It's all about Appearances!

I was very pleased to bring you the abbreviated version of Bob's life story. The full story would just take up too much time to tell. During the writing of said biography, Bob inspired me, and I couldn't just leave today without passing that inspiration on to you.

The title of this story basically summarizes the story, It's all about Appearances! There are two important concepts to consider when designing products, functionality and aesthetics. Most business owners are fully aware of these two concepts.

Functionality: This is the why to making products. Without a purpose, or a function, there is no point to making anything. A product needs to be able to function adequately to perform a needed task or function. Traditional Business modeling would state that in fact the product should go above basic functionality and offer more.

Aesthetics: The look. What good is a functional product if it is not pleasing to the eye. Nobody is going to want to buy a car that looks like crap, even if it runs extremely well.

Traditionally, functionality should be considered first, going above and beyond normal functionality is what is thought to make a product attractive to consumer. Aesthetics should be applied to some degree, but only enough for a consumer not to be turned off. Bob reverses this theory, asserting that aesthetics is indeed as important, if not more so than functionality.

Over the course of the last 4 years GenTechs has been building a machine for a client. Unfortunately this machine is under a strict NDA and I can not go into any more details here. Suffice to say, this machine is fairly large and has cost a large sum of money. Production has been slow, and often delayed, resulting in the costs overtaking the agreed upon price. Most of you may be thinking that we should cut our losses and run, dump the system the way it is and move forward. While that may be a good idea... Bob has other plans.

During the course of building this machine, Bob has repeatedly followed his rules of business administration and is certain this machine will turn a profit, if not now, then in the long run. The machine was actually sold before the design was even finalized, remember young business minds, fly by the seat of your pants! In fact, during the entire production Bob has tried to let his employees handle most of the production tasks so that he could focus on his other business ventures. Being the great man he is though, he knew he could not stay away, and in fact would pop his head in every few weeks and make changes (for the better) that made all the prior weeks work for nothing. This process of changes continued throughout the entire production run of the machine.

Finally last week, after having gone way over budget but finally delivering a working machine, Bob turns to me and says, "I like it, but we need to make it look better."

I didn't think much of his comment until two days ago, Bob showed up with 50 rolls of aluminum foil. "We are going to cover the machine with aluminum foil!" Bob proclaimed excitedly. "Not only will it help cool our machine, but it will also make it look spacey, like a satellite!"

I inquired to Bob about why we were going to do this, and he told me that customers like things that look Science Fictioney. I thought it looked terrible, but Bob assured me that it would work, and even though we were at a loss of money now, the look would bring him back for more and the money would flow! Besides, not only does the machine look good, but it also looks good for the company to bring in sales, even if they are at a loss.

... It's all about Appearances!