[Pelham]

Too many companies ignore the “human engineering” aspect of the products that they sell. This wasn’t the case at all when ‘Boomers were growing up.

[Alberta's Child]

I once heard a great radio interview with a futurist who began his career as a "new product development assistant" for a major auto manufacturer. His job -- believe it or not -- was to get a job at Hertz or Avis car rental and spend his entire days making mental notes of how people interacted with their rental cars. This is how they would come up with new innovations that would be attractive to car buyers.

One good example he cited was the remote trunk opener. This was originally designed with rental cars in mind ... so a traveler with a lot of luggage could open the trunk without putting all the bags down and fumbling for the trunk key.