Don Norman at IIT Design Research Conference 2010 from IIT Institute of Design

The research product gap – and two kinds of innovation: Donald Norman makes some good points in his talk at the design research conference this year. He already challenged the community with his provocative statements on design research (’Technology first, needs last’)  in an article in the Interactions Magazine (March/ April 2010). – I do agree with him in most of what he is saying: We design researchers need to bridge the gap between research and company product divisions (ie. marketing, engineering, etc.).  A common language is needed in order to accomplish results in real products which are based on our user insights.

It’s an elaborate speech, well structured. Nonetheless I would have expected Norman to talk more about solutions to this apparent problem than just to repeat and explain what is already known to be a problem. A similar debate is ongoing for years among anthropologists who want to make their field more applicable and to gain a wider public audience [1, 2, 3].