My point of view on Don Norman's artcile on D. Research

I love Don's work on human desire psychology, but i also do think that Design Research was taken too narrow on his polemic declaration.
If by one side you can set yourself some limits by analyzing too much insight data ,by the other hand to do not deep dive on desires in a commoditized world is a high risk of failure and irrelevance.
All the inventions that were shown in Don's article are great "time-changing" inventions, but they are all technology driven innovations, led by people considered "genius" by the society.
Let's take also in consideration not tangible innovations like in services that provide a great experience, where to do not deep dive on branding, competition and desires makes it impossible to get it right. And even those great services that we know didn't directly name it Design Research (Disney in it's beginning for example), have stories that tell us that a human-centered-discovery approach was taken, as that of Walt Disney's giving gum's on the entrance and shadowing people to count steps before they throwed the gum paper on the ground, this resulted on a trash can each 30 step.
Let's also not leave aside social innovations, where if you do not understand deeply the needs, desires, roots, culture, enviroment and other key elements you will design something worse than irrelevant, it will be something that those people in need can not embrace due to deep rooted limitations that can not be easly overcome.
That way i do agree that only user centered will not do everything, and that it needs to be holistic enough to give you a full perspective. And i also agree and believe, that Design Research is the future pre-req for innovation (meaning not only high tech high amounts of R&D money innovation) in a world where people has access to almost everything, and everything is 10 seconds away of becoming a commodity. And where money is not so disposable anymore as it was before.
Innovation in my opinion it is not a "genius" skill, it comes indeed by trully connect with the entire context you are designing for . In that way, with properly techniques and practice i believe everyone can innovate in a field, a service or a product.

Here is the post on Frog's website where this response is posted: http://designmind.frogdesign.com/blog/what-good-is-design-research.html#new