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DEFUSEDESIGN FOR USE

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SIMON ROBERTS-ING

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I want to acknowledge from the outset the work of Elizabeth Shove and Mike

Pantzer, especially their papers on practice such as Consumers, Producers

and Practice (Journal of Consumer culture – 2005: Vol 5 43-64) and many

conversations I’ve had with Simon Blyth at IDEO about the ideas in this

presentation.

This talk is about products and practice – actually it’s more about practices and why

these are important, even if you think you design products.

The world is full of lots of products that either fail outright or never catch on

How can we save our products from ridicule – how can we make things that people

want, use and share. I contend that the answer is to focus on practice not products.

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Let’s start with walking.

Mankind has been walking for 1.6 millions years and he is pretty good at it.

Walking is a practice that needs little innovation or additions – or does it?

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• Walking

Of course walking is not a uniform activity – there’s walking to work – anyone that’s

every been pushed along by the crowds on a London bridge in the morning will

know that this is entirely different from a solitary walk along a beach or rambling.

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Everyday life is made of a series of things that we do, or practices like walking.

Making coffee and brushing our teeth are just a couple of these. As humans, or

consumers, we consume stuff through doing these practices

And on the flip side, this stuff supports our practices.

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It might sound like both a trivial and obvious thing to say but we cannot perform

practices like tooth brushing without tooth brushes and toothpaste and we can’t

play tennis without courts, nets, balls, racquets.

Objects, things, stuff: they all sustain our practices

And people tend not to NEED things like balls, courts, racquets until they’re

performing a practice like playing tennis.

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Of course the standard NPD and marketing narrative is that consumers have

undiscovered needs and when we have divined these pre-existing needs we

design a product for them.

But you don’t need a device that allows you to send a 140 character message until

you have a practice called ‘texting’. Needs emerge from practices

You don’t need Nordic walking sticks until you start Nordic walking….

So what is this Nordic walking malarkey and what has it got to do with new practice,

as opposed to new product development.

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Nordic walking is an activity which involves people aerobically exercising in outdoor

settings with two rather techno-looking walking sticks or poles.

Depending on your opinion it can look a bit silly but it’s an international phenomenon

and big business.

It is even got a foothold in Ireland.

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Where did it come from?

Three versions of the story:

1. Cross-country skiers training in the off-season;

2. state sponsored campaign in Finland to promote benefits of outdoor life

3. The deliberate transfer of equipment from one market sector (the disabled) to

another (wellness and fitness).

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Which ever account you buy Nordic walking has done one thing – it has

fundamentally repositioned the whole idea of walking with sticks.

It has broken the near universal link between ideas of frailty, infirmity and old age

and created new links with ideas about wellness, fitness, the outdoors….

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Put it another slightly more sociological way, Nordic walking has integrated three

things:

Slightly new stuff = STICKS;

very new images = NATURE, FITNESS, WELL BEING;

and new competences = how to walk with these sticks and with other people in

ways that make it great exercise

Nordic walking is the novel integration of IMAGE, COMPETENCE and EQUIPMENT

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STORIES: here are some of the stories that touch on the practice of Nordic walking.

Fitness, fun and ordinariness (you don’t look as stupid as you think which

overcomes the initial concern which people have that they look silly – makes it a

group practice which normalises it)

The redefinition of ordinary walking through focusing on reduction of joint injury and

involving the use of more muscles.

Walking with sticks is better for you than walking without them

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SKILLS: Skills to be mastered – training courses and systems of accreditation and

recognition.

Reframing the skill of walking – new and distinctive activity with techniques all of its

own.

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STUFF: A variety of different tips for differing ground conditions, urban colouring

and even a range by Marimekko. A profusion of equipment

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Nordic walking represents the artful integration of SKILLS, STUFF AND STORIES –

images of fitness and wellbeing; the walking sticks themselves and knowledge

about how to use them to create a new practice

The practice of Nordic walking adds weight to the things/stuff that the practice

draws on – in this sense it is recursive.

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As the ‘practicers’ worldwide continue to do the integrating of stories, stuff and skills

in locally relevant ways. NW becomes a global phenomenon.

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So what I’m suggesting is not that we should stop making things/products (though

sometime you have to ask if we need everything that businesses produces) but

instead that we might think of our roles as designers not so much as product

designers and more as developers of practices.

And as the example of NW has shown, if we are to create and sustain practices we

need to integrate Stories, Skills and Stuff – not just design STUFF

NPD = NEW PRACTICE DEVELOPMENT: Products alone have no value. Stuff

only has value to people when it is allied to stories and skills and the real skill is

the work of integrating stuff, stories and skills.

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Segway

I think the Segway is a good example of a thing being created without due attention

to the skills and stories that are need to ingrate it into a popular practices.

INTEGRATION here is key and that’s what as designers, marketing, advertising and

policy people you should be thinking about.

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linear

This idea of practices can be turned to field other than products and business –

there are pressing concerns and agendas in terms of obesity, water wastage,

climate change and here we need to be creating practices which have an impact

on our footprint.

What Skills, stories and stuff do we need to change the way we practice every life

with respect to these challenges.

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linear

And of course in some areas of life we want people to do more of something – eat

more fresh fruit and veg, turn lights off more and use less water in the shower.

Again what Stories, skills and stuff do we need to integrate in these areas of life.

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So my conclusion, briefly, is that you should re-think what your role as a designer

really is and think about enabling and supporting practices not just creating new

things.

And if you must build new things – think about the stories and skills that enable

them and which, in turn, the thing sustains.

Your challenge is to create, maintain and improved new practices, and if you’re

business ensure your relevant in existing or emergent practices.

Design for the verb.