David J Gilmore

Helping to improve user experiences through design

I have been working on innovation, product design, user experience, human factors and human-computer interaction for over 40 years..

In the mid-1990’s I led a team that demonstrated the need for something richer than usability … and we were working with Don Norman at Apple on this and related ideas and it was around this time that Don coined the term ‘User Experience’.

At IDEO I was part of the Human Factors leadership that revealed how contextual, empathic research could identify users’ implicit and latent needs in ways that designers could act upon.

Since IDEO I have worked at Intel, Logitech, GE Research and Elekta, leading developments in user experience across hardware and software, in consumer products and in complex industrial domains (for example, gas-fired power stations and radiation therapy). 

It is a lot more than User Interfaces

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Solving Real Problems

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Prototypes for early concept exploration

Are you building prototypes early enough? Do you assume that engineers should build your prototypes? Do you know how to build prototypes that help you explore your concepts before you commit to engineering development?

Authentic Conversations

Are you hearing authentic responses? Or are you hearing what your customers and users want you to hear, or what they think you want to hear?

Strategic UX or UX Strategy

Are you using your UX capability strategically? Or are they delivering great UI in places where it might or might not matter?

Some previous work

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Always Open to New Methods

A pack of IDEO Method Cards deliberately contained 51 cards because there should always be room for one more. And you can use the cards for much more than just choosing your research methods.
A pack of IDEO Method Cards deliberately contained 51 cards because there should always be room for one more. And you can use the cards for much more than just choosing your research methods.

Apps for physical products

Speakers are physical and minimally interactive – how might an app enable one to add features and interactions without cluttering up the physical design?
Speakers are physical and minimally interactive – how might an app enable one to add features and interactions without cluttering up the physical design?

The internet at home

In the 2000’s it was still very unclear what the role of the internet was at home, or how it would be accessed.
In the 2000’s it was still very unclear what the role of the internet was at home, or how it would be accessed.

Some publications

Read more of my past work and thinking

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Making Things Better

Human Factors and User Experience design have developed relatively independently and from different traditions and yet they both share the all important goal of making better things for people to use. This paper explores how we might bring them closer together and recognise the overlaps – especially in the context of safety-critical systems.

Assessing the design of a new HMI

As industrial plants (e.g. gas-fired power stations) become more and more digital the human-machine interface (HMI) is in danger of being left behind. These studies evaluate modern digital designs for power plant HMI.

Decision-making in a design process

Based on the story of the development of the Unity MRLinac, this paper focuses on the use of human factors methods to improve the decision-making during the design process.