"Design firm IDEO and its CEO, Tim Brown, spent a career popularizing human-centered design and integrating it into corporate strategy-but what were the results? If it's such a natural thing to do, why don't we see more successes on the level of Uber, Airbnb, iPhone, Fitbit, eBay, and PayPal? The problem is that conventional research methods don't uncover how people work and, importantly, how people work around problems to create jury-rigged solutions that satisfy them, at least for a time."
"Most of the weight in my suitcase is from shoes, and the rubber in running shoes is a big culprit. I haven't found a shoe that meets my needs, and the rental of shoes when you travel never really took off. I work around this by using an old pair of lightweight orange track shoes when I travel. I carry my orthotics in a separate pouch to distribute the weight."
Business exists to create and keep customers, requiring observation of how people work to translate needs into demand. Human-centered design aims to integrate user needs into corporate strategy, yet widely adopted methods often fail to reveal true customer needs. Conventional research misses the improvisations and jury-rigged workarounds people adopt, leaving latent needs obscured even from users. Practical example: travelers use worn lightweight track shoes and separate orthotics to reduce luggage weight, masking an unmet demand for travel-optimized footwear. Identifying such latent needs requires ethnographic observation of real behavior rather than survey-based inquiry to enable breakthrough products.
Read at Big Think
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