Slashdot Mirror
Tim Brown On Current Design Challenges
prostoalex writes "Tim Brown is the CEO of IDEO, design company that is quite famous for its work on designing office chairs, Palm computers, Microsoft mice, Nike shoes, etc. MIT Technology Review interviewed Tim Brown on current challenges in the design world, exciting fields for a designer to be in, current annoyances in the user interface design."
The idea that people are going to use their mobile devices to do things like watch movies is just wrong. I think this is as the reason that the Japanese i-Mode has been so successfulâ"its applications are very small.
I'll agree using a cell phone to look at movies and pictures is stupid.
However, i-Mode services took off because anyone can easily make themselves an i-Mode application and have it run. Here, I am limited to very expensive applications and only ones that have been endorsed by my digital cell provider. Meaning that I have never so much as LOOKED at any of those features. I'm not going to spend a quarter to send a instant message. I'd balk at a nickel. I'll just call - I pay a flat fee for voice, to a point. Text uses a FRACTION of that bandwidth.
The phone companies want to be in the applications business, and so long as they control the content, these services are just a bad joke. That's the secret of i-Mode.
..don't panic
The general populace tends to be slow to accept radical changes to familiar things like the way a suburban street or a park feels. They have an expectation that has built up over several years, and things that are different (and often much, much better) seem strange, and are sometimes rejected outright. We fear change. Change is bad. The same is often true for things like community zoning boards (made up of average Joe, average Bill, and average Jane).
I'm sorry but this demonstrates an aspect of designers that I find somewhat annoying. If you are designing for the average Joe, Bill and Jane, and they aren't happy with your designs, it's your fault, not theirs.
It's like when I'm working on a piece of multimedia/website with a graphic designer and they come up with some original concept that the client rejects on practical grounds -- the designer goes into a big huff and thinks the client is stupid.
Some designers always tend to think their ideas are the best in the world. Really good designers design what people want and are humble about it. Some designers seem to think that because they can come up with original ideas they are in some way "brilliant", but there are a lot of people with a lot of good ideas and good ideas are not restricted to designers. As my old boss used to say, "ideas are cheap".
(Sorry if this comes over a bit strong. I don't really mean this as an attack on you personally, it's just one of my pet peeves.)