Engineering and What People Love About Showering

Genevieve Bell is an anthropologist with Intel (She holds a PhD in cultural anthropology and is one of the authors of Divining a Digital Future: Mess and Mythology in Ubiquitous Computing).  She had the following comments in the May 28-June 3, 2011 issue of the magazine New Scientist:

"Engineering tends to start with what is technologically possible.  Part of my job is about how you talk about experiences as a starting point instead.  Taking a shower, for example: you don't need to know how plumbing works, but what people love about showering.  This approach creates very different solutions.

To design for real people, you've got to think of messy apartments where everything is plugged into the same electrical outlet.  As an engineer you tend to imagine you're designing into a blank space.  It's a different problem to think about how to create a technology so compelling that a person is willing to give something up, to unplug it to plug your thing it."

Companies are full of great problem-solvers.  But you have to know what problem to solve.  Rare is the person that is extremely good at reframing the problem in a new way - - informed by their insights from the field - - so that the right solution can spark a breakthrough.  The rare engineer, willing to set aside what they "know," looking past tradition and even their own preconceived notions.  They have the wisdom to observe with a truly open mind.  They don't judge, they observe - - because creativity has much to do with experience, observation, and imagination.  Picking up on the smallest nuances of your customers or clients can offer tremendous opportunities.

The bottom line - - the key to coming up with game-changing innovations lies not in finding novel solutions to known questions but, rather in posing novel questions.  This requires removing barriers and approaching the world with an anti-disciplinary ethos.