Studies show that people gravitate toward products and services that make them feel good, safe, calm, or happy. Yet the traditional foam core model, created in a design lab and proudly displayed on an executive's desk, can neither capture nor demonstrate the sensory and emotional state of a customer experiencing a company's service.
Think of GM's OnStar in-vehicle security and communications system. A physical model of the blue OnStar call button doesn't begin to convey the relief a lost or injured driver would feel on hearing the operator's voice. Marketing departments get this, it's why an OnStar ad focuses on the customer rather than the button, yet the distinction is too often overlooked in the development process.
With this in mind, it is strange to me that common practice in the service sector is to still test potential innovations with simple, written concept statements. Worse still are the companies that follow with an expensive pilot only to find that their promising concept missed the mark - because it had focused on the button rather than on what the button meant to the person pushing it.
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