Working Forwards – How to Creatively Improve Your Product and Business
The 5 design patterns that underpin every creative advance
Jeff Bezos might be the biggest champion of #workingbackwards from a customer need. But he is also a proponent of “invent and wander” – the messy process of working forwards where you try lots of new things to discover what works.
The truth is that entrepreneurs need both working backwards and working forwards. Only when a practical solution meets a customer need is value created.
In my previous essay, Creative people start with more dots to connect, I explain how creativity is connecting the dots in new ways. But since most ideas won’t work, I argue that you must start with lots of diverse dots, so you have more possible connections to make.
But when you have retrieved lots of dots, what do you do with them?
How should you connect the dots to find ideas that are not only novel – but also valuable?
That’s the topic of this essay.
The 3 Methods for Discovering Creative Ideas
We can say that Creativity = Value x Novelty.
We can also say that Value = Solution x Problem. Value is created whenever a product fulfills a desire we have.
This means that there are 3 main methods – or starting points – we can use to find creative ideas:
Solution Origin – Start from an existing solution, then tweak it to solve a problem in a novel way.
Problem Origin – Start from a problem, then find a novel solution to it.
Novelty Origin – Start with something novel, then find a problem it can solve.
This essay will cover the Solution Origin.
We’ll start from an existing product that has value, then work forwards by tweaking it to find a new problem-solution fit.
The 5 Universal Design Patterns
Jacob Goldenberg, et al, have practically written the bible on how to innovate an existing product in their article Finding Your Innovation Sweet Spot.
The authors identify 5 universal design patterns. Ways of connecting dots that have a much better chance of adding value.
Let’s explore each of them below!
1. Subtraction
Subtraction means you remove an element most people think has to be there.
A great example of subtraction is the iPhone. In the pre-iPhone age, the surface of mobile phones was choked with buttons. The iPhone subtracted the entire tedious keyboard and replaced it with a single touchscreen.
The iPhone X later went even further, removing the home button too to make room for an even larger screen.
Another product that used subtraction is Sassy Seat – the baby stool with no legs! The baby stool is instead attached to the tabletop, making the chair highly portable as it doesn’t have any bulky legs sticking out.
The benefit of subtraction is reduced complexity. You remove unnecessary elements.
2. Task Unification
Task unification means you give an element an extra task to complete, thereby unifying two tasks into one component.
Consider IKEA’s use of the warehouse. Normal retail stores have neat customer-facing shelves on the frontend, and hide the storage warehouse on the backend. IKEA lets the warehouse double as a storage and as customer-facing shelves, allowing them to save significantly on floor space and time spent moving products between different shelves.
Another company that used task unification is Newell Rubbermaid. Customers kept misplacing the assembly instructions for Rubbermaid’s garage cabinet. So the company printed the instructions onto the product packaging – letting the packaging serve as both cover and assembly manual.
Not only did this save costs by eliminating the separate paper manual, it also boosted sales by showing customers how easy the cabinet was to assemble!
You can also insource adjacent tasks to a product that were previously done manually.
Consider a cutting board. One adjacent task when cutting groceries is to keep the cut groceries from falling off the board. This task is typically done manually by the person doing the cutting. Until someone was smart enough to insource this task to the cutting board by adding edges around the frame.
The main benefit of task unification is reduced complexity. You collapse two products into one. But it can also provide increased customization when you insource previously manual tasks.
3. Altered Copies
Altered copies means you create several copies of an element, and then modify each copy slightly to create different flavors of their core function.
Take a garden hose nozzle as an example. Simply adding three identical mouthpieces to the nozzle wouldn’t be very useful. But what if you altered the size and shape of each mouthpiece to create different spraying capabilities?
Better yet, what if you added a rotating mechanism to the nozzle so you can rotate between different sprays? Then you get the modern garden hose nozzle we know today.
Modern screwdriver sets also use altered copies by having many different kinds of screwdriver bits that can be attached or removed from the same handle. Instead of creating a new handle for every screwdriver bit, you have one handle that does everything.
This screwdriver metaphor is also how Shopify is built.
Shopify’s job is to provide the perfect way to sell products on the web – ie, the perfect screwdriver handle. But they don’t create all the different flavors of selling products – ie, all the different screwdriver bits for the handle.
Shopify instead invites third-party developers to build all the different online store apps (screwdriver bits) merchants might need.
Shopify itself does just two things:
Perfect the core handle ⇒ so online sales become frictionless.
Standardize the screwdriver bit hole ⇒ so developers can build customized bits that interface well with the handle.
The benefit of altered copies is increased customization. Instead of being locked into one flavor of the core function, you get endless customization while reusing the core component.
4. Attribute Relationships
Attribute relationships means you change the relationship between two attributes around the product.
Consider a shaving razor. There is a strong relationship between the razor’s blades and the gender of the user – with razors for women having more lubrication. This is a relationship between a product attribute (razor blades) and a user attribute (gender).
Likewise, a MacBook can have a strong relationship between the brightness tone of its screen and the time of day – with bluer screen light earlier in the day and warmer light later in the day to help late-night users fall asleep easier. This is a relationship between a product attribute (screen tone) and an environment attribute (time of day).
A third example is how the iPhone automatically reduces screen brightness when its power gets low. This is a relationship between two product attributes (screen brightness and battery).
As the examples above show, there are 3 categories of attribute relationships:
Product-User
Product-Environment
Product-Product
The benefit of attribute relationships is increased customization. Depending on the user, the environment, or another product attribute – attribute relationships let the product adapt to offer the perfect customization for the situation.
5. Modularity
Modularity means you break the product up into smaller modules, which can be used independently or combined in endless ways.
Modularity achieves two key benefits:
Increased customization:
LEGO is one of the most popular toys because it lets kids create any toys they can imagine. When a large product is separated into smaller modules – that can be taken apart and put together in all sorts of ways – it unlocks endless customization.
The fast-casual restaurant chain Chipotle also uses this principle. Their entire menu consists of just 53 natural ingredients. (McDonald’s french fries alone contain 19 ingredients). But by combining these core ingredients in different ways, Chipotle can offer 650,000 versions of burritos, bowls, and tacos.1 23
Reduced complexity: In the early days of Amazon, their website was built as one big monolith. As more and more features were added, the risk that a new feature might interfere with the existing features in unforeseen ways and cause bugs became ever greater.
Amazon solved this problem by dividing their website into separate modules with standardized interfaces. New changes could now be made to one module, without affecting the other modules. This modular system let each web team work independently, thereby iterating faster and spending less time patching bugs. 4
The Overarching Principle – More Connections with Fewer Dots
You will notice that the 5 design patterns center on just two key benefits:
Increase customization – make more connections between dots.
Reduce complexity – reduce the number of dots used.
Creativity is to make more and more connections with fewer and fewer dots.
Instead of having an identical handle for every screwdriver bit, we draw connections between the same handle and each bit.
Instead of having a separate “dot” just for assembly instructions, we eliminate the manual and reassign that connection to the product packaging.
Instead of having razors just for men, we replace the usual “razor blade dot” with a more lubricating version, and draw a new connection between the razor and female customers.
If I were to summarize the 5 design patterns into one overarching principle, it’d be this:
Make more and more connections with fewer and fewer dots.
Which Patterns Should I Use?
There are two major flaws a product or business unit can suffer from:
Too narrow customization: This happens when a product is made static. When it can’t be adapted or reconfigured, and when it mainly serves one use case.
Too big or complex: This happens when you use too many “dots” or couple them too tightly. In effect, you form one giant dot that is bulky and complex to use.
Which patterns to use depends on which flaw your product suffers from.
Gillette’s shaving razors suffered from being too narrow by only selling to men. So they used attribute relationships to design different blades to reach the female market.
Newell Rubbermaid suffered from being too complex with a separate assembly manual. So they used task unification by printing the instructions it onto the product packaging.
An ordinary rug might be considered both narrow and bulky. So Caesarea Creation Industries, an Israeli-based maker of household rugs, used modularity to divide their rugs into smaller “ruglets” that could be joined and taken apart using magnets.
Start by Listing Lots of Attributes
In my previous essay, Creative people start with more dots to connect, I stress the importance that you must start by creating a list with lots of diverse dots.
More dots matter because you discover more connections that can be made. Newell Rubbermaid couldn’t have eliminated their assembly manual if they hadn’t first thought about the product packaging.
If a dot is not listed, you can’t draw new connections to it!
Ideally, you should deconstruct and list the attributes in three categories:
Product:
What components and materials is the product made of?
What shape, size, color, texture, etc does the product have?
Environment:
Where and when is the product used – and not used?
What other tasks do people perform adjacent to this product?
User
Who uses this product – and who does not use it?
What is the main benefit they get from using the product?
Only when you have a long list of dots can you start drawing new connections between them.
Summary
Working forwards from an existing product has a big advantage – you are more likely to discover an idea that has value.
You can create value in one of two ways:
Increase customization – ie, make more connections between dots.
Reduce complexity – ie, reduce the number of dots used.
The 5 design patterns are useful tools for achieving these objectives. Depending on what your product suffers from most – too narrow customization, or being too large and complex – you should choose the patterns that best suit that objective.
Then, make a list of the attributes of your product, its environment, and its user.
Once your lists are done, you too will be ready to make more and more connections, with fewer and fewer dots.