Harley-Davidson President and CEO Jim Ziemer, Harley-Davidson Annual Report, 2007
My latest interactions column, Ships in the Night (Part I): Design Without Research? has just been published.
While user-research-eschewing Apple is everyone’s poster child for “design for yourself,” I find Harley-Davidson to be a more compelling example (although I may be comparing Apple(s) and oranges). At Harley, Willie G. Davidson is the grandson of the original Davidson. Senior vice president and chief styling officer, he is known as Willie G. And he looks exactly like a guy who rides a Harley: big, bearded, and leather-clad. If we judge a bike by its fairing, the designer is the customer. That’s part of the Harley brand: In a recent Harley-Davidson annual report, executives appear next to their bikes, and we know that they all ride. A crucial part of Willie G.’s role is to preserve the legacy of the brand; the company communicates that it is (and always has been) part of the culture for which it’s designing. People at Harley, we believe, use the products and live the lifestyle. But underneath it all is a sense that Harley-Davidson, through its history, has created the brand (i.e., the products and their meaning) in partnership with its customers. For all the tribal connectedness Apple has facilitated, the company itself is not a participant. It is a benefactor.
Get a PDF of the article here. To receive a copy of the article, send an email to steve AT portigal DOT com and (if you haven’t given us this info before) tell us your name, organization, and title. We’ll send you a PDF.
Related: Steve Portigal speaks at User Research Friday – Design and Research, Ships in the Night?
Update: Ships in the Night (Part II): Research Without Design? is now available
Other articles
- Persona Non Grata
- Everybody’s Talkin’ At Me
- The Journey Is The Reward
- Hold Your Horses
- Living In The Overlap
- Some Different Approaches to Making Stuff
- Poets, Priests, and Politicians
- Interacting with Advertising
- We Are Living in a Sci-Fi World
- On Authenticity
- The Hard Work Lies Ahead (If You Want It)
- What to Expect When You’re Not Expecting It
- Elevator Pitch
- Kilroy Was Here
- Never Eat Anything Raw
- Content, the Once and Future King
Tags: apple, customers, design, Harley, insight, interactions, research, user research
RT: @steveportigal: @ChittahChattah: Ask for our latest, Ships in the Night (Pt I): Design Without Research http://tinyurl.com/cnno3m
Comment by daveIxD (Dave Malouf) 12.31.69 @ 11:59 pm
[...] an interesting article for Interaction’s Journal about deisgn without research titled “Ships in the night“, which discusses similar ideas, using Apple and Harley Davidson as examples – and pointing [...]
Pingback by Mayo Nissen » Blog Archive » Us Now - Thoughts 06.13.09 @ 9:57 am[...] Ships in the Night? (slides, audio, and video here) and the subsequent articles in interactions: Part I and Part II . Share this [...]
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