Icons of brand experience: Dieter Rams for Braun

Dieter Rams

Braun

The principles of great "user experience design" have been pillars of design from the outset. All product designs that became icons and survived for generations, did so because they offered the consumer something unique and presented it in an "intuitive" way. "Intuitive" because good design fulfills its function without "trying".

If a brand seamlessly integrates with our lives, it does it simply and efficiently. This means, wherever, whenever and however a brand touches the consumer, it does it in a way that seamlessly connects and solves problems. There is an old notion that "good design is invisible." That is very apt. It is the same for a good painting, even if many people claim they can easily replicate the few brushstrokes of a Picasso or Matisse, that is not true. Even with Miro, it is what is left behind after all extraneous elements have been taken away that creates the impact. Exceptional product design does the same: it makes the brand experience so "frictionless" that nothing less or more is required.

This principle is the foundation of user experience design. We may not have called it that when Rams designed his iconic products, but the principles were the same. Watches, toasters, radios and other household products that perform simple functions. However simple it may sound, the fact that so few brands "get it right" endorses just how difficult it actually is.

The very same way a user experiences a physical product that is well designed now applies to online marketing and user interface. Even more so where the two worlds collide: online and offline. Why I say collide, is that we tend to dissect the consumer experience, when it should be seamless between brand touch points. Consumers should not even have to think about where the interface actually happened. The invoice from the telco is as important as its network coverage. When it is disconnected, it does not work.

Yet, we often face hugely complex online retail sites. Web sites where you try once and then give up. Links that do not work. Having to enter the same information again and again. Being retargeted for the same product again and again, even after you bought it! Receiving the same offer from your bank week after week. Being asked to rate the same site again and again. Then try to call a call centre to resolve an issue. I can go on.

These are not complex things, they are the very basic things that "interrupt" user experience and infuriate customers. Because we have faster and deeper analytics available, online user experiences are much easier and faster to correct than physical products. We don't have to wait for consumer research that may take weeks. So why don't we do it? Is it because we still design businesses in functional silo's that automate business operations rather than create seamless customer experiences? It is easy to talk about being customer-centric but it is actually a very serious topic.

There is an inherent paradox in many brand designs. When a brand is designed "from the inside out" - hence starts with consumer problems and designs the most logical interface to offer solutions, the design is good. What is the shortest line between problem and solution? Where are the fault lines? What will complicate rather than simplify functionality? What will confuse instead of help? What does every element do?

Dieter Rams designed the by now classic range of watches and other products for Braun in the fifties. His vision of design was "Less, but Better". User experience should be intuitive, not "over-designed." It should also be holistic, not fragmented experiences - the whole must be more than the sum of the parts. That is true for all good experience design. It was then, it is now - it is more complex with the explosion of touchpoints, but the better we understand what problems our brand must solve, the easier it is to do. We just need to specify, within the brand strategy, the user experience parameters and design them that way from inception.

Dieter Rams - the Jonathan Ive of Braun?