It’s almost impossible to start to design an offering that’s customer-focused if you can’t relate in a very tangible way to the experience the customer is going through, either positive or negative.

Unfortunately, many companies were reluctant to take this approach. Instead they relied on customer surveys or spending millions on high-risk research and development programs.

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Nina Hale. Some rights reserved.

My memories of summer camps mainly include lakes, barbeques and tents, but the folks from the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design (CIID) and INDEX are running a camp with 40 student representatives from around the world to foster intercultural dialogue and use user-centred design techniques as a mechanism to “solve the global challenges of mankind.”

That is a far cry from learning how to properly roast a marshmallow. But seriously, there is much more information on the camp website. Hopefully the blog will help us follow along with the students and their journey.

When I was a design manager, I always preached you could never go too far, only not far enough. By providing a range of concepts from close-in to further afield, you had a better chance of stretching your client to a more “radical” solution.

The nonobject Book is every designer’s dream. No clients. No customers. No limitations.

The principal objective of the book is to stimulate thought: What is an object? Why do we desire what we desire? Why has “functionality” been defined in such a historically narrow way? What is beauty? Nonobject is an attempt to free the imagination by disengaging it form the constraints of utility, economy and technology.

The site is worth a visit to see the preview of Tarati, a phone concept that highlights the magical empty space between telephone connections by removing keys and making dialing a function of passing your finger through the interface.

The title of the post comes from a Populuxe film from the 1950′s. My how far we have come …

The gap I am referring to is the three week lapse in posting to the blog. We have good reason to be concentrating on the real vs. virtual world as we launch the Innovation by Design programme. On May the 17th we ran the first of two user centred design workshops, the first being with the Registrar’s Office from the Institute of Technology Sligo and other invited guests. On the 12th of June, all six Northwest companies will be participating.

The workshop is the cornerstone of a user-led approach to innovation and is the result of six months of content development, including the input of experts from Ireland, mainland Europe and the US. They day itself is facilitated by Colin Burns, a user centred design expert, formerly the MD of IDEO London.

Our intent is to share the approach and tools via the website in the coming weeks.

Though written primarily from the perspective of designer to designer, Jennie Winhall wrote this fascinating essay on the politics of design. Not only do designers need to take responsibility for the consequences of design, whether they be unintended like the “butterfly ballot” which may have turned a US election, but also the conscious choices designers make around creating sustainable products and services, and even the clients they choose to work with. The very process of design is becoming more “democratic” as users become a focal point and in some cases are co-creating solutions.

I recall seeing Bruce Mau speak in the States and he began and ended his presentation with a challenge to all the designers sitting in the room, “Now that we can do anything, what are YOU going to do?”

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Jennie is setting up Participle, a social enterprise focused on designing a new generation of public services along with the former UK Design Council RED team members: Hilary Cottam, Colin Burns and Charles Leadbeater.

Forgive an emerging theme on the importance of the user. The New York Times, in a nicely populist article also applauds the user-centred design approach and once again cites Von Hippel. By the way, you may need to register for access to their site.

The article also includes a nice insight from Christopher Lettl, the new professor of user-driven innovation at the University of Aarhus School of Business in Denmark. He thinks that Danish culture’s focus on the concept of “janteloven,” which holds that no person is better than another, may make companies more open to ideas from their users.

Is it time for a dose of humility from companies and designers alike about the real source of inspiration?

Be prepared for a very American take on the subject of user-based innovation but this video has some top brains saying it just the way we see it.

Some really nice insights all echoing the Von Hippel mantra in his book “Democratizing Innovation”. If you haven’t read it, do get a copy; in an ispired move he has made it available free under a creative commons license.

via futuramb …

As we have been developing the Innovation by Design programme, we have purposely taken a user-centered approach to innovation. If you look at the classic venn diagram around design innovation, human values, or user needs, are external to the organisation. Technology and business are very internally focused. P A Martin Börjesson argues that a technology focus operates from a convergent mindset and is less successful at generating innovative solutions. Apparently some research was done at Karlstad University that proves the point:

… a group of users was invited to participate in an innovation process for end user services for mobile phones. During two weeks a large number people divided in test groups were provided with new mobile phones and notebooks to write down ideas about possible new services for that phone that pop up in their daily life. An interesting result was that the test group without technical knowledge outscored the group with technical knowledge both from a qualitative and a quantitative perspective. An even more interesting result came from another group consisting of non-technical people, who half-way through the experiment received some education about technical possibilities. After they received their mid-experiment lecture, i.e. learned more about the inner workings, their innovation score dropped.

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via Design Directory …

There a great review of a presentation from the Shimano marketing team at the National Bike Summit, where they detailed the background of their Coasting program. Shimano worked with IDEO to develop a strategy to get more of the 161 million Americans who don’t ride back onto bikes. This research led to a revisiting of cruiser bikes, and subsequently to a series of new bikes from Trek (the Lime is shown above), Raleigh and Giant.The original post goes over some of the findings that IDEO uncovered, and the resulting product strategy. But the comments, from bike mechanics, enthusiasts, lawyers and others, are the best part. The only thing missing from the conversation are the designers and product strategists. A great product design conversation, from a group of ‘non-designers’.

via IDSA …

Ever picked up a device and thought with just a little tweaking, it could be even better? (Of course you have; that’s why you’re designers, right?) Well, even non-designers have good ideas: The New York Times examines the concept of user-driven innovation, the value of letting users of products modify them or improve them, because they may come up with changes that manufacturers never considered. MIT professor Eric von Hippel, a leading advocate of user-driven innovation, says that by harnessing this concept, companies can develop products more quickly and inexpensively than with their internal design teams. Still not convinced? Consider this: 82 percent of new capabilities for scientific instruments like electron microscopes were developed by users.

Read the NY Times article