Today I had the lucky chance of visiting a lecture of Donald Norman and it was a pleasure. The man is a great orator and he managed to get his point across very clearly, to the displeasure of a lot of the Industrial Design students and staff. But what was his point?
Mainly he believes that design research, as it is taught in most modern design universities, is irrelevant for radical innovation. “Ye gods! The man is insane! Bring tar and feathers!” You could already hear similar thoughts in a lot of the audience.
But he makes a valid point. Most radical innovations are created by people that do not have training in, or even perform formal design research. They are people that see a cool new technology, make a product around it and create a need for that product. That is how television, SMS and a lot of other innovations came about.
Designers don’t do that. They are still extremely important for innovation, in the sense that they are able to improve properly on existing designs and products. They are able to figure out the needs of people that use a product and perfect the product with that knowledge.
But the innovators take the better product and really create something new with it, along with the need for it. And for this, you don’t need research, you need hands on work. Experience in creating things so you can prove your idea.
Are designers incapable of creating solid, robust ideas to convince people of a need? I’m not sure I agree with that. But I do agree that the innovations can only come from those people that are able to bring it in the world, before they convince people they need it.
I’ll leave you with two quotes that struck a chord with me and my notes of the lecture in mindmap form. Because somehow everyone seems to be fascinated by mindmaps.
Designers transform things into thing of emotion.
The ones that are best in predicting technologies are science fiction writers.
My Mindmap of Don Norman's Lecture
A Pad Full Of Noodles 