User centered design

This weekend, I found myself explaining what the Institute of Design is about to quite a large number of people. I was at a friend’s wedding in Bolton, MA and this friend had just graduated from Wharton. As you can imagine, the crowd at the wedding had a ton of ivy league business types and when the usual set of introductions went around and I said, “Institute of Design“, they all went huh?

So here’s a quick little video snippet of one company using user centered design to develop a unique product in the medical space.

User centered design of course isn’t just about developing new products. The methods and frameworks can be applied to developing new services, identifying opportunities within existing markets, identifying customer pain points and a whole host of other strategic activities.

The importance of user based perspectives in science

I was catching up on my blogs after a busy and fun filled weekend in Boston sans laptop when after just a couple of articles, I ran across a post on Core77 about the discovery of a new super glass material by a Swedish research scientist.

I’m a nerd at heart so stuff like this is exciting in it’s own right but this quote below is really what caught my eye.

Congrats to Saeid not just for his research but also for adding some user perspective in the world of research. Saeid earlier said: “If I talk about atoms and bonds and nitrides, people fall asleep at their desks. But if I talk about this wind power plant and the problems we’re wrestling with, then everyone wants to join in!”

Core77 got it right in congratulating Saeid for using a user centered perspective to frame his discoveries. While the new superglass material is sure to get material scientists excited, for the average joe like you and me, it’s the application of these technologies that are truly interesting.

It also got me to wonder about how many scientists regularly pitch foundations for grants with a user centered perspective and how this would affect their success. This of course is a lesson for all of us, not just the scientists out there.

Are the management style of Indian CEO’s stifling innovation?

At least, that’s the premise of this article published in the Harvard Business School press.

http://discussionleader.hbsp.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/1365

While I agree that management culture can certainly stifle the growth of innovation from the bottom up, i disagree with his conclusion about the solution being the use of technology, namely social networking tools.

Forrester (disclaimer – I used to work at AMR Research, a competitor) is primarily a technology advisory company and as such, the recommendations are from a technology biased perspective.  That’s why Navi’s recommendation to

To facilitate innovation in this new fluid and dynamic organizational context, Indian CEOs must invest in Web 2.0-enabled employee motivation technologies like prediction marketplaces, idea management apps, and employee blogs.

falls a bit flat and sounds more like an attempt to drum up business for their advisory service. Any serious talk about innovation cannot happen through the perspective of technology alone. During my internship at Target’s Innovation Group, I was lucky to see their efforts at bringing the idea of innovation throughout the organization. They used none of the technology Navi is talking about, but they were extremely focused on making sure that their employees recognized that innovation was not just the responsibility of the single group, but rather that the group would act as facilitators in making sure all ideas were heard.

The idea is not to lead with technology when change can happen with people instead. If employees don’t feel the desire to innovate, no amount of Web 2.0 apps could help.

Mass amateurization and the bottom of the pyramid

I love this short article “Vietnamese pedicab driver designs a better vehicle“ on Core77, especially the quote from the pedicab designer

“Although I am only a driver without diplomas or certifications, I am lucky to have experience on the roads for more than 20 years, which has given me some knowledge about mechanics,” said Tam, who filled info gaps by doing internet research to complete the vehicle. His goal, he said, was to make it “green and clean.”

I’m half way through Clay Shirkey’s “Here Comes Everybody”, an excellent book about how masses are self organizing and engaging in activities that previously were only in the realm of professionals using tools that encourage such activities. He calls it, “mass amateurization”. The example of the Hanoi pedicab driver seemed relevant, as he engaged in the activity of designing a greener bike, made possible through the medium of internet and his considerable experience on the streets. The mass amateurization of product design.

The article also reminded me of a pet peeve I have about the phrase “designing for the bottom of the pyramid”. This phrase gets mentioned seems to be all the rage but has a very annoyingly paternalistic feel to it. As someone originally from a third world country, I can’t help but feel that it’s a new effort to tap previously virgin markets and sell them new products (which they helped design in the first place). After all, isn’t that what the term “emerging markets” describes? A new place to sell more stuff ?

Instead, how about “design by the bottom of the pyramid”. I’m far more interested in seeing designers engaging with all manners of people over the world, not just to design for them, but to help them get better at designing for themselves. Bringing this back to Clay Shirkey’s concepts, developing the means of self organization to encourage the rise of design from the masses, as opposed to designing for the masses.

Collecting examples of good storytelling

My friend and I are working on a new product + platform in the wireless presentation space and I need to finish up the semester’s work by creating concept boards. I would love to do a quick video to explain the product but besides the time involved in creating them, I’d like a more portable way of describing our 3 concepts in this space.

Do any of you have suggestions or examples of places where you’ve seen a product explained clearly and concisely? If so, please post in the comments as I’m sure other would like to know.

Icing on the cake for urbanites

Great stuff! I’m a staunch urbanite (take that Priya) so this is just icing on the cake for me.

12:24 PM (23 minutes ago) City Dwellers Are Greener from Popular Science - by Matt Ransford New York Skyline: Photo by William Warby (CC Licensed) The Brookings Institute has released a study this week in which residents of the 100 largest metropolitan areas are shown to produce 14 percent less carbon dioxide emissions per capita than the national average. The reasons for the discrepancy point to population density. As one nears an urban center commute times are shortened, mass transit options are increased, and dwelling spaces get smaller, leading to less individual emissions on average.

Shards of identity

I recently received an email from a friend who I had lost touch with 8 years ago. He and I were in the same architecture class at Berkeley (I was a EECS major - go figure) and we worked on an animation project together. I got to know him and his family well and at the end of school, he had to move back to Egypt.

Last night, I got an email from him saying that he’d tracked me down, even though I had moved to Boston. The funny thing was, he had the right email but I was no longer in Boston, having moved to Chicago a year and half ago to attend ID. That experience got me thinking about my presence on the web and I realized it was like the broken shards of a mirror, disparate and reflecting slightly different parts of you to the web and so anyone looking for you, might find your identity in the past.

These broken shards of me reflect a person from different points in time and I have quite a few. From the daily updates on twitter, to the 6 month old picasa photo albums, the friendster profile long forgotten, the facebook profile who’s only purpose is to update my status, my linked in network rarely used, my portfolio page rarely visited, these numerous instances of me are spread all over (not to mention the google trails of me back to high school).

So, my summer project is to try and find a way to consolidate all of them in to a meaningful whole – one site that reflects my interests, activities and passions. I’m guessing there’s nothing out there right now that will accomplish this but I’ll start looking and let you know if I find something.

Design Thinking

Great excerpt from Core77 on Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO on design thinking. As anyone in this industry knows, explaining what it is you do to MBA’s, traditional designers and your grandmother can be an excercise in frustration. Glad to see he’s tackled this subject.

In the Harvard Business Review, Tim Brown (finally) goes on record with what, exactly, Design Thinking is. Tim said that this piece was a long time coming, and with equal parts pragmatics and philosophy, it’s probably just what the doctor ordered. Here’s a sweet spot:

I argued earlier that design thinking can lead to innovation that goes beyond aesthetics, but that doesn’t mean that form and aesthetics are unimportant. Magazines like to publish photographs of the newest, coolest products for a reason: They are sexy and appeal to our emotions. Great design satisfies both our needs and our desires. Often the emotional connection to a product or an image is what engages us in the first place. Time and again we see successful products that were not necessarily the first to market but were the first to appeal to us emotionally and functionally. In other words, they do the job and we love them. The iPod was not the first MP3 player, but it was the first to be delightful. Target’s products appeal emotionally through design and functionally through price–simultaneously. This idea will grow ever more important in the future. As Daniel Pink writes in his book A Whole New Mind, “Abundance has satisfied, and even over-satisfied, the material needs of millions–boosting the significance of beauty and emotion and accelerating individuals’ search for meaning.” As more of our basic needs are met, we increasingly expect sophisticated experiences that are emotionally satisfying and meaningful. These experiences will not be simple products. They will be complex combinations of products, services, spaces, and information. They will be the ways we get educated, the ways we are entertained, the ways we stay healthy, the ways we share and communicate. Design thinking is a tool for imagining these experiences as well as giving them a desirable form.