At the beginning of the course we had an interesting lecture given by Dr. Mirja Kälviäinen from the Design Resource Center at the North Karelia University of Applied Sciences. Mirja presented different methods about facilitating design suggestions based on the mental models, habits, or perceptions of users. One of the techniques used in innovation camps was to show to participants sets of pictures and ask them to choose those that described how they feel about certain product. It made me think a lot about how people perceive different things. Having the experience of living in 4 different countries, made me realize that the culture and habits influence a lot about how we see things. I’m pretty sure that having the same innovation workshop somewhere in Asia may have totally different results when conducted in Europe. I think that cultural differences apply also in designing software and applications and should not be disregarded during planning. Just like Mirja said it is very important for the designers to go to the field and research the environment in which the product will be used.
There was also one thing I did not agree with Mirja. She said that very often the customers do not know what they want. I think that customers often do know what they want but they not necessary know how to put it in words. I guess it is the design team job to discover those needs. If a customer doesn’t know what she/he needs then perhaps the customer doesn’t really need it.
MZL
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Hei, I agree with your observations on the culture and design interplay. There is a lot of interest at the moment in the research; it deals with problems such as what is the (best) method to use when designing across cultures, what are the assumptions, etc.
ReplyDeleteTo defend Mirja, I think she more referred to the fact that customers are not able to verbalize their wishes, ways of working, etc - exactly what you think at the end :)