Why You Should Sweat the Details

Hosain Rahman, the CEO of Jawbone, design celebrity Yves Béhar, and a Jawbone executive met to discuss the packaging for a product. The specific issue: Did they have the right color of black? After 45 minutes the exec loses patience and asks when they’re going to put the crayons away and do some real work. The exec is now a former Jawbone exec.
“That was just the wrong way to think about the product experience,” says Rahman. “We care about the debossing and embossing, the matte, the shiny – all the different iterations of black and how they interplay when you do black on black. And it was important to us that we were sweating that detail for the experience.” (Italics mine)
Do you remember when Steve Jobs called a Google exec on a Sunday saying they had an urgent problem that needed fixing immediately? The second “o” in the Google icon on the iPhone didn’t have the right gradient of yellow.
How often do you give in to “it’s good enough”, “it doesn’t really matter”, “no one will notice”?
If you are truly committed – not just interested, but committed – to the customer experience, then it’s not good enough. It does really matter. And the point isn’t whether they will notice. The point is what you choose to do when you notice.
Because that speaks to who you are.
Your thoughts?
Michael

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