Deconstructing Product Design

Maglite Flashlight

Anthony Maglica, 1979

1. Like many great products, the success of Maglite regards understanding and solving deep problems of product design — problems, in many cases, users are not even able to articulate. The flashlight was originally designed for the public safety sector, but it quickly established itself as a viable premium consumer flashlight due primarily to its reputation for ruggedness and reliability. Anthony Maglica comments: “I knew someone in the 1970s named Don Keller, who later came to work for me, and still does. He had been a policeman, and he knew cops who had problems with their flashlights. The flashlights were flimsy, made of plastic, and if you dropped them, they would break. Keller said that if someone ...