One might be forgiven for having suspicions about this "design fad." It seems like people who have a "design background" are positioning themselves as the new vanguards of business innovation. It is possible to read some of the books and come away wondering what the point was. One is left thinking that "design" is some secret sauce that only the initiated understand.
Roberto Verganti's book more or less says as much, referring to "circles of the initiated" and the "design discourse," which is some mysterious activity carried out by the gods of design, an elite crew who understand what design is really about. Presumably, because we - the lay readers - are not part of the initiated, this is why we might fail to grasp the point of the book by the time we hit the end. We get a sense of excitement and thrill, but come away none the wiser. It's a bit like listening to a coffee taster refer to the "tones of fruitiness" and "waves of acidity" that rise from the swig of espresso, whilst we only taste coffee. We stare at the cup wondering if we're missing something.
At the other end of the spectrum, we hear a lot of people talking about "User Experience," often as if they've invented it. The term is used interchangeably with user-centred design (UCD) and the new god of the user. "We must have participatory design," we are told. It's part of this thing called Web 2.0, where we "co-create" with the user. Isn't it? There are so many variations on the theme, so many experts to go with it.
Is this the culture of design that Verganti is writing about? Is this design-driven innovation?
No, it certainly is not, because, as Verganti relays to us from many of his Italian design contemporaries, radical designers ignore the market (i.e. the user) and simply "make proposals" - i.e. they propose products to it. To the UCD enthusiast, this is perhaps a sin. "What? Ignore the user?"
Let's be clear what Verganti means, although I think he fails to spell it out in his book.
When he talks about designers proposing ideas to the market, he doesn't mean a product designer sitting in the lab whose job it is to make sure that the buttons are usable and the base looks nice whilst supporting the weight of the screen. That might be part of the product process, but it isn't part of the innovation process. To understand Verganti, we should think about artists and art.
When a great painter or sculptor sets about creating a work, they don't set up a focus group and ask "the market" what it wants. They create what they are compelled to create and then propose it to the world. Can we imagine Damien Hirst sending out a survey: "What kind of work would you like: a. picture of flowers, b. a colourful vase, c. a sheep in a tank?"
Great innovators use design to propose their ideas to the world. They bring new meaning to ideas. They transform book cases into works of art, per Verganti's example of the Bookworm. They transform console games into physically charged family experiences, per Nintendo Wii with its MEMS technology.
In effect, they are proposing a new language around with product proposals. With the Bookworm, we are not interested in its capacity to hold books. We are interested in how we might configure it (the worm can be shaped into any curve that the user likes), which books to display and what their combined statement will be about the user e.g. "I am a traveller," for the one who displays a well-thumbed collection of travelogues.
This idea is not too dissimilar to our exploration of culinary languages in a previous post about the different types of chef.
Radical innovators concern themselves with proposing new ideas. They are concerned with meaning. Design is a tool to convey the meaning that the designer wishes to give to the product, service or business. This is the essence of what many of these "design of business" books are trying to tell us. They are not about the process of designing products and how they look. After all, how the Wii looks is of little meaning. What it does, what it enables and what it means to the (mostly) families that use it is what really matters.