Ideo: Using Market Research to Innovate

Recently I discovered the company IDEO. IDEO is a company that prides itself in being innovative and groundbreaking. They are hired as consultants to perform two tasks. 1. To do the market research to discover exactly what the consumer wants. 2. To design a product based on that research. When developing and launching a new product line, being creative is the key. Companies like IDEO have mastered the art of creative design.


From their president Tim Brown: “Design thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer's toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.” 


I found the creative process that IDEO uses to be brilliant. When working, they separate themselves into small workgroups which each focuses on a single aspect of the design process. They assign a group leader and begin an open discussion about what they are trying to design. Each group builds off the work of the previous group to create a unified product. 


I read about them re-inventing the way we think about work desks. They saw the classic school desk to be obsolete. They went into schools and examined not only how desks were being used, but how the children were learning. They realized that the desks were heavy, unpractical, and immobile.


They split up into their small work groups, each focusing on a single design aspect. In the end they came up with the "node chair."

"The final product, dubbed the Node chair, has received praise for promoting student collaboration, allowing educators to reconfigure classrooms to fit different teaching styles, and enabling institutions to save money by making spaces more flexible and accommodating for varied uses." -http://www.ideo.com/work/node-chair/


The chair allows students to store their belongings, move freely about the classroom, adjust their posture based on what is going on in class, and move the writing surface 360 degrees based on their needs.


The product was an immediate success. The company had over 500,000 pre-sale orders at $399 a unit.


I believe that the creative process that IDEO has utilized could be adapted into any form of design. It streamlines the efforts of many into specific tasks and allows the participants imagination to soar.