Monday, December 10, 2007

Design is the Cause of and Solution to all the world's problems

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ff2d7118-a39f-11dc-b229-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1

Recently there was a small news piece in the Financial Times that mentioned how Netflix has earned the ire of the USPS's auditor because the return envelopes' closing/sticky edge is too soft. So it means that the USPS has to hand-sort all of those Netflix envelopes that are used to return the discs to Netflix. The original envelope that gets the disc to the customer has a stiff enough "leading edge" but not the return envelope. Apparently the "leading edge" is not using a good design. Plus it'll cost Netflix an additional 17 cents per envelope to get DVDs back from customers. This increase would negate 2/3rds of Netflix's profit.

Netflix designers, hopefully, are working on a way to stiffen the edges. So with better-informed parameters and good design strategy, Netflix is going to remedy the problem that bad design created.

Gooooooooooooo Design!