Go to Page: 1 2

In today’s high-tech world, technology often seems to be driving us instead of the other way around. Overnight, products and services appear that just days before we were unaware of—for example, the ability to now use a cell phone to send a photograph of the house we’ve just built to a friend half way around the world.

Technology isn’t the only area where change is rampant. Lifestyles are constantly being reconfigured, with demographic patterns in such flux that it may be misleading to call them patterns. All these rapid changes are making it more and more difficult to predict how people as consumers want and need to be served.

Finding out is the goal at IIT’s Institute of Design (ID), where researchers develop methods that will help organizations gain a more detailed and relevant understanding of users’ increasingly complex lives and drive the development of innovative and humane products and business concepts. Put simply, ID faculty and students study exactly how people live and work and then strive to develop ideal products, systems, and concepts for them—a task that is every bit as challenging as it sounds.

So how do designers reach that critical intersection of need and product design—referred to as the “sweet spot”?

Before there was the Institute of Design, created in Chicago in 1937 by Hungarian-born émigré Lázsló Moholy-Nagy, there was a school of design in Germany called the Bauhaus, where Moholy-Nagy had served as a master teacher.

The Bauhaus (a coined word meaning something like “construction house”) had been founded by Walter Gropius as a new type of school of architecture, art, and design. Its stated goal was to promote “a new unity of art, science, and technology in the service of humanity.” Its educational approach was holistic—educating the entire person in the belief that such an education would give students a better grasp of society and how products they designed could improve it. Experimentation was encouraged, with an emphasis on process.

Moholy-Nagy brought the Bauhaus philosophy to Chicago, and that legacy of human-centered design still flourishes at ID, where students are given instruction and practice in the study of people—these days referred to as users or end-users. This research is called activity-focused and encompasses a broad range of actions, circumstances, and environments—for example, note-taking in an airplane seat, telecommunicating, accessing the water supply in an urban slum, threading through traffic on a crowded Internet, or taking blood in a lab. As a result of this trained observation, designers can identify important components of user needs and requirements that might otherwise have been missed.

ID uses this information within a broad framework that supports understanding users from multiple perspectives, addressing not only the users’ physical capabilities and cognitive functions, but also their cultural backgrounds and the social situations in which they operate when using a product or service. ID has gotten so good at this that the institute has become an international leader in teaching human-centered design.

Once ID faculty and students have the ability to identify sweet spots, they have to determine where to focus their attention. According to Vincent LaConte, communications manager at ID, current trends in design see a concentration of work in the areas of environment and health, with interactive learning and home environment now starting to get more attention. At IIT, where the goal has always been to use design research to make life better, several initiatives are working toward that goal.

One current ID initiative is the Urban Opportunity Project. Begun in 2003, the project was formed to explore urban global slums and then to develop human-centered strategies for products, services, and businesses that could generate sustainable economic development and improved living in these areas.

A slum household is defined by UN-Habitat as a group of individuals living under the same roof who lack one or more of the following: security of tenure, structural quality and durability of dwellings, access to safe water, access to sanitation facilities, or sufficient living area. The project’s initial focus has been in India, with a long-term focus of creating a replicable model for slums around the world.

Sam Pitroda (EE ’66)—telecommunications pioneer and recipient of the IIT Alumni Award Medal, India’s National Citizen Award, and an International Distinguished Leadership Award—has been a galvanizing force as the project advisor. His extensive expertise in international business and politics, along with his global perspective, have been invaluable in helping team members apply the best of design research to improve the worst of living conditions.

The goal has been not to apply a bandage, but to discover systemic solutions to the complex problems in daily life—such as water quality, healthcare, and sanitation—as well as related problems of unemployment, communication, and education.

To get a broad framework for understanding slums, research was conducted in slum areas in Mumbai, India. By observing the daily life, the Chicago-based team of researcher-designers—led by Patrick Whitney, the lead faculty member and director of ID—discovered patterns of social interaction, economic activity, and living conditions that inspired ideas for new solutions.

Go to Page: 1 2