Code Halos: How the Digital Lives of People, Things, and Organizations are Changing the Rules of Business

Chapter EightDelivering Beautiful Products and Experiences

“We are in an era where we are reimagining nearly everything . . . powered by new devices, plus connectivity, plus new user interfaces, plus beauty.”

—Mary Meeker, Partner, Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, November 2012¹

Beauty is probably not the first word that springs to mind when you think about most corporate computer systems. Yet consumer-based Code Halo products and experiences have raised the bar by making beauty a priority. We’re reading headlines like these more frequently:

• “Apple iPhone 4: an object of rare beauty that leapfrogs the competition.”²
• “FuelBand is a stunner. . . . FuelBand is such an elegant, beautiful product that some users might consider buying it solely for the watch functionality.”³
• “Netflix—beautiful, beautiful Netflix—is, experts hypothesize, the pinnacle of the human experience.”⁴

Do your customers, partners, and employees look at your company’s IT systems and gush with such sentiments?

We humans are inherently drawn to great design. Multiple studies have shown that the human eye is captivated by the visually pleasing—and, what’s more, that the hand instinctively wants to touch beautiful objects.

Many IT departments have not developed this design sensibility—but they must, and quickly. Design will be a critical factor of success for IT organizations over the next five years. For the past several decades, most corporate IT systems have been developed for captive IT users—primarily ...