How does your product compete beyond founctions?

I have always been fascinated by human behaviour and the application of psychological concepts to cater to the needs for human's daily activity. Looking back in the Uni days, the education framework never gave me the chance to explore the use of psychology in product design. By the end of my degree, I have lost interest in psychology from a human research point of view and all the lab reports that hindered upon me. I wondered every day, there must be more than testing conditioning in the lab with the use of psychological theories and conceptual models.

Until I found out about user experience design and user persona construction, I started to join the dots together. I also want to share some thoughts on the advantage of incorporating psychological contexts in the design of products.

Because the machine cannot understand human in a way, we know ourselves. Still, when we are designing a product, we could always come back to the necessary human behaviour, and human needs to embed in the design of products to make the products work smoothly for us.

In this competitive market, any features that you might think of for your products. Other people are thinking of similar things for their product development. Even if they are not as smart as you are to deliver the functionality, they could still adopt rapidly of your creation and show it though copying strategies or licensing. If you see yourself caught up in the vicious circle of technological advancement, and looking to give the world the next significant technological invention of all time. What would be the chances for that to happen?

And if you look at Apple, you might understand what I am trying to convey.

The design must have a vital role in the process of product development. It is like the personality in you that shapes your characteristics. They are there to tell the rest of the world who you are, how do you function in society and how you could let other people remember you. But if you hide your personality away, how do you let people see you? And how do you even see yourself?

Isn't that is the similar case for considering design in the product development process?

You give your brainchild a spirit to let them be alive in the minds of your users. And it would be hard for your competitors to copy your product soul.

(To Be Continued)