Vision in Design: A Guidebook for Innovators

by Paul Hekkert, Matthijs van Dijk

The first book about how to formulate a vision for new and appropriate products.

Genres: Design

376 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2010

Reviews

[Laurian · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have a real problem with this book. The basic premise of the book is that design lacks soul because designers do not follow their intuition. Design isn't about intuition and doesn't doesn't lack soul. Design lacks good research, participatory design, and iterative designs. It isn't something that comes from the magical designer. I have a real problem with that premise, which almost the whole model is based off of. Since the book is about the model, the basis of the book is problematic.

Added to that is the problem with how the book is structured. I don't know who thought that narrative conversation was a way to convince people that your method is valuable, but I wasn't convinced. In fact, most of the time I was just confused. For a design book to be so poorly designed, it was a good sign that the model was also going to be problematic.

[Gaurav Mathur · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very rich in insights. Offers a completely different approach to design (versus Lean, UCD, etc.). Focuses very much on abstract, almost philosophical thinking. This is a very new experience for me in the area of product design, though I can relate it to brand and communication design. Because branding is also design-driven and relies on having a very deep understanding of context.

It is convincing that this approach would lead to original, 'aha' solutions - something designers crave. The example of 'Kiosk' store is very relatable as they can be seen on every train station in the Netherlands. The approach relies on a lot of work done on aesthetics and linguistics.

The approach seems a bit weak on idea-generation as well as user testing, but it might be intentional. The authors claim that the vision is the most important piece of the puzzle, and once that is right, other things fall into place.

I recommend this book for all professional designers as well as anyone who likes to create new things. However, I have not yet created something using this method, and plan to update this review once it is done.