People's Dreams should design Products, says DTI Speaker

'We believe that the future should be made of the dreams of everyday people, not of CEOs, CFOs and technologists,' said Uday Dandavate of Sonic Rim.

Speaking as part of the "Innovation through People-Centred Design: Lessons for the UK" event at the Design Council, Dandavate was discussing "Harnessing the Creativity of Ordinary People". His theme was co-creation, which he referred to as 'synchronised dreaming'.

'The seeds of user-relevant designs exist in people's dreams and ideas,' he said, juxtaposing the old 'signature' designer with the New Reality, in an interesting echo of Kees Dorst's keynote in September (see UN story: HCI 2004 hears the New Rules of Design). 'You cannot design experience,' he said, debunking the myth that "Designers know what people need". 'They don't. Only people know what they need.'

His guidance concerned design approach rather than method. He listed judgement criteria:
• Relevance to user context is key to the success of a new idea.
• Experience is more important than technology, form or function.
• Aesthetics of experience will drive people (a sense of comfort and fulfilment), over aesthetics of form.
• Empathy, not ego, will drive ideas.
• Meanings, not just benefits, drive people to surround themselves with everyday objects.
• Metaphors are central to the cognitive processes of making sense of the environment.

Dandavate, like Herman D'Hooge of Intel (see UN story: People-Centred Design Trip yields Innovation Advice), is from one of the companies visited by the DTI delegation in December to look at UCD.

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