Product Development Process: Observation

David Kelley, IDEO

Kelley talks about how the observation phase is the most overlooked part of the development process. Kelley hires social scientists to watch people complete tasks instead of asking them usability questions. He prefers to see them as customers instead of users and strongly believes that customer satisfaction comes with understanding their values. He gives examples of how his team will observe a customer in their usual environment instead of inviting them into a sterile lab for product testing. The case studies he presents include a television remote control.