Fortune
ASSIGNMENT
Update Jay Doblin’s 1959 design research to reflect changes within contemporary practice. Determine a contemporary list of the 100 best designs.
Role + Responsibilities
PROJECT LEAD, PROJECT MANAGER, + DESIGN RESEARCHER
Primary + secondary research
Survey design + administration
Cull lists of design and business leaders
Data preparation + cleaning
Qualitative + quantitative data analysis
Comparative analysis of data sets
Research analysis + synthesis
Presentation deck + executive summary
Stakeholder + project management
Team
SUPERVISOR
Denis Weil
EDITOR
Daniel Bentley
STUDENT RESEARCHERS
Harini Balu, Ellesia Albert, Jessica Jacobs
FACULTY RESEARCHERS
Martin Thaler, Mark Jones
ILLUSTRATIONS BY MARTIN LAKSMAN.
“I think that this list points toward a potential future, but it still shows where we’re coming from as a discipline.”
TODD COOKE
PHOTOGRAPHY BY DAN SAELINGER. STYLING BY BIRTE VON KAMPEN.
“Process must become more important than product. In the future, pride of ownership […] will give way to human values—education, intelligence, contributions to society, creativity.”
JAY DOBLIN
1959 Article
The original research was undertaken by Jay Doblin, the Director at IIT Institute of Design. The landmark survey was the first of its kind, and took stock of the achievements in the burgeoning field of industrial design. The research findings were published on pages 135-141 of the April 1959 issue of Fortune magazine alongside a brief explanation of Doblin’s methodology, which formed the basis of our effort to update the list.
1970 Book
"One Hundred Great Product Designs" was published almost a decade later, in 1970, as a complement to the original 1959 survey. The book contains a slightly modified list, and each product is as accompanied by a written explanations of the design’s significance. The book also includes an introductory essay, in which Doblin expounds on his thoughts.
Phase I: Research
The first stage consisted of culling lists of potential participants. Attempting to update Doblin’s study, we followed his methodology whenever possible, but doubled our sample size to a curated list of just over 200 individuals, and broadened the target populations to include design practitioners, teachers, and influencers.
As a supplement to the rank-based polling Doblin relied on, we required reasons for each entry. The previous study left readers to speculate on the parameters by which any given design was selected.
Phase II: Analysis
We received 303 unique nominations and convergence around 25 designs, which became the “top 25 designs of modern times.” (Doblin failed to achieve his goal of total convergence in the original study as well).
For designs around which there was convergence, we determined their rank based on quantity of submissions. In cases of a rank-based tie, rankings were determined by an analysis of the distribution spread.
Within the three populations, we ranked designers first, influencers second, and educators third. If designers, educators, and influencers all independently nominated a design, that constituted consensus thereby elevating a design’s rank.
Phase III: Meta-Analysis
For single-submissions, rather than ask participants to rerank the full list of products, as Doblin did, we determined a set of criteria using a linguistic meta-analysis of participants’ rationale for submissions using a Python-based search algorithm designed specifically for this study. The results of the meta-analysis were then peer-reviewed by four other design researchers, who determined the final criteria:
Adaptable
Equitable
Usable
Impactful
Transformational
Phase IV: Ranking
A blind study was then designed and administered to six design researchers who were asked to rank each product against the five aforementioned attributes using a Likert scale.
The submissions with the highest weighted scores were included in the final list.
