User Centric Design is Dead

Found at Design Sojourn "User Centered Design Innovation is Dead", details here.  Reminds me of a Steve Jobs quote - "You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new."

Will Design Thinking Deliver to the Consumer?

A new mantra among the corporations of the world is emerging for the teen years of the 21st century - Design Thinking.  Just like the concept of Innovation rose in the early 2000s, Design Thinking as an idea is finally on the rise.

The leaders in this space have existed for a while, couple of examples being IDEO and Procter & Gamble (with its Innovation Centers).  The level of understanding, misunderstanding or not understanding this space are clear from the Business Week article "Inside the Design Thinking Process", here.  The author, Helen Walters, discusses the Aspen Design Summit where multiple design driven sessions were conducted to solve hard problems.

I give credit to Ms. Walters on stating about the Design Thinking process as implemented at the Aspen Design Summit, "... the strongest takeaway was that those looking for a prescribed way to implement design thinking are destined to be disappointed. It's a messy, opaque process that depends as much on group dynamics as intellect or insight."

Preparation of such sessions requires experience and insights into human behavior.  Someone I personally know to be exceptionally talented at this is the Marketing Consulting Services of Copenhagen, see information here.

Yet, the one reason I suggest giving this article serious consideration is because the author highlights the key to the success of all Design Thinking processes, having the end user or consumer of the product or service engaged, which apparently was missing from all the sessions conducted at the Aspen Design Summit.  The author termed the results being developed out of the sessions to "seem like entirely inappropriate bunk" for the end user or consumer.

Perhaps all this is becoming news due to Roger Martin causing an uproar with his open challenge to the research driven, heavily analytical product and service development organizations and management consultancies, see my blog "Roger Martin - On Designing the Future", here.

I believe that exciting times are ahead as the left and right brained individuals realize that to truly deliver a breakthrough to their consumer, they must work collaboratively, break down the silo and unburden themselves from the past to really "create".

Roger Martin - On Designing the Future

My astute friend from McKinsey, Samvit Kanoria forwards "What's Thwarting American Innovation? Too Much Science, Says Roger Martin", in Fast Company, see here.  The article highlights Mr. Martin's focus on creativity in innovation being a combination of science and design aspects of product or service development working together.

For the scientist, he states - "The future has no legitimacy for analytical thinkers."

Mr. Martin thrashes the large management consulting companies and lays the blame of innovation bottle neck on a corporate structure mired in research and analysis of the past - "But what they analyze is the past.  And if the future is not exactly like the past, or there are things happening that are hard to measure scientifically, they get ignored."

Mr. Martin is asked - "Are you saying that the regression analysis jockeys and Six Sigma black belts have got it all wrong?" and he states - "Well, yes."

Interestingly, my tenure at P&G was during the time Roger Martin was advising A.G. Lafley and I was a part of the substantial changes brought within P&G's approach to business.  See information on some my work related to Virtual Shopper here on my friend Franz Dill's blog, who also was one of the founders of the P&G Innovation Centers.

Though Mr. Martin speaks candidly, yet the change he suggests carries pain to the corporate as a whole and the machinery of suppliers supporting it.  Corporate innovation remains more perception than reality, with incremental results seen in their markets from licensing, buyouts, etc.  Breakthrough innovation remains the domain of the entrepreneur, one who can imagine a future unburdened by the past!

Raymond Loewy - Father of 20th Century Design Innovation

If you don't know of Raymond Loewy then he is one of the two or three individuals from the 20th century in America who have made design the impactful reality in products - from maximizing on revenue to the consumer feeling the "need" to "must have" a particular brand.

Wired magazine online profiled Raymond Loewy in November here. Also, I visited an informative exhibition on Raymond Loewy chronicling his design through the decades including family and commercial videos in Bozeman, Montana called "Raymond Loewy:Designs for a Consumer Culture". See details here.

For me there is no getting away from the fact that Raymond Loewy brought together the initial principles of Industrial Design, perhaps not all of them yet the most important ones, including that it begins and ends with the consumer, in delighting the consumer through design and the experience that design imparts for the consumer of the product.

See a photo gallery of Raymond Loewy's designs here on Wired online.

Is it all about Design and Experience?

SCAD

While conducting a seminar on Design Innovation and a Design Charrette at Savannah College of Art & Design (SCAD), I left the students with the question whether in the final analysis it was all about design and experience of any product before they began their Charrettes?

The deep consumer understandings gleaned at places such as the Innovation Centers at Procter & Gamble enable product companies to capture the sale at the point of purchase - First Moment of Truth (FMOT) as P&G puts it, see definition here. My work at the various Innovation Centers around the world continuously helped me realize that P&G had captured the essence of reaching the consumer - Design enables success at FMOT.

See my friend and colleague Franz Dill's blog here discussing P&G's Innovation Centers and some of the work we did as detailed in Mr. A. G. Lafley's book "The Game Changer". Franz was also the founder of the first Innovation Center there.

While the above is a commercial venture for increasing shareholder value, I was happy to see that in academia SCAD has introduced anthropology and psychology to compliment their excellent curriculum in Industrial Design program, see here.

The quality of experience offered by the product or service may or may not result in repeat business. This is where the product companies of the world are engaging in immersive and experiential environments for learning consumer behavior. See another of Franz's blog here regarding Cargill's Innovation Center.

The SCAD students produced impressive results for the dilemmas I brought to them from UAE and Germany. My friends and faculty at SCAD that is; the Industrial Design Dean - Mr. Victor Ermoli, the Chair - Mr. Tom Gattis and a dedicated Professor - Mr. Robert Fee, should feel proud of their accomplishments as the No. 3 Industrial Design program in the USA.

This Charrette helped me solidify my belief that in the end, yes, it is all about design and experience. Or did Dr. Ivan Pavlov already discover this indirectly in the late 19th century when he developed the concepts of Classical Conditioning?

Company Highlight - live|work

live|work

I want to highlight a service design company, live|work, and a friend Mr. Chris Downs, founder of live|work, with whom a conversation began about three years ago whether it is all about the experience? Chris (if I am remembering it right) was of the opinion that it is all about the service as in the end all products have to provide a service. A lesson learned at Procter & Gamble and the result being the concept - Second Moment of Truth i.e. what happens when the consumers try the product after making the purchase decision. Here is an interesting blog providing insights on this.

I have not seen a "Services Design" firm such as Chris's in my international work that has successfully combined all the varied pieces of use and usability, incorporation of the five senses, pre-present-post emotions, and so on and delivered hard ROI. Have a look at few of the case studies of live|work here.

Read more about "Service Design" here.

See an insightful conversation here that Chris had with NextDesign Leadership Institute's (NextD) GK VanPatter.

Context Over Dogma

Chris Bangle defines the new concept car GINA as simply - "Context Over Dogma". Chris's talk below has implications across product design holistically... Enjoy!