[IxDA Discuss] about this list (not in FAQ)

[John Grøtting]

I'll toss out another set of theories here.

Having lived in the US and now in Germany, I have noticed some  
differences. Firstly, in the US there is greater emphasis on issues  
of marketing and design (the human side of products) than in Germany,  
where there is greater emphasis on engineering (technical  
excellence). A great example of this is Adidas. Although they created  
the market for sports shoes, they became a small player beside  
newcomer Nike. Nike was all about marketing. For years, Adidas  
believed that because their products were technically the best for  
sports, they should maintain business as usual. Eventually, they  
realized that they needed to add emotion to their products, while  
maintaining their technical superiority.

In general, I find less acknowledgement of design (aesthetic and  
experiential) as a key success factor for business in Germany.

Additionally, having grown up in the Bay Area (Silicon Valley), I  
have seen the high level of innovation that is concentrated in a very  
small area. This entrepreneurial attitude has taken many good ideas  
and made them even better. It has also helped the US build other  
centers of excellence around software. Only in the culture of Silicon  
Valley was Apple's operating system possible at the time that it came  
into being. On one side, you have a very "new age" culture of the  
50's and 60's in California that was trying to better understand the  
human spirit. On the other side, you have a technology hot spot.  
Where else could you see the early pioneers of computing technology  
hanging out at Grateful Dead concerts? These two concepts merged and  
became the cradle where human factors, information architecture,  
experience design, etc. all matured rapidly.

There are other countries, where there has been great appreciation of  
the psychology and the spirit of man. The overall attitude of each  
culture towards these topics has influenced their approach to these  
professions. In Germany, there has always been an interest to  
quantify the human pschy and therefore IxD is more geared towards an  
engineering approach. Sweden, on the other hand, has always had a  
greater connection to nature and the spiritual side of man and  
therefore has been strong in combining the scientific with the more  
aesthetic dimensions of our field.

John Grøtting

Grøtting + Sauter
Barnerstr. 14B
22765 Hamburg
Germany

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