I have spent the past XX years working in traditional product development companies. I started my career designing cell phones (when we had quite different ideas about portability), then moved to the consulting world when the idea of having ID and ME under one roof was all the rage. Design has changed a lot since those days, and product development has become increasingly commoditized as the technical skill and expertise (the “what & how”) in manufacturing, engineering and design has moved off-shore. In response, design firms have adjusted in a variety of ways: some have moved up-stream in the product development cycle, some have established off-shore offices, some have abandoned the engineering disciplines, and some have abandoned product development altogether.
During this time, we have seen tremendous advances in both the capabilities and accessibility of technology, and the devices we live with today are smart devices that interact in a very sophisticated with the user. As our devices have become more capable, the job of defining what devices we ought to create, what they ought to look like, how we ought to interact with them and how they ought to behave, has become much more complex. As our product development teams have become much more interdisciplinary, the old distinctions between classical Industrial Design (focused on the user experience of form and function) and classical User Interaction Design (focused on the logic of user input and device response) have become increasingly blurry – in fact the distinction is probably meaningless to most young designers.
We have also moved from a world where we could envision a product but did not have the technological ability to realize that dream, to a place where we can realize just about anything we dream up – except we aren’t really sure of what it is we ought to produce. That’s why today “know-why” is more important than “know-how”, and a user-centered design approach helps us gain insight into what features, affordances, devices, services, etc might be relevant and meaningful, and what things might have a positive impact on people’s lives. For products/services/environments today the “what is it?”(what it looks like and how it behaves), the “what do I do with it?”(how I use it), and the “why is it?” (how it fits in my life and why I should care) ought to be very closely aligned.
Yet somehow we are often still stuck in this old paradigm where the technological innovation leads product development: “we’ve got this great new technology – now what do we do with it?”. This leads to a “what does it look like” first, and a “how should I use it” second: we all marveled at the accomplishments of the original Motorola razr but were quickly disappointed by the UI. Coming at it from the other direction also has its issues: the iphone has redefined how we interact with a device, but the magic is confined to a small piece of flat real estate. With Wii and Natal our interactions become much more physical but we’re still unsure of what the devices ought to be.
We have great new tools in our toolbox and there are great opportunities for next generation experiences and devices – but the old approach won’t get us there. I believe that we need to lead with “why is it?” and “what would be a great user experience?”. The answers to those questions point us in the direction of “so what should it look like, and how should it behave?” – and ultimately more meaningful results.