š”Temperature design
Hereās a business idea. Take a piece of fitness equipment. Make some updates. Attach a monitor and wifi card. Offer a subscription fitness package (recurring revenue!).
Peloton is an amazing business. They took something people readily joked was for hanging clothes and collecting dust, upped the price, and upended long-established equipment manufactures.
One part of their success was design.
But not of the stuff.
Of the people.
In a tangent on the Daring Fireball podcast, Ben Thompson and John Gruber said about temperature scales:
(Gruber) "I staunchly believe that Fahrenheit is the better scale for weather because it's based on the human condition. Who gives a crap about what the boiling point of water is, it's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard in my life."Ā
(Thompson) "The other thing is that Celsius is not precise enough. In the car it adjusts it by point-five because a single degree of celsius is too much for the car. Fahrenheit is more finely grained in a positive way."
Fahrenheit is easier for humans to use. Peloton is easier for humans to use.
For individuals in organizations, the goal is to make the Job To Be Done as easy as possible.
Note, Iām not taking anymore JTBD clients right now, but you can read an overview of the approach.