Innovative Products or Solutions

When designing products or solutions, some of us have a tendency to gravitate to the Pareto Principle — we try solving for the bulk. For approximately 80% of the majority. And we feel it is the most optimal way to go.

There’s a reason I say feel, as opposed to think. In some cases, with process improvements or extremely limited budgets, it makes clear business sense to take this approach.
But not so much when you are innovating for a target group.

Because a very common side-effect of focusing on the average majority, is that the resulting solution that is just that. Average.
Often an oversimplified solution which might meet broad or basic needs of the majority, but nothing more. And in some cases, it might create more problems than solve.

Counterintuitively, the design thinking process recommends involving and including exception users. Users who fall on the extremes (of the bell curve). Those outside of the general majority.
Why, you might wonder, when it is tough enough finding a solution for the majority.

Because those are often the users who have a clearer context about a need. They usually are aware of available options and alternatives. They tend to feel more strongly about the problem, and often have very creative and innovative ideas for a better solution.

Kat Holmes beautifully highlights this and the importance of involving and including the exceptions, users who don’t form the majority. According to her, when you solve for the majority, you risk getting a solution that doesn’t fit anyone’s requirement perfectly. And that instead, when you involve, and innovate including users at the ends of the bell curve instead, solutions tend to be more flexible and inclusive to everyone.

And she backs it up with a great example from the 1940s, when the US Air Force designed fighter jet cockpits for the “average pilot”, where everything was fixed in place, unintentionally causing a lot of crashes. Subsequently, a lieutenant studied a few of the “average pilot” dimensions and parameters used to design the cockpit, only to find they didn’t fit a single pilot perfectly.

This later led to a range of innovations like adjustable instrument clusters, adjustable seat belts, height-adjustable seats, etc., many of which have become commonplace in our passenger cars and commercial flight seats.

Always good to remember that when solving present day challenges, we would be better off innovating and designing more inclusive solutions considering a diverse range of users, rather than limiting our focus and efforts to the average majority and risking with an oversimplified product that isn’t wow for anyone.
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