Dear All,
Someone wrote me offline and asked whether Don Norman's interpretation of my original post/idea 'Projection Before Analysis' got what I wanted to say. My reply was, sorry to be blunt, 'OH GOD NO'. And since he does not reference my post, perhaps his post has nothing to do with mine, and
I do understand ideas get lost easily on PHDDESIGN list, especially one that is beaten up by someone with a baseball bat with full force the minute after it has been posted. And I should not take my idea as something so precious, I do like to say that:
Projection before analysis, NOT 'act first, do the research later'.
God bless us all.
Rosan
-----Original Message-----
From: Don Norman [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Dienstag, 2. August 2011 01:06
Subject: Act First, Do the Research Later
I was inspired by the debate a while ago about doing design without research to write an essay for my column at the Industrial Design magazine, core77.com.
So, for your amusement, below are the first few paragraphs and a pointer to the whole.
Let me acknowledge the assistance of Ken Friedman for a series of private emails on the topic, including my first rough notes that led to the column.
Ken urged me to send it to this distribution list, but I decided to use it to fulfill my continuing obligation to Core77.com.
http://www.core77.com/blog/columns/act_first_do_the_research_later_20051.asp
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Don Norman, *
*[log in to unmask] www.jnd.org
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Act First, Do the Research Later
Think before acting. Sounds right, doesn't it? Think before starting to design. Yup. Do some research, learn more about the requirements, the people, the activities. Then design. It all makes sense. Which is precisely why I wish to challenge it. Sometimes it makes sense to act first, think afterwards.
In the real world of product development, time is always short and budgets limited, so it is almost impossible to start with research. "Yes," the product manager will say, "I know we should do some research first, but we don't have time, we are too far behind schedule. But for the next project, we will start with research, OK?" It never happens. The next project will also start out with no time, behind schedule. In fact, let me create a law:
Norman's Law of Product Development: A project is behind schedule and over its budget the day it is started.
Today we teach the importance of doing design research first, then going through a period of ideation, prototyping and iterative refinement. Lots of us like this method. I do. I teach it. But this makes no sense when practical reality dictates that we do otherwise. If there is never enough time to start with research, then why do we preach such an impractical method? We need to adjust our methods to reality, not to some highfalutin, elegant theory that only applies in the perfect world of academic dreams. We should develop alternative strategies for design.
Opening paragraphs of my article on the Industrial Design magazine, core77.com, website.
http://www.core77.com/blog/columns/act_first_do_the_research_later_20051.asp
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