Improving Products and Services

We are grateful to the companies that create the products and services which make every aspect of our daily lives possible, however we know that everything can be improved.

Javul.org can be used to create improvement systems for existing commercial or non-commercial companies and organizations of any size providing products and services to the public. Leadership systems within organizations need to be effective and be aware of the most important needs of their customers and respond accordingly and quickly. Currently many organizations do what they like, not being aware of what the customer wants most or ignoring their needs. Through this project, they will be made aware of their customer’s needs. They’re free to ignore them or attend to them.

It should not be customers who should be forced to tolerate bad products and services because they have no choice. It should be business owners who should be forced to maintain a minimum level of quality and customer satisfaction or face reduced revenue or be forced out of business. Never should a situation arise where a customer has to put up with bad products or services and the business owners choose to ignore customer concerns. Of course we are not talking about the small number of customers who make unreasonable demands. We are talking about a product or service that is criticized in a reasonable manner by a lot of people.

Online reviews can be inaccurate, incomplete or hard to trust. It should be very easy to find products with the features we want, implemented in the right way. Whether or not desired features are present in a product should never be an issue. The features should be there. The only issue should be how well the features have been implemented and if they work correctly.

Through Javul, the most important problems with a service or product and the best solutions suggested by people can be highlighted. Looking at the example of reviews, we want products and services that have reviews of 4.8/5 or greater. That is the type of high-quality product/service and customer satisfaction that we want.

Customer Experience

Today's experience

Here's the current experience for buying anti-slip clips for car mats so the floor mat doesn't slip. Going to Ebay.com and searching "car mat anti slip", there are about 9000 results. Perhaps 500 of the listings are the relevant product type that we're looking for. So we have 500 different sellers selling perhaps 50 types of floor mat clips. Many of them are very cheap. They are designed and manufactured in China. The design and manufacturing process is flawed for example, they break easily or dont last long, put too much stress on the anchor location, have usability problems (anchor is too small, or too high) and so on.

If we go to Amazon.com, they're hard to find and different search terms yield different search results. There may be some higher quality products but they're more expensive than they need to be and they also have problems. As pointed out, its impossible to contact the manufacturer and tell them about issues with the product and have them redesign the product. There are 100's of other websites or apps where we can buy car mat clips and none of them provide any guarantee of an acceptable product.

Desired Experience

Now lets see what a desirable customer experience for buying car mat clips could be like.

Design: The design would be created by the public. It would be an open-source design to which anyone can contribute. In order to reward skilled designers, royalties can be given out to the designers for each item that is sold.
Manufacturing: This could be done by any manufacturer that accepts our agreement of pricing and quality control and other issues. If they violate any part of the agreement, we can find another manufacturer. There are lots of willing and able manufacturers in China and other places.
Public availability: The customer would go to our website and easily point out what product they need. The goal is find the correct product category for example, Transportation > Cars > Interior > Floor mats > Anti-slip Clips. There, all anti-slip clips for car mats would be listed that have been approved to be listed. For example the design would be open-source, it would have been reviewed, tested, re-designed and approved by the public. It would be manufactured by approved manufacturers who follow our agreements and manufacturing standards. The product reviews would not have the problems of false/fake/ineffective/incomplete reviews that we see in reviews systems nowadays on most websites. So the customer is able to easily find products where the design and manufacturer is something that they would approve of.
Product feedback and design revisions: It would be easy for customers to report issues with the product. This feedback would be evaluated and used for design revisions.

The whole process of design, manufacture and review would be transparent. The other thing to realize is that the problem of a customer finding a reliable product is something that applies for all locations around the globe irrespective of language, culture and other aspects of society.

We need to design a software-technology based system that makes the above possible.

Better Product Design

Product design that lacks in many ways is very common in today’s world. Many times this is not intentional. The simple reason for a product lacking features is that very few people are involved in taking decisions that affect a large number of people (the customer). Product developers are often not aware of what people would like or there are other limitations. People are usually not asked what they would like in a product. Online reviews are often not reliable. The reviewer may not have good intentions or may not be enough aware to create a thorough and accurate review.

We can take the example of a wifi router. Electronics companies make 100’s of new router models every year, for marketing and other purposes. People would rather have a few models that have all their issues resolved, rather than keep buying a new router which has a new issue that did not exist in the previous model. Upgrades in technology can be taken care of in a careful manner. Having a large number of unnecessary product versions/models also increases the difficulty in maintaining them long-term.

The USB interface that has been used for years has caused a lot of grief to people because it cannot be inserted reliably or because it is not reversible.

There are better chances of a product being designed better when there are more people involved and when the design process is transparent and can be observed by anyone who wants to observe it. The design process should allow for feedback from anyone who wants to provide it. When product design decisions do not significantly change the cost of making a product and they matter a lot to customers, then they need to be involved in making those decisions. Anytime a product or service is being developed, its customers (those who will use the product or service) must be consulted during the development process. If they are consulted after the product/service has been developed, this makes it difficult to alter the product/service later.

We want products that are carefully studied in detail and are continuously refined and improved. The product should be reliable and offer the features that people want.

At Javul, people could create characteristics that they would like in a certain product. Javul would certify qualifying products and make it easier for people to know which products fulfil those requirements. This would encourage product design that focuses on what people want. People can avoid buying products that are not certified. There can be different levels of certification. Javul would give higher level certifications to companies that operate on the Javul business model (full transparency and other aspects).

Pollution and product recyclability is also a great concern that needs to be dealt with.

Some Possibilities

These are different kinds of activities that maybe need their own software tools:

Improving a specific product (commercial or open source)
Creating standards for a specific type of product that manufacturers should try to follow

Product design with Gimmicky Features

This applies to products and services. Sometimes it happens that designers like the power they have over the masses and they’ll do something ‘different’ just to feel good about their work and trying to force and herd the masses into using and accepting a new feature even if the feature is actually a bad design. Examples can be found in Web design or software where usability is actually reduced while implementing a ‘cool’ feature. Examples of ‘cool’ features include: (1) Page scroll bar disappearing in Microsoft Word after a timeout leaving the user wondering about their location in the document unless they press page down or up. It is obvious from Google search results that the majority of users don’t want this feature and they’re trying to find out how to turn it off. Here's an example where people tried to create work arounds by writing a script to disable the feature. (2) Slow page scroll animations on websites even though the user has turned off slow scrolling in the Internet browser.

This needs to stop. We need to give this phenomena a name (or just call it bad design as it is) and educate designers to avoid this practice and put in place new design processes that place first priority on users and keeping them satisfied. If design decisions are going to be made, this is the only correct way to make them. The default behavior of a product or service should always be the one that most people like and options to change that behavior should be easily accessible.

This applies to a wide variety of products which have gimmicky features.

Roles to play on Javul: Product Design

Market Research: Investigate what people want in a product. For example search online, interview people. Its easy for people to say something is wrong but its hard to be specific about what exactly is wrong and better yet, how the problem can be fixed in the best way. The role of the Market researcher is to find out the qualities of a product that would make people happy
Product design. Using information gathered from Market research, create standards and requirements for those products
Industry liaisons: Establish contacts in Industry and work with them to implement products with Javul standards.
Product analysis and Feedback: Evaluate products to see how closely they meet Javul standards. Communicate with Product designers so designs can be updated if necessary.

Every product has certain critical aspects that need to be designed better than other aspects. For example a phone’s volume control button is very critical. Critical features need to be documented. Designers need to know that they have to put a lot of work in the design of these critical aspects.

Product Specifications

Most products have certain characteristics that should be implemented correctly. Javul.org can help create a software platform where people can define characteristics that they want in a product and then we can try to contact manufacturers who are willing to implement those characteristics. They would also listen to feedback and revise product design as necessary. Companies and products that fulfill these requirements would be stored in the database so when people need a product they know which one to buy.

Example of Product Specification: Tub Spout

Every product no matter how simple it is, its design usually has many requirements that it should meet. Here's a simple example of product specifications for a Tub spout:

The water pipe inside should be resistant to cyclic stress (as we switch the water supply) and also occasional stress
The water switch should be reliable and durable and should not result in leakage when either of the two switch positions is enabled.
Paint and external plating should be reliable and rust proof.
All product characteristics and specs need to last as long as possible.

Example of a Product Specification: Mobile Devices

Here's an example of product requirements for Mobile Phones.

Design decisions that cost very little to implement have a big impact on users of mobile devices. For example if it only costs $1 to add a notification LED and if there are 100,000 users of the devices, this means a lot of people are going to be affected if the LED is not present and they would all gladly pay $1 to have the LED. The real reason why companies do this is to create product lines that have these features and they market their devices as “premium” as if it cost a lot to create the feature. So they increase the price by a large amount when in fact the feature costs very little to create.

These are just some suggestions and a lot of additional requirements and features can be added. It should also be possible to create phones with multiple configurations in case there are segments of the population with different preferences.

All of the features below should be available in the default interface without the need of users having to root and ‘hack’ their devices.

Body: Round corners, not pointed (easy to place in pocket and not stress on clothing). Should be able to slip in a metal pad after removing the back cover to help with magnetic cell phone holders. Ideally include the pad in the design. Should not be too slippery. Removable back cover.

Volume/Power Buttons: Volume Button Size (must not be too small). Both width and length. Also it should have appropriate pressing depth. If its too close to the surface it makes it harder to press the button. Design button so it can tolerate a high number of presses. Make it easily replaceable.
Location of buttons needs to be thought out. To prevent confusion, place Power button at top left and Volume button on the right. Provide option to wake up device with Volume button.

Speakers: Should be dual front-facing. Easy to see. Hard to get dirty. Good volume and bass response (not expecting a lot but certain speakers dont have much amplitude at lower frequencies)

Display: At least 350ppi. Avoid polarization and if its not possible, make it polar at 45”, not 0 or 90. Should be able to dim it all the way. Create a recovery system to bring back to 100% if needed (e.g. combination of button presses or shaking movements).

Navigation button lights: Should dim with the display. Customizable.

Other Features: NFC, FM Radio, Dual wifi (2.4Ghz and 5), anything else that people need. Notification LED.

Software: This will be a long list. Here are some items for starters: Volume at low levels should be in higher resolution. In other words the volume curve should a quadratic function, not a straight line. The delay for the Volume popup to disappear should be configurable. Set to 4 seconds by default.Dark/Light theme options for the main OS (settings of any kind).

Battery: Make the phone thicker and put in a bigger battery. Target for at least 40% more battery capacity than what is usually found. Should be replaceable.

Battery Usage: High Battery drain at idle is a common issue. We need to create a system that deals with this problem and finds the actual reason behind the drain and stops any offending apps or other services from using battery like this and provide information about the situation.

GPS Heating Issue: Lots of phones heat up when GPS is in use and this can result in the phone shutting down or freezing up and possibly damaging the battery due to high heat. One cause of the heat could be excessive CPU usage and if thats the case, phones need to throttle CPU usage and only use as much CPU as necessary to provide up-to-date GPS directions. Extensive testing should be done in hot environments to make sure the phone can still function. Heat generation should also be dissipated efficiently to reduce hot spots.

There are many other features that users want. This section is just an example for now.

Standardization

We want to create standards for products and services so they are more compatible with each other. This helps keeps costs down, makes repair simpler and helps in recycling.

We want to discourage proprietary characteristics in products. Parts should be interchangeable. A lot of times a product is thrown away because one part of it stops working. For example headphones could use ear pads that fall under a number of defined designs and they can be easily replaced when worn out or if a different fit is desired. Currently every headphones has its own unique pad design. We can have a smaller number of designs that can be used for all headphones. The product needs to be designed for easy repairability. This is good for the environment also as a product can be repaired instead of being replaced. This kind of product design can apply to many things we use in our daily lives.

We want to support companies that follow recommended practices.

Design Reviews

A laptop hinge is a location where a lot of physical forces are cycled in comparison to other locations on the laptop. Therefore laptop hinge design requires extra attention. Many laptops have problems with their hinges. Manufacturers like Apple created a laptop where the laptop cable started to break because it wasn't long enough to tolerate the cyclic stresses of opening the laptop.

Its as manufacturers dont have an appropriate design review process that can identify aspects of a product which require extra attention. This keeps happening with every new product model where one model has one set of issues and the next model has a new set of issues. These companies have 10s of years of design and manufacturing experience and they make basic mistakes like this.

We want to have regulations and review processes created and maintained by the public. Every product design must go through these processes and if the design and manufacturing process hasnt been certified, people would be not be recommended to buy this product.

Fake/Unfair Reviews

Fake online reviews are a huge problem for us. Review farms create fake reviews to increase the products rating or might target a competitor with lower ratings to try to reduce their sales. A genuine reviewer may give high or lower rating to a product because they aren't aware enough about the product (haven't spent time with it, explored all its aspects or have enough knowledge to judge it accurately).

We need to find ways to deal with these problems. We want to have reviews that are genuine, thorough and fair.

Product Software

Looking at the example of Televisions, we have 1000's of model with different software. Each software has various features which are missing. We want to have a few versions of software that are very flexible and can be configured in a lot of ways (e.g. the volume at which a TV is when its first turned on). We want to create standards for software and better yet, we want to have open-source software that can be used on any product.

Next Steps for Javul.org

Creating a unique open-source platform for managing products and services, their specifications, requirements, companies that fulfill these requirements and any other characteristics for the platform.
Create a platform to help people find products/services that meet their requirements
Help Combat Fake/bad quality reviews
Start creating the job description for a product/service platform that has the features we want

External Links

Open Source Ecology - "We’re developing open source industrial machines that can be made for a fraction of commercial costs, and sharing our designs online for free."