skip to Main Content
overcrowded verganti design

Don Norman: Overcrowded, by Roberto Verganti: In favor of criticism

Don Norman: Overcrowded, by Roberto Verganti: In favor of criticism

Don Norman: Overcrowded, by Roberto Verganti: In favor of criticism

I was just in Germany, in Herzogenaurach to be precise, at Adidas headquarters. (Hardly anyone knows where Herzogenaurach is — it’s a 20 minute taxi from Nuremberg.) I was at a conference organized by my old friend (and co-author) Roberto Verganti, from the business school at Politecnico di Milano. Years ago, he and I had a debate in Milan about the value of Human-Centered Design (HCD) and the way it is normally practiced. To the audience’s great surprise, we both agreed:

  1. HCD is a powerful tool for improving existing products. That is, it is a powerful tool for incremental innovation.
  2. HCD, by its very nature (hill-climbing plus a kind of design by committee), is a really bad tool for radical innovation.

In his book Overcrowded, Roberto expands his argument for methods of getting to radical innovation. He says that the standard IDEO rules for brainstorming by never criticizing is wrong. Great ideas come about when a small group of people continually criticize one another’s work. Note that the criticism has to be constructive and helpful. The word “critique” might be better.

This matches my long-stated personal views. For example, I when someone praises my work, that’s nice to hear, but I don’t learn anything. When someone criticizes it, if the criticism is intelligent and thoughtful, I learn. I might still think I was correct, but I have then learned that I have presented the ideas badly. Or I might determine that my ideas are wrong, or perhaps incomplete. That’s good to know.

So think about it: Criticism is good. Constructive criticism, that is. (Roberto gives numerous examples, from Claude Monet and the merry band of impressionist painters who revolutionized art to the Nest Thermostat (among others).

The book emphasizes the love over need. Design things people will love. Moreover, start with yourself: if you, the designer, don’t love the idea and the design, nobody else will. Take the thermostat; using HCD to make a better thermostat in the old days would make the complex programming easier to understand and do. But programming the thermostat was hated. Nest made one that eliminated the need for programming: it learned all by itself what your preferences were.  It was a thermostat that people loved.(I have problems with Nest, but that is a different story, namely that once the radical innovation is over, we still need HCD to improve it. Nest lost its way.)

– Don Norman

Verganti, R. (2016). Overcrowded: designing meaningful products in a world awash with ideas. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/overcrowded

Our earlier paper:

Norman, D. A., & Verganti, R. (2014). Incremental and Radical Innovation: Design Research vs. Technology and Meaning Change. Design Issues, 30(1), 78-96. doi:10.1162/DESI_a_00250
https://jnd.org/incremental_and_radical_innovation_design_research_versus_technology_and_meaning_change/

I was just in Germany, in Herzogenaurach to be precise, at Adidas headquarters. (Hardly anyone knows where Herzogenaurach is — it’s a 20 minute taxi from Nuremberg.) I was at a conference organized by my old friend (and co-author) Roberto Verganti, from the business school at Politecnico di Milano. Years ago, he and I had a debate in Milan about the value of Human-Centered Design (HCD) and the way it is normally practiced. To the audience’s great surprise, we both agreed:

  1. HCD is a powerful tool for improving existing products. That is, it is a powerful tool for incremental innovation.
  2. HCD, by its very nature (hill-climbing plus a kind of design by committee), is a really bad tool for radical innovation.

In his book Overcrowded, Roberto expands his argument for methods of getting to radical innovation. He says that the standard IDEO rules for brainstorming by never criticizing is wrong. Great ideas come about when a small group of people continually criticize one another’s work. Note that the criticism has to be constructive and helpful. The word “critique” might be better.

This matches my long-stated personal views. For example, I when someone praises my work, that’s nice to hear, but I don’t learn anything. When someone criticizes it, if the criticism is intelligent and thoughtful, I learn. I might still think I was correct, but I have then learned that I have presented the ideas badly. Or I might determine that my ideas are wrong, or perhaps incomplete. That’s good to know.

So think about it: Criticism is good. Constructive criticism, that is. (Roberto gives numerous examples, from Claude Monet and the merry band of impressionist painters who revolutionized art to the Nest Thermostat (among others).

The book emphasizes the love over need. Design things people will love. Moreover, start with yourself: if you, the designer, don’t love the idea and the design, nobody else will. Take the thermostat; using HCD to make a better thermostat in the old days would make the complex programming easier to understand and do. But programming the thermostat was hated. Nest made one that eliminated the need for programming: it learned all by itself what your preferences were.  It was a thermostat that people loved.(I have problems with Nest, but that is a different story, namely that once the radical innovation is over, we still need HCD to improve it. Nest lost its way.)

– Don Norman

Verganti, R. (2016). Overcrowded: designing meaningful products in a world awash with ideas. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/overcrowded

Our earlier paper:

Norman, D. A., & Verganti, R. (2014). Incremental and Radical Innovation: Design Research vs. Technology and Meaning Change. Design Issues, 30(1), 78-96. doi:10.1162/DESI_a_00250
https://jnd.org/incremental_and_radical_innovation_design_research_versus_technology_and_meaning_change/

I was just in Germany, in Herzogenaurach to be precise, at Adidas headquarters. (Hardly anyone knows where Herzogenaurach is — it’s a 20 minute taxi from Nuremberg.) I was at a conference organized by my old friend (and co-author) Roberto Verganti, from the business school at Politecnico di Milano. Years ago, he and I had a debate in Milan about the value of Human-Centered Design (HCD) and the way it is normally practiced. To the audience’s great surprise, we both agreed:

  1. HCD is a powerful tool for improving existing products. That is, it is a powerful tool for incremental innovation.
  2. HCD, by its very nature (hill-climbing plus a kind of design by committee), is a really bad tool for radical innovation.

In his book Overcrowded, Roberto expands his argument for methods of getting to radical innovation. He says that the standard IDEO rules for brainstorming by never criticizing is wrong. Great ideas come about when a small group of people continually criticize one another’s work. Note that the criticism has to be constructive and helpful. The word “critique” might be better.

This matches my long-stated personal views. For example, I when someone praises my work, that’s nice to hear, but I don’t learn anything. When someone criticizes it, if the criticism is intelligent and thoughtful, I learn. I might still think I was correct, but I have then learned that I have presented the ideas badly. Or I might determine that my ideas are wrong, or perhaps incomplete. That’s good to know.

So think about it: Criticism is good. Constructive criticism, that is. (Roberto gives numerous examples, from Claude Monet and the merry band of impressionist painters who revolutionized art to the Nest Thermostat (among others).

The book emphasizes the love over need. Design things people will love. Moreover, start with yourself: if you, the designer, don’t love the idea and the design, nobody else will. Take the thermostat; using HCD to make a better thermostat in the old days would make the complex programming easier to understand and do. But programming the thermostat was hated. Nest made one that eliminated the need for programming: it learned all by itself what your preferences were.  It was a thermostat that people loved.(I have problems with Nest, but that is a different story, namely that once the radical innovation is over, we still need HCD to improve it. Nest lost its way.)

– Don Norman

Verganti, R. (2016). Overcrowded: designing meaningful products in a world awash with ideas. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/overcrowded

Our earlier paper:

Norman, D. A., & Verganti, R. (2014). Incremental and Radical Innovation: Design Research vs. Technology and Meaning Change. Design Issues, 30(1), 78-96. doi:10.1162/DESI_a_00250
https://jnd.org/incremental_and_radical_innovation_design_research_versus_technology_and_meaning_change/

Read Next

Don Norman To Receive Sir Misha Black Medal

Don Norman to Receive Sir Misha Black Medal for Distinguished Services to Design Education

The Sir Misha Black Medal for Distinguished Services to Design Education for 2021 is awarded to Don Norman, Design Lab Founding Director Emeritus and Distinguished Professor Emeritus of the University of California, San Diego, USA.

He will receive the Medal at a Ceremony to be held at Imperial College London, at 6pm on Tuesday, October 19th 2021, where he will deliver a short address on his philosophy on design education.

This Ceremony will be combined with the Awarding of the 2020 Medal and the 2020 Awards for Innovation in Design Education.

The Sir Misha Black Medal honours those who have given distinguished services to design education. It was the first, and is the only, international award to do so. The Awards commemorate the work and life of the designer and architect, Professor Sir Misha Black, whose pioneering work played a crucial role in the development of design in Britain.
Seda Evis

Designer in Residence: Seda Evis

While Seda Evis participates as a Designer-in-Residence at UC San Diego with The Design Lab, and is VP of Strategy & Growth at FreshForm Interactive—an experience design and innovation consultancy—she also claims to have what she refers to as a superpower: her hybrid mind, which she describes as the combination of two worlds: the business side and the design side.

As a Designer-in-Residence at The Design Lab,  Evis enjoys working in an interdisciplinary setting, which she says enhances her existing skillset. “Academia tends to be quite separate from how the practice is done,” she explains. “I find ways of doing interdisciplinary work, as well as cross industry work, very important for innovation because that’s how you actually get seeds from different places.” As of now, most of Evis’s work at The Design Lab has been working with the Community Team on the now winning bid for the World Design Capital 2024 (WDC) designation. Her work dovetails with her role on the Board of  Directors for the Design Forward Alliance–a non-profit organization started by the Lab in partnership with the regional design community and one of the partners co-leading the HOME 2024 WDC efforts alongside the Design Lab, Burnham Center for Community Advancement, the City of San Diego and the City of Tijuana.   The designation puts the San Diego-Tijuana region in a prestigious international cohort recognized for the “effective use of design to drive economic, social, cultural and environmental development.”  Even the proposal theme is significant, Evis says. “Home” not only refers to the immense and diverse communities of San Diego and Tijuana that form one, but also serves as an acronym for Human-centered, Open, Multi-disciplinary/Multi-cultural, and Experimental. For Evis, participating in HOME2024 signifies her career “coming full circle.” 

Frontier Design Prize Announces Winners at World Design Cities Conference

Shanghai, September 15, 2022 | The Frontier Design Prize announced the winners of its inaugural edition during the opening ceremony of the World Design Cities Conference (WDCC).  Mr. QU Xing, Deputy Director-General of UNESCO, Mr. GONG Zheng, Mayor of Shanghai, Ms. XU Xiaolan, Vice Minister of Industry and Information Technology (China), along with leading designers, scholars and industry leaders, attended the award ceremony. The Frontier Design Prize (FDP) is a visionary, innovative, world-class design award established with the aims of encouraging design innovation, enhancing the impact of design in driving industrial transformation, and promoting the role of design in shaping a better world. A central program of WDCC, it is undertaken by Design Innovation Institute Shanghai (DIIS) with guidance from the Shanghai Municipal Government. 
Design Lab Uc San Diego Don Norman Creative Education

Rethinking Design Education

Don Norman, Design Lab Director

The Challenge

The requirements of the 21st century are quite different than those of earlier years. New needs continually arise, along with new tools, technologies, and materials. Designers are starting to address some of the major societal issues facing the planet. Does design education prepare them to work with and lead the multidisciplinary teams required to work on these complex sociotechnical systems?

The Origins

We are embarking on a serious effort to rethink design education for the 21st century. We started with the multiple thoughtful articles in two special issues of the journal She Ji on design education (download from our website). This inspired us to assemble a team of senior designers from academia and business to serve as a steering committee to start a large effort to rethink design education.
UCSD Trolley Station

UCSD to create grand entrance to manage crushing growth, and welcome the public

"To see eyes looking at you matters. One pair of those eyes may give you a job offer, or help finance your startup, or help buy your first product off Kickstarter, or convince you what you’re doing isn’t solving real problems." — Scott Klemmer, Design Lab

In one of the biggest physical and social changes in school history, UC San Diego will create its first “front door,” a grand entrance meant to appeal as much to the public as students and ease crowding on a campus where enrollment could hit 40,000 this fall.
Plans are being drafted for a gateway that will blend art, culture, entertainment, dining, education and research — the same mix that helps funnel people from Westwood Village to UCLA.
Ford People-centered Automation

Ford Gifts $50K to Design Lab People-Centered Automation

Colleen Emmenegger, Head of People-Centered Automation at The Design Lab, was recently the recipient of a $50,000 grant from Ford Motor Company. The grant was awarded for her work regarding how drivers can understand, negotiate, and manage shared autonomy with their vehicles in a way that is accessible and easily translatable.

“We're trying to figure out if you can build a contract with the driver and her automated vehicle co-pilot so the driver knows exactly what they need to do and what the system does," says Emmenegger. "We're trying to build something that explicitly and continuously communicates, and that doesn't act as an invisible ‘controlling entity’ of the car. A system that provides dynamic, yet constant feedback to the driver and not sudden, startling warnings." 
Back To Top