To set the stage for why I’m talking about a shaver and not a user interface, I’ll start this post off with the well-known statement made by Steve Jobs in 2003:

“Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”Steve Jobs, 2003 (source)

I bought a new Braun Pocket Go P-70 last year because it was for sale on Amazon for $10. I have mostly used Gillette razors, but I figured that since my current electric shaver was sprinting towards death, I’d try a new one. It sat in the packaging for quite some time under my sink in the bathroom, and I didn’t think too much about it. It came time for me to travel to UIE last fall, so I grabbed the new shaver and took it with me to Boston.

Using it was fantastic.

It solved all the gripes I’ve had with other shavers:

• Shavers come with a plastic cover for the cutter foil that always falls off and usually gets lost.
• Shavers have proprietary, built-in batteries that rarely hold a charge over the long-term, and require carrying a cable to charge it.
• Most shavers can’t get wet and you have to pull out a tiny little brush to clean off the blades.

The Braun Pocket Go does all of this right. You can run it under water to wash it, it uses two AA batteries (just changed my first set after 3 months of every-other-day use; my plug-in Remington barely lasted 3 weeks on a charge), and it has a cover that slides up to protect the foil. This is great product design.

There isn’t anything pretty or fancy about the aesthetics of this device. It looks mostly like every other shaver around. But obviously Braun stopped to figure out what was wrong with other electric shavers and they made it all right with the Pocket Go.

I’ll run with Steve’s quote and create my own:

Design is carefully considering what problems need solving, and creating a solution that meets those needs in a way that is enjoyable to use.

You’d think this is common sense by now, but there sure are a lot of lame products out there.