Making a product great by taking care of details, like including a screwdriver

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Recently I enjoyed reading Tony Fadell’s 2022 book Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making. He is known as the ‘father of the iPod’ and co-creator of the iPhone. Beginning on page 103 there is a wonderful story about development of the Nest smart thermostat. You can watch the Nest thermostat installation video here.

 

They knew do-it-yourself installation might be a problem, so a sample of people were given prototypes to install. It took them an average of an hour to finish. Why so long? People wasted a half hour looking around the house for their screwdrivers. They needed a Phillips-head screwdriver to mount the Nest, but might also need a flat-bladed one to remove their old thermostat.   

 

 So Nest changed the installation procedure by including a cute little conical screwdriver, as shown above, with four interchangeable heads - under the hemispherical end cover.  Now installation took less than half an hour and was painless. Tony said:

 

“Journalists wrote articles about the screwdriver. It appeared in every five-star review. It was free PR, a boost to word of mouth. Instead of a bowl of candy at the Nest front desk, we had a bowl full of screwdrivers. It became a symbol for the entire user experience—thoughtful, elegant, long-lived, and deeply useful.”

 

The caption for Figure 3.1.4 says:

 

“The original Nest screwdriver cost around $1.50 to make, so including it in every box was hugely controversial on a team that was focused on being lean and profitable. But the screwdriver’s friendly shape made installing the thermostat yourself seem less daunting and it was so handy that it functioned as a marketing tool long after sale.”

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Conversely, you can frustrate customers by not doing something taken for granted - like including the battery in a tool requiring one. Recently I bought a $25 infrared laser thermometer (as shown above) from the Boise Harbor Freight store. The woman behind the checkout counter warned me that a 9V rectangular battery was NOT included, so I stopped somewhere else to get one on my drive home.