Week 1 Reflection

The concept of IDEO is absolutely ingenious and advanced. Analyzing from multiple fields such as the real markets,technology and constraints; observing how people behave under real world scenarios; visualizing new ideas and expanding target groups; evaluating prototypes and eventually implementing the new concept for commercialization makes Its process of innovation realistic and scientifically based. I believe a main factor of its success is that IDEO genuinely uses the internet as a platform to solve problems. As a matter of fact, the existence of the internet indefinitely shortens the distance between you and I as well as the thoughts of ours. IDEO cleverly captures the advantage of the internet and utilizes it for its clients. So now the problems from its clients not only get the replies and advice from the staff of IDEO but those around the whole planet.

I think a main change that took place on OpenIDEO is that it ensured that the online community was able to experience different design phases that were inherent to IDEO’s innovation process. This is something that IDEO did not possess. Another change was that OpenIDEO was designed to cater to more types of users: creators; critics and lurkers. I believe these changes are really essential to the success of OpenIDEO because it not only inherits the pros from IDEO but also developed and brought it to a higher level. Just as what Haiyan Zhang, an Interaction Designer at IDEO, commented: “in any ecosystem, you have a tier of the community that actually contributes new content, a second tier of people that just react to and comment on that content, and an even bigger tier at the bottom that aren’t contributing but just watching. You need to make sure all of these users are catered to.” From my point of view, the platform plays a role as an ecosystem, and the users are the creatures living in it. OpenIDEO provides an ecosystem online for different types of users to mutually coexist in it, people get to be the users they feel comfortable with. which also matches the fundamental purpose of IDEO, the human centered design.