To create good products, meet your customer
Doug Dietz is an industrial designer who work for GE Healthcare for a long time. He designed the MRI scanner which he is very proud of. Many people including technician, docker praised his MRI machine so much.
On one day, while he was talking with the medical technician in a local clinic, a girl with her parent came to do a check up with his MRI scanner.
As soon as she see a machine and the atmosphere around, she cried.
She cannot control herself, so the staffs had to use sedative drugs in order to make her calm and continue the process.
Nobody told Dietz about that. He tried to collect the usage information for children and figured out that almost 85% of 3–8 year children had to use sedatives.
He think that it is his failure.
After that, during a seminar in D.School, he discovered the cause of his failure.
During his design process, he met and consulted with many people: engineers, marketers, technicians, doctors. But the one that he did not ever take his time with is children, who need to use his invention.
After that, he tried to observe children , met with child psychologist, parent, teacher.
Finally he create a new MRI, The Adventure Series
The Adventure Series provides the new experiences to the children. They will feel like they are in adventure, instead of medical treatment.
The Adventure Series make a huge success in child treatment. it decrease the need of sedative to near 0. Children are happy and want to come back again.
Before solving problem, did you meet all of your stakeholder, especially, your customers, and your users?
PS. The story from The achievement habit, Bernard Roth