What is design research? It is generally refer to the upfront contextual inquiry work that designers perform before they start ideation. Sometimes it involves some light ethnographic work and some interviews, but it is primarily not structured as comprehensive or rigor. Design research emerged only in the late 60’s with the goal to improve seeing how consumers use the product and looking for ways to improve the effectiveness of a product. Pretty much a human factor investigation, but it is now widely practiced but facing a few serious challenges.
Idris Mootee design design research consumer insightsWith a cheeky little link to Tom Kelly’s The Art of Innovation, Roberto Verganti (author of Design Driven Innovation) suggests in not so many words that User Centered Innovation, IDEO’s claim to fame, is dead.
Design Translator user centered innovation design IDEO Apple consumer needsWow what a year 2009 was? We got hit right in the face by the economic down turn and designers all over the world were falling like flies as companies cut R&D or design budgets in response to a drop in consumer spending.
consumerism design design thinking Design Translator recession sustainabilityJust for this week only, we bring you our next podcast hot on the heels of our first. In this discussion Feng and I chatted about Entertainment Design and how much more work is required when you are designing a world rather than a product. Watch out for the key take away of this podcast, where we talk about designers needing to be sensitive to visual cues so that their creations are believable.
design Design Translator entertainment podcastsWe had such a good response to the podcasts published during the Icsid world design congress, that I think I might turn this into a regular thing. The podcast will be published either weekly or bi-weekly, we have not decided.
design Design Translator podcastsSince the days of radical printer-pamphleteers, design and designers have a long history of fighting for what’s right and working to transform society. The rise of the literary form of the manifesto also parallels the rise of modernity and the spread of letterpress printing.
design Design Translator manifestoOver the last few days, I conducted a whirlwind tour of the different events and exhibitions at the Singapore Design Festival 2009. There were some interesting work exhibited that reaffirmed my faith in the quality of designers or designs from the region. Some of the more notable exhibitions include; Small Thoughts, Big Ideas, Singapore Souvenirs and the UseLess Exhibition at the Icsid 2009 Congress.
design Design Translator exhibitionsI think there is a lot more to this discussion, more than about “just making things simple and easy to use”. Why are some objects simple and easy to use but end up limited and boring? Why are some objects, like the iPhone, simple to use but somehow able to have many layers of more complex functions? Is this what they call simplexity, or an “emerging theory that proposes a possible complementary relationship between complexity and simplicity”? (via Wikipedia)
complexity design Design Translator simplicityBeing the dean of a Design School is no easy job today. Design schools is struggling to serve three masters: to the student and the industry and to the society, the last one is a new one as designers generally have come to a consensus that design for social change is part of the design agenda.
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