Design as a collaborative process: Bill Moggridge (IDEO), Younghee Jung (Nokia) - PICNIC08

The cuddly face of modern design practice...

More from Gavin Edwards helping to cover PICNIC08 for us, this time on the Design as a Collaborative Process session featuring Bill Moggridge of IDEO (who Gav appears to like) and Younghee Jung from Nokia who doesn’t get such a good response…

Moggridge walks on stage, the last action hero of design, with one of his classic peach shirts.

He hardly needs an introduction, I’m sure we’ve all heard or seen Bill on the conference circuit before - he’s certainly got the cred: so here he is, the leader of IDEO, once again showing us case studies of how other companies, not IDEO, do it, out there in the real world.

Moggridge’s opening gambit explains our current understanding of things. We know how people think through cognitive psychology; we understand their physical being through anthropometric data; and that the area where designers need to focus at the moment is on how we’re all connected. He also points out that, as designers, we are in danger of designing for oneself.

Hardly groundbreaking.

Of course, this being an IDEO presentation, Bill would like us to know that they’re here to help steer the good ship Design on our behalf, and to this end - alongside the Rockefeller Foundation - they’ve put together a tool kit to help us… You can find it here.

Moggridge also shows a great video of Tangible Earth, a globe which displays real time data showing shifting weather patterns. Of course, it could show anything with associated location based data, and this is a great concept for visualisation the impact of a connected society.

The wrap up comes as a brief introduction to the Designers’ Accord: “a global coalition of designers, educators, researchers, engineers, and corporate leaders, working together to create positive environmental and social impact.” Worth checking out.

So, in summary, each of these examples are here to steer and guide dsigners, whether in the form of a toolkit, a guide for conduct or a means to understand the impact our decisions have on a global level.

Then next up is Younghee Jung - he’s a senior designer at Nokia and he’s here at PICNIC to talk about how people in Africa are seeing technology integrate with their lives.

Look, here’s the bottom line: it’s a video I’ve seen before (so why take it on the road yet again, Nokia? Come on…) and despite understanding the sentiment, I’m not quite sure I can share the Jung’s pride in the fact that families in Africa would rather have a phone than a fridge….