Cognitive Justice at the user interface
Justice has become the hottest topic in calls for papers this year, particularly noteworthy in inter- and cross-disciplinary design and innovation studies. I first came across the theme of justice last year in the IPCC February 2022 report, where the authors defined it as: Justice is concerned with setting out the moral or legal principles […]
From multi-disciplinary to transdisciplinary design research
Exploring the transdisciplinary nature of knowledge let me conclude that insights gathered via various design research methodologies can be said to exhibit, for the most part, transdisciplinarity. The figure shared above from the work of Rassmussen and her colleagues (2010) helps clarify why. By visualizing epistemic integration correlated to the varying degrees of complexity and […]
Goal Directed Research for Innovation Planning in Emerging Markets
What differentiates the research conducted to inform the design of an innovative product or service, in an untapped market? Michael Kimani asked me this question during a recent Skype conversation and I promised to write out the answer. Goal directed research for innovation planning seeks to discover opportunities for new products and services for a […]
Design research as a method for discovering & understanding the world around us
Variously known as User Centered Design (UCD) or Human Centered Design (HCD), the fundamental philosophy underlying the designer’s approach to problem solving is that of discovery – “figuring out how to make something that will work in this context”. Innovation, invention and novelty rarely have pre-scripted processes due to the as yet unknown, and often, […]
Understanding at the bottom of the design pyramid
source Before we can give form – and it does not have to be a tangible product but could even be a service, a business model or a strategy – to what we wish to do, its not enough to step back to just the function level, one must step even further back to envision […]
User driven innovation planning and strategy in development
It was with feeling of satisfaction that I read Eric Smallberg’s recent post titled “Thankfully, ICT4D is Now About Strategy and Implementations, Not Technovelty” where brings up the lessons from failure and the shift in emphasis of technology based development projects and social enterprises. He says: Richard Heeks wrote about the early history of these […]
