Sarah Jersild: Chicago Tribune | Aesthetics gains a scientific edge

Aesthetics gains a scientific edge
Metaphase Design Group is among the firms that are melding research and good looks into products, helping clients find new revenue streams

Sarah Jersild, Special to the Tribune.
Chicago Tribune. Chicago, Ill.: Sep 20, 2004. pg. 1

Squeeze or pour?

In developing a new bottle for Chicago-based Gatorade, product designers at Metaphase Design Group Inc. spent hours perched at sporting events and construction sites trying to figure out which was the most common method for imbibing the sports drink.

And then there were the studies on lip shape and size, the videographic research measuring the bottle's flow rate versus the subject's consumption rate and the analysis of existing data on hand size and strength in thinking about what the girth of the bottle's grip should be.

A little excessive for a bottle that will be gulped dry and tossed within moments?

Not when you consider that Gatorade's sales shot up 23 percent in 2001, the year the bottle was introduced.

The project is just one example of how design firms like Metaphase are increasingly melding scientific research and aesthetics in designing new products--changing the reputation of a field once viewed as a creative frivolity.

"When everything that is made works equally well and sells for the same price, design is the only reason people make a decision to buy one thing or another. It's the only competitive leverage left," said Mark Dziersk, former president of the Industrial Designers Society of America and senior vice president of Herbst LaZar Bell, a product-design firm based in Chicago, Boston and Los Angeles.

"There are clear examples: the iMac, the new Beetle, Oxo Goodgrips," Dziersk said. "You just can't argue around the impact design has had on making those huge successes. Where would Volkswagen be without the new Beetle? They'd be dead in the water."

But looks alone won't do much for companies, said Bryce Rutter, who founded St. Louis- and Chicago-based Metaphase in 1991. Rutter considers himself on a mission to banish "cool-looking stuff that doesn't work."

Metaphase emphasizes the science in its award-winning design for products ranging from high-tech Navy jet cockpits and surgical instruments to mundane items like toothbrushes, disposable plates and coffee-cup lids.

The company, one of about 500 design consultancies in the United States, specializes in ergonomic design, which is often treated as the steamed cauliflower of the design world--it's good for you, but it sure is boring.

Not so, says Rutter.

"We've been pushing this concept that [ergonomics is] more than just how big your body is or how smart your brain is--it's about how you think, feel and behave," he said. "If we can capture a design that really takes into account the way that we live--and if I know that before I even hit the drawing board--then I can start to design things that are really going to make you happy."

In doing so, the company claims to have boosted sales and created new revenue streams for companies such as Kraft Foods Inc., Solo Cup Co., Microsoft Corp., Gatorade Co. and Bayer Corp. that are among the growing number of firms recognizing how design affects their bottom line.

That approach attracted the food-service division of Northfield- based Kraft to Metaphase.

"They had dedicated resources to understanding the likes and dislikes and the critical needs of end users such as the restaurant operator," said business director Chip Potter, who worked with the company on a redesign of Kraft Mayo bulk packaging for food-service customers that debuted in 2003. "Their ability to translate that into ergonomics really made a difference to us."

Even more important, said Rutter, is his firm's research, which allows Metaphase to identify what really matters to a consumer.

Identifying the two or three triggers that make a product work allows Metaphase to narrow its focus and minimize risk.

"The very first step of the research is designed to help narrow down the options and truly understand what makes people tick," Rutter said.

By the time a prototype of a new design is made, "we're not throwing out enormous paradigm shifts because the research allowed us to focus."

In addition, the focus allows Metaphase to weigh how important certain details are.

"The more you understand about who uses a product and how they use it, the more you know what [you can] trade away" if costs are tight, Rutter said, adding that design can be quantified.

"We can say, 'That scoop is there because the thumb is 10 mm wide on average.' Every line and detail has a reason for being there, including some of the sex-appeal stuff, rather than everything being there because of intuition or some warm and fuzzy feeling."

That emphasis on hard numbers is making design more comfortable for big business.

"Business has a blind spot," said Dziersk at Herbst LaZar Bell. "If things cannot be quantified, they cannot be understood. Mostly design has its strength in its emotional reach."

The possibilities of that emotional reach encouraged Rutter to change his major from architecture to industrial design in college. His conversion from "touchy-feely" designer to man of science came later.

"I remember a meeting where a client for a medical product I was working on asked me, 'Why did you do that?' I probably looked like a deer caught in the headlights," Rutter said, adding that he replied that he thought people would like it. "He said, 'No. Tell me the science. Tell me the rationale.' It was at that point a light bulb went on."

Rutter realized he wanted to have a strong scientific background, and that inspired him to earn a doctorate in kinesiology before starting his firm.

But why would Kraft call in a kinesiology and design expert to ponder a relatively unglamorous, behind-the-scenes product like bulk food-service items?

"We were trying to establish a point of difference for ourselves," Potter said. "Because of the point of difference that [the new design] offered--the fact that the packaging was easier to handle, it's more durable and it makes more sense for the operator, not only from a usage standpoint but also from a storage standpoint- -we've had customers tell us how much easier it is to work with the product."

Chicago-based Solo Cup Co. hired Metaphase with the thinking that even disposable products can benefit from a high-end ergonomic approach.

Solo hired the company to design the Solo Grips disposable dinnerware collection, which incorporates a small thumb grip in intuitive places so users can carry the plate without sticking their thumbs in their food.

"We haven't increased the volume of plastic, we've reshaped it," Rutter said, "and now [Solo has] a patented solution that has a unique oval shape that sets them out in a crowd, and research shows that they can price this at a premium. Now they've got a premium product with no more cost margins."

Not all manufacturers are that lucky.

"One of the major arguments I always get is that [we're] going to come back and make [them] pay more money to manufacture something," Rutter said. "In many cases that's true, because we're working with people who have been in the commodities market for so long that it's nothing but price and it's nothing but margins.

"But I guarantee that if you find out what irritates consumers and you give them [the solution] at the right price point, it's something they'll buy."

- - -

Harvesting the 'aha!'

- Don't believe the hype. "About 70 percent of all the 'ergonomic- design' stuff out there is really marketing terminology wrapped around the same old stuff," said Metaphase founder Bryce Rutter.

- Beware of design for one. If you don't do your research, your product may be perfectly suited to only one person--the designer.

- Look at your owner's manual. The longer your manual, the more likely your design is clunky, unintuitive or just plain wrong.

- Know your product's culture. Not everything needs to be sleek and trendy, Rutter said. For example, Metaphase found that diabetics preferred less-flashy blood monitors, as they were less likely to be stolen. Not a bad thing for a life-saving device.

- Don't rely solely on focus groups. Focus groups tend to tell you what they think you want to hear. Instead, watch how the product is actually used.

- Take a two-stage approach. Don't wait until you can retool your manufacturing line to launch the ideal ergonomic product. Integrate as much ergonomic benefit as you can into your existing manufacturing lines just to make sure you're still claiming space on the shelf.

- Be skeptical of trends. Bayer initially wanted its blood glucose monitor to be smaller, because that was the way the market was going. But hands weren't getting any smaller, and reducing the size of the device would have compromised functionality, Rutter said.