To the extent that the end-user PC market is becoming saturated and people are less willing to pay for additional clock-speed increments, then Intel indeed will have to find new sources of value to keep its fabs running producing new chips. I do not believe, however, that this is the right moment for Intel to make a huge investment in cross-training its design engineers in the details of consumers’ lives. The reason is that Intel’s infrastructure requires that they produce chips with a very large market, which of necessity must contain a wide variety of specific end-user situations. There is no way for them to master the scores or hundreds or thousands of niches that would be needed to add up to their current sales level, much less to produce specialized versions of their chips for even a coarse grouping of these niches.

Intel makes general-purpose chips intended to be used in a wide variety of circumstances because its capital stock and management systems are optimized for that sort of mass-market strategy. They need to look for new generally desirable features for their microprocessors (hence the Centrino campaign) and pray for new applications that can be enabled by greater clock speed (perhaps non-annoying voice recognition for the PC). This search does not preclude innovative thinking about user needs, but such thinking is likely to be in the mode of looking for big things that can be used for many different purposes rather than finely-tuned offerings for specific consumer needs.

Companies that lose touch of their customers stumble. And conversely, if you look at the success of WalMart a lot can be attributed to the fact that they are closer to the customer than their suppliers. They are eating these

Tom, Thank you and very well said. The similarities are more interesting and useful than the differences. Hey, when are we going to have that coffee? Best, Grant

The issue of “flavors of creativity” is a pivotal one today. We’ve been enraptured by “types,” “brain dominance,” and categories of all kinds; all facile ways of making sense of human complexity. My psychologist colleagues and I are accountable for this disgrace. I call it a disgrace because it divides people into simplistically conceived groups that provide license to stereotype, overlook and manipulate.

More difficult is seeing beyond superficial (or even deeply structural) differences to more fundamental similarities. In my work with designers, I’m constantly pushing us to recognize the similarities that lie beyond differences.

The “cultural guru” who urged the engineers to become more “empathic, intuitive, and feminine” would have had as much success as trying to turn bluebirds into redbirds. Not gonna happen. Nor should it. Both can fly, nest and sing just fine.

Nice post.

Home to some major brainies like Ken Anderson, Tony Salvador, Genevieve Bell, Eric Dishman and others.

Tony gave a presentation at the recent About, With, and For conference (http://www.aboutwithandfor.com) that described, among other things, how the work his group does gets transferred to other parts of the organization.
http://www.id.iit.edu/events/awf/fullschedule.html#pres01 for the abstract and http://www.id.iit.edu/events/awf/speakers/t_salvador.ppt for the slides.

Of course, Grant, your point is about the overall product development effort at Intel and I don’t think these folks would disagree with you at all (Tony showed me the usability labs sitting unused, abandoned from a previous effort to be a consumer products company with amazing products like the Play line – including a really really easy video camera for kids), but at least let’s acknowledge that Intel does some top work in understanding the consumer.

I find the strategy interesting, in fact. The group doesn’t work for product teams, they are fairly self-directed and then disperse their information to the audiences that they create internally.

I believe they get enormous PR value out of this work, like any great R&D effort, if you can show you are doing really far-reaching, far-seeing stuff, people have GOTTA believe it plays back into the regular stuff you do, right?

Again, it’s tangential to your point, but probably worth fleshing out the story to acknowledge that particular group of folks.