Design outcomes, not products

Timothy Prestero: Design for people, not awards | Video on TED.com – There are so many good quotes in this 15-min TED talk that you might as well check it out for yourself. The speaker takes us through his journey of designing a device to keep newborns in developing countries warm enough that they survive their first few days of life.  Good idea, nice design, but they didn’t know how to get the product into the real world.  The talk is about the lessons he learned and applied to another device for newborns that did get manufactured.  I may have a word or two off on the quotes below, but you get the idea.

“There is no such thing as a dumb user; there are only dumb products.”

“Design outcomes, not products.”

“Are you designing for the world you want? the world you have? or the world yet to come?”