The object on a product-development table has an advantage over the object in someone's home: the table has been cleared for it. There is room to turn it, compare it and explain why its proportions make sense. A cupboard offers no such courtesy. Its depth, shelf arrangement and existing contents continue to matter after the new product arrives. I think that surrounding situation belongs inside the product brief. Otherwise, the team may design a convincing answer to a household that exists mainly in its own presentation.
This is not an argument against standardisation. A range with fewer unnecessary differences can make choosing and using an object easier. Common components can be valuable to customers as well as to buying and operating colleagues. The question is which differences are unnecessary. A product team cannot settle that question merely by looking at the orderliness of the catalogue. It needs to understand which variation comes from accumulated development history and which responds to a situation that changes whether the product is useful.
## Look around the object before making its dimensions universal
In the fictional Belvarel Retail storage review of 2023, the proposed range contained twenty-eight container formats. I initially favoured a strongly standardised modular set. Mira Vensley brought observations from visits to sixty households: thirty-seven had shallow cupboards and twenty-three had deeper ones. Those counts did not describe the distribution of cupboards across Australia. They did establish that the spaces we had actually encountered were not interchangeable. The universal proposition was already meeting a relevant difference before we had a sound reason to call that difference immaterial.
Mira's challenge made me separate two questions. Could a common system help people use the range? And did that system require every container to share the same depth? I had allowed the first question's attraction to carry the second question's assumption. A lid footprint might create useful commonality while several formats remained necessary around it. The surrounding space did not have to defeat the modular ambition, but it did have to change what the ambition meant.
I wanted the observation to reach the decision in a form that colleagues could examine. Saying that customers are different is too broad to guide a range. Saying that the observed cupboard depths made particular formats impractical gives the team something to test. The distinction helps the discussion move beyond a contest between the person asking for simplicity and the person asking for more choice. Both may be responding to a real problem. The work is to identify the level at which commonality helps without pretending it resolves a different level.
## Separate the common element from the differences that remain useful
We selected eighteen formats around three common lid footprints and supported A$4.6 million development. That decision reduced the proposed format count while retaining dimensional choices. It gave up the strongest version of one universal set. Buying and supply colleagues would still have several formats to manage, and the product account needed to acknowledge that work. A choice that is sensible for the household is not automatically free for the retailer. I wanted the cost and complexity considered alongside the usefulness, rather than hidden after the decision had been described as obvious.
The relationship between a component and a complete proposition matters here. A common lid can be explained clearly without asserting that the same container fits every cupboard. The range can retain a recognisable family while allowing variation where the observed situation calls for it. That is a more specific design argument than either total uniformity or unlimited choice. It asks the product team to justify the difference that remains and to show why removing it would transfer an inconvenient task to the user.
There is also a communication task. The shopper should not have to reconstruct the development debate to choose a format. The differences need to become understandable through dimensions, labels and the way the range is presented. Product leadership can set that intention and examine whether the explanation works, while buying, retail operations and quality retain their own responsibilities. A well-reasoned range decision can still be poorly communicated. The evidence behind the choice and the explanation offered to the customer therefore need to meet before the product story is treated as complete.
## Keep the household the pilot did not serve inside the decision
The subsequent pilot involved 120 households. Eighty-four accepted the proposition and thirty-six still had unmet needs. I wanted both groups retained in the account. The first group offered evidence that the revised choice was useful in those observed situations. The second group identified the limits of that proposition. Neither should be converted into a national market share, and the combined result should not be described as a successful public launch. A pilot can support a development decision without being asked to stand for every later commercial outcome.
The unresolved group can be uncomfortable because it arrives after the team has already changed its preferred design. We have listened, reduced the range and preserved different formats; another set of needs may feel like evidence that the work is never finished. I think the better question is what those needs imply for the next decision. Some may call for further development. Others may remain outside the intended range, provided that boundary is deliberate and accurately explained. Keeping them visible does not mean committing to serve every possible household. It means avoiding a claim that the proposition has resolved what the observation still leaves open.
A practical review should therefore separate acceptance, unresolved use and the decision made in response. If the team chooses to proceed with a bounded range, the account should say why the remaining situations do not prevent that step. If the uncertainty concerns a central use condition, more work may be warranted. Product judgement lies in making that trade-off explicit, with appropriate specialist input. It does not lie in selecting a more flattering way to count the pilot so that the decision appears to make itself.
My own responsibility was to let the cupboard change the proposition I had initially favoured. That is a small physical detail with a larger leadership consequence: the evidence must be able to alter the idea before the team has to defend it publicly. The product's setting is not background scenery. It is part of the work the object must do. A range becomes more convincing when its common elements and deliberate differences can both be explained in relation to that setting, including the places where the present answer still does not fit.