Designer Immersion: The Advantages of Designer as User

Industrial design methodology has always dictated that industrial designer's "get to know" or "understand" their users. The premise is that the better the industrial designer understands the user's wants, needs, desires, and behaviors, the better the product design will reflect these attributes and meet (or exceed) the user's expectations.

This statement is of course true, but traditional methods of "getting to know" and "understanding" the user can be limiting, and may result in incomplete or slanted user information. Examples of these methods include user observation, user testing, user scenario analysis (including knowledge of where, when, and how the product will be used).

What is limiting or missing from these traditional methods? It is the desirable ability to "get inside the head" of the user. Traditional methods work primarily from the "outside" or by means of observation. While the results of observation are vital, they are only part of the picture. But how can industrial designer's truly "get inside the head" of the user?

The only way for a designer to "get inside the head" of a user, is to become a user. Only by thinking and acting as users themselves, can designers complete their understanding of the user's wants, needs, desires, and behaviors.

I've coined the phrase "Designer Immersion" to describe this process. Designer Immersion implies that the designer completely immerses themselves into the role of the user. Designer and user essentially become one.

What are the advantages of using Designer Immersion compared with the use of traditional user observational methods alone?

First, industrial designers can verify (or refute) from first hand experience, any or all of the user observational information gathered. Designer Immersion is therefore a key verification tool.

Second, through first hand experience, designers can make subtle observations in: product behavior, environmental conditions, user tasking, or product fit that can drive design, and would otherwise be missed.

Third, Designer Immersion can help designers develop a higher level of user "empathy" that can heighten their concern for the well being and success of the end user. By experiencing product use, as well as product risk and consequence of misuse first hand, designers are in a unique position to support design concerns that include appearance, comfort, fit, tasking, and safety.

And when you really think about it, as a customer would you want to use a product that was not designed by a user of that product? Would you want to dive with dive equipment not designed by a diver? Would you wear a respiratory mask that was not designed by a mask user? Would you want to use a medical device not designed by someone intimately involved in the first hand use of that device?

As users and customers have come to expect this relationship between their products and the designers of their products, Designer Immersion can effectively be described as an essential and necessary user requirement.