Video Reflection: David Kelley > Human Centred Design

This video interested me because of its topic human centered design. David Kelly talks about how we today are using a more “human centered approach to design and that were including behaviors and personalities in the things we do.”

He goes through the lecture showing examples of this, the first example he shows is a handspring device which is a handheld computer at the time. Then the heart stream defibrillator which is saving a lot of lives and is used at the airport. Another product he introduced was the reader which is a tablet form device making reading magazines enjoyable.

He explains that the development of design has led up to focusing more on the human centered approach to design and looking at incorporating behavior and personality also in to the design. To show us how designers are doing this he shows a few clips that focus on human centered design.

One example that interested me that he showed was where Scott Adams asked them to design an ultimate cubical for Dilbert. The team thought to build their own cubicles to see for themselves the problems that come with them. They first group builds a cubicle making the walls, screens for their computer and their family photos. In the second group scenario the walls are alive and they give “Dilbert” a “group hug”. They want to make the cubicle more human so they achieve this by many features in the cubicle. There was a flower in a pot that wilts when you leave in disappointment and when you come back stands up straight as if it’s greeting you. To make it more home like, in the walls they add a built in fish tank and a small punching bag with the bosses face on it so you can let aggression out. There was a hammock that stretches across the cubicle for that afternoon nap.

This was one of many examples looking at the human centered design approach and I enjoyed all of them. I wrote about the cubicle one because it to me stood out with the human approach and you could see the personality in it making the cubicle “human like”. This I believe would also increase employees work quality as it is enjoyable to work now with the feeling of happiness rather than the feeling of entrapment.

It’s important for industrial designers to see this video so that they can see how important human centered design is in everyday living. The video also is great because it shows how far we have come from 9 years ago in terms of the design world.