I got this book about product marketing because I wanted to gain insight on the marketing of my own product https://www.code-roller.com so I was a little frustrated by the overall direction and focus of the book which is to motivate the reader into hiring Adaptive Path. All four authors either currently work for or have recently worked for that marketing company. According to the on-line edition of the book, there are twenty eight references to Adaptive Path in the content.

While light on theory, the book does give good advice. This advice is mostly in the form of what not to do. This most probably reflects Adaptive Path's pain points in earlier engagements with customers. Don't use competition as your main driver. Don't depend on novelty. Don't get stuck on research or reporting. Don't get stuck on product design. Don't over-engineer. Don't get too confident about what you think your customers want.

If there is only one important take away from this book, then I believe that it would be this. It's all about the user experience. What you should be focusing your design efforts on is the user experience. What you should be focusing your strategy on is the user experience. The only thing you do that your customers care about is their experience of your product or service.

They heavily advocate using an Agile methodology. They agree with early prototyping, failing fast, and continuous customer involvement. They are lukewarm on the SPARC model.

'Subject to Change' is a valuable addition to the modern business person's bookshelf. I should note that this would be an especially great tool for marketers and publicists, research and development teams, as well as application developers.

The Adaptive Path team took a fungible approach to writing this book, as an organization that is interested in anticipation of the ever-changing needs of the expectations of their customers.

In the late Nineteenth century, inventions and innovations were largely based on new advances in technology available at the time. The kludgy inconvenience of these early technologies were simply 'part of the experience.' This book sites Eastman's Kodak Camera as perhaps the first example of a company having the foresight to anticipate a customer's needs. Until then, photographers were hobbyists, scientists, and tech geeks of the age. Eastman's brilliant vision of making technology more accessible to the rest of the populous with the philosophy of "You press the button, and we do the rest," was a great bridge between the customers who wanted to take photos and a company that could provide a service. That service being the development of the film, processing the plates, and mailing the finished photos to the customer.

The book uses this model to encourage shifting our traditional business mindset to anticipate our customer's needs while developing software, hardware, or other devises. By empathizing with the target audience, and my making yourself a part of the audience yourself, you may wish to create an experience for your users that has the potential to seamlessly integrate with their lives. When marketers or designers use the traditional mode--that people are sheep--without valuing the feedback of the audience, innovation will grind to a halt. I emphatically agree with the Adaptive Path on this theme. As a publicist, I value customer feedback as much as I value my own creative ideas.

Another great specimen, and perhaps a more modern one, is the iPod/iTunes Music store. The mp3 player was already invented, but Steve Jobs created the experience of browsing music and buying music for the device, anticipating the customer's needs. One could also argue that the iPhone is also the product of this school of thought, combining the need for a cell phone with the music player experience, all in one well designed device.

I have a niece with juvenile diabetes, and this book gave me a peek into the development of something that she uses every day to enjoy a happy life. There is a relatively new medical product developed called an insulin pump. I can testify that she is much happier using this pump than her previous regiment of daily shots. When developing this pump, diabetics tested a mock-up of the device, and offered feedback as to what would work for them. The developers of the pump changed the design of the belt used while swimming or in the shower, as well as other practical concerns. A side-note is that I was reading this section of the book while my nieces were happily making sandcastles and going in and out of the water! Without the user input, the device might be uncomfortable and unwieldy and certainly not easy to wear at the beach. This reminds me that the first undergarments for women were made by men, but the true innovations in practicality and comfort came when women started designing them!

In conclusion, this is a great book and I have started personally to rethink the feedback I am getting from my customers to be more empathetic. Empathizing with a person's needs in the present and the future will prove to be a better model to provide easy to use, and enriching technologies, customer service solutions, and ingenuity.

In an accessible tone, Subject to Change articulates what should now be taken for granted in product design: that products designed around real peoples' needs and desires will win over those engineered to meet theoretical expectations. Using Adaptive Path's experience as examples (and perhaps emphasising the consultancy's achievements more often than necessary), the authors make an easily-digestible case for implementing an experience design strategy in favour of blindly over-engineering complex products.

The book suggests that engineering-led product optimization improves but doesn't innovate. On the other hand, placing real customers at the center of the design process is shown as a shortcut to delivering more relevant, useful and successful products.

Adaptive Path are arguably thought leaders in this space, and the style of writing here shows their desire to advertise the company's experience. The reader is perhaps reminded too often that the successes in the examples given were due to Adaptive Path's involvement, and that adopting their processes in particular can help any product designer. This doesn't add credibility to the case studies, because someone buying an Adaptive Path book is likely to already be satisfied with the authors' credentials before reading.

Subject to Change will resonate well with designers of all disciplines, but it's perhaps other departments that would benefit the most by considering the adoption of an experience-led strategy. There may not be a great deal of new thought contained here, but as an easy-to-read introduction to the merits of customer-focussed design, Subject to Change would be a useful addition to an engineer's or product manager's bookshelf.

SUBJECT TO CHANGE: CREATING GREAT PRODUCTS AND SERVICES FOR AN UNCERTAIN WORLD provides basics for designing products for web software and competitive advantage alike - but to limit it to computer collections would be a shame. It's the college-level or public library collection specializing in innovative business solutions who will find it a powerful discussion of strategy and futuristic thinking processes, packed with real-world examples.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

Subject to Change presents an excellent strategic overview of new product development practices for media and physical interaction products based upon the consulting practice of Adaptive Path. It mentions, and briefly summarizes such practices as paper prototyping, persona's, wireframe mockups, storyboards and Wizard of Oz simulations. Several historical and current examples such as Apple's iPod and George Eastman's original camera are briefly highlighted. The book definitely provides a strategic overview of current product development practices, highlighting those of "Experience Design". It is most suitable as a supplement to Ulrich and Eppinger's Product Design and Development for an MBA product development course or as a stand-alone strategy guide for an Art School course in new media design. For the practitioner, this book certainly highlights modern practices of experience design and product development as they affect interaction design, industrial design, and the new media industries. However, as a strategic guide, it is lacking in the level of detail necessary for a cookbook to carry out a specific design project. Perhaps the book should be supplemented by a website with detailed examples of each of the development practices mentioned in this guide. For example, Adaptive Path, the media strategy firm whose practices are highlighted in this volume has illustrated on their own website the development methods they carried out in developing, the Aurora video prototype for a future Mozilla browser with both textual scenarios, outlines of the development effort, and several short video clips. If this brief strategy guide were supplemented with several such practice scenarios, the strategies mentioned in this book could be readily carried out by any competent practitioner.

This review is based on my experience as a new product development consultant in the Information Technology field for Arthur D. Little, Digital Equipment Corporation and several multimedia startups.

-- Ira Laefsky