Friday, January 04, 2013

The Secret Yardstick Driving Innovation At AOL, Beats, And Microsoft | Co.Design: business innovation design

The Secret Yardstick Driving Innovation At AOL, Beats, And Microsoft | Co.Design: business innovation design: The "15-foot test," as Wetherell refers to it, is the threshold for differentiation he holds his team to: Products must attract attention even yards away from the computer screen. It’s the idea that in order for a product to stand out in such a crowded market, he says, "it needs not only to function differently but also look noticeably different from afar." That standard was arguably the driver behind Alto, AOL’s radically redesigned email service that launched in October--which looks more like Pinterest than Gmail--but it’s also a sentiment I’ve heard from a slew of designers in the past year--a sign that products can no longer live or die by tech specs and up-close product inspections. In fact, AOL killed a past iteration of its email service, called Phoenix, because Wetherall says, "it didn’t pass the 15-foot test."

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