Customer Needs, not Functionallity

My Lamy ink pot is so well designed that every time I refill my cheapy $30 fountain pen I get a real sense of satisfaction, because everything just works.

I can feel that they've actually though about:

how a customer will use their product,

the acions they'll take immediatly before and afterwards, and

what place the product has in the customers life.

An inkpot is a fairly simple thing at it's heart. You just need ink in a well sealed container, lamy obvioulsy have great ink, and athe container closes tightly but it's a few little additions that make me willing to pay the %20 price premium over their competitors.



Lamy's have added two main feautres:

An integrated dispenser for plastic backed tissue paper around the base of the ink pot

A little reservoir in the bottom of the pot so that it's easy to get your pen or bladder all the way into the ink, even when you're down to the last of the ink.

So; from a BA point of view what have Lamy done that is so applicable to software design?

Firstly - they didn't think about themselves as providing a function (Ink, Email, holding customer records) instead they saw themselves as supporting an activity (Refilling a pen, communication, communicating with customers). By looking at a wider business-process context they were able to better integrate multiple functional components into something useful to the end user.

From a BA POV they took a wide process, and collapsed distincy activities together by providing a single interface that matches what the customer wanted to acheive. This is putting the customer's needs first, and the functionallity later.

Secondly - they looked at the whole lifecycle of usage. They introduced features that covered the whole product lifecycle, giving the customer unexpected bonuses towards the end of their product use; which usefully for a retail product is just when they're about to re-order.

But what's really great is that there's a synergy between the two, that little reservoir on the bottom is what paper dispenser clips to. There's also ongoing revenue from selling paper refills.

The only thing it's really missing is a way to easily open it when the ink has dried the list shut, maybe if base coudl be made square'ish you could get a grip more easily?