I'm not sure this is true: "innovation, development, and evaluation of design ideas cannot be based only on the designer's intuitions but must be grounded in users' actual needs and behaviors. We need to apply social and psychological sciences to understand how technology could qualify a positive change for the users." The reason why I express doubt is that the 'need' for an innovation often becomes knowable only after the innovation has been introduced. Moreover, it seems to me that 'need' is a very fluid concept, susceptable as much to media and marketing as to any basis in day-to-day life. And when the variables we are measuring for can be created and manipulated by the experimenters, the reliability of such empirical research can be questioned. Anyhow, this paper argues for the contrary position and is one of a half dozen in the newly launched open access journal, Human Technology. PDF.
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