The more I read, research and understand "design and emotion", or to use a better phrase "experience design" the more i feel that the future of industrial design will be less about being experts in "products" and more about being experts in "humans".
This may seem like an obvious comment - I mean, industrial designers have always placed humans at the centre of what they do - and to a large extent that is true. However, little by little i have come to realise that the focus has always been heavily biased toward the object in question rather than the human in question.
More recently there have been researchers and practitioners that have begun to latch onto this idea and approach. In many cases this particular approach to design has been labelled "experience design" or "holistic design". Unfortunately these terms too have been pigeon-holed into the realm of flash-in-the-pan 'buzz' words... nevertheless in their true sense these terms hold a fair amount of truth to them to help describe where the real focus should be. This idea is described succinctly in the book Subject to Change: Creating Great Products and Services for an Uncertain World (Merhoz, Wilkens, Scheauer and Verba 2008). Here the authors describe the approach by outlining:
"...you need to ask yourself, what do people want to accomplish? How does this activity fit into their lives? How can I deliver on those desires? Asking these questions inevitably shifts your focus away from one-off, standalone products and allows you to start thinking of products simply as elements of a much larger system"
This statement hides within it some key ideas. Firstly they talk about "what do people want to accomplish? How does this activity fit into their daily lives?” This point draws our attention to people, activity and daily lives. These are at the centre of what I believe should be the fundamental shift in design thinking.
When they talk about “people” it’s about understanding what everyday humans want, need and desire in this world. It is less about "users" and more about "humans" as although they are indeed 'users' of objects, products and systems, they are above and beyond humans that have desires that need to be met.
“Activity” and “daily lives” orientate the discussion towards the issue of context and of interactions over time, rather than momentary actions. The issue of interactions over time is an interesting one because it acknowledges the fact that people use objects and systems over an extended period of time, and over this time their attachment will evolve and change and adapt in different ways. The issue of context is also a crucial part of the equation. Context is not a simple exemplar of the location in which one might interact with the object in question but rather a more complex and dynamic setting in which the human-artefact interaction is constantly situated in and being influenced by. Furthermore with the advent and subsequent proliferation of portable products, the contexts in which we use devices is ever-changing. Unlike previously where the context was somewhat fixed to one location (like watching the television at home) nowadays the activity of viewing TV, browsing the internet, peer-to-peer communication, b2b communications and financial transactions (to name a few) can be done virtually anywhere, anytime. This changes the game drastically.
It is my view that the future of design should be genuinely focusing on learning, educating, practicing and researching the human part of the equation; the better we learn about ourselves in the real world the more relevant design will become. It is important that we continue to be product experts, but it is imperative that we become human experts…
Really good example of this systems approach is the Kindle. There were plenty of eBook readers before hand, but no easy system to buy books, and put them on the reader. In comes Amazon, who already has deals with all of the publishers, so can get the eBooks easily, and creates a product WITH an attached service, for buying and downloading content directly to the device. Bam.
ReplyDeleteVery similar in many ways to iTunes, and now with purchasing and downloading music and apps directly onto the iPhone on the go.
S
Raf, you need to write shorter posts! There are too many things to respond to coherently in this tiny comment window ;)
ReplyDeleteTaking what I think is the centre of your argument:
This point draws our attention to people, activity and daily lives. These are at the centre of what I believe should be the fundamental shift in design thinking.
I don't think you need "daily lives" in there as it's covered by people and activity. And then, at least in what I've quoted above, you're missing artefacts, which I think are equally important as people and activities, and what makes the discipline "design" instead of anthropology (for example).
Simon brings it all together by mentioning the "systems approach" which I think is going to be an area of significant thinking in the near future and a great challenge for "design" which has previously been focussed on artefacts that stand alone and more recently on one person using one artefact in isolation.
I think that a new artefact is going to have to be a big iceberg-y. The artefact will be the tip of an iceberg that is mostly service -- like iTunes or Kindle "books".
And then you can ask questions about how iTunes/iPod and Amazon/Kindle have, or are, changing the idea of the things we used to call albums and books. People have said that albums (as collections of 12 or so songs) were an artefact of the medium of distribution and that people actually want to buy individual songs. Similarly, people are beginning to predict the end of print for certain things like daily newspapers and/or certain kinds of books because for certain things the distribution channel is kind of broken.
A (not THE, but A) challenge, for designers, is that an artefact makes a pretty rendering but you can't make a nice rendering of a system.
Nice post Ben, Thanks.
ReplyDeleteThis is why I'm wandering down this path in to the forboding forest of complexity theory... anyway came across an interesting quote bit of writing by Margolin. In his chapter "Expadning the boundaries of design: the product environment and the new user" (from The Idea of Design, 1995. Eds. Margolin, V., & Buchanan, R. p.s. don't put it on hold I still need it!) he talks about the product environment, which is pretty much what we are talking about.
"all the necessary conditions for acquiring the product, learning to use it, following its changes and improvements, providing components for it and keep it in good repair are part of the product environment" (p. 277)
The most important part of his discussion, and I think this is very relevant here is the following comment:
"For the user, the product itself and everything to required to make it work are all of a piece" (p. 278)
As designers, we really need to address everything surrounding a product. I think Apple are one of the best examples of this. Lame as this sounds, I still have the box from my Macbook Pro, even though it has been 9 months, simply because opening it was such an awesome experience. I really didn't want to have to cut out the barcode to send it back to apple to get my rebate for my ipod... and it's just a box...
But they consider everything. From the Magsafe connector, to being able to change the length of the cord of the power supply. Anyway i don't need to say much more, you both have macs and you know what I'm talking about.
I think this is happening more and more, as companies begin to realise the depth of interaction users have with the products they own.
By the way, that article appeared in the journal Design Issues, so it is probably available online.
ReplyDeleteI still have the box from my Powerbook and I only recently threw out the box from my iPod Touch.
ReplyDeleteEventually you have to draw a line in the sand and say "beyond this point I will not care". I think. But where that line is, is different for every product/service.
EG: Suppose you were going to design a new application to take on Microsoft Word. It wouldn't matter how awesome your product was because you'd have to usurp the complete market saturation M$Word has. Even if your app could get enthusiastic early adopters to switch, you'd still have the millions of people for whom Word is where you write text to overcome.
Or, you could come up with something that does not replace M$Word but replaces the paradigm (Kuhn, Structure of Scientific Revolutions -- google it ;) ) underlying Word.
Of course, first you have to figure out what that paradigm is.
Hey Ben,
ReplyDeletesorry for late response but i have finally had a chance to look at your response and here is my reply...
Firstly, I will try and make my posts shorter - although its difficult when we are talking about such an important issue! :)
Secondly, the words "daily lives" were very carefully chosen on my behalf. Even though you are correct in saying that "people" and "activities" refer to situations in real life, when discussing the central idea of my argument (which i will come to in the next paragraph) the idea of “daily lives” becomes core to the shift in thinking i am outlining.
I agree that when viewing the idea of a system - artefacts are just as important as people, and i dont want to undermine the importance of artefacts - as the title suggests, designers should be MORE than product experts... this implies that products come along in the ride... however, i am suggesting that instead of looking at the system from a product perspective (as i am suggesting it has been for most of the time) we should look at it from a human perspective - and not just an ergonomic or usability point of view but rather from a perspective that takes into account how humans behave and act in their "daily lives"…
To answer your idea about "systems" I will begin by saying that i agree with you that focus in the future will without a doubt be on the "system" rather than the product alone (and this will cause chaos with those who can render prettily).. nevertheless what i am refering to is regarding what the focus SHOULD be when considering the design of the system - I still believe that it shouldn't be on the system itself but rather on the people that make up that system. This seems like an obvious point - however what i am proposing has to do with an expansion (or shift) as to designers expertise whereby we should be more psychologists than engineers/manufacturers (so perhaps we should be seen as more anthropologists - even though i know you were being facetious when you mentioned it)
I am not sure if i can add an image on here but i have a diagram that will explain it better and will try to upload it somehow...
* as a side-note I would like to add that I think when I speak about “experience” I am including the system within this – except the crucial difference is that the word “experience” is ALL about the human perspective. I.e. you can design the perfect system but if you don’t consider or understand how the human/s within that system is/are going to PERCIEVE that experience, then it will ultimately fail. Thus the crucial element in the “system” is always the human “experience” (their subjective perception) and the only way to become attuned to this is to become a human expert, not just learn more about how to design “systems". I might re-visit this later..