IDEO designer Jane Fulton Suri figures out unmet consumer needs by watching ordinary people doing ordinary things.
As the leader of the “human factors” group at IDEO, the international design consultancy, she and her colleagues will watch kids brushing their teeth, parents pushing strollers, or patients checking in at the emergency room, trying to find opportunities for design to improve the experience. Yet often that means looking for something less obvious: the ways in which the experience can improve the design.
Their observations have brought rubber grips to Oral-B’s toothbrushes, raised the height of Even-Flo’s strollers, and streamlined DePaul Health Center’s check-in processes. For Fulton Suri it’s as if the world is one big beta test, in which every feature is begging for improvement.
“Thoughtless Acts” is her book that shows random acts of design witnessed in everyday life. Some shots from the book below.
Creative Generalist has an interview with Suri:
In your experience, what type of personality typically makes the best observer? I find that curiosity, open-mindedness, and imagination are important. It helps to be non-judgmental, able to move easily from noticing detail to thinking about patterns and the big picture, perceptive about (their own and other) people’s behavior, motivations, and personally genuinely interested in other people’s points of reference.
Hendrik
on 01 Jun 07I also do the tea bag thing… I don’t get the parking meter picture, though.
Chris Hajer
on 01 Jun 07I think the bags on the parking meters mean “out of order.” Or it’s a prank – the bags don’t look too official.
Tom
on 01 Jun 07Paul Bennet, the creative director of Ideo, did a talk at TED a few years ago on this same subject (with some of the same visuals).
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/43
Percy
on 02 Jun 07I’ve been fascinated by Ideo ever since I read the book The Art of Innovation. Looks like this is another book to pick up to add to the mountain of books I Have to read.
About observing people, I often wonder whether the whole usability testing field could benefit more from observing real people use products rather than tests in lab situations. I’m not saying that tests in the lab are not useful, but I sometimes feel that observing people could allow you to glean more data that is useful.
In fact, when I’m using some products I wonder what the designers would think if they saw me use the product? Maybe their eyes would pop out or something.
Julia00116
on 02 Jun 07hey, thanks, this post is very useful
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Luca
on 02 Jun 07Another interesting book on a similar subject is “The Psychology of Everyday Things”.
It starts off by looking at bad design practices and how everyday objects do not behave how users expect. He also introduces what he calls ‘user-centered design’, designing based upon the needs of the users.
It is an interesting read, and still (unfortunately) applies today even though it was written 20 years ago!
eric
on 03 Jun 07according to the site, the meters are out of order, but the bags help provide a more visible indicator that they’re unusable.
Joran
on 03 Jun 07IDEO are Jakob Nielsen in the Real World.
kent12er
on 04 Jun 07Thanks for uploading this, it gave me something to read on my lunch break. Software http://www.popsoftware.net/
Reis
on 04 Jun 07Very interesting!
The talk that Tom linked to was awesome, thanks for sharing.
Uta Brandes
on 04 Jun 07this is a very interesting approach and partially resembles the one that Michael Erlhoff and myself have researched over the years. We call it NON INTENTIONAL DESIGN (NID); see: Uta Brandes/Michael Erlhoff: Non Intentional Design, Cologne-London-New York 2006, daab publisher (ISBN-10 3-937718-93-1) (ISBN-13 978-3-937718-93-4)
This discussion is closed.