Operations Management (Research Paper Sample)

REDESIGNING A PRODUCT WITH BAD DESIGN
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Redesigning a product with bad design
Introduction
Designing a product is critical in order to ensure efficiency and profits (Keupp, 2007). Good product designers understand their clients’ needs, and are dedicated to inventing solutions that not only works for the customers, but also within the limitations of the enterprise. However, failure in designing a product has greatly led to losses and collapse of various companies. A good example is the latest Microsoft windows operating system “Windows 8”. This led to loses amounting in billions of dollars for the company. Consequently, it is imperative for the management to improve various aspect of the original product that includes changing the interface to what the users are accustomed. With windows 8, Microsoft introduced a new interface called Metro. The interface was targeted at having a common interface in all their devices including the laptops, tablets to the phones. No other computing giant had managed to merge the user interfaces across all their devices. This essay looks at a number of errors made on the design which led to loss of market share at Microsoft Inc (Arthur, 2014).
Original product attributes
One of the most notable features with the Microsoft’s Windows operating system is the iconic “start menu”. Since 1995 as a graphical interface system, windows introduced the start menu to access all programs. For almost two decades, having dominated the computing world, this one button has been the center of the windows user interface – the start menu (Ethington, 1995).When windows 8 was released on 26th October 2012 for all users, and two months earlier for manufacturers, most of the windows users were anxious and ready for the upgrade. However, they were met with a rude shock when the first thing they noted was that the start menu was missing from the interface. Instead, users were now to adapt to a different layout and learn new ways to use their computers (Co.Design, 2013)
The new interface faced a lot of criticism form users. People turned away from the upgrade. One of the major reasons why people turned away from the upgrade is the design of the interface itself. Many argued that the interface was good for a tablet but its usability on their desktops and laptops was not as good as it was with earlier versions. A lot of functionality would be accomplished with a little more clicks in windows 8 than did in previous versions. For people who owned large displays, there is an extremely large amount of space wasted in the tiles menu.
Another question was the presence of features that users do not need. For instance, some users noted that there was a brightness control on their desktop. Due to this, some users declined buying it as they felt that it was not polished and largely oriented towards mobile and touch screen devices.
The other notable feature was the introduction of gestures that would be performed by “accident”. Users argued that the gestures were error prone and reduced learnability. If something fails, users would not know where to touch or if they did a wrong gesture or in worst case, need to do a different gesture entirely. Most users were simply confused about the swipes to do in particular situation to get what they want at the moment (Knittel & McFedries, 2014).
Another bad design was the ability of some of only some user application could run the full-screen mode. Some users noted that only a limited number of applications would run in full scree mode. The universality that was being brought about was itself a problem as this was expected to happen in a tablet and other small screened devices but not a computer.
Due to these few and other problems, big companies saw themselves try to pull off the market and reintroduce earlier products to maintain sales. Microsoft itself counted losses with their first devices to run the system.
Enhanced product attributes.
The most feasible solution when a product design fails a business is to go back to the drawing board, come up with a new design based on the customers wants and then implement the design. Despite the poor reception by users, there are various ways the designers at Microsoft could redesign the product to fit the wants of many customers. One of the first things to do would be to reintroduce the start menu as the primary access to programs. As many have faulted it as the main reason they did not want to use it. This was because of the steep learning curve of learning to do what one has been doing. Even without doing away with the whole Metro interface, Microsoft would have to make the system configurable and the user would have to use it on an option basis. This, while introducing something new, would allow the users to learn the system gradually rather than forcing it on them (Klimchuk & Krasovec, 2012).
Secondly, even though it may have been a good idea to have a common interface, it was necessary to try and differentiate the interfaces for various devices. This would have been possible by choosing the device you are on and contextually, give you the appropriate features. Choosing devices according to type would also help in customizing a device as per the needed features while leaving out the unwanted (Schooley, 2013).
Lastly, there would have been a need to reduce some of the gestures especially those that would be trigged accidentally. For instance, there would be some notifications that notifies you when you are about to carry out a command. Some of the criticism ...