Re: UCD and Innovation

I've just been reading some De Bono that has relevance to this discussion,
and as he's been mentioned at least once already...

A strong theme of his is the insufficiency of traditional Western thinking.
He tells us that our education systems and culture lead us to believe that
if we can glean perfect information we can make the perfect decisions. That
truth and beauty can be found if we strip away the stuff that doesn't work.
This leads to lots of analysis and critical thought but doesn't encourage
generative, creative thought. He argues that pure information and critical
analysis is not sufficient, nor does it necessarily reveal the right choices
after all. He preaches the use of many other thinking tools alongside those
that we are so comfortable with. And provides healthily chunky tomes on many
of them, including lateral and parallel thinking (both terms he invented.)

Most of the examples of brilliantly applied user research do work from a
solidly researched information but also design a way forward from the issues
raised that solves any problems and often brings pleasure. Therein lies the
creativity. It is up to us to take the step beyond saying, "Don't do that
because users don't get it"

Tom

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Tom Kerwin
Moodia
www.moodia.com
020 7770 6037

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