Technology First, Needs Last:
The Research-Product Gulf
Donald A. Norman

Nielsen Norman Group, Northwestern University, KAIST Industrial Design | [e-mail]
[ 1] Nye, D. E.
Technology Matters:
Questions to Live With.
Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, 2006.

March + April 2010

interactions

“Necessity is often not the mother of invention. In many cases, it surely has been just the opposite. When humans possess a tool, they excel at finding new uses for it. The tool often exists before the problem to be solved” [ 1].

I’ve come to a disconcerting conclusion: Design research is great when it comes to improving existing product categories, but essentially useless when it comes to breakthroughs. I reached this conclusion through examining a range of product innovations, most especially looking at those major conceptual breakthroughs that have had a huge impact upon society as well as the more common, mundane, small, continual improvements. Call one a conceptual breakthrough, the other incremental. Although we would prefer to believe conceptual breakthroughs occur because of a detailed consideration of human needs, especially fundamental but unspoken hidden needs so beloved by the design research community, the fact is it simply doesn’t happen.

New conceptual break-
throughs are invariably driven
by the development of new tech-
nologies. The new technologies,
in turn, inspire technologists to
invent things. Why the inven-
tion? Sometimes because the
inventors themselves dream
of having the capabilities, but
many times simply because they
can build them. In other words,
grand conceptual inventions
happen because technology has
finally made them possible. Do
people need them? That ques-
tion is answered over the next
several decades as technology
moves from technical demon-
stration, to product, to failure,
or perhaps to slow acceptance
in the commercial world where
slowly, after considerable time,
the products and applications
jointly evolve, and slowly the
need develops.