CHOICE
connect
A division of the American Library Association
Editorial Offices: 575 Main Street, Suite 300, Middletown, CT 06457-3445
Phone: (860) 347-6933
Fax: (860) 704-0465
FOR INTERNAL USE ONLY
Please do not link to this page.
Harvard Business Review Press
The following review appeared in the April 2015 issue of CHOICE. The review is for your internal use only. Please review our Permission and Reprints Guidelines or email permissions@ala-choice.org.
Social & Behavioral Sciences
Business, Management & Labor
Product design expert Kolko, vice president of consumer design at Blackboard Inc., provides a nuts-and-bolts approach to matching product development strategy to consumers’ needs and feelings. The key, according to the author, is empathy, which must be reflected in the product. Offering a "new view and usable process for conceiving and building powerful, emotionally resonant new products," the book contains the basic steps of product design—namely, studying the market, defining the design, crafting the product details, and shipping—but unfortunately the basic design concept that "form follows function" is not on display in the book. Despite an appealing, bright yellow "smile" cover that beckons the reader to open the book, its content and format do not deliver on its promise. Passion and energy are left out of the writer's equation, and the pale, gray typeface and bland charts lack the pizzazz the subject calls for. Because of these deficiences, the book is recommended with reservations for graduate design and marketing students, faculty, and practitioners.
--P. G. Kishel, Cypress College