Borrowed Lenses

The Better Product at the Edges

Curated and edited by John Pile Jr 5 min read

How this article was developed, including AI’s role

Carla Hall wears headphones and reads from a book into a studio microphone.
Chef Carla Hall records audio versions of her books for the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled, August 21, 2026. Photo: Shawn Miller / Library of Congress. Source. CC0 1.0.

In the 1930s, the American Foundation for the Blind helped develop recorded “talking books” for people who could not read conventional print. The program helped establish a format that eventually became familiar to people who could read printed books perfectly well: the audiobook.

Sometimes an improvement designed for people excluded by an existing product turns out to be useful to a much larger audience.

The inconvenience everyone else tolerated

Sam Farber was watching his wife, Betsey, prepare food when he noticed how difficult an ordinary vegetable peeler had become for her. She had arthritis in her hands. The narrow, hard handle made a simple kitchen task painful.

Farber had spent years in the cookware business, but the problem had escaped his attention. Once he recognized it, he began reconsidering an entire category of utensils. Working with the design firm Smart Design, he and his team consulted people with arthritis, home cooks, and professional chefs. They experimented with larger handles, softer materials, and shapes that required less effort to hold.

The resulting OXO Good Grips line appealed far beyond people with arthritis. Many users who could manage a conventional peeler still preferred a more comfortable one. What had looked like an accommodation turned out to be an improvement to an everyday product.

OXO Good Grips peelers and other kitchen tools with broad, rubberized handles.
OXO Good Grips kitchen tools, including two peelers. Photo: Didriks, CC BY 2.0.

Something similar happened when Gillette tried to reach men in rural India.

The company knew how to develop increasingly elaborate razors for customers in its established markets. But its researchers visited Indian consumers and found very different shaving conditions. Some shaved while sitting on the floor, with a mirror and a small container of water rather than a bathroom sink. A razor that was awkward to rinse could be particularly frustrating when water was scarce.

Those observations shaped the Gillette Guard, launched in India in 2010. Its head had wider channels that made rinsing easier with a small amount of water. The razor was simpler and substantially less expensive than the multi-blade products associated with the company. It found a large market among consumers whom Gillette's existing designs had served poorly.

Close-up of the black Gillette Guard single-blade razor head against a pale-blue background.
Gillette Guard close-up. Image of Gillette Guard from a P&G product press release; cropped and background extended.

The two stories differ. Betsey Farber was already using a peeler, though with difficulty. Many of Gillette's prospective customers were using other products altogether. In both cases, the experience missing from the normal design conversation was precisely the one that made the improvement apparent.

When access improves the whole service

The effect can extend beyond a household product.

Traditional buses had steps that could make boarding impossible for wheelchair users and difficult for people with limited mobility. Low-floor buses, often combined with kneeling mechanisms and ramps, addressed that barrier. But a lower step also helps passengers carrying luggage, pushing strollers, or simply trying to board quickly.

A low-floor London bus with its wheelchair boarding ramp deployed at the side door.
A low-floor bus with its boarding ramp deployed. Photo: citytransportinfo, CC0 1.0.

The benefit reaches everyone waiting on the bus. A transportation study estimated that low-floor designs could reduce ordinary passenger boarding and exiting times by roughly 13 to 15 percent, apart from their benefits for wheelchair boarding. The feature that opened public transportation to more riders could also make the service faster for its existing riders.

In Kenya, an overlooked group helped change what a financial service could be.

Vodafone initially developed M-PESA as a modest mobile-phone application for microfinance clients who had limited access to conventional banking. During the pilot, customers began using it for a different purpose: sending money to other people. The team followed that behavior and redesigned the service around deposits, withdrawals, and transfers by phone, without requiring a bank account.

When the redesigned M-PESA launched in 2007, it addressed an everyday problem for families sending money between cities and rural communities. It became widely adopted by Kenyans with bank accounts as well as those without them. A service created to reach people outside conventional banking became a major part of the country's payments infrastructure.

The pilot revealed that the proposed product was too narrowly defined. Users demonstrated a more valuable purpose for the technology than its designers had originally planned.

The experience around the product

At Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, the opportunity appeared in a different place: the room surrounding a medical scanner. Staff began introducing child-friendly distractions in a CT room in 2005, then worked with GE to develop themed imaging environments for the hospital's new facility.

MRI and CT systems can be technically excellent while the experience remains difficult for an anxious child. The machines are unfamiliar, sometimes noisy, and require the patient to remain still. For some children, distress can complicate a scan or increase the need for sedation.

The rooms turned examinations into adventures. A scan could become a journey through space or a pirate voyage, with staff helping children take part in the story. The redesign included what children saw, heard, and understood about the procedure.

An MRI scanner and room at Hospital Garrahan decorated with a purple octopus and underwater characters.
An underwater-themed MRI room at Hospital Garrahan in Buenos Aires, Argentina, illustrates a similar approach. Photo: Ministerio de Salud de la Nación / Argentina.gob.ar, CC BY 4.0.

The Pittsburgh program reported less anxiety, fewer sedations, and shorter waits for scans. Those results followed changes to the whole patient experience, including staff participation, so they cannot be credited to decoration alone. Helping children through the procedure also freed capacity for other patients.

Who is outside the feedback?

Product teams routinely study how people use what they make. The people who struggle, quietly compensate, choose a competitor, or never try the product can be much harder to observe.

That absence can be misleading. A peeler may receive good reviews from people whose hands tolerate it. A bus may appear efficient when its boarding data does not include people who cannot climb the steps.

Sources and further reading

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