Nike just introduced a new running shoe, Nike Free. I tried it on in Nike Town. It was the most comfortable running shoe my feet had worn.
Holding Free in the hands, one will immediately notice its light weight. The upper of the shoe is extremely thin. It also has numerous tiny slit openings to enhance ventilation. The sole is flexible, so flexible that the shoe can almost fold in half. Running in Free is an exhilarating experience. I did it on the treadmill in Nike Town. My feet felt light and free, just as the shoe’s name suggests.
I also watched the TV spot for the shoe in Nike Town. It must be one of the most effective commercials ever made. A group of runners, all wearing white T-shirts and shorts, run barefoot on a wet sand beach. Yet it is no ordinary beach. The runners step over a manhole; they zoom past by parking meters, fire escape ladders, newspaper venders, mailboxes, and fire hydrants. A yellow cab drives by. Pedestrians. Then a bus crosses the screen. When it is gone, the scene has changed to a street corner in New York City. Only one runner remains. The camera switches to his feet. He is wearing Nike Free. The scene blurs, and a message appears on the screen: “Run barefoot”.
The music used in the commercial? Chariots of Fire. The tune, repeated twice, imprints in anybody’s mind.
What makes a great product? Invariably, a great product is built around a simple concept. It is conceived with a clear vision of how it will be marketed. Run barefoot, run free. Nothing can be simpler than that. Everything about Free revolves around this simple concept, from the choice of fabric to the shape of the shoe. It has not an ounce of extra weight. It flexes to conform to the shape of the foot. It is probably the most plain-looking sneaker that Nike has ever made. Once the simple concept is established, no effort is spared to realize that concept in the product.
Apple also makes great products. iPod Shuffle, for instance, took the flash player market by storm. The simple concept here? Life is random, so give chance a chance. So goes the tiny LCD screens, so goes the cluttered buttons of controls. All the fat is stripped off the Shuffle, and the result is a lean flash player that the market has never seen.
The technology that goes into Nike Free or Ipod Shuffle must be enormous. Yet Nike and Apple mention none in their commercials. They sell the concept, not the technology. Ever watch the infomercials? “Our product is made of materials used in spacecraft.” Hello! Anybody interested in buying a spacecraft?
So what makes Nike Free, or iPod Shuffle, a great product? In short, it has everything, and nothing more.
Jonathan Ive’s goal in designing iPod was to achieve a look that does not appear to have been designed.
ReplyDeleteSimplicity sells. Big. There is the swiss knife equivalent in every product category. There are zip-off pants, watches with built-in radio, and cameras that shoot video clips. But the top of the line is almost always the one that fulfills only a single purpose, the one function that defines the product in the first place.
At one point or another, we have all told ourselves to simplify our lives. That is, intriguingly, what we do best. We divide people into groups so it is easier for us to identify friend from foe. We classified the living world into three kingdoms although we did not get it completely right the first round. We categorized the forces of the universe and then attempted to unify them. And our friend still tries to simplify the force field.
The simplicity of an elegant equation made a physicist proclaim the truth of his theory before it was proven by experiments. However, one simple explanation for the appeal of simplicity is that, far from being the true face of nature, it is the part that our feeble brain is able to comprehend. We probably simply can not handle the whole truth.
Ive’s design did deceive me. I did not understand the fuss about iPod in the beginning because I thought exactly as he planned for us—there was no design in this thing. Being a man with a cluttered life, I am definitely the simple-minded and single-tracked type. I like simplicity because it makes my life easier. But I also have zip-off pants and multifunction watches. My camera even plays mp3. It is not because I don’t like Rolex or Nikon. I simply can not afford them.
Simplicity is a vision, a choice and it is also a commodity, a strategy. It is the eye candy for the intelligent mind. But ‘sweet’ is not all the flavors that nature has to offer. Kids love candy because it plays right into our taste buds. Almost all of us later discover the bitterness of coffee, tea and even beer. Some of us still add sugar to the first two and substitute Smirnoff (Smirnoff Twisted V, of course) for the third.
A great product is beauty reduced to its essence, luxury stripped to its core. It is nothing but the utility we are seeking--and are able to manage.