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Design Without Designers
By Don Norman - Oct 07, 2010
Don Norman
Don Norman claims his goals in life are to make a significant difference, but to have fun while doing so. he has just established the Design Lab at the University of California, San Diego which he intends to grow to become a major center for design with a focus on the application of human-centered design principles to complex sociotechnical systems, such as healthcare and automation. He is both a businessperson (VP at Apple, Executive at HP and a startup) and an academic (Harvard, UC San Diego, Northwestern, KAIST). As co-founder of the Nielsen Norman Group he serves on company boards and helps companies make products more enjoyable, understandable, and profitable. He is an IDEO Fellow and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. He gives frequent keynotes and is known for his many books including "The Design of Everyday Things," "Emotional Design," and "Living with Complexity" (which argues against simplicity), and a completely revised, updated edition of "Design of Everyday Things."
33 Comments
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I actually predict the return (or the rise) of the designer, because for commodity goods the features, statistics, etc. aren't differentiating anymore. It's about the attached emotion that needs to be captured and aligned with the target audience. A designer will be much better to sense and feel the emotion and translate into appearance reflecting the emotion attached.!Report as spam
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The idea that "computers" and "software" (and thus their "byproducts" ) ARE NOT driven by political, or agenda driven processes and systems is naive and frankly dangerous.
Any improvements or messes humanity makes is its own.(exclude any "god" or "nature") We increasingly now imprint ourselves into "techmediamachines" as well as our biological children. What these "new" children may "choose" for us, IF and when they can, will be for their benefit, more than ours, if history and nature continue to be "reality".
Technology is a "cultural" babymaker, unlike people who do it in twos.... A single Designer or Engineer or Venture Capitalists "education" cant do much to a "better world" alone.
There is a system that must be examinded closer and acted on. A system now dominated by technology/mechanised myths today when it had been dominated by the human individualists myths less than a century ago.!Report as spam -
I'm not convinced by the argument for computers or engineers [solely] doing user-facing design (circuits and things 'under the hood' are inherently different) in lieu of designers tasked and experienced in specifically looking at how to present information/functionality to users without being _unduly_ influenced by the technology serving it.
Have a look at early computer UIs and websites. Those were done by engineers, for engineers, which is why many of them provide poor experiences for the rest of us (and unfortunately, continue to do so).
Of course Agile has no need for designers; Agile was a developer's solution to what many [mistakenly] see as a 'development issue'. (Note the intended sarcasm). Everyone responsible for delivery should absolutely learn the basics of user-centred design in order to inform their own decisions, but in the end, design decisions work best when centralised, rather than committee-based or distributed.
This is not to say that developers cannot design at all, nor is it to say that data-driven design is wholly evil, but rather these are things that should be leveraged in conjunction with an understanding of the context of user motivation and satisfaction levels (emotional design). Algorithms or machines cannot replace the creativity, intuition, and innovation of a designer, they can only enhance it.
A recent NYTimes commentary, 'Stories vs. Statistics', rather nicely suggests the role of data and how it differentiates from stories:
"... perhaps the most fundamental tension between stories and statistics. The focus of stories is on individual people rather than averages, on motives rather than movements, on point of view rather than the view from nowhere, context rather than raw data. Moreover, stories are open-ended and metaphorical rather than determinate and literal."
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/24/stories-vs-statistics/!Report as spam -
"Design without designers" is not a new concept. The fact that it is increasingly being done by computers instead of being at the mercy of things such as politics, organisational structure, existing processes etc is a good thing for us as human beings as it improves the products and services we rely on.
Designers shouldn't create a false dichotomy by pitting data and intuition against each other. As Don points out, both types of innovation are necessary. Data-driven methods should augment our skills as designers and help us make higher-level intuitive decisions based on a better understanding of the people we are designing for.
I wrote a very similar post to this almost a year ago at http://designthinkage.com/?p=53.!Report as spam -
You've missed the point with the Google example you give.
What Google were testing was which colour blue _loads_ faster. Not which one was preferred by the consumers.
And _that_ is why Google is messed up.!Report as spam -
Maybe this is why Google grows by acquisition. Let people create startups to experiment with hard-to-test new ideas, then buy the companies that succeed and refine the design by testing.!Report as spam
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and will also need to adopt a more analytical / left-brained approach to their professions....
Ah. but its THIS left brain, that being replaced by the computer/networked media/ faster than the right brains abilities, which of course are only devlaued by those who are temporarily the "masters" of the left side...;)
"think about it."... C.Beerman.
www.mediabastard.wordpress.com
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more importantly for many is the question of designers without design... this isnt a future, but readily the present.
About that Space Agency reply - notice how their were no "designers" aboard the USS ENTERPRISE on STAR TREK... only engineers.;)
No Matt Jefferies in the future?.. shame on humanity.;)
Dunzel C3
www.mediabastard.wordpress.com!Report as spam -
Don,
I agree with your statement that radical innovation doesn't greatly benefit from customer input (be it through web analytics that Google employs / focus groups done by FMCG majors etc) and also with the claim that incremental innovation does benefit from these.
As far as the future of design is concerned, we should look at the role of designers in a) radical innovation and b) incremental innovation going forward.
Radical innovation: Designers aren't the only ones who can come up with great ideas. So while many designers are exposed to multi-disciplinary fringes from where new ideas come, so are many other people - from technology / business and other disciplines. Radical creativity is not restricted to designer.
Incrememental innovation: The traditional role of designers will get transformed (if not disrupted) as launch, test, iterate models become more prevalent. As the cost / effort of creating new products - through platforms such as mobile app builders / 3D printing etc which are proliferating - decrease, more and more, business will value the hard data over "design intuition".
These two trends coupled with the fact that the supply of designers (design schools etc) greatly exceeds that necessitated by opportunities for radical innovation, will mean that many designers might end up quitting the Googles of our current and future times.
Some parts of the globe such as India, where design is highly under-penetrated, will see this trend a few years after it hits the design heavy parts of the world.
What this does mean is that designers will actively look to create new roles for them - at the intersection of business / design, social impact etc - the increasing rise of design thinking is ample evidence of this migration. However, as many have argued, for this shift to be seamless, designers will have to train themselves more on the disciplines that they engage in (the non-profit space for instance) and will also need to adopt a more analytical / left-brained approach to their professions.!Report as spam -
Don,
I enjoyed reading your article. It seems that you are making a simple division between conception and improvement. Designers should be in the business of conception and end users should be in the business of improvements.
Unfortunately, with thousands of design schools and thousands of designers, many designers are in the business of creating marginal differentiation and marginal improvements. What Amazon and Goolge have demonstrated that these are best done by consumers - because they are all different to each other and do not need the services of designers to tell them what they like.
The Google search page is the best designed page in the web. It has been designed. It has been conceived with great design thinking - that values simplicity. That is good design. Whether or not designers are involved is irrelevant.
Google is a revolutionary out fit that has altered the relationship between knowledge and humanity. Its approach to design could be equally revolutionary. It has, as it has in most of its operations eliminated the middle folks, who badly interpret and charge for what they think consumers like.
The change that we are seeing is the transfer of marginal design activity to the hands of consumers.
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Least to say-
More often when new products are launched in the market.They just struggle with the new psychology of Design Innovation.
Why should one want to try out new thing, if he is doing well with existing ones.
However, the cases like Google and Amazon deals with technological acceptance.
So the psychology of Appearance and Usability works in different manner.
Providing some sort of innovative clue in d existing product which going to be implemented in the future design, can greatly reduce the risk of new design failure or more they can tell the future of new product.
Creativity or creative thinking is not just only the property of the designers, but anyone can have it. Particularly what IDEO often used to call it as a Design thinking.
Design is like a big-bang theory, which gets the favorable conclusion.
I have lot more to say on this talk but i told you that, this topic will always come to its multifaceted end.!Report as spam -
Great article, by the even greater Don Norman! Thanks!
I guess, do whatever you may, it is just about impossible to automate the creative part of the human brain by anything simpler, even when the simpler stuff (the data) might be driven by a multitude of brains, until, of course, we come to fully understand or emulate the human brain, which is, although I hate using this word, impossible.!Report as spam -
Mr. Norman,
Thank you for your entry. It clarified a few things for me. As a student studying architectural design, we encounter similar issues and criticisms on both methodologies, though mostly in the "testing" approach, due to the "Great Innovation" being the normative. Although some might say the incremental enhancement isn't possible with architecture (due to the site conditions and circumstances that are always different, and the sheer nature of the building production being a lot slower than that of product/graphic design), I think it could be, when you look at the processes such as algorithmic design; the uses of feedback loop could be seen the same way as the testing method of Google and Amazon to determine what's better.
You said in your entry, "New Approaches to computer-generated creativity such as genetic algorithms, knowledge-intensive systems, and others will start taking over the creative aspect of design." I do see the argument of generative design being a more intense method of designing something (and therefore possibly a hyper-creative method), because you start to "design" or script towards a greater amount of detail and precision. I've heard it said this way when talking about the issue of authorship that arises from generative designs. I feel that both are equally creative. do you think that the testing and great innovation should combine as much as possible to achieve the best result? Or do you think they should remain separate entities and never blend? Is there a possibility of the product being diluted once you integrate the two methods? Thank you for the insightful entry.!Report as spam -
Great article, I guess its the "Monetary System" and"Freemarket Capitalism" that prevents true innovation and its application. The real cause, I mean...!Report as spam
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I'm with Greg Blonder on this one. A number of industries and professions are being hollowed out, and design just happens to be one of them. Mass adoption of a product or service coupled with a simultaneous reduction in the size of the industry required to deliver it. Think Paypal vs. AMEX, or Craig's list vs. newspapers.
For all the hand-wringing about the role and value of design, and hopes for for a wave of design work to support a golden age of the industry, the reality is that the mass adoption of design by business will be driven by the automation of much that we consider to be design. GAP's "design our logo" campaign is probably a portent of the future of design.!Report as spam -
I'd just like to add a caveat for the sake of balancing the argument (wherein I agree with Mr Norman here) that if indeed creative, innovative advances are to succeed far more rapidly in the market then it behoves the creators/makers/designers to also learn some thing about business, marketing and people/society and not simply exemplify the caricature of the great "designer" who would refuse any changes to his creative masterpiece. That's the tyranny of the opposing end of the continuum that Don's describing. There is always a middle path ;p!Report as spam
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Sure apple VP blah blah blah, the guys who started Google had a totally different approach to search (PageRank WAS NOT an iterative approach) and I'd argue it was a radically different 'design' even though they were CS grad students and not 'designers'. Design vs. Engineering is a bunch of BS, good design == good engineering/technology. It is was makes technology advance.!Report as spam
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- rant mode:on -
1. Management is not hired for making sustainable decisions - they answer for the bottom line every month. So no strategic thinking people are in those positions.
2. As they have to be good on #1 they are better at economic theories than running a business.
3. Since it is easier to make money from running your known business better the best of the breed will put resources into the incremental model. The rest will just be doing business as usual. (However now reaching in to the social channels :-)
4. Since the bottom line is in focus everyone will try to refine their existing processes, adding en extra ISO# as a quality mark.
5. Effectivity, as a measure of $ per work hour, will effectively stop all unstructured (innovative) behavior.
6. Since investors are in focus, customers and their needs are not.
7. However, innovation is hot, so there are "labs", expecting a few individuals to come up with ground breaking solutions in their ivory towers.
8. And of course, design is hot, so let's plaster that on the finished product afterwards.
- rant mode:off -
Conclusion: We need, among other things, more educated investors.
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Great article. Makes me wonder to what extent Google is missing the boat on new ideas by ignoring the unproven.
Roger Martin, Dean of the Rotman School of Management, preaches the importance of analytical thinkers to embrace the intuitive approach of designers. Designers employ abductive thinking and this is how companies like Apple find the path up the "darkened hill".
I am exploring the design possibilities of silk biosensor technology for a graduate design project. I would love some feedback. http://silkdoctors.ning.com/
Cheers.!Report as spam -
great insights ... "The universal methodology of the tyrant is incrementalism." Derek Audette!Report as spam
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My former employer just "eliminated my position for strategy reasons." My position? Senior User Experience Designer. The company? Makes online health management systems, health information portals, and online health engagement/improvement programs. The belief of the VP of Technology is that in Agile/Scrum iterative production, there is no need for design, even in online software. Business requirements get handed to developers without any kind of creative process to determine the best solutions to the needs presented by the BAs.
This article is exposing a very real and dangerous threat to the design world. In the end, it poses a threat to the Experiences we all share. Determining what was wrong with the last experience doesn't create a great experience the next time. User Acceptance Testing (UAT) is just that: acceptance. Not happiness. Does the user accept what you fixed last time? This isn't a world I want to work in, where all we strive for is ACCEPTANCE by our users. Not in today's economic climate. If we don't deliver an experience that forms an emotional bond, we lose customer loyalty to whoever has the best price. And there will ALWAYS be someone with a similar product and a lower price.
Design something INtangible, design an experience, and the tangible will follow because your customers APPRECIATE you. Remove design, and you hang all your business on the hope that your customers/user ACCEPT you.!Report as spam -
Very interesting argument. However, one of the dangers of "Data-driven design" is the fact that it relies too much on what consumers /users THINK they want rather than what they really WANT. The problem is that we cannot accurately translate our reaction to objects. Do we hate it or is it just too unusual for us? The classic example of this problem is the "aeron chair" which failed at all of the "tests" and later became a best selling chair.!Report as spam
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Bob, what you're describing is design - not engineering.
User experience design is often described as the offspring of human-computer interaction (HCI) and ergonomics, so regardless of their training or job title a designer is a designer. Decisions about ergonomics and form factor are design decisions.
Great article Don.!Report as spam -
Terrific Blogpost!
After 3 days at A Better World By Design 2010 Conf (put on by RISD & Brown students!) -- I doubt any of the ecstatic or rigorous designer thinkers on either campus would opt for only the slow iterative Google approach to design thinking. In fact, in my own panel: Politics in Design, we got pretty down and dirty on the subject of design thinking -- what it entailed, especially when working with new populations, ngos and local "mafia" in countries throughout the world.
I stand with you Don, in asking for a whole brain, whole system approach -- one that includes over time/space testing of serial, parallel and non linear, cross vectored processing of info and iterative design. Otherwise, to live in a googled universe, testing protocols become opportunities to reduce "insight" to "normative insight." Hardly the "spacious, idiosyncratic or collaborative mind" model for insight when it comes to break through innovation. (The google view of design thinking hands creativity over to the programmer -- a daring proposition in itself - one that designers should consider in their design thinking toolbox!)
On a final note, speaking of whole system, whole brain approaches: Given the highly unique neurological structure of each human brain/dna - your analysis seems on point especially when designing the future of neurofeedback for both healthy and normal brains. A topic that is near and dear to my innovator's heart!
Thanks Don!
Yours with neurons sparking!
Dr G
Chief Brainiac, GGI -- dedicated to using design thinking to spread brain awareness around the world!
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Great article. I think design is something natural and not programmable. You can program a computer to design some shapes and test them, but that's completely different than asking designers to come up with something more creative.!Report as spam
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Sounds like design would end up just the way as the space industry has started and was like the previous 55 years. Luckily even they are SLOWLY changing their perception about what design can do for them.
However, strange contradiction. In my region there's also the trend of 'supporting creativity', 'innovation and design' and so on so I don't immediately notice this undesign movement. But now I now I should watch 'my' back. Thanks for opening this up Mr. Norman.!Report as spam -
Don-
Even the "breakthrough" part of design is falling into the computational domain. Computers are pretty adept at employing genetic algorithms to invent new electronic circuits, or (based on similarity trees), novel physical mechanisms, that result in patentable ideas.
http://www.genetic-programming.com/inventionmachine.html
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0804756996
We still need designers, but as is true in retailing and drug discovery and many traditional endeavors, the center is hollowing out, leaving mass production at one end and a select few innovators at the other.
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Sad. Where I work design is much appreciated.!Report as spam
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A world filled with design without designers would probably be a lot like the world of Garfield without Garfield.
http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/garfield_just_isnt_garfield_without_garfield_9069.asp!Report as spam -
Thank you for a great article. I've noticed this disturbing trend in my area of practice (product development for media and entertainment). The focus from both client and consumers has shifted to quantity, speed and access versus pacing, quality and understanding.
I done want to sound like one of those old timer designer longing for the old days, before the bubble formed around data-centric design, but I've always advocated leaving the MBAs at the door when you're trying to create and innovate [call them back in when it's time to wrap a business or process around the idea]!Report as spam -
The acceptance risk can be mitigated for "breakthrough product innovation." Acceptance can be reduced from decades/years to months by proving the efficacy of the novel idea. It is being done in the medical design field, there is no reason to believe it can't be done in the consumer field as well.!Report as spam
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Very interesting assessment, especially like the analogy of the field of hills. The question I'm wondering is are more companies realizing the importance of creative thinking? Just from appearances the resounding success of companies like apple and nintendo seems like a huge incentive to invest in creative judgment while companies such as GM serve as an example of what can happen when you become too static and do not act quick enough.!Report as spam
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the biggest barrier to great innovation is the idea that 'engineers' can't design or 'designers' can't engineer. Design isn't a niche function, its a common facet of practically every job. Every button on an iphone is designed into place? or is it engineered into the correct ergonimic location? Google doesn't have an aesthetically pleasing interface?
this article is unhelpful design-mumbo-jumbo drivel!Report as spam
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