I often meet people who refer to Henry Ford’s famous quote: ”If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses …”
They refer to the quote as a criticism of the user-centered design approach because Ford’s words indicate that people do not know what they want or do not want. And I partly agree. It IS a good quote because it very precisely points to a challenge with user-centered innovation. Namely, that people only speak within their existing frame of reference, and what we (IIAB and client) are trying to develop per definition lies outside the existing frame of reference. In short, people find it difficult to imagine and articulate a future that they do not yet know. But for this exact reason there is a whole industry of people like us. Companies that claim they can help companies identify the needs that people can not easily articulate or recognize.
IIAB looks ahead by asking backwards
So how can the user-centric approach help companies to develop new products that people do not articulate a need for? Let us imagine that Henry Ford had hired IS IT A BIRD to help him to investigate if there was a marked for cars. What would we have come back with?
Based on a series of studies, we would be able to show a number of indications that the development would go in a certain direction, and therefore would be a good chance that people would behave in a certain way.
We would argue that there are several general trends, which show people’s general readiness for motorized vehicles. For example, people fascinated by new machines: The airplane was invented a few years earlier (1902-1906) and started to become widespread. Large steamships were becoming a popular way to travel. Titanic (1912) is an example of such.
After talking with people about what works good and bad about their current vehicle, IIAB would also be able to say something about what Ford should focus on in the design. We might say that it is important that the new mode of transport has less maintenance than the horse. It is important that the machine will not be “fed” so often. It would also be important that the new mode of transport had a long reach without getting tired along the way.
So we would be able to tell Ford a lot of people’s existing behavior, experiences, thoughts and needs, and thereby pointing forward and conclude anything about the population’s readiness and the needs of a new product can speak into.
But but but…
Had we made an analysis for Ford, he would probably have some personal insights and reservations about how to sell his new product. Therefore, he might have asked us about one of his concerns: Humans intimate relationship with horses. 'Wouldn’t people miss scratching the horse behind the ear and talking to it?' Maybe, but we would tell him that we have observed that people can have intimate relationships with their personal possessions.
But, what about the high-speed of cars? Will people not be nervous about it? In response to that, we would tell Ford that we can see that people have no problems with speed when they drive trains, and that we observe people’s fascination with airplanes.
IS IT A BIRD, however, would not be able to tell Henry that he should make a Ford T, what it should look like, or how the technical specifications should be. And we certainly would not have said it should only come in black. In contrast, one of our insights might be that the horse’s race, appearance and equipment expresses human personality and values, and therefore we would recommend that you make the new car in a variety of colors so that customers can buy the exact color car which best reflects their personality. Ford would probably respond that in his opinion, a car should be black, and so it became black.
