Do You Matter?: How Great Design Will Make People Love Your Company (Paperback)

As an executive in a large corporation with the responsibility to display to my clients things that differentiate us from other companies with which we compete, I am always reading about ways to achieve this. Like self-help books, there is a well developed genre of books about how to make your company stand out from the others. I suppose theres a great temptation to read the ideas, run off and implement them chapter and verse, and then wait/hope/pray for great transformation to take place. But there's no magic pill. And all the great advice in all the greatest books won't make a bit of difference if your company really is different from all the rest. But there really are ways to stand out. This book is full of ideas. But each idea by itself is not enough to achieve the end goal of making people love your company. And the authors know this well. From the start they make it clear that having a successful company requires a wholistic approach. Everyone from the very top to the very bottom must be fully committed to a shared vision, with a consistent level of performance to achieve the goals. And the old saw about the customer always being right is constantly reinforced here but in ways that seem obvious when you read them, but may never have occured to you before. Numerous examples of familiar companies are cited. Their successes and failures are examined in great detail in very engaging ways. These are not boring case studies. These are compelling stories about how companies rise and fall. Ever wonder what happened to Polaroid? Remember them - king of the instant photo? Who would have thought that they'd be left behind by digital photography - the electronic version of the instant photo. But because they didn't have a connection with their customers and the world as it changed, they practically ceased to exist. And certainly in digital photography terms, they don't exist as a major player. What about Apple? Lots of stories about Apple. Samsung. When I was a young adult Samsung was the ultimate junk electronics company. Crappy products. Dumb designs. Cheap unreliable rubbish. Take another look today. They're near the top of the heap. They found a way to completely transform their company by the way they approached design, and by the way they connected with their market and especially their customers. The thing that resonates with my experience is the emphasis that is placed on the customer experience. In many ways, the field I am in has very little opportunity to achieve meaningful differentiation. We all sell the same services. We all use the same product vendors. We all describe similar solutions and delivery strategies. But what we all have the potential to do different hinges on what kind of experience our customers have. At the end of the day, it's all about the people we serve and the way they feel about our products and services. Deliver a wonderful product to a customer who has been made to suffer the wh

The book by Robert Brunner and Stewart Emery is a compelling book defining what design is, why design is important to products/services/business, how to make design part of your process/culture and how lifestyles get connected to products. Apple is the prime example of a design driven organization used in the book. Steve Jobs is given as an architypal Chief Creative Officer (CEO). The writing style of the book is very clean, crisp and well structured use of examples with the logic behind the particular example to clarify and drive home the point. The approach is much better than the style used by Marty Neumeier in "The Designful Company". The big question is "Do You Matter?" which is really a great question that all company management and product managers should be asking themselves everyday especially in the real-time nature of the internet. The book does a great job of explaining why design is so important in creating products / services that are meaningful, affective and given sometimes cultish support by customers. The need to refocus the entire company to design products from the customer point of view (surface) and the backward engineer as need to make the customer experience happen makes a lot of sense. This is a difficult thing to do for a company as the book points out with many clear examples. The way to get a company to do it is not a magical set of 12 steps but rather getting management, middle-management and low level employees to be aligned using whatever methods are necessary. "Product as a portal" to the customer is a critical concept -- lifestyle products. If a company can make products portals, they will be exceptionally successful as the lifetime value of the relationship with the customer will be much larger than a given transaction with the customer. "Customer experience supply chain management" is a bit clunky but does summarize what a company needs to focus on. The book discusses this very well. The approaches to make this happen are useful but you need to know what will work in your organization. Summary, this is a very useful book for all companies but especially start-ups developing new products with limited resources. The rapid prototyping method of quickly getting at what a customer wants is very important. However, you must remember that once you know what a customer wants you must be extremely detail oriented and not stop iterating until it is correct (product, box, service, purchasing, support, etc). Management of start-up companies must read this book!

i read the book in just few days. its a type of a book that captivates you, that you can't let go and that you want more of. It is about all things that i so strongly believe matter when you make a product that changes people's lives, products that provoke smiles, warm fuzzy feelings, products to remember generations after. a nice gallery of good and bad examples to learn from. Its a lot about Apple and their geniality in all they do. Apple approach to 'total design' is a motivation to so many designers, marketers, to people who care and my personal driving spirit. This book is highly inspirational for those who want 'to matter'. I am eternally grateful to the authors for this fantastic book with great, unselfishly shared references. I hope my professional path will cross theirs one day. This book is a door opening towards new, better worlds. I strongly recommend owning the book.

As a business student, I felt this book was a page turner and a must-read for anyone interested in marketing research. It covers several real-world examples that are hot topics in today's marketing courses and reflects a modern approach to design-driven research and implementation. The authors frequently use Apple's iPhone as an example of how the company sells the whole experience to the customer rather than just a solid product. One of the authors, Robert Brunner, was listed as a former Director of Industrial Design at Apple, which explains the frequent analogous comparisons between Steve Jobs, Apple, and other companies. I also detected a strong affection towards BMW vehicles, suggesting one or more of the authors may own at least one BMW but I admit that they sell the experience as well as a stout automobile. The authors wrap up the book by summarizing the major ideas behind design-oriented products and how it has to strike an emotional chord with the customers. The authors cover a concept that is not frequently examined in marketing courses but is often hinted at or brought up as a side conversation. One scenario explored by the authors focused on Harley-Davidson and how they sell the brand and "lifestyle" and not just a mode of transportation. Super Sport bikes, naked bikes, and Dual-purpose bikes might offer better performance or versatility, but Harley-Davidson sells you the brand along with a machine that evokes an emotional attraction with its "potato-potato" exhaust. Overall, I felt this book did an excellent job of covering a very abstract concept lost to large companies that are undergoing a death spiral in today's economy. The book was also a quick read, so expect to finish it within a few hours.

This book is a great read about what good design is and the difference it can make on a company's success. It's full of real life examples about how some companies do it right and others fail miserably. No longer is design confined to the appearance of a product, but now it involves a whole myriad of things. One example the author uses is the iPod. The iPod is more than just an attractive object. It's the iTunes store, the 99 cent songs, and even the Apple store. If you have any interest in learning about the impact of design this is the definitive book. It's co-written by the the first head of ID for Apple. The book is full of illustrations and practical examples. Read this and you'll never look at a product in quite the same way.