Achieving success through a giant leap or incremental steps?
I always thought it to be almost common understanding that if you want develop good quality products to gain a sustainable position on the market, knowing what your consumers want is crucial.
A provocative discussion that was raised by Donald Norman about the importance of understanding consumer needs left me a bit confused. He mentiones that:
“technology comes first, inventions second, and needs last”1… “It is science and technology that drive truly disruptive innovation, not Design’s focus on the needs and wants of people”2.
Quite something to say…isn’t it?
Sure there is much truth in his argumentation, but I’d like to stress that innovation is not a synonym for invention, and inventions do not automatically guarantee success! So I’d like to quote Adam Richardson3 in saying that design is not solely about creating products that users want – design, like politics, must balance many requirements. As a consequence, neither is design research a synonym for user research.
But even far more important, when we talk about the management of design and design research: regardless of what the source of innovation is (technology, design or the interplay of these), you need to align product development with the corporate strategy! Depending on the corporate focus and strategy should be decided if it is relevant to become the leader or a follower in design. Lots of our clients make good profit by listening very well to their consumers. They have understood that delivering the best consumer experience whilst balancing these insights with other requirements (like engineering, manufacturing, the brand, marketing etc.) can lead to substantial competitive advantage (even if it is “only” incremental). Not only that, you only have to take a look at the FMCG industry to see that incremental innovation can be very profitable.
So should all design managers freeze the budget for design research?
I’d say not. After all, not every company wants leap forward only through radical innovations; making big profit through incremental innovation as strategy works fine in many cases as well!
(Remember, Sergey Bubka was very successful in breaking his own world record in Men’s Pole Vault 35 times, with just a few centimetres every time, making big money for Russia!)
1 http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/technology_first_needs_last.html
2 http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/NussbaumOnDesign/archives/2009/12/technology_vs_c.html
3 http://bx.businessweek.com/design-management/view?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdesignmind.frogdesign.com%2Fblog%2Fwhat-good-is-design-research.html
Tags: human-centered, research, technology
