David Kelley suggests that design focuses on products as it always has been, and that the consumer, still focuses on the products and how hi-tech or flashy they are. But Kelley also suggests that over the past 18 years that people are more focused on human centred design. He says that human centred design is "designing behaviours and personalities into products" to make our jobs and lives more enjoyable.
This change in focus can really be noticed in the design process, as designers are now not only producing static images and models to depict products they are designing them and getting the product in motion, to allow people to understand and emote more to the product and allowing them to have an experience of it. Kelley compares this to how "architects show people in their houses, as opposed to them (the house) being empty.
An example of human centred design that Kelley showed in his talk was one of his projects for Prada, they had to construct a new personality for the new Prada New York store, providing it with a new cultural and retail role in the consumer lifestyle. This meant that they had a task of designing new and customised technology for the store rather than using any old scanners or fitting rooms that were already available to the market. The new technology that the store has, lets the consumer become more involved in the process of shopping. So shopping a Prada no longer means just pulling an item off the rack, trying it on and then buying it. The consumer now can choose and item and watch it being modelled on the catwalk through the store monitors, and when they go to change into their clothes the fitting room recognises what clothes are in the room and can show their selection on more touch screen displays and with new liquid crystal display technology changing into clothes means you don't have to go in an out of a change room just with a flick of a switch be able to change in privacy or show your new items off. This means that through these aspects, they have designed an experience for the consumer making it customised and personalised.
Another example that illustrated this process more definitively was the video showing Scott Adams "Dilbert", an illustrated person, and designing a new office cubicle for him, most people thought that the office cubicle was too "cold" and make the person sitting in the cubicle feel very unwelcome, when the redesigned the cubicle they made it so the cubicle was more welcoming and comforting to be in, creating a more personalised and fun experience to be inside the cubicle. This relates to how people want designs to be more inviting and more user related, almost saying that designs not only need to be functional and aesthetically pleasing they need to draw the user in and provide an enjoyable and made to fit experience.
David Kelley's talk about Human Centred Design, gave a lot of insight into how designs need to be relatable to the users and how people need to understand that as people progress, design is progressing to fit people rather than vice versa. This is very relatable to designs and products in our current society, and even off the top of my head I can think of a few products that are now consumer related. We can see how much this has and is affecting designs every day.
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