I am sure we all have seen Pedestal fans, and in different sizes. I am sure we have seen pedestal fans that rotate for a wider wind sweep to serve more people. Ever wondered why nobody ever found a way to rid us from the hassle that every time the fan speed had to be adjusted, we had to walk up to it and do it?
Well, as I discovered a few weeks back, somebody actually did. How many of us would have seen a Remote Control Operated Pedestal Fan. Here is one from a less than million population township in Central Eastern China.
No big brand but functional product design that’s relevant to the market.
How much? About RMB 200/- (roughly USD 35)
It is interesting to note how features get loaded, even to the seemingly basic products like a pedestal fan.
To me this is almost like an inspiration to get Functional frills into value for money products and build relevant differentiation. For example as my friend Deepak recently mentioned, why can’t we have no frills mobile phones with folding USB ports so that we can use them to transfer data without waiting for Bluetooth connectivity or looking for the PC connecting cord (which we seldom remember to carry around). Add to it we can even replace our USB flash memory sticks with such a feature in the mobile phone. I am sure most of the readers of this post would have lost at least one of their USB flash memory sticks by the time they find this post :)
To me, functional frills could be defined by some basic characters
1. Functional Frills are Hardy: Dust, heat, climate compliant/ tolerant
2. Functional Frills are Cheaper: Cost effective
3. Functional Frills are Physical: Based on hardware more than software
4. Functional Frills Differentiate: Help in bringing uniqueness to basic products/models/Designs
5. Functional Frills & Mobility: Help in making travel easy; need not carry different things any more – one can do more
One of the most compelling example of Functional Frills is Flip, an award winning Digital Video Recorder from Pure Digital starting at as less as USD 129/-. Flip is super simple, thus easy to use, can be connected to TV and has a USB that can help you connect it straight to the PC too. It is designs like these that make people adopt gadgets effortlessly.
Simple cost effective design is the shortest line between innovation and adoption.
Are we up to it?
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Functional Frills!
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2 comments:
reminds me of the 'you cant always get a big idea. meanwhile you should test out a lot of smaller ides' conversation.. true
Thanks for reading. Yes, this is a very good way of looking at it - 'get more and more small ideas' - lot of people out there are looking for such small improvizations/innovations.
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