Earlier this morning, I was among the 10,000+ attendees at the Autodesk University event in Las Vegas and took in the keynote address that included Carl Bass, Autodesk’s CEO, Jeff Kowalski, Autodesk’s CTO and Tom Kelley, the general manager of IDEO, one the world’s premier product design firms.

A couple of key take-aways emerged.

1.  From What if to What else?

The Autodesk executives showcased several amazing examples of innovation, from buildings to bridges to surf boards to cities (yes, complete 3-D models of cities)  – many of which were designed by Autodesk customers in the room.  They shared their vision for how software (like theirs and others) with enormous computing power will enable us to shift from asking “What if” questions to asking “What else” questions.

Before, an architect, designer or engineer might ask, “What if we change the shape?”, “What if we change the material?”, “What if we change the user interface this way?”  With today’s tools, we have to imagine all the different What if scenarios ourselves.  The human mind can only process 7 bits of information at a time, and software today is still a relatively passive experience, reacting to the inputs and commands we give it.  Regardless of how smart we are (or think we are), the software tools we use to build things, should and will soon become much more proactive.  The apps will assess all the possible variables and combinations for us (including ones we probably wouldn’t have thought of) and offer us back options to choose from that provide the best design, the best experience.

An example was given with Boeing, where they were already able to do in 6 days what used to take 8 years, and analyzing exponentially more options and identifying the safest, most reliable solution to their engineering challenge.   Essentially, the true power of software will be that it will enable people to digitally conceive, design, and experience things before they are real – which has enormous benefits in terms of speed, costs and quality.

2. Innovation & Design – At Work Together.

Tom Kelley of IDEO in his presentation made the point that innovation and design aren’t mutually exclusive disciplines, that they’ve blended together – whether you’re developing a new eco-friendly building, a new bike, an entire city or a new software application – design isn’t superficial as some might think – if you want to innovate you have to design.   And, design is as much about identifying the right problem as it is engineering the right solution.

Tom touched on his 2 favorite personas from his latest book, “The 10 Faces of Innovation” – the Anthropologist and the Experience Architect.

He joked about how there is general skepticism around the anthropology work that is needed in the innovation process, of how clients often ask, “Can we just skip that and just do the real design and engineering work?”  He had a nice way of summarizing the value of each role.

The Anthropologist is great at observing customers and “finding the opportunities that are hidden in plain sight.” What he called “Vuja de” or the opposite of Déjà vu – meaning looking at something and seeing it differently with new eyes.  He gave the simple example of how IDEO designed a new kid’s toothbrush for Oral B.  The pre-existing assumption was that we all know how to brush our teeth.  We’ve been doing it for centuries, so it would seem logical that kids are just smaller versions of adults, so just take an adult toothbrush and design a smaller and skinner version of it, right?  Wrong.  The anthropologists at IDEO observed that when kids brush their teeth, they can’t hold the brush with their finger tips the same way adults do; they hold it in their fist.  So, the smarter, better design is to actually make the handle bigger and softer so the kids could easily hold it while brushing.  Simple, but brilliant, and in plain sight.

These kinds of opportunities exist all over in our field of work in software application design – we just have to be open to looking for them.

The value of the 2^nd key persona, the Experience Architect, is that they think beyond the product or service or user interface and focus on the customer journey from start to finish.  Paired together, these 2 personas are critical to the process of building great products, services and experiences.

3.  Software Design – We must aspire to the Wet-nap user interface.

Even though Autodesk’s tools primarily apply to the design of physical products, these same principles apply to our world of software design and development.  We should challenge ourselves to put our anthropologists and experience architect hats on everyday and look at our work with new eyes.  Too often as developers, work can be very specification-driven.  The logical answer to the problem is believed to be understood and thus documented in a static requirements specification doc, and now go engineer it.  But, innovation doesn’t happen that way.  Continue to ask ourselves, “What else is possible?”

As Tom Kelley put it, we should aspire to the “Wet-nap user interface” even when developing complex, sophisticated products.  The directions on the back of a wet-nap are so simple, they read, “Open and use.”  When we can build software that is that simple for our users, that’s when we know we’ve nailed it.

For more photos on Facebook: John’s Autodesk University album