Design
Products for Normies, Products for Sickos
Some products are made to have a perfect balance of features. They are "good enough" for "most people." A milquetoast Wirecutter pick. Those are products for "normies." But some products are made for the extremes, the edges. Those are products for sickos. (As a
Opinionated Is Good
In a user interview years ago, a customer said he found his Tortuga backpack to be too "opinionated." I got a little obsessed with that idea. A product should be opinionated. A designer—and by extension, his products—should have a point of view. Opinions are good. You
Meet Them Where They Are
> What's your California Roll? Nir Eyal's People Don’t Want Something Truly New, They Want the Familiar Done Differently [https://medium.com/startup-grind/people-dont-want-something-truly-new-they-want-the-familiar-done-differently-7648f24f8fe7] highlights how the California Roll turned American sushi consumption from zero to a multi-billion dollar industry. He calls this "the
Getting Specific: Tortuga's V3 Strategy
At Tortuga [http://www.tortugabackpacks.com], the V3 project was all about getting more specific. Going more niche. The Outbreaker backpack [http://www.tortugabackpacks.com/products/outbreaker-travel-backpack] isn't just a new product, it's the next iteration of Tortuga as a company. For the launch, we redesigned
Optimal Newness
Raymond Loewy has been called "the father of industrial design" and credited with "invent[ing] Americana." I'm embarrassed to admit that I only learned about him recently from a misleadingly-titled Atlantic article [https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/01/what-makes-things-cool/508772/] . The article
A Non-Designer’s Quick and Dirty Guide to Working with Designers
> Now make it look good. If you say this to a designer, you’ve failed. You’ve failed to maximize her strengths and probably failed to engage her in the project. Design is not making things look good. Design is a repeatable process for solving problems. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- At Tortuga,