Product Functionality Verses Product Design

Credit: Solar Ready

 

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By James Byrd, MBA

Product Functionality Versus That of Product Design

In terms of product functionality, we are talking about product differentiation. The differentiation of a specific product will house its prominent features. These are the identified features of a product that are identified by a company via surveys of recent buyers and incorporated within the architectural design of the product, after the incremental study or survey. These various heuristic features are brought together as a cost-conscious effort to satisfy a value-added need to customers.

The success of this differentiation process depends on a company being able to avoid “feature fatigue”, that is, the company must prioritize enhancements of features from time to time, and impact upon customers the benefits of these enhancements and capabilities, (Kotler; Keller, 2009, p. 351). And with this we are talking product re-engineering, that is where a company will from time to time or during set intervals, study and do modifications of the internal mechanisms or the functionality of an existing product in order to reconstitute it with new features and capabilities, to the tune of taking advantages of newly emerging technologies, and again this is done without major changes to the inherent functionality and purpose of the product, (Product re-engineering, n.d.).

What’s happening is that the architectural design is somewhat static; it’s the embodiments of the architectural design that is reconstructed with incremental changes in order to come to terms with the dynamics of innovative technologies. 

Now at the other end of the equation, we have the product design phase and its efforts to garner brand success. Product design and product functionally, go hand in hand, with product differentiation and position as a way to move towards a designer’s gaining some insight into the totality of features that will affect how a particular product will perform, how the product will look, and how the product will appeal to both a consumer’s emotional and rational sides. Next, to the basic functional uses of a product, product design will impact how well these functions are carried out, (Kotler; Keller, 2009, p. 354)

Sources:

Kotler, P., Keller, K.L. (2009) Marketing Management (13th ed.). New York, NY: Pearson-Hall.

 Product reengineering. (n.d.) McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific & Technical Terms, 6E. (2003). Retrieved July 10 2012 from http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/product+reengineering

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