1、Design Without Designers 网站截图： http:/ 原文： Design Without Designers I will always remember my first introduction to the power of good product design. I was newly arrived at Apple, still learning the ways of business, when I was visited by a member of Apples Industrial Design team. He showed me a foam
2、 mockup of a proposed product. Wow, I said, I want one! What is it? That experience brought home the power of design: I was excited and enthusiastic even before I knew what it was. This type of visceral wow response requires creative designers. It is subjective, personal. Uh oh, this is not what eng
3、ineers like to hear. If you cant put a number to it, its not important. As a result, there is a trend to eliminate designers. Who needs them when we can simply test our way to success? The excitement of powerful, captivating design is defined as irrelevant. Worse, the nature of design is in danger.
4、Dont believe me? Consider Google. In a well-publicized move, a senior designer at Google recently quit, stating that Google had no interest in or understanding of design. Google, it seems, relies primarily upon test results, not human skill or judgment. Want to know whether a design is effective? Tr
5、y it out. Google can quickly submit samples to millions of people in well-controlled trials, pitting one design against another, selecting the winner based upon number of clicks, or sales, or whatever objective measure they wish. Which color of blue is best? Test. Item placement? Test. Web page layo
6、ut? Test. This procedure is hardly unique to Google. A has long followed this practice. Years ago I was proudly informed that they no longer have debates about which design is best: they simply test them and use the data to decide. And this, of course, is the approach used by the human-centered iter
7、ative design approach: prototype, test, revise. Is this the future of design? Certainly there are many who believe so. This is a hot topic on the talk and seminar circuit. After all, the proponents ask reasonably, who could object to making decisions based upon data? Two Types of Innovation: Increme
8、ntal Improvements and New Concepts In design and almost all innovation, for that matter there are at least two distinct forms. One is incremental improvement. In the manufacturing of products, companies assume that unit costs will continually decrease through continual, incremental improvements. A s
9、teady chain of incremental innovation enhances operations, the sourcing of parts and supply-chain management. The product design is continually tinkered with, adjusting the interface, adding new features, changing small things here and there. New products are announced yearly that are simply small m
10、odifications to the existing platform by a different constellation of features. Sometimes features are removed to enable a new, low-cost line. Sometimes features are enhanced or added. In incremental improvement, the basic platform is unchanged. Incremental design and innovation is less glamorous th
11、an the development of new concepts and ideas, but it is both far more frequent and far more important. Most of these innovations are small, but most are quite successful. This is what companies call their cash cow: a product line that requires very little new development cost while being profitable
12、year after year. The second form of design is what is generally taught in design, engineering and MBA courses on breakthrough product innovation. Here is where new concepts get invented, new products defined, and new businesses formed. This is the fun part of innovation. As a result, it is the arena
13、 that most designers and inventors wish to inhabit. But the risks are great: most new innovations fail. Successful innovations can take decades to become accepted. As a result, the people who create the innovation are not necessarily the people who profit from it. In my Apple example, the designers
14、were devising a new conception. In the case of Google and Amazon, the companies are practicing incremental enhancement. They are two different activities. Note that the Apple product, like most new innovations, failed. Why? I return to this example later. Both forms of innovation are necessary. The
15、fight over data-driven design is misleading in that it uses the power of one method to deny the importance of the second. Data-driven design through testing is indeed effective at improving existing products. But where did the idea for the product come from in the first place? From someones creative
16、 mind. Testing is effective at enhancing an idea, but creative designers and inventors are required to come up with the idea. Why Testing Is Both Essential and Incomplete Data-driven design is hill-climbing, a well-known algorithm for optimization. Imagine standing in the dark in an unknown, hilly t
17、errain. How do you get to the top of the hill when you cant see? Test the immediate surroundings to determine which direction goes up the most steeply and take a step that way. Repeat until every direction leads to a lower level. But what if the terrain has many hills? How would you know whether you
18、 are on the highest? Answer: you cant know. This is called the local maximum problem: you cant tell if you are on highest hill (a global maximum) or just at the top of a small one. When a computer does hill climbing on a mathematical space, it tries to avoid the problem of local maxima by initiating
19、 climbs from numerous, different parts of the space being explored, selecting the highest of the separate attempts. This doesnt guarantee the very highest peak, but it can avoid being stuck on a low-ranking one. This strategy is seldom available to a designer: it is difficult enough to come up with
20、a single starting point, let alone multiple, different ones. So, refinement through testing in the world of design is usually only capable of reaching the local maximum. Is there a far better solution (that is, is there a different hill which yields far superior results)? Testing will never tell us.
21、 Here is where creative people come in. Breakthroughs occur when a person restructures the problem, thereby recognizing that one is exploring the wrong space. This is the creative side of design and invention. Incremental enhancements will not get us there. Barriers to Great Innovation Dramatic new
22、innovation has some fundamental characteristics that make it inappropriate for judgment through testing. People resist novelty. Behavior tends to be conservative. New technologies and new methods of doing things usually take decades to be accepted - sometimes multiple decades. But the testing method
23、s all assume that one can make a change, try it out, and immediately determine if it is better than what is currently available. There is no known way to tell if a radical new idea will eventually be successful. Here is where great leadership and courage is required. History tells us of many people
24、who persevered for long periods in the face of repeated rejection before their idea was accepted, often to the point that after success, people could not imagine how they got along without it before. History also tells us of many people who persevered yet never were able to succeed. It is proper to
25、be skeptical of radical new ideas. In the early years of an idea, it might not be accepted because the technology isnt ready, or because there is a lot more optimization still to be done, or because the audience isnt ready. Or because it is a bad idea. It is difficult to determine which of those rea
26、sons dominates. The task only becomes easy in hindsight, long after it becomes established. These long periods between formation and initial implementation of a novel idea and its eventual determination of success or failure in the marketplace is what defeats those who wish to use evidence as a deci
27、sion criterion for following a new direction. Even if a superior way of doing something has been found, the automated test process will probably reject it, not because the idea is inferior, but because it cannot wait decades for the answer. Those who look only at test results will miss the large pay
28、off. Of course there are sound business reasons why ignoring potentially superior approaches might be a wise decision. After all, if the audience is not ready for the new approach, it would initially fail in the marketplace. That is true, in the short run. But to prosper in the future, the best appr
29、oach would be to develop and commercialize the new idea to get marketplace experience, to begin the optimization process, and to develop the customer base. At the same time one is preparing the company for the day when the method takes off. Sure, keep doing the old, but get ready for the new. If the
30、 company fails to recognize the newly emerging method, its competitors will take over. Quite often these competitors will be a startup that existing companies ignored because what they were doing was not well accepted, and in any event did not appear to challenge the existing business: see The innovators dilemma.
