Product design Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Product design - Essay Example Usually, the failure of a new product results because of the weakness of its product design. (Roqueta, 1992) One of the prominent weaknesses in this portable CD player is that it has buttons whose placement is not too comfortable. The placing is awkward, thus making it difficult for the consumers to use. Moreover, since the CD player is portable, the usability and smoothness of the buttons play a major role, since they have to be used on the go. But rather than being extremely user friendly, their placing is not up to date, making it inaccessible to the consumer easily. These buttons are very small in size, thus this result in pressing some other button when the consumer intends to press a specific button. The button of switching between the AM and FM also looks very out of place, since its look is very different from the rest of the player. It is made of very thin rubber, which doesnt complement the stylish outlook of the remaining CD player. The design is perfect when the entirety is in congruence with each other. Second issue with the product design is that of the SonicStage software that comes with the player. The problem with it is that it is too slow in function. The software is supposed to compress the music of consumers, such that the quality is maintained and it can easily fit into one single CD. But the problem starts when the software is converting the MP3 format of the song to the ATRAC format of the Sony CD player. This process is very sluggish, and takes place at a snails pace, thus eating up a lot of time of the consumer and also increasing their frustration with the slowness of it. Moreover, as promised that the quality of the songs would not change, this does not happen to. The songs are now of lesser quality than they originally were, after the conversion has taken place. In addition to that, the SonicStage software