overcrowded verganti design

Don Norman: Overcrowded, by Roberto Verganti: In favor of criticism

Don Norman: Overcrowded, by Roberto Verganti: In favor of criticism

Don Norman: Overcrowded, by Roberto Verganti: In favor of criticism

I was just in Germany, in Herzogenaurach to be precise, at Adidas headquarters. (Hardly anyone knows where Herzogenaurach is — it’s a 20 minute taxi from Nuremberg.) I was at a conference organized by my old friend (and co-author) Roberto Verganti, from the business school at Politecnico di Milano. Years ago, he and I had a debate in Milan about the value of Human-Centered Design (HCD) and the way it is normally practiced. To the audience’s great surprise, we both agreed:

  1. HCD is a powerful tool for improving existing products. That is, it is a powerful tool for incremental innovation.
  2. HCD, by its very nature (hill-climbing plus a kind of design by committee), is a really bad tool for radical innovation.

In his book Overcrowded, Roberto expands his argument for methods of getting to radical innovation. He says that the standard IDEO rules for brainstorming by never criticizing is wrong. Great ideas come about when a small group of people continually criticize one another’s work. Note that the criticism has to be constructive and helpful. The word “critique” might be better.

This matches my long-stated personal views. For example, I when someone praises my work, that’s nice to hear, but I don’t learn anything. When someone criticizes it, if the criticism is intelligent and thoughtful, I learn. I might still think I was correct, but I have then learned that I have presented the ideas badly. Or I might determine that my ideas are wrong, or perhaps incomplete. That’s good to know.

So think about it: Criticism is good. Constructive criticism, that is. (Roberto gives numerous examples, from Claude Monet and the merry band of impressionist painters who revolutionized art to the Nest Thermostat (among others).

The book emphasizes the love over need. Design things people will love. Moreover, start with yourself: if you, the designer, don’t love the idea and the design, nobody else will. Take the thermostat; using HCD to make a better thermostat in the old days would make the complex programming easier to understand and do. But programming the thermostat was hated. Nest made one that eliminated the need for programming: it learned all by itself what your preferences were.  It was a thermostat that people loved.(I have problems with Nest, but that is a different story, namely that once the radical innovation is over, we still need HCD to improve it. Nest lost its way.)

– Don Norman

Verganti, R. (2016). Overcrowded: designing meaningful products in a world awash with ideas. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/overcrowded

Our earlier paper:

Norman, D. A., & Verganti, R. (2014). Incremental and Radical Innovation: Design Research vs. Technology and Meaning Change. Design Issues, 30(1), 78-96. doi:10.1162/DESI_a_00250
https://jnd.org/incremental_and_radical_innovation_design_research_versus_technology_and_meaning_change/

I was just in Germany, in Herzogenaurach to be precise, at Adidas headquarters. (Hardly anyone knows where Herzogenaurach is — it’s a 20 minute taxi from Nuremberg.) I was at a conference organized by my old friend (and co-author) Roberto Verganti, from the business school at Politecnico di Milano. Years ago, he and I had a debate in Milan about the value of Human-Centered Design (HCD) and the way it is normally practiced. To the audience’s great surprise, we both agreed:

  1. HCD is a powerful tool for improving existing products. That is, it is a powerful tool for incremental innovation.
  2. HCD, by its very nature (hill-climbing plus a kind of design by committee), is a really bad tool for radical innovation.

In his book Overcrowded, Roberto expands his argument for methods of getting to radical innovation. He says that the standard IDEO rules for brainstorming by never criticizing is wrong. Great ideas come about when a small group of people continually criticize one another’s work. Note that the criticism has to be constructive and helpful. The word “critique” might be better.

This matches my long-stated personal views. For example, I when someone praises my work, that’s nice to hear, but I don’t learn anything. When someone criticizes it, if the criticism is intelligent and thoughtful, I learn. I might still think I was correct, but I have then learned that I have presented the ideas badly. Or I might determine that my ideas are wrong, or perhaps incomplete. That’s good to know.

So think about it: Criticism is good. Constructive criticism, that is. (Roberto gives numerous examples, from Claude Monet and the merry band of impressionist painters who revolutionized art to the Nest Thermostat (among others).

The book emphasizes the love over need. Design things people will love. Moreover, start with yourself: if you, the designer, don’t love the idea and the design, nobody else will. Take the thermostat; using HCD to make a better thermostat in the old days would make the complex programming easier to understand and do. But programming the thermostat was hated. Nest made one that eliminated the need for programming: it learned all by itself what your preferences were.  It was a thermostat that people loved.(I have problems with Nest, but that is a different story, namely that once the radical innovation is over, we still need HCD to improve it. Nest lost its way.)

– Don Norman

Verganti, R. (2016). Overcrowded: designing meaningful products in a world awash with ideas. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/overcrowded

Our earlier paper:

Norman, D. A., & Verganti, R. (2014). Incremental and Radical Innovation: Design Research vs. Technology and Meaning Change. Design Issues, 30(1), 78-96. doi:10.1162/DESI_a_00250
https://jnd.org/incremental_and_radical_innovation_design_research_versus_technology_and_meaning_change/

I was just in Germany, in Herzogenaurach to be precise, at Adidas headquarters. (Hardly anyone knows where Herzogenaurach is — it’s a 20 minute taxi from Nuremberg.) I was at a conference organized by my old friend (and co-author) Roberto Verganti, from the business school at Politecnico di Milano. Years ago, he and I had a debate in Milan about the value of Human-Centered Design (HCD) and the way it is normally practiced. To the audience’s great surprise, we both agreed:

  1. HCD is a powerful tool for improving existing products. That is, it is a powerful tool for incremental innovation.
  2. HCD, by its very nature (hill-climbing plus a kind of design by committee), is a really bad tool for radical innovation.

In his book Overcrowded, Roberto expands his argument for methods of getting to radical innovation. He says that the standard IDEO rules for brainstorming by never criticizing is wrong. Great ideas come about when a small group of people continually criticize one another’s work. Note that the criticism has to be constructive and helpful. The word “critique” might be better.

This matches my long-stated personal views. For example, I when someone praises my work, that’s nice to hear, but I don’t learn anything. When someone criticizes it, if the criticism is intelligent and thoughtful, I learn. I might still think I was correct, but I have then learned that I have presented the ideas badly. Or I might determine that my ideas are wrong, or perhaps incomplete. That’s good to know.

So think about it: Criticism is good. Constructive criticism, that is. (Roberto gives numerous examples, from Claude Monet and the merry band of impressionist painters who revolutionized art to the Nest Thermostat (among others).

The book emphasizes the love over need. Design things people will love. Moreover, start with yourself: if you, the designer, don’t love the idea and the design, nobody else will. Take the thermostat; using HCD to make a better thermostat in the old days would make the complex programming easier to understand and do. But programming the thermostat was hated. Nest made one that eliminated the need for programming: it learned all by itself what your preferences were.  It was a thermostat that people loved.(I have problems with Nest, but that is a different story, namely that once the radical innovation is over, we still need HCD to improve it. Nest lost its way.)

– Don Norman

Verganti, R. (2016). Overcrowded: designing meaningful products in a world awash with ideas. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/overcrowded

Our earlier paper:

Norman, D. A., & Verganti, R. (2014). Incremental and Radical Innovation: Design Research vs. Technology and Meaning Change. Design Issues, 30(1), 78-96. doi:10.1162/DESI_a_00250
https://jnd.org/incremental_and_radical_innovation_design_research_versus_technology_and_meaning_change/

Read Next

Ucsd Design Lab Platforms

How pizza could save the world

On a recent Hawaiian vacation, Don stayed at a truly luxurious resort. It wasn’t his style. He couldn’t help but notice the contrast with the poorer sections of the island where locals lived and tourists rarely ventured. Is this the planet’s future? Two distinct cultures, one of isolated wealth and excess, the other of poverty? When we discussed this question, Don couldn’t help but mention he’d also found amazing pizza on the island.

SAP collaborates with Design Lab students

In December, UC San Diego Design Lab students wrapped up two major projects with SAP,…

Tricia Ngoon

Tricia Ngoon, UCSD & Design Lab PhD Graduate, Discusses “Adaptive Conceptual Guidance”

Currently, in the spotlight of Tricia Ngoon’s research and involvement with The Design Lab is her recently accepted paper, Shöwn: Adaptive Conceptual Guidance Aids Example Use in Creative Tasks, which will appear in the Designing Interactive Systems virtual conference this summer, 2021. Her research hypothesizes that providing “adaptive conceptual guidance” will improve a person’s implementation of examples within creative work, as opposed to providing a static example. Using the domain of web comics, “[researchers in the study] present concepts to people alongside examples as they work.” Ngoon adds that “It’s essentially a step towards coaching. For example, if [a person is] working on a comic you might present a concept to consider the framing or kind of the composition of the panel and then [show] examples of different types of framing and composition.” Ultimately, her research concluded that “these adaptive suggestions as a person is working in context really help with making a clear and more unique story. It kind of changes the way they look at their ideas because they are more likely to explore different [ones].” 
Ailie Fraser UCSD Design Lab

Ailie Fraser Aims to Support People Doing Creative Tasks with Software

“There’s so much helpful content available now, but how can it be understood and consumed by a novice?” asks Ailie Fraser, a PhD graduate, “That’s what I’m interested in answering.” She is a part of a generation of upcoming design innovators, working collaboratively with The Design Lab. Her recently published dissertation aims to support people doing creative tasks with software specifically by leveraging resources generated by experts and bringing them into the context of people's workflows; in order to make them simpler to navigate and understand.

Fraser received her PhD from UCSD in Computer Science this past spring, and is now working full-time as a Research Engineer at Adobe Research. During her PhD, she completed three internships with Adobe Research. During her first internship, she focused on the domain of photo editing in Photoshop and addressed the problems novices experience when they begin to use the application. Due to the plethora of features and tools offered by the service, it can often be overwhelming to those unfamiliar with Photoshop.

Don Norman speaks on The Future of Design at the New School of Architecture

A crowd gathers as Don Norman prepares to speak on the Future of Design at the…

Design Lab Ucsd Elderly

Design for older people sucks. Here are four ways to fix it

Digital Arts editorial with Stefan Sagmeister and Design Lab Director Don Norman on designing for sixty-somethings.

Beginning in May, Alive Ventures launched a series of ongoing panels titled “Old People are Cool, Design for Them Sucks”, aiming to open up a discussion with the design community on how to better design for older adults. John Zapolski, founder of Alive Ventures, and design thought leader Ayse Birsel of Birsel + Seck, hosted the series of discussions, with guests including design luminaries such as Stefan Sagmeister and Don Norman.

“When I would visit him in retirement homes, I would see people who needed walkers and wouldn’t use them because it was a stigma,” said Norman. “They were so ugly and it sort of shouts out to the world, ‘Hey I’m old and crippled and therefore probably feeble minded as well,’ right? Well no, it’s wrong. And so I noticed that, but I didn’t pay much attention until I myself reached my eighties and started looking at my friends and other things and realised that, yes, people shunned a lot of things that are being made to help them because they don’t like to admit publicly they have problems.” - Don Norman
Back To Top