Seeking Conformity - Part II

I'm still on vacation, and played another round of golf yesterday. I used my brother's clubs since I am staying at his house. He has much nicer (and much newer) clubs than I have, so any inadequacy that I had cannot be blamed on that. The course was in fantastic shape, which removed another excuse. Being a private course on a weekday, there were very few groups playing, so I can't even say that we were being rushed or pressured. And yet, I still played pathetically.

It struck me afterwards that there is another type of conformity that we all aspire too and that is mastery. It doesn't matter what we're doing, be it work or play, we all have an image of what "should be" and we measure shortcomings against it. There's nothing wrong with that, in fact it's what drives us toward continuous improvement.

But that led me to think about the way we research common products and develop ideas for new ones. Had an observational researcher followed me around the course yesterday, he would have made notes about my unmet needs. E.g. "While Jerry has a lot of power off the tee, he struggles with consistent direction", or "Jerry is unable to read some of the intricacies of the sloping greens".

The researcher might even take these discovered unmet needs back into an ideation session to generate solutions. "Let's make a club that you can't slice", or "Let's put a chip into the putter that can automatically read the curvature of the green to allow for more accurate putting".

Let's imagine further that they could actually produce such products. Would that be a good idea? If suddenly I could record scores like Tiger Woods, that might be exciting for a fleeting moment, but what lasting value would that have? In fact, if such clubs were allowed by the PGA, it would realistically kill the sport. Conforming to Tiger's ability without working for it takes away any pleasure that it would bring. I would much rather learn to get better with the equipment I have (or that I'm borrowing) than to have some that corrects everything for me. I only appreciate my great shots when they stand in stark contrast to my bad ones.

What about the products you make or use? Are all unmet needs equal? How do you distinguish between those that will enhance the life of a person, and those that will ultimately disappoint? Should our goal be to make everyone equally proficient with everything they use?

It's got me thinking...