21st century design
We must have a sufficient number of designers in the decision-making levels of companies.
Speaking to KRUPA Conference this year, Don Norman said he does not intend to write more books about Customer and User Experience.
“I’ve decided that I am not going to continue practicing or writing about the design of consumer goods for 2 reasons: first I’ve kind of said everything I think I have to say. But second, I don’t want to continue to destroy the environment in our world,” he said.
Don Norman called for consideration not solely of “positive power of design and the negative way it is being used” but of “why that negative reason is here” and what kind of social good we could do as designers.
In the view of Don Norman, the new era of product design should bring recycling and long-term products to the forefront. To do this, we need to review the business strategies of companies in the world market.
“We have the wrong business model in place. We’re working at short-term gains instead of long-term. We are not thinking of the community. We should put the community first,” Don Norman said.
Example of these product is mobile phone. Every 2–3 years customers are buying a new mobile device instead of a good one. Don Norman explained: The problem is a relentless pursuit of short-term profits for companies.
What can we do as designers?
Daily designer’s job includes mockups, interfaces, animation, applications, user tests — but if you really want to have impact on the business strategy and you have to show a clear understanding of the impact of design on the business.
Who is making a decision?
Who is your customer? The normal answer is People. People from different countries who are using your product. In fact, that does not work in this way. If you’re in a consultancy or design firm your customer is your client. Your customer is your boss or more accurately the boss of your boss.
“We must have a sufficient number of designers who rise to the point where they’re in the decision-making capability of whatever organization,” Don Norman said.
How to be heard by CEOs?
You need to present them a spreadsheet in which you show: “if you do this here it will increase in sales, increase in profits, increase in margin and decrease in service costs”.
We don’t have enough designers in the decision-making levels of companies.
Learn something about the business. It’s not necessary to get MBA degree but you have to learn the business principles. You’ve to understand your executive and speak in the same language. The language of numbers.
How to make right decisions and build long-term products?
Businesses have to follow four fundamental Human-Centered Design principles:
Principle 1: Focus on people. It sounds obvious to designers but not to developers and engineers who designed. Always think about people who will use your product.
Principle 2: Find the right problem. We should always try to solve the fundamental root of the problem. It’s important to dedicate time to research and identify a core of the problem.
Principle 3: Think of everything as a system. Always think about the big picture of the user journey. Everything as interconnected. So, we should always be thinking of the big picture: what is the final result we care about?
Principle 4: Test before release. Always test solution with real people.
Whatever you are doing keep focus on people and whole system to solve the right problem. It’s very easy to solve the symptoms but one of the principles of human-centered design is ask question: “Why, why is that a problem?”. Try to understand the real issue, focus on the people and iterate your prototypes check-watch-modify.
