 |
|
|
|
Have you ever seen a single glove on
the street and wondered who lost it? We have too. As a reminder of
who we are designing products for, OXO employees collect lost gloves
around New York City and around the world. These gloves are
prominently displayed at our office as a reminder of the different
hands our products need to comfortably fit - large, small, male,
female, young, old and in between.
OXO was founded in 1990
on the philosophy of Universal Design, which is the concept of
designing products that are easy to use for the largest possible
spectrum of users. At OXO, living by Universal Design principles
gives us an opportunity to see things from a different perspective.
The goal of making products more usable forces us to first identify
problems and inefficiencies of existing products (including our
own), not only in terms of comfort, but performance as well. This
gives us the foundation to meet our commitment of making only
products that offer tangible improvements. Each year, OXO introduces
more than 50 products. Many of these products take more than two
years to develop. In fact, a few of the products never make it to
the market because they fail to meet the OXO criteria.
We're
often asked where product ideas come from at OXO. The reality is
they come from everywhere - employees, consumers, inventors,
retailers, even the aunt of an employee. The fact that we are all
users of the types of products we produce makes us more sensitive to
the validity of these ideas. And through our product development
process, we have been able to bring a steady stream of innovative
solutions to user problems.
It also doesn't hurt that we're
all crammed into our office like sardines where no one is allowed to
forget the true OXO mission. | |
|
|
