I just saw a video that blew my mind. At NYU they’ve developed a touch screen similar to the one featured on the iPhone…only much larger. Jeff Han demonstrates it’s possibilities in this video.

Interfaces like this will be a huge leap forward in how we interact with computers.

Jeff Han is a research scientist for New York University’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. Here, he demonstrates—for the first time publicly—his intuitive, “interface-free,” touch-driven computer screen, which can be manipulated intuitively with the fingertips, and responds to varying levels of pressure.

Luke from Functioning Form recently posted notes from a discussion with Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO on the topic of innovation through design thinking:

So what is Design Thinking?

• It’s a human-centered approach to innovation.
• Being human-centered is unique to design, Designers think about people first, then the business second. The opposite is true for most companies.
• In the traditional Venn diagram of People (desirable), Business (viable) & Technical (feasible), design thinking solves the problem from the People perspective
• Design thinking is supported by a rich set of tools, processes, roles, and environments. Designers work like craftsmen. They know when to use the right tool at the right time.
• There are 3 important phases for design thinking: Inspiration, Ideation, Implementation

Inspiration

• Everything hinges on inspiration. We need new insights to drive innovation.
• The right way to get inspired is to get out into the real world: use the world as a source of inspiration not just validation.
• Great designers are great observers of life. They get out there to look, listen, and try.
• What’s the difference between design research and market research? Predictive market research is used by marketing to gauge the size of an opportunity. It is primarily a validation tool. Design research is an inspiration tool.
• Designers gain empathy by looking at the world through other people’s eyes in order to understand things at social, cultural, cognitive, emotional, and physical levels.
• Designers often look at analogous situations for inspiration. For example, when doing research for surgery procedures an IDEO spent a day with a Nascar pit crew.
• Insights come from extreme users and not from center of the bell curve. There’s little inspiration in average usage.
• Kids are extreme users. They magnify issues that we have as adults.

Ideation

• Building to think is essence of the prototyping process.
• Prototypes can be very rough but they should always enable engagement & discussion. Prototypes don’t have to be physical but do need to be tangible.
• Designers might go though hundreds of iterations of prototypes so they need to be quick and easy to build.
• McDonald’s prototypes service models and scenarios in a giant reconfigurable lab in Chicago.
• Prototyping makes a difference. Mcdonald’s saw kiosk usage rise from 7% to 90% after IDEO ideation process.

If you’re ever struggling to find the right way to display and visualize data, have a glance at this page for some ideas:

http://www.visual-literacy.org/periodic_table/periodic_table.html

They’ve broken it out in a periodic table fashion with slick rollovers that reveal a screenshot of the visualization.

Consumers are becoming aware that the more features a product has, the less easy it is to use. They have demanded feature ridden products without understanding the impact on usability. Technology companies in competition have been compelled to meet these demands…cramming as many features and functionality as possible so that their products can be everything to everyone. These products do a thousand things poorly, and nothing great.

The success of the iPod is a perfect example of a product that does one thing extremely well…and is a good indicator of things to come. I believe that we’ll start to see more products like the iPod…instead of 1 product that does a thousand things, we’ll see 5 or 10 products that meet specific needs.

The CEO of Phillips, Paul Zeven, recently made some enlightening comments on this topic and shared some results from a study they performed:

“Clearly, the American consumer believes that we are still cramming features and functions into our products simply because we think they will sell or in response to fierce industry competition.

We need to change that. As makers of tomorrow’s gadgets and gizmos, we need to take a lesson from the success of Google. It rescued users from complexity by presenting the simplest Internet search interface possible. Another Web site, Craigslist, has done the same to maintain simplicity and to-the-point information at users’ fingertips.

The fact that some products have been able to deliver this should have raised the bar for all technology products. My industry needs to better understand the impact technology is having on our lives and find ways to simplify the overall consumer experience. And consumers should demand that we deliver this, always. After all, what is the purpose of designing a product for consumers if they are not able to use it?”

Study Results:

• more than half of Americans believe manufacturers are trying to satisfy perceived consumer needs that may not be real.
• two out of three Americans have lost interest in a technology product because it seemed too complex to set up or operate
• Only 13 percent of Americans believe technology products in general are easy to use.
• only one in four consumers reports using the full range of features on most new technology products.