Wygle Wide Web

Take the well-known example of the Toyota Prius. This hybrid car was not the result of user-centered innovation. Toyota started to design the Prius in 1994, when user-centered analysis and market data were pulling auto manufacturers in a different direction: toward heavy, gas-guzzling SUVs. The Prius was a proposal — a vision that came from a better understanding of the future evolution of the socio-cultural and economic scenario. Now, more than a decade after it was first launched, people like it, even if they did not ask for it when it was conceived. And thanks to its early start, Toyota is well ahead of its competitors.

Harvard Business Review: User-Centered Innovation Is Not Sustainable (via exmilitary)

This pretty much sums up why I’m skeptical about user-centered design and UX research: as the Prius example shows, as the recently re-circulated initial reactions to the iPod confirm, and as my early experience getting feedback on Birdfeed taught me personally, people generally only think in terms of what they know, so if you ask them what they want, they’ll tell you the same and more of it. I think that great products—the kind that change the world, the kind people truly love—usually have a strong, often counter-intuitive, point of view, so a methodology that relies too much on what people say they want, instead of trying anticipate what they don’t yet realize they want, seems like a poor way to invent the future.

(via buzzandersen)

Source: exmilitary