Not Consumer Insights but Consumer Discoveries

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Yet another popular online publication link baits the entire design industry by revisiting the whole “User Centered Innovation is not really innovation” debate. I mean, did we not discussed this whole “User Centered Innovation is Dead” thing more than a year ago (in February 2010)? I thought we had already decided where the strengths and weaknesses of this activity or process lie and have all moved on?

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Fortunately when social media often scrapes the bottom of the barrel so that it can whore itself for traffic, wonderful gems occasionally appear. Reminding me of an 80′s talk show host, the gentleman in the YouTube video above is actually Guy Murphy, Worldwide Planning Director at JWT London. Check out that wallpaper!

He waxes lyrical about the problems with Consumer Insights (the cornerstone of User Centered Innovation) and how it is most of the time really Consumer Obvious instead. I like how JWT Planning (what do they do again?) uses instead the term Consumer Discoveries to describe this whole exercise. More importantly, Guy highlights, with great examples, how Consumer Discoveries can come from any part of the design process. Nice.

Hope you enjoyed this video, I know I did, I watched it twice. Thanks to the folks at Sense Worldwide and @drewpasmith (who works there) for the link.

Image by: ThisIsIt2

Original Post: http://www.designsojourn.com/not-consumer-insights-but-consumer-discoveries/