helps you with this pain in your elbow and you've got this great little elbow brace, blend the business and

00:15:50 Kevin Mako: your personal life together, especially as a hardware startup. A lot of people are afraid to do this. But the reality

00:15:55 Kevin Mako: is the people who bring an authentic real story, a true narrative behind the product, both is

00:16:02 Kevin Mako: great, as you're mentioning from your PhD thesis, in creating an amazing product that fits

00:16:06 Kevin Mako: the market, but also gives you a huge competitive edge over the big corporations that can't bring that narrative human factor into every new product they release.

00:16:16 Kevin Mako: What an advantage is a hardware startup. And here you're hearing it from PhD thesis, somebody who's been in the industry

00:16:22 Kevin Mako: for 40 years on how that truly makes for better design products. And you've seen it from all angles. You've seen it from the academic angle.

00:16:30 Kevin Mako: You've seen it from big corporate at Phillips and Whirlpool. You've also seen it working at your design studio back in the day, working

00:16:36 Kevin Mako: with countless product brands at all different levels.

00:16:38 Suresh Sethi: And the reality is, is bring your narratives into the product, have it be one and the same.

00:16:43 Suresh Sethi: Not only are you creating a better product, but you'll enjoy it more because it's your personality, the core of your being.

00:16:49 Suresh Sethi: The reason that you invented this product is now coming through the product itself. And that's what people want to see. That's what people buy. They pay for it.

00:16:56 Suresh Sethi: And as you mentioned, you started with this at the beginning of this episode. It actually leads to more profitable products at the end of the day.

00:17:03 Suresh Sethi: Think about the business and not just the product. Have a story you can share with your consumers, connect emotionally.

00:17:10 Suresh Sethi: A delightful experience is what people remember about your product. Create a name that is memorable and easy to state.

00:17:17 Suresh Sethi: Creating simple and beautiful forms, timeless forms, is the key to product success.

00:17:23 Suresh Sethi: To me, without that, these are core values that I have probably practiced

00:17:27 Kevin Mako: unknowingly, but having written my PhD, having gone through the rigor of traveling alone, PhD is a lonely journey.

00:17:36 Kevin Mako: You have to find your own path. You reflect on things that you've done in your past. And having done it late in my life, I felt that it was, these simple things are

00:17:45 Suresh Sethi: what matters.

00:17:47 Suresh Sethi: And if you can put that together, definitely I would say you'll be able to sell your product better. That's very powerful advice and great little action nuggets for everybody to

00:17:55 Kevin Mako: put into their product, into their designs, with their design teams to make the next world-class product. Stress, really appreciate you being on the show.

00:18:03 Kevin Mako: Thank you for all your words of wisdom and helping hardware startups get off the ground with their product innovations by connecting emotionally with their customers.

00:18:11 Kevin Mako: Thank you so much, Kevin. It was wonderful talking to you. And I hope whatever little I have shared makes sense to people. I'll be happy to come again onto your

00:18:20 Kevin Mako: podcast in the future sometimes. But thank you so much. Much appreciate it. We'll talk soon.

00:18:26 Narrator: Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the Product Startup Podcast. If you found some value in the show, do us a huge favor and leave us a quick five-star review.

00:18:34 Narrator: If you have any questions, guest suggestions, or anything else, feel free to reach out to us anytime at our email, podcast at MakoDesign.com. That's podcast at MakoDesign.com.

00:18:43 Narrator: This show is hosted by Kevin Mako, North America's leading expert on product development for physical product

00:18:48 Narrator: startups. Huge thanks to our sponsors, PTC, and their two best-in-class 3D CAD product development software solutions, Onshape and Creo, and Mako Design + Invent.

00:18:57 Narrator: The original firm providing world-class consumer product development services tailored specifically to startups, small manufacturers, and inventors.

00:19:04 Narrator: Thanks for joining and see you next time.