Latitude

On Wednesday, we saw Bill Moggridge, Founder of IDEO (a global design consultancy) speak at MIT’s Emerging Technologies Conference. We’re big fans of IDEO’s holistic, people-centered approach, and Mr. Moggridge’s talk–”Expanding Contexts for Design in a Connected World”– was wonderfully insightful.

Mr. Moggridge emphasized the importance of people-centered research tactics in context– for example, many Americans have time to talk about their experiences with products and brands during their commute “down-time” but, culturally, it’s often considered impolite to be noisy on public transit in Asian countries–which may mean the difference between interviews, textual feedback, and various forms of user interface engagement or hands-on product manipulation to understand how people interact with objects and information.

Also salient was the notion that personal relevance and ease of use are necessary components of good design–innovative ideas must be constructed with people in mind–and well implemented in the details.

To illustrate the point, Mr. Moggridge demo’d a video where users of a particular cell phone service could purchase drinks from vending machines through bar codes displayed on their screens; when they actually gave it a go, the process took upwards of 30 minutes. In their own work, IDEO emphasizes end-user testing and idea-generation (and even invites children into their office on a weekly basis to glean relevant feedback on products designed for this demographic).

IDEO’s philosophy of human-centered design extends (inwardly) to the spaces in which their teams innovate, with designated “project” and “brainstorming” rooms.

Mr. Moggridge has the understated ability to reveal the significance of seemingly smaller things (the essence of individual-centric)–and to demonstrate the tangible effect that design and physical spaces can have on social dynamics and creative innovation. He’s a compelling speaker, and we recommend you catch him speak in video (or in 3space, if possible).

“Expanding Contexts for Design in a Connected World” (EmTech ‘09) has not yet been made available, but his talk on “Design as a Collaborative Process” is in a similar vein.

Bill Moggridge, Founder of IDEO: Design as a Collaborative Process

IDEO offers its free 27-page PDF, “Human Centered Design” for download here, where it outlines processes (a “toolkit”) for human-centered research. Very thoughtful and well-designed.

Header image courtesy of rickharris’ flickr.