some of you may agree with what Don Normal recently said on is blog
‘.. he tells designers to get over themselves. It is science and technology that drive truly disruptive innovation, not Design’s focus on the needs and wants of people. Ethnographic research, Norman says, can generate small, incremental innovations but the blockbuster game-changing stuff, comes from the lab, not the village or the mall’ (businessweek)
I met Don a couple years ago in Amsterdam and talking with this nice old teacher was really inspiring. He is the author of dozen of books about user experience. I nevertheless disagree with this article, today.
Don’s innovation model is very old and is not taking into considerations how new tools like design thinking and ethnographic research are changing the model, but we all know how difficult may be cracking this old innovation model …from his article
‘ ..it all sounds logical: study people. Discover hidden, unmet needs. Fulfill those needs, and leap ahead of the competition, producing yet another wondrous advance. This is the mantra of the design research community
… But the real question is how much all this helps products? Very little. In fact, let me try to be even more provocative: although the deep and rich study of people’s lives is useful for incremental innovation, history shows that this is not how the brilliant, earth-shattering, revolutionary innovations come about’ (jnd.org)
