the maya concept
Raymond Loewy’s, a very famous and important industrial designers of the 20th century, coined the MAYA concept, “most advanced yet accepted”.
Raymond Loewy explains it thus: “The adult public’s taste is not necessarily ready to accept the logical solutions to their requirements if the solution implies too vast a departure from what they have been conditioned into accepting as the norm.”
intrinsically, there is a limit to how far we can push the status quo.
most of us like innovation, new technology, creative and original designs, but if a product or service is too far removed from what we have, or are familiar with, we may reject it. in essence, there is only so much change we are willing to do or accept.
this tolerance to change, varies of course from person to person, the challenge is to find the right balance between innovation and acceptance. how far can you take a concept or product and still get market adoption?
some products such the ipod and ipad have been very successful in pushing the limits of design, convention and standards of how we listen to music or read books. these products’ immense market adoption proved many early critics wrong. they risked being too advanced for their time but they worked because they delivered a powerful combination of extraordinary, innovative design with superb quality leaving behind many other competitor’s products that took less of a risk in innovation.
sometimes, we need transitions, smaller changes to get us where we need or should be but other times the market is ready for that change and whoever gets there first wins.
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