Sunday, March 05, 2006
Product Innovation
Alan Cooper: The Insane Are Running The Asylum.
Donald Norman: Emotional Design - Why We Love or Hate Everyday Things.
Jef Raskin: The Humane Interface - New Directions For Designing Interactive Systems.
B.J. Fogg: Persuasive Technology - Using Computers to Change What We Think and Do.
Of course, I will fill the gaps :-), but having some exposure to this material will speed things up. Although those books are not about product innovation per se, they all present an interesting perspective and insights on product development, which will be crucial to effective innovation.
Today, the product is strongly oriented toward what Norman calls the Behavioral level. This is hardly a surprise, as the product is largely coming from a technical-professional mindset. This is quite common: domain experts and engineers usually thrive on the behavioral side. Still, to significantly improve the product, I believe we should find a way to strengthen its Visceral appeal (another of Norman's design levels). We should also reconsider its current role, and make it act more (as Fogg would say) as a social actor.
Product innovation is often a significant challenge. An even bigger challenge, quite often, is convincing the engineers that there is real value in those theories, leading them to leave the system-oriented approach behind, and make them wander freely into untraced territory. So, these two days are going to be challenging, with some chances of also being fun :-).
Back to the books: they all present interesting taxonomies, but they aren't easy to mix. Although Norman's book somewhat acknowledges the existence of the others :-), it doesn't really go to great lengths to merge everything into a unified theory. I would have found that much more interesting than the chapter on robots :-).
Anyway, sooner or later I'll draw a somewhat large table and try to put all what I like of those theories together. While at it, I'll throw in something more, mostly from a business perspective, and a few recipes for innovation taken elsewhere, like Edward De Bono's theories and techniques for lateral thinking, or the Russian "systematic creativity" concepts embodied in Triz, as well as some pearls of wisdom I've got from listening to a Tom Peter's talk ("Circle of Innovation"). And then, of course, we now have several books devoted to innovation itself, like "The Innovation Paradigm Replaced" by Waldo Hitche, and so on...
