Industrial Design: Claims & Substance

Bruce Nussbaum, of Business Week finally discovered my essay "Industrial Design: Claims without Substance,"  and discussed it in his blog on BusinessWeek.com, charmingly entitled "Don Norman is my hero."

I had complained that Industrial Designers, clever folks that they are, often designed wonderful things, but then they made completely unsubstantiated claims about them. I took Bruce to task, for he has been the major champion design at Business Week, and it is he who is responsible for the annual IDSA/Business Week awards for design, usually the cover story of the magazine. Bruce's response was amazingly supportive.

And then Chris Conley of both The Institute of Design and GravityTank wrote, asking me to be on the 2006 jury. Here is what he said: "I am the chair of the 2006 IDEA/Businessweek awards and would like to invite you to join me and a range of design and business leaders on the jury. I saw Bruce's post on his blog and couldn't help but chuckle!

"As you probably know the process is imperfect and last year's jury (of which I was a part) made strong recommendations to evaluate the actual products, not just pretty pictures. Alas, the logistics won't be in place until next year. But I feel that this year's jury must be strong advocates for change and improvement in this competition if it is going to build strong credibility and have its unfair share of influence!"

So, let's see what happens. As Chris says, not in 2006, but in 2007.