This week's text "The art of innovation" by Tom Kelly (founder of IDEO) is about how and where to look for and find innovation in everyday life. In the course of the text, various examples and methodologies are mentioned and an attempt is made to form a trend line out of them that are useful for the reader. Here are some key statements from the article:
We all know it: when you do something for the first time, be it surfing for example, you are not familiar with the subject matter and you wonder about many things, why it was designed that way. Maybe it even feels strange the first time you use it. That's where there's great potential for innovation, because maybe what you find strange is something that the professionals don't even notice anymore because they're used to it. It's a good idea when you do something for the first time to make a "bug-list" with all the things that seem strange to you or bother you and all the others have simply got used to it and can't question it any more. Through such lists, innovations often come to light.
Another point that seems important to me is that as a designer you should definitely get on the ground so that you can really understand the problem situation. "If you're not in the jungle, you're not going to know the tiger" is an important quote from the text. It is also called "Sensory Immersion" or "Why video calls might not do it and being at place is better than watching it on a phone".
With so much innovation in every everyday situation, I also get a little scared: if I design something now, then I must be constantly afraid of not having found the right innovation, but only having made a problem worse. How do I know that I have an innovation and not just a stopgap solution? How do I know if there is still an innovation at all in what I am currently working on?
Other notes from the text: