[Sigia-l] Mapping

[Groot, Boyd de]

I think alot of mechanical engineers in the car industry can relate to this,
but still the engineer at BMW is just as proud and respected in his/her role

as the designer or stylist :-)

I think this phenomenon can perhaps be clarified more through the theories
from
Maslov / Herzberg. Their theories were, as you probably all know, about
human 'needs'
and products and on-line services essentially fulfill needs.

Aspects like performance, usability, robustness, etc. seem to be on the
lower side of the Maslov pyramid and seem to go unnoticed until, of course,
they fail. According to Herzberg these are dissatisfiers.

Motivators, on the other hand, are aspects in the top half of the pyramid
and
here is where shiny-designy stuff comes in play that address things like
social needs (status ?), lifestyle, self-appreciation, etc. 

The important lesson here (also according to Herzberg), I think, is that if
the 
basics aren't right higher levels can never be reached no matter how
shiny-designy 
a service may be. Eventually users wil discard the product/service, though
probably in the beginning they might be enthusiastic.
  
I think, this is the basic problem with the IT-industry in the current phase
of
its lifecycle.

Another important lesson, I think, is that in order to design and develop a
product or service that really addresses all levels, close cooperation
between
different oriented disciplines is neccessary, totally focussing as team on
the 'product' or 'concept'.

The car industry and consumer product industry seem to understand this
better
than the IT-industry, at least judging by the continuous debates on this
list 
between people from different disciplines that just need to sit together in
a 
room / studio and 'work' the design problem at hand. :-)

kind regards,

--Boyd

PS You can find a couple of slides on the above topic below:

http://www.ipo.tue.nl/homepages/fegger/hci-marketing/CHI%202001%20SIG%20intr
o.pdf 



-----Original Message-----
From: Listera [mailto:listera at rcn.com]
Sent: dinsdag 29 oktober 2002 18:44
To: sigia-l at asis.org
Subject: Re: [Sigia-l] Mapping


"Peter Merholz" wrote:

> I guess I'm getting annoyed with how the shiny-designy solutions, which
> aren't useful, are getting noticed, while the less pretty solutions,
though
> actually useful, are by-and-large ignored.

Hmm, is there a (hopeful) lesson there?

Best,

Ziya