The danger is that when the emotion and personality gets removed from the design process and it is driven by market research and data, then the final product may be on the button but super-dull.

Re muses: since the late 1990s, the company I work for as ed-in-chief (WGSN) has dominated the (primarily fashion) trends research industry by pushing none of our individuals as muses or gurus but believing that the sheer volume, depth and speed of online research blows that away.

There is an internal debate as to whether we should create a “muse” of our own or keep to Economist-style relative anonymity. Li Edelkoort is usually cited as the classic example of a muse, but I do feel the game has moved on a bit. From a marketing perspective, though, it may make sense to create our own Li.

Brilliant blog, by the way, Grant – I only just discovered it.

You mention Faith Popcorn. I think many of the top fashion houses use Li Edelkoort’s Trend Union. Li used to be one of the most influencial people in the fashion world. She predict colors and trends- most of the top houses use or used to use her.

Trend Union’s work can be seen in magazines like View on Color and in the trends presentations they give several times a year.

There are others like her that do the same kind of thing. They combine intuition, creativity with knowledge about what’s happening in culture and society. They are the “researchers” of the fashion world.

Fashion is clearly also a network good — almost no one want to wear clothes which other people disparage, so my utility from a particular fashion depends partly on your utility from the same fashion — and so we all wait to see how others are choosing before we make our own choice. After two decades working as a marketing consultant, I came to the conclusion that ALL products and services have a network-good component: even so-called commodities such as coal are subject to peer-constrained purchase trends.

As a consequence, new products may suffer a stalemate period, with everyone waiting to see how everyone else in their peer group will decide. When you take this perspective on new products, it is clear that one crucial function of advertising is to help break the stalemate, by informing potential buyers what their peers (actual or aspired peers) think of the product.

Customers representative of the target market could be engaged for interviews, given time&space to wander and rant, even ethnographically shadowed for days at a time. Is this happening?

The musing of the designer-”muse,” as I see it, is relevant primarily as it meshes with the musings and actions of the target market. Not independently important, except as a study of creativity, etc.

Sounds to me like an instance of tacit knowledge combined with innate skill. Designers know *what* they do, but cannot articulate *how* they know to do it. I think Michael Polanyi applies here (which would still be interesting research, just not as marketing-valuable as the research you suggest!).