Thoughts on Product Design and the Hotel Bathroom Puzzle

One of the most error-prone challenges we encounter in business is product design. How often have you walked into a bathroom at a hotel you'd never been at before, stepped into the shower...and had no idea how to work the darn thing?? Personally I am not ashamed to admit it's happened more times than I care to remember. Yeah, you fiddle with the faucets, or dials, or levers - or whatever tortuous device the manufacturer had come up with and managed to convince the hotel architect to recommend and purchase - but shouldn't showers, and thousands of other products, be designed so intuitively we in our consumers' shoes shouldn't have to think about how to operate them? The "Hotel Bathroom Puzzle" is a classic. Read Alec Nevala-Lee's excellent short treatise on the subject and learn, learn, learn. #failure #learningfromfailure #productdesign #design #Productmanagement