來自：UEDchina
What ingrained habits
are linked to a designers ability to bring
original ideas into the world as successful innovations. All of which suggests
that they merit a closer look.
Question. If you spend
any time around designers, you quickly discover this about them: They ask, and
raise, a lot of questions. Often this is the starting point in the design
process, and it can have a profound influence on everything that follows. Many
of the designers I studied, from Bruce Mau to Richard Saul Wurman to Paula
Scher, talked about the importance of asking "stupid questions"—the ones that
challenge the existing realities and assumptions in a given industry or sector.
The persistent tendency of designers to do this is captured in the joke
designers tell about themselves. How many designers does it take to change a
light bulb? Answer: Does it have to be a light bulb?
In a business
setting, asking basic "why" questions can make the questioner seem nave while
putting others on the defensive (as in, "What do you mean Wes volatile marketplace, the
ability to question and rethink basic fundamentals—What business are we really
in? What do todays easy for
companies to say they care about customer needs. But to really empathize, you
have to be willing to do what many of the best designers do: step out of the
corporate bubble and actually immerse yourself in the daily lives of people
yout cut it;
designers know that you must care enough to actually be present in peoplet necessarily have to invent from scratch.
By coming up with "smart recombinations" (to use a term coined by the designer
John Thackara), Apple has produced some of its most successful hybrid products;
and Nike smartly combining a running shoe with an iPod to produce its
groundbreaking Nike Plus line (which enables users to program their runs). It
isns one
thing to dream up original ideas. But designers quickly take those ideas beyond
the realm of imagination by giving form to them. Whether its also true
that when you commit to an idea early—putting it out into the world while its ability to "fail forward" is a
particularly valuable quality in times of dynamic change. Today, many companies
find themselves operating in a test-and-learn business environment that requires
rapid prototyping. Which is just one more reason to pay attention to the people
who've been conducting their work this way all along.