I Want You, I Need You, I...

My bloggin' buddy Niti Bhan put up a provocative little post the other day on customer-driven design focusing on "unmet needs." She quotes Meena Mansharamani, Pepsi's North America senior vice-president of innovation and insights, who said:

We're constantly examining our product pipeline to develop innovations that will satisfy the unmet needs of our consumers. With the introduction of Dole Sparklers, we're providing a light, invigorating sparkling juice that's low in sugar and calories, but indulgent on taste.

S-s-s-something from the comments (sorry, if you haven't yet seen Ze Frank's hilarious, The Show, you probably won't get that one), I wrote:

My unmet needs are legion. From a computer that actually repairs itself, to a simple recycling system, to a toaster that actually toasts properly, to a government undistracted by calls to make English America's official language...pretty diverse set of unmet needs. Beverages that are low in sugar and calories, yet indulge my taste, are in another category altogether. Might be nice, might actually be enjoyable, but don't get on my unmet needs radar. Trying to put them there makes a SVP of innovation and insights sound like an idiot.

And later on, I said:

The illusory nature of "need" is one of the great conversations of our age. Grant McCracken writes brilliantly about the attacks against "manufactured need" waged by post-War academics. We came to view Packard's "vast wasteland" of American culture as a kind of original sin; materialism became our guiltiest of guilty pleasures...

[snip]...like it or not, capitalism hinges on enticement; on pointing out that there are things available that you might want, that you might come to feel you need. But capitalism also hinges on discipline; on recognizing that, like Mick said, "you can't always get what you want." Advertisers, marketers and designers (in the main) are definitely on the "enticement" side of that equation.

And then, yesterday, Karen and I went to MoMA and saw this:

Need and Desire flash on and off on this piece of art...the creator of which I neglected to note. Just like in our lives...Need...Desire...Hope...Dream...flashing on and off continually...all aided by the works of our fellows.

We need to get used to the fact that this process isn't creating "artificial needs," it's part of the great evolutionary process which makes one bird more attractive than another; one flower bring on more bees. We are attracted to beauty and wired to acquire things that attract us. What could be more "natural" than that?

Tags: Niti Bhan Design

Comments

[.. atrakasya ..]

Apropos your comment - "We are attracted to beauty and wired to acquire things that attract us. What could be more "natural" than that?"

It does seem like that - to go to beauty as a fundamental instinct of man.

What remains to be seen is - can one embed beauty synthetically into synthetic objects? Of course it can - any designer will tell you that.

The art is almost perfected. I can take your formal sense of sexual beauty, implant it's features into a motorcycle styling and show you a bike that makes you want to have it with the same desire that you would want a beautiful woman. And you may not even realize why you like it so much.

This, then, becomes the equivalent to saying that it is correct to want flavour-beauty in food, while disregarding the fact that the flavor is created synthetically, by adding the neuroexcitator monosodium glutamate, or by adding aspartme.

Hence, the question is not whether it is natural for man to go to beauty.

The question is whether it is valid to synthetically embed beauty in products that do not naturally have it, and to what extent is external/superficial ornamentation to be respected as beauty.

To use a catholic metaphor - the devil can quote the bible to his own ends.
Similarly, the designer can use your natural (frankly, thats to be defined) sense of beauty to sell you something that you may perceive as your inherent need.

[olivier blanchard]

Great piece.

PS: Can someone please officially shelf the term "Product Pipeline?" I can't believe anybody still uses it.

[Tom Guarriello]

Thank you, Olivier. Yours is a very nice blog, by the way.

How about "product roadmap"? Can we eliminate that as well, or better yet, send it washing down the "product pipeline"?

[.. atrakasya ..]

Now, I have no sympathies with technical jargon (whether managemental or design) either way, though obviously, it is necessary to have specific words or phrases for some concepts for clear understanding.
Yet so many times we invent monikers or acronyms for other reasons.

And it is interesting to note - we also constantly do away with terminology when it gets a bit old.

Is it because there is, on the horizon, a more accurate descriptor of the same entity, or the entity itself has been redefined?
Or is this simply a need to seem more contemporary in one's outlook by constantly embracing 'happening' terminology and abandoning the jargon that has reached the hoi polloi?

Take for example the phrase - "product pipeline". Has the concept that it represents morphed into something else?
Or is there a new moniker (which may be equated with packaging the same old concept in contemporary, supercool, upgraded, aerodynamic, packaging?) for the same concept represented by "product pipeline"?

It is pertinent that this is addressed under a blog that talks of needs - whether real or projected.
How many examples do we know of such "rejuvenation" of concepts, or "upgradation of conceptual understanding by semantic alteration of a moniker", if I may? :)

[Tom Guarriello]

Freshing language often freshens concepts. Words reveal shades of meaning that had previously been hidden. But we're easily sated creatures, demanding newness (one of my graduate school profs, given to drama, called this the "fundamental need of the voracious ego for more and more"); dramatic, but fundamentally accurate. We crave new things and language is no exception. In fact, it's one of our primary means for making old things new again. (How many poems, songs and novels about love can we write?)

So, your point is a good one, ..atrakasya.., the need is probably the same, but the means of expressing it gives it the veneer of newness (or, rather Newness!) that we love.

[Friend]

never the less, this piece is from Bruce Nauman