There’s more to the design world than the design of objects. On September 21, as part of the series “Why Good Design Matters” at the Apple Store in San Francisco, Fred Dust, Smart Space Practice lead at IDEO, described how his firm uses innovative design methodologies and applies them to housing, cities and even governments.

IDEO, a Palo Alto, California, industrial design firm, splashed onto the scene with such iconic industrial designs as the first Apple mouse, the first laptop, the Palm V and the Treo. Continually reinventing itself, IDEO is moving away from its roots as a pure industrial design firm, to be recognized by savvy CEOs for the contribution it makes to business strategy.

Dust presented a design process that IDEO deploys on projects that are “bigger than a breadbox.” These large-scale projects include fresh takes on failing neighborhoods, the reinvention of government services for Finland and the creation of immersive interactive spaces for the likes of the Gap, Prada, BBC and Virgin. Dust ascribed IDEO’s success in this wide range of activity to its development of what he calls “design as an investigative process.”

How to Dress

At the Smart Spaces group at IDEO, Dust said, “We do design with a small ‘d.’ Design with a big ‘D’ results in the preciousness of the object. Design with a small ‘d’ uses an adaptable, investigative process to come up with innovative solutions across a range of fields.” As an example, Dust pointed to the work IDEO did for the flagship Prada store in Manhattan.

“We do design with a small ‘d.’ Design with a big ‘D’ results in the preciousness of the object. Design with a small ‘d’ uses an adaptable, investigative process to come up with innovative solutions across a range of fields.”

“We reinvented the dressing room for Prada,” Dust said. Bring in a garment to try on and information embedded in the tag calls up images of the item as seen on a fashion runway for display on a video screen. The new dressing room mirrors capture and display your image from the rear, so you can see what you look like from behind. This sounds simple, but IDEO has discovered that this is a compelling experience. The dressing rooms have proved so popular that “Time Out New York” declared it “One of the 10 Best Places to Take a Date.” Prada has to bring the system down every so often just to clear people from the dressing rooms. “Why would you ever leave?“ Dust joked.

Design What?

Reimagining retail space, a product or a service is one thing, but what about an entire country? IDEO was asked to use its design principles in the service of Finland. “I got a call from someone who said they were from the government in Finland, and they wanted to come over and see what IDEO could do for their country,” Dust said. Apparently government ministers wanted to imagine new social policies based on the design principles put into place at IDEO. “I thought it was a joke,” Dust said. Until two busloads of Finnish cabinet and parliament members showed up six weeks later.

In-Depth Interviews

“Ask people what they want and you rarely get the truth,” Dust observes. Instead of a survey, IDEO conducts in-depth interviews and ethnographic studies. To get at the heart of consumer behavior, IDEO will spend days at a time with its subjects, sometimes even moving in with them. For a project examining the use of luxury products IDEO had to overcome the knee-jerk puritanical response most American’s hold regarding luxury and pampering. Case in point, one subject who claimed she never pampered herself was complimented about her French manicure. “Oh, this is not a luxury,” she responded. “Great nails are a necessity.”

The conclusion IDEO reached: “Sometimes the language throws you off. You have to spend time eliciting answers that otherwise won’t appear on a survey.”

One method IDEO uses to get beyond a focus group — which is notorious for providing misleading answers — is what it calls the “Wine & Dine.” Dust explains, “We ask a dozen people to dinner, serve wine, let them relax and invite them to talk about a single subject. What happens is that an openness develops. People talk to each other, not just to the moderator, and insights arrive out of that camaraderie. There’s value to going off topic.”

Next Page: The Client as Design Team Member