Bill Moggridge
Bill Moggridge, founder of IDEO began the workshop by describing the scope of the workshop experience as an investigation into Design Thinking. Bill described several challenges of developing user interfaces in contemporary times.
First, Bill described the development of telephone service. Telephone companies viewed the key challenge of providing phone service as a personnel and training problem. Employees needed to be trained as phone operators to connect calls and provide a good human experience for the user. But today’s cell phone is an extremely complex object, incorporating multiple levels of design problems. The cell phone needs to have an appealing design, yet it is a sophisticated software and hardware engineering problem, and needs to be a platform for a complex set of user interactions.
Yet, the telephone, at it’s inception was a device that was primarily a people-to-people communication. Trained operators would connect your call, and the interaction of using the telephone was centered around a human experience. More recently the experience of the telephone interaction has shifted from a human-to-human to a human-to-machine, and a machine-to-machine interaction. Bill discussed how various cellphone providers have attempted to overcome this — most notably with the i-mode system, developed in Japan.
In an increasingly complex world of design approaches, where implementing design solutions requires varied sets of knowledge, collaboration becomes the rule rather than the unique situation. In fact, designers have a longer history of collaboration with experts in specific knowledge fields than one would first think. Designers of chairs have long collaborated with human factors engineers — people who understand the set of movements and range of measurements of the human body. Bill proposes that this collaboration is only slightly different than a design collaboration with a cognitive psychologist, ethnographic researcher, or environmental scientist, when a specific knowledge set is needed to inform the design process.
Yet, technology products often require the expert knowledge of several approaches. One of the very interesting aspects that informs this collaboration is the ways technology is adopted in our culture:
Bill described three aspects of technology adoption behaviour:
As a Hobby – by the Enthusiast – Exploit me!
As a tool for Work – by the Professional – Help me work!
As a part of Life – Consumer phase – Enjoy me!
Yet, many products begin in the consumer phase, which is perhaps the most complex set of behaviors associated with objects. One of these consumer objects that is most cited as a great example of a well-designed product is the iPod. Common belief is that the iPod was a result of a singular vision of the product. Yet Bill, citing Paul Mercer noted that the iPod was actually the result of a years-long iterative design process. Bill cited the iterative nature of Apple’s design process as one of the company’s major strengths. That Apple achieved greatness not just through great design and great leadership, but through a great systemic strategy that requires that people work in new kinds of relationships. For Bill and for Apple these kinds of great teams exhibit Design thinking, and Design thinking is:
Design research HOW TO KNOW?
Interdisciplinary Design thinking WHAT TO DO?
Specialist design skills HOW TO DO IT?
General design awareness HOW TO CHOOSE?