Made to Stick: A Design Perspective
6 Principles to make Ideas (and designs) sticky
Sticky Ideas.
That’s the fundamental idea behind the book Made to Stick.
The authors of Made to Stick describe and analyze the principles that help make an idea sticky with an audience. The Heath brothers looked at numerous examples to understand why some ideas can so greatly influence an audience and become so memorable.
The book looks at a variety of ideas, ranging from urban legends to John F. Kennedy’s “Put a man on the moon” vision. And with each of these, the Heath brothers focus on what makes these ideas so great. They give us six principles of successful ideas and tips for applying these rules to make our own messages “stick.”
Even though the book talks about ideas in general, the principles highlighted are a great way to think about product design.
The essence of product design is about centering the product’s core idea in front of the user. And when we look at products through the lens of sticky ideas, we can start to see the application of those principles to design.
Having these “stickiness” principles as part of a design toolkit can be beneficial when solving a variety of design problems. They can not only inform product design itself but also help give structure and language to your design strategy.
There are a lot of examples out in the product world where these principles are already in play, but it might be hard to identify them. As I walk through each of these principles from the book, I have tried to incorporate real-world examples of organizations using these principles as part of their design.
This post was originally published on Medium in August 2020.
Parv Sondhi