Quite amazing “design thinking” from 1925 by the legendary Henry Dreyfuss, who was just 21 years old at the time. An aspiring Broadway theater designer, he was sent to Sioux City, Iowa, to improve a struggling theater that was losing audiences to its competitors.
It was 1925 and Henry Dreyfuss, wearing his trademark brown suit, stood vigil in front of the sparkling new RKO theater. He was there to solve a problem that had bedeviled the theater’s owners back in New York: They’d invested a tidy sum in this new showplace and no one was coming in. The location was good. This was a prosperous stretch of downtown Sioux City,” Iowa, and the RKO theater hosted popular traveling vaudeville shows and newer, better movies. Yet the happy families and farmers mostly scuttled past the theater’s twinkling new marquee and the plush red carpet blanketing the sidewalk on their way to the shabby competitor down the street. Dreyfuss was standing around so that he could just watch them, and see if he might understand them.
In an era before marketing consultants or business strategists, Dreyfuss had gotten the job simply because he seemed to know something about theater design. He was, at the time, just twenty-one, but already known as a wunderkind designer of Broadway shows. His success had allowed him to start styling himself more as an engineer of consumer demand. When Dreyfuss first arrived at the theater in Sioux City, he lowered prices, ran triple features, and gave away free food—still, none of it worked. After spending three days just observing, he ventured into the theater lobby to eavesdrop on what customers there were saying. Then he overhead someone say how afraid they were of messing up such rich carpet with their muddy shoes. Dreyfuss looked back at the slick tongue of carpet lolling in the theater’s glossy maw and saw how intimidating it must have been to the “farmers and workmen.” The problem he’d been sent to fix—a theater design that wasn’t drawing crowds—ended up not being the problem at all. It wasn’t that the theater wasn’t nice enough. It was rather that, having been conceived on some drawing board in New York City, the theater was too nice for the practical and unassuming Iowans.
(from “User Friendly” by Kliff Kuang)
Just a few years later, in 1929, Dreyfuss founded his design firm, Henry Dreyfuss Associates (HDA), in New York. He went on to create iconic designs such as the Western Electric 302 telephone (now featured in museums like MoMA), the Honeywell T86 round thermostat—affectionately called "The Round" for its elegant simplicity—and the streamlined 20th Century Limited train, a symbol of Art Deco sophistication. Dreyfuss’s work redefined industrial design through his focus on functionality and user-centered innovation.
It was 1925 and Henry Dreyfuss, wearing his trademark brown suit, stood vigil in front of the sparkling new RKO theater. He was there to solve a problem that had bedeviled the theater’s owners back in New York: They’d invested a tidy sum in this new showplace and no one was coming in. The location was good. This was a prosperous stretch of downtown Sioux City,” Iowa, and the RKO theater hosted popular traveling vaudeville shows and newer, better movies. Yet the happy families and farmers mostly scuttled past the theater’s twinkling new marquee and the plush red carpet blanketing the sidewalk on their way to the shabby competitor down the street. Dreyfuss was standing around so that he could just watch them, and see if he might understand them.
In an era before marketing consultants or business strategists, Dreyfuss had gotten the job simply because he seemed to know something about theater design. He was, at the time, just twenty-one, but already known as a wunderkind designer of Broadway shows. His success had allowed him to start styling himself more as an engineer of consumer demand. When Dreyfuss first arrived at the theater in Sioux City, he lowered prices, ran triple features, and gave away free food—still, none of it worked. After spending three days just observing, he ventured into the theater lobby to eavesdrop on what customers there were saying. Then he overhead someone say how afraid they were of messing up such rich carpet with their muddy shoes. Dreyfuss looked back at the slick tongue of carpet lolling in the theater’s glossy maw and saw how intimidating it must have been to the “farmers and workmen.” The problem he’d been sent to fix—a theater design that wasn’t drawing crowds—ended up not being the problem at all. It wasn’t that the theater wasn’t nice enough. It was rather that, having been conceived on some drawing board in New York City, the theater was too nice for the practical and unassuming Iowans.
(from “User Friendly” by Kliff Kuang)
Just a few years later, in 1929, Dreyfuss founded his design firm, Henry Dreyfuss Associates (HDA), in New York. He went on to create iconic designs such as the Western Electric 302 telephone (now featured in museums like MoMA), the Honeywell T86 round thermostat—affectionately called "The Round" for its elegant simplicity—and the streamlined 20th Century Limited train, a symbol of Art Deco sophistication. Dreyfuss’s work redefined industrial design through his focus on functionality and user-centered innovation.