User centred thinking Much has been said about 'user centred design' in recent years. It’s a subject that has developed its own legs, spurning publications, discussion, elaborate methodologies and inevitably more terminology. For many service companies what was once a component of design has become an end in itself as the value of understanding people and being able to deconstruct what you see and hear becomes central to solving all sorts of problems and providing better products and services. But, it is a subject that for many designers has a stigma attached, implying putting bigger graphics and softer corners onto already compromised and over featured products. In short constraining our creativity. And, as many researchers are now calling themselves designers (along with anyone who seems to fancy the title) there is an inevitable confusion in the market place and a tension for those of us who can implement. From our point of view designers have always had an understanding of people. With experience the best of us have an intuitive sense of what people will or won't use, find desirable or too complex but if we are not quite sure we have prototyping skills through model making, drawings and scenarios to test and make damn sure. Arriving in Silicon Valley in the mid-90’s we were able to work alongside researchers and be exposed to almost every flavour and type of research, something that wasn’t typical in European design groups at the time. Exposure to observation, analysis and the deconstruction of problems across a huge range of industries has allowed us to understand for ourselves which processes might be necessary to support our various design activities and most importantly how to interpret the results in a new and interesting way. Interpretation being the key to all of this. As products and technologies get more and more commoditized, there is a need for companies to differentiate themselves from their competition. Shape, technology and even being user centred are no longer enough to make this happen, and hence we are now in the period of the celebrity sell - TV celebrity, design celebrity, people who are famous for being famous, or even worse for knowing someone famous. In the late eighties cars and duvets used to bare the word ‘designer’, they now bare the actual designers name. Now that’s progress! Its our belief that the only way to break this trend (or at least have an alternative) and create unique products is to undertake research in its broadest sense, find inspiration from divergent sources and then add our own twist. This broad research might be going for a walk, reading a good book, observing a completely different industry, collaborating with different practitioners and then applying this learning to our own creative process. Not only is this what we get paid for but it’s the basic art school doctrine of looking at and observing the world from different vantage points. It’s easy to design for yourself but real people are unpredictable, they don’t know what they might want to use in 3 years time and don’t have the sketching skills to show you what they are thinking. Hence focused user centred research is a parallel and important part of our own broader research. Interestingly what we have found valuable about this is not to do with the nitty gritty of an object itself, which as we have said we know intuitively, but through the process of observation and analysis we can ask serious questions of our clients such as; does it make sense, do people really care and most crucially will it be commercially successful. This is an important bi-product of the process and allows us with our clients to help strengthen and validate a business proposition and streamline the development process. Given the kind of products we are typically designing, which tend to involve new technologies for global sale, our user research is usually at the front end of projects with some validation or checks later on, meaning we can learn about the pitfalls early when its still cheap and adjust the plan while there is still time. In addition the research findings become a key part of the design brief itself and from our point of view are used as a contract or planning document for ourselves and the client. This is invaluable in communicating to other parties such as investors and colleagues and in the unfortunate case of a dispute about direction, acts as a reminder to all. It’s difficult to argue with what you have heard and seen from real people and if we or our clients choose to take a course of action other than the one we have evidence to suggest, there ought to be a good reason for it. For a purposely small and focused company like ours, finding designers and researchers that you and your client can trust, understand and collaborate with is a large part of any successful project and it’s at the centre of our thinking when we engage in these kinds of activities. Since returning to London a year and a half ago we have been working with a small group of talented designers and for our more complex user research focused projects, we collaborate with Matt Marsh of Firsthand. This relationship began in San Francisco and together we intuitively understand where research ends and design starts. We are able to work closely to find the output we are looking for, which usually takes the form of some kind of design opportunity framework enabling us to specify or direct our design ideas. This supplements other research allowing us to create those first and important concepts and then forms part of the design brief we mentioned earlier. In the time we have known him, Matt has become expert at communicating the design process (ambiguities and all) and its relationship to business from the client’s viewpoint. This has been an important learning for ourselves and should be for other designers. Second nature to us, the process of developing new products can be a hard and uncertain activity to all with little or no experience of it. As designers, we know the next steps, the pitfalls and blind alleys but the client is often new to this and will predictably feel nervous. Even worse if you are not looking carefully this can even derail the project. User centered thinking not only puts us into the shoes of the end consumer, helping us to understand what they are feeling, what is important and why they act the way they do but is also something we can use to create better understanding and therefore relationships with our clients. When it comes down to it we are designers. And like most designers we want to focus our energies on designing and thinking about products, looking for new and interesting areas and companies to collaborate with. But our experience of working with companies in the US, Asia and Europe who are trying to find a need for a technology or function, or those who just need some gentle guidance has shown us that one simple way to find out which way to move forward on a project is to go and look, listen and learn. If as designers you can supplement this process with your own thinking and interpret the information in a creative and unique way, then there is no need to feel constrained by research in fact you should feel liberated by the certainty it will provide. contacts David Tonge / david@the-division.com Nicole Hodgkinson / nicole@the-division.com Matt Marsh / matt.marsh@firsthandexperience.net