Empathize

Sometimes direct observation won’t yield the right results fast enough. “As designers we have to put ourselves in the situations of our customers,” Dust said. A project to design the “ultimate cubicle,” which the firm worked on with Scott Adams, the creator of the Dilbert cartoon, proved difficult, since no one at IDEO had ever actually worked in a cubicle. So IDEO built its own temporary cube farm out of foam core and duct tape. “We learned more in a day than we would have in a month of direct observation,” Dust said.

Design for Behavior, Not Demographics

For Forest City, a real estate developer, IDEO created three styles of model homes based on the way people live in their homes. IDEO discovered that home occupants fell into one of three categories. There are “Storytellers,” who use their house to establish their identity. There are “Functionalists,” whose homes are designed to fulfill their activities — these are typically “Type A” people like triatheletes whose homes serve as containers for their gear. And there are the “Campers,” who don’t ever really move in.

These ways of living defy design that targets demographics and life stage. Design for behaviors instead, says Dust, and you have a profound design tool. Thus, IDEO developed three model units: one each for Storytellers, Functionalists and Campers. Shown to prospective buyers, these model homes suggested guidelines for living that purchasers could follow as they set up their homes to fulfill their lifestyle.

Radical Collaboration

Perhaps the most radical of all IDEO’s core design strategies is the inclusion of the client in the creative process. “Bring the client into the design process, make them a member of the team, and you will get better results,” Dust said.

At UC Berkeley, where IDEO was asked to propose a redesign for a new community center, IDEO had the opportunity to test its methodology in the public arena. After extensive interviews with administrators, faculty and students, Sproul Plaza, with its history of student protests, and its central location on campus, seemed the obvious choice for the center.

“Bring the client into the design process, make them a member of the team, and you will get better results.”

Then IDEO actually followed students — who were, when all was said and done, the ultimate clients — around, taking note of where they went and when. “Much to everyone’s surprise, we discovered not one of the students went anywhere near Sproul Plaza,” Dust said. “Students stay close to what’s important to them.” The result? Satellite community centers. Instead of one big community center, IDEO proposed a handful of community centers spread out around the campus where students could encounter them as part of their daily activities.

Recently IDEO was asked to design an entire neighborhood. The historical center for the African-American community in Kansas City — the neighborhood at 18th and Vine — was for a time the center of jazz, the Negro baseball league, and black urban life in this country. But it had fallen on hard times. Some of its most prominent “buildings” were in fact nothing but facades, left over from the 1996 Robert Altman movie “Kansas City.”

The neighborhood association wanted to memorialize the history of 18th and Vine by building a museum of jazz. But an attraction that would bring busloads of tourists to a single destination would not serve IDEO’s true clients — the people who actually lived at 18th and Vine. According to Dust, “We had to balance the needs of the neighborhood with the identity of the neighborhood.”

In interviews with current and former residents, IDEO discovered that when people thought about 18th and Vine, they thought about moments, not places. “Where you went on Friday night was different from where you went on Sunday morning, even though physically you were in the same neighborhood,” Dust said.

Instead of a monolithic museum that would mummify history, IDEO recommended unpacking the museum, getting it onto the street and then building a flower shop, a newspaper kiosk, a café — specific small-scale environments that would extend the moments people chose to spend at 18th and Vine.