Designing The Future of Things & Experiences, by Michael Eckersley, PhD, HumanCentered

1. Designing the Future of Things and Experiences
title slide
University of Kansas
Think & Make
Michael Eckersley, PhD
March 2012

2. about me
© HumanCentered 2004, All Rights Reserved

4. about us

5. what we do
OUR WORK INVOLVES IMPACTS
contextual human research brand brand equity
consumer experience &
design planning products & services
behavior
strategic design planning architecture & engineering systems behaviors
visualization / simulation management systems business performance

6. about you

7. art school
design school

8. Marc Newson
an art school designer

9. “Ultimately, my job as a designer is to be able to
look into the future”.
“I grew up in a generation...when they landed on
the moon. I can’t deny that that was massive
event in my life. All of my dreams were about the
future. What I want to do is to be able to have
things that don’t exist. Things that you can’t go
out and buy.
Things that irritate you, anger – or dissatisfaction,
at the very least – play such an important role in
motivating what we do as designers.”
“My job is about what is going to happen, not
what has happened.”

10. Encouraged exploration and
discovery, a way of looking at
problems with fresh eyes, without
the burden of conventional ways
of dealing with them.
Duchamp, Baldessari
(business & innovation)

11. the form
the idea
the people•
beware the
designer’s
ego
the system

12. multiple points of view
critical, independent thinking
iterative problem-solving
cultivated imagination

13. “Art school: the last resort of
malingerers and bluffers, and
those who don’t want to work.”

14. so what’s design?
“Everyone designs who devises
courses of action aimed at
changing existing situations into
preferred ones.”
–Herbert Simon

15. “Design is a complex problem
solving process whereby artifacts
are structured to attain goals”
–Herbert Simon
so what’s design?
products conceived functionality
services programmed reliability
brands organized beauty
communications developed elegance
systems built profitability
experiences crafted efficiency
etc. engineered viability
fashioned etc.
etc.

16. so what’s all the fuss
about design?

17. “Design is not incidental to modern
economies, but integral; not part of
success but at the heart of success; and
not a sideshow, but the centrepiece.”
Gordon Brown
UK, Prime Minister

18. In most people's vocabularies, design
means veneer. It's interior decorating.
It's the fabric of the curtains of the
sofa. But to me, nothing could be
further from the meaning of design.
Design is the fundamental soul of a
human-made creation that ends up
expressing itself in successive outer
layers of the product or service.
– Steve Jobs

19. "Design is only secondarily
about pretty lumpy objects
and primarily about a whole
approach to doing business,
serving customers, and
providing value."
"Design... has become
central to enterprise
strategy."
–Tom Peters

20. Design at the level of what subjects and
strategy, policy and
opportunities
mission
should we pursue?
Design at the level of what value
tactics, products, offerings should
problem services, processes we develop?
scope
Design at the level of
operations, tangibles
what form(s)
and touch should these
things take?

21. creative
ubiquitous
design
•
screen/stage music
foods
community plays enlightenment
aircraft organizations fine art play/relaxation
film/media
network productions games
technologies vehicles entertainment
environments scents brand consumer
marketing fashions expressions experiences
designer, communications business models
guided
don’t be
material consumer transformations conceptual
parochial medical/surgical publications products
devices materials smart, adaptive
industrial software systems recombinant systems
gm seeds processes consumer/ business transport
pharmaceuticals services computing biomolecular machines
bioengineered lighting systems microbes, molecules
tissues molecular systems commercial biopharms
knowledge/skill devices channels programmable materials, matter
enablers weapons artificual organs, tissues
systems microorganisms
analytic

22. sound great?

23. sound great? so great?
what’s not
We live in a time of fertile
change and tremendous anxiety…
Ambiguity
Complexity
Volatility

24. knowing how to
engineer virtual
anything
g ap
ti on
no va
in
not knowing
what to make that
would be desirable
to people & viable
to business
Patrick Whitney, IIT
© HumanCentered 2007, All Rights Reserved

25. business has a problem
with the future
Q2-2011 Q2-2012 Q3-2013 Q1-2014 Q1-2015
OUR WORK
offering offering offering offering
offering offering
Now Next Soon Later Who
knows?

26. design helps here
Q2-2011 Q2-2012 Q3-2013 Q1-2014 Q1-2015
OUR WORK
offering offering offering offering
offering offering
Now Next Soon Later Who
knows?
1. understanding 2. identifying patterns 3. creating concepts 4. prototyping the
users and the context and reframing the that build experiences innovations
of the problem problem for users and
–Patrick Whitney, ID, IIT
economic value for
the company

27. design business

28. “There is a huge river of misunderstanding between
the design world and the business world. You have to
start building a bridge between them.”
“What designers need to learn–and this is the most
important thing– is the language of the business
world. Only by learning that language can you
effectively voice the arguments for design.”
Peter Gorb, London Business School, 1993

29. Patrick Whitney on the value of
abstracting design problems
www.vimeo.com/5750600

30. “Informational displays/systems
and the future of the driving
experience”
© HumanCentered 2007, All Rights Reserved

31. “Informational displays/systems and the
future of the driving experience”
Knowledge > Insights > Ideas
UNDERSTAND articulate vision/
intent MAKE
research
& discovery
REALIZE
© HumanCentered 2007, All Rights Reserved

32. http://vimeo.com/16227154
© HumanCentered 2007, All Rights Reserved

33. http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=I8biQ8dfC_U&list=PL93019A1526FC1BE6&inde
x=36&feature=plpp_video
© HumanCentered 2007, All Rights Reserved

34. http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=wvZTSnT5Qus&list=PL93019A1526FC1BE
6&index=37&feature=plpp_video
© HumanCentered 2007, All Rights Reserved

35. Designing the Future of Things and Experiences
title slide
nk s!
T ha University of Kansas
Think & Make
Michael Eckersley, PhD
March 2012