One of the buzz-words in innovation these years is User Driven Innovation. In plain words user driven innovation is about developing things, that people need and like – and of course buy. The basic idea is to involve users in the innovations proces or observe them as preparation in order to get a deep and detailed understanding of the people, that we actually innovate for.

On Monday the 18th February we will take a closer look at different methods used in user driven innovation.

If you want to go a bit deeper in some of the methods, there is a brief description of 13 methods on Usability.gov. The descriptions is focused on testing web usability, but most of the methods can be applied in a lot of other contexts.

If you want to go really deep – more than necessary – you might want to read “Observing the user experience” by Mike Kuniavsky.

By the way, LEGO Mindstorms User Panel is a famous example of user involvement in the innovation proces.