Design & Innovation

I’ve been trying to apply some of the concepts we’ve been discussing in class to my work. However, in my industry it’s not quite as simple as researching, prototyping, evaluating, re-prototyping, etc.

I’ve spent my career working in institutional advancement - aka fundraising - for higher education. The goal for getting my MBA - figuring out better ways to manage the operations of this industry - one where the future clearly shows exponential growth in the need for private funding to subsidize the bottom lines of institutions. Yet, where’s the innovation in this industry?! Since the roots of philanthropy way back in our nation’s history (the Carnegies, Rockefellers, and so on) there have been just small moves that change and innovate how donors can transfer money - but little has been done to improve how organizations that actually secure these funds are managed!

I recently came across an interesting article in The New York Times Magazine that reveals the very small steps that are being taken to start the design/redesign process. An article from the March 9, 2008 issue titled “Giving It Away” starts to scratch the surface on how and why people give money in our society. I believe that this is very much aligned with what we have been talking about — understand/become your customer in order to figure out ways to meet/exceed/anticipate their needs. In this article it’s interesting to see that they call philanthropy a “laboratory for human behavior”. I think that that is a fantastic phrase that is applicable to our design projects and how we address our observations and interviews.

In the end, I believe it is research like this that will be critical to advancing and designing systems that will be in the best interest of my industry. We have to come to a better understanding of who gives, why they give and how we can improve that experience. Similarly on a broader scale, it’s the depth of understanding afforded when really realizing what makes your industry’s customers “tick” that is the key to providing products and services that are truly innovative and successful.

In the book The Art of Innovation by Tom Kelly and Jonathan Littman, Kelly talks about the first two steps in IDEO’s methodology as Understand and Observe. The idea being that to really uncover the needs of a user you must go beyond asking the user what they want. You must really seek to understand what the user is trying to accomplish through observation and study. The user may not even be able to articulate what he or she wants and only through observation can a designer really understand the issues.

I work for a software company that designs its products to meet the needs of engineers performing various types of testing on network elements in communication networks. As a company we do not take the design process far enough. We have solicited customer feedback about what they like or don’t like about our product, we have had some product managers visit customers and sit in conference rooms to talk about our product. However, we have never sent our product group into the customer environment to observe and study how the users actually use our product.

These insights into how IDEO views design are very valuable and applicable to my company’s product. I think it is possible to design a superior product by collecting one or two meaningful insights into user needs. The decision criteria among users in our market are very fine; such that one or two very insightful features could have a major impact on a customer’s final decision.