Don Norman Said that a Translational Bridge is Needed Between Design Thinking and Design Doing

Jose Antonio Vanderhorst-Silverio | Sep 15, 2010

        

Don Norman at IIT Design Research Conference 2010 vimeo.com

 

After looking at the presentation, I see that Don is saying that Human Centered Design is concerned with incremental innovation. Radical Innovation is the result of technology and meaning innovations. To bridge the Research-Practice Gulf, he is introducing what he calls translational engineering. I could see myself in the latter role for all my work life.  

 

Below the "vimeo" we can read: The Research-Practice Gulf  

 

There is a great gulf between the research community and practice. Moreover, there is often a great gull between what designers do and what industry needs. We believe we know how to do design, but this belief is based more on faith than on data, and this belief reinforces the gulf between the research community and practice.  

 

I find that the things we take most for granted are seldom examined or questioned. As a result, it is often our most fundamental beliefs that are apt to be wrong.  

 

In this talk, deliberately intended to be controversial. I examine some of our most cherished beliefs. Examples: design research helps create breakthrough products; complexity is bad and simplicity good; there is a natural chain from research to product.

 

If I understand correctly what Don Norman said, Design Thinking is about incremental design. He wants designers to go for radical Meaning Innovations, while he does not think designers have any advantages with radical Technological Innovations.  

 

I have one example of a radical Meaning Innovation (a big change in meaning) that I have been working in the electric power industry. The example is in the EWPC article Market Research Doesn’t Work Yet for Demand Integration, whose summary says:  

 

Demand integration is a discontinuous innovation and the reason why the responses of customers are way off with respect to the non-trivial concept of demand response. Politics should NOT continue to play major interventions in regard to betting on outcomes in alternative energy and demand response, as the installation of AMI is developed by 2GRs under competition. Great opportunities are waiting “that promises much more value creation over time” under the EWPC paradigm shift.

 

Once the electric power industry is restructured, 2GRs will be able to use Design Thinking and Translational Engineering to incrementally reach a the higher plateau of business model innovations, as predicted under the EWPC-AF.  

 

Does anybody else have similar examples?

yyy