Image Source: Michael Roller.

Michael Roller has written a great post describing the 4 key members of a design team and the different roles they play. They are a little complicated at first glance, so I have taken the liberty to add to this discussion by translating these roles into the more common design titles we are familiar with (in brackets are my contributions):

1) The Evangelist: “A design team without a visionary leader is like a church without a preacher. The Evangelist focuses on design at the highest level, developing strategies and processes that push the limits of design and business as a whole.”
(Design Director or Design Manager)

2) The Conductor: “The Conductor’s analytical mind helps her to ensure that no detail goes unconsidered. Like directing an orchestra, she brings together all the little details into harmony, making sure everything has been figured out and nothing taken for granted.”
(Creative Director or Lead Designer)

3) The Dreamer: “A great design team deploys Dreamers to brainstorms where blue sky thinking is necessary, and keeps them involved when the end product must push category boundaries or create brand new ones.”
(Conceptual Designers, Content Creation or Form Monsters)

4) The Surgeon: “A great design team relies on the Surgeon – an analytical thinker who cuts up and dissects design problems to find the best solutions.”
(Realization Designers or Case-Part Designers)

Oh wait, there is one more:

5) The Jack of all Trades: “Every team has designers with diverse skill sets, but the Jack of All Trades might be the most talented person in your office because he can truly do everything.”
(I’m sure we all know this one eh?)

When you get the chance, do check out the full write up on Micheal’s Strategic Aesthetics Blog.

Via: Design Notes

Guy Kawasaki, in his usual 10 point interview format, talks with Hartmut Esslinger founder of frog design and someone BusinessWeek calls “the most influential American industrial designer since the 1930s”.

In the interview, Hartmut shares his thoughts on Steve Jobs’ brain, “Why big companies create crappy products?”, and his Top 10 best and worst products of all time.

It is a great interview and a primer for Hartmut’s new book: A Fine Line: How Design Strategies Are Shaping the Future of Business. (Out in June) I am looking forward to the book and will do a review as soon as I can get my hands on one!

Interestingly in question #9 of the interview, we get to hear, from the “horse’s mouth”, why there was a limited success with the $100 Laptop Project. This pretty much echos my views I have shared in the past.

Do check out the full interview transcript here.

Via: iPlot

Over the weekend we went to a fairly up market restaurant for dinner. It was a nice little quaint setup with enthusiastic waiters and fantastic food. My rack of lamb was particularly delicious.

All in all it was a good meal, good company and a good night. However it will be unlikely that I will comeback to this restaurant again. The reason was that someone decided to leave the doors to the restaurant’s toilet wide open. As a result of this, the moment you walked into the restaurant, it smelled like a well-used public toilet.

You never realized how important something like “a smell” is to a restaurant until it’s gone, and in this case, gone bad. In other words you don’t really know what you are missing until its gone. Identifying such small but important details takes a lot of skill, making designing an experience a difficult task indeed.

From another angle, I can almost say that “good design” is one people don’t have a problem with because it covers every possible problem by the removal of such “pain points”. I always say people should complain about “good design” a lot more!

Unfortunately consumers today are savvy enough to take a lot of this for granted in your products. This makes our task as Industrial Designers a lot more challenging. So now you know the baseline you have to maintain. The real question is how do you design a product that can go beyond this and more?

What a crazy few months I had on both my work and home front! As a result of this I have not had the time to blog, and so I like to apologize for the lack of posts or updates. However I have been keeping track of all your comments so do keep them coming!

Furthermore in the last couple of weeks I had to prepare for and make a business trip to Amsterdam. The jet lag did not help my nights in Amsterdam much, but it did get me to up at 4.30am which resulted in really long days. So now I’m safely home and recuperating.

While the last months have been busy, I have not been idle. My Moleskine has been slowly growing with lots of great ideas for Strategic Industrial Design posts, so now I just need to the time to write it! I believe things might have settled for a bit all around, and I hope to get some posts up soon.

My next subject will be a good one and likely a “Pillar Topic” here on Design Sojourn. Unfortunately I have not decided if it will be in a format of a post (or multiple posts), a PowerPoint, or a downloadable e-book. However I have decided it will be a yearly feature, and will focus analysis of the latest Industrial Design strategies available for Design Managers to use.

So do stay tuned to Design Sojourn as this “Pillar Topic” will be up soon (as long as I don’t get sideline along the way!). Take care friends!

I was very thrilled to be able to visite the Droog store in Amsterdam. Sorry I don’t have any pictures as I was so excited to go in to the store that I forgot! Anyways it is worth a trip there if any of you are next in Amsterdam.

What was also of great interest to me was the store was also a museum! You could view certain classic Droog Design pieces as well as new work. Unless there is a “do not touch” sign you could also interact with the products.

What was also really good, was a visit to the other quaint shops in the area. There was an excellent Typography and Graphic Design book store as well as one that sells really cute stuff toys.

The experience was very enlightening, and unknown to me a thought was brewing at the back of my mind. It only bubbled to the surface when I read Seth Goding’s “Why aren’t you (really) good at graphic design?“. So I like to state that:

In this day and age, not only do we need change, we need to evolve to survive. And if you want to lead in your field, this has to be a basic “hygiene factor”.

I have dealt with the need for designers to evolve into “Hyper-creatives” in the past, but from this experience and a few in the past, I now believe this evolution needs to be applied to all things around us. An evolution with perhaps a focus on the user’s experience with your brand.

For example:

1) You can’t create a boutique product brand on philosophy alone. You need to give people access and a means to experience your philosophy.

2) Book stores can’t just carry books. They need to be well curated and selected, so much so that buying from that store means buying into the curator’s thought leadership.

3) I have mentioned this before but I think its relevant here. With everyone getting access to cheap digital cameras and SLRs, Photographers have to become more than just equipment or focal numbers. They have to push their ability into an art form.

I can keep going and I’m sure you can come up with many examples as well. So I’ll stop here. However before I go, I would like to ask you to take some time from your daily grind to think about the future and how you can evolve your product or your business and even you. If not, in time to come you will lose relevance and go the way of the dinosaurs.

Image by Balakov

This is my second article, that I wrote for Yanko Design (YD). As I know some Design Sojourn readers don’t really frequent YD, I have decided to republish and keep a record of the article here. Enjoy, and I’m looking forward to your comments if you have not left any before!

There is something really nasty about the Design Industry; something many know of but never really spoke of. In our ever-competitive society, we always seem to celebrate the winners, and outcast the losers. We often talk about the one that made it to the top and leave no space for second place.

Just like in our Design world it is all about our award winning designs, the big budget projects, and the ones that the client and consumers love. However we never talk about our setbacks, the projects we hate, the ones that failed the engineering tests, and the ones that got away. We never like to talk about this so-called “Dark Side of Design”.

I like to share with you a number of real life scenarios that shows how the world of design can be a pure hellhole. I like to talk about how money seems to overcome morality and sensibility. Facing the “Dark Side of Design” head on is neither easy or fun.

1. You will have to design something you hate
Designing something you hate is something you never really consider when you get out of school. It just does not register. You love design and you love your work so it is not conceivable that you would have to design something you hate. It will happen, so be prepared and bask in the frustration.

2. You will have to work with someone you hate
You will get assigned to that snot nosed designer that can’t design for nuts but can kiss ass like there is no tomorrow. When it happens at work you suddenly realize why your boss is not paying you his salary in addition to yours. Worst he may be your manager.

Not only that, but you might have to work with a client or business partner that treats you like that piece of dirt under his/her shoe. That person may be unreasonable, belittle you, and hate everything you give him. Unfortunately, the only thing you can do is swallow your pride and turn the other cheek.

3. You will have to make a decision between giving consumers what they want or what they need
The majority of design work, sad to say, is all about feeding consumerism. The reality is that your designs are often not necessary, nor what people need. In school they teach you to study your consumer, identify their needs, and design for them. However do you really think that person needs another chair, laptop or mobile phone? I’m sure you can do a great job, but will it be right? What about sustainability? When does that happen or does it ever happen at all? You will suddenly realize there are forces at play that are beyond your control, and you will have to decide if this is the right career path for you.

4. You will not be able to distinguish between night and day
You will work hard. Sure, you thought you worked hard in school to graduate at the top of the class, but you will never work so hard in your life when you are a designer in the trenches. So hard that you cannot tell the difference between night and day. You will do it because you have to. You will do it because you care. Needless to say, you will hate it.

5. You will never have clear brief
In the real world everyone knows what a brief is, but nobody really knows what a brief is. You will have to face the fact that there is no such thing as a clear brief. It is also never the straightforward design process you learned in school. You will hop back and forth through changes so many times you will think you are a trick pony. What is worst, the schedule will not move because of someone elses “briefing” mistake.

6. You will be made responsible for a design that has failed
It is too easy. Product does not sell? Blame the designer. Product cannot be engineered? Blame the designer. Suddenly you will be in everyone’s “cross hairs” and be blamed for everything. Remember though designers make suggestions. The people who pay for the designs are the ones who own the designs, thus responsible for the outcome. This leads me to my next point.

7. You will never own your designs anymore
What was a great solo effort in school, will now becomes everyone’s baby. You will pour your heart and soul into a design to only get it taken from you and passed off to someone else. Your design idea would be lost, modified, “raped” and even killed. Not only that, there will be projects that will have so many people working on it, that nobody owns or wants to own it.

8. You will hate design
One morning you will drag your tired body through multiple all-nighters to present your work to an unappreciative client, and you will tell yourself something along those lines of “I hate design”.

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They always say it is “darkest before the dawn” and in design it is.

Many designers quit before reaching this point, I almost did. Some of the popular excuses are likely to be “it’s too hard” or “not enough money for this BS” or even “no one appreciates the effort I put in”. My advice to you is to hang on because it does get better.

Strangely enough this turning point happens around the 5 – 7 year mark, depending on the amount of project hours a designer has clocked. Somehow after that, things just fall into place. It can happen like how it did for me, you wake up one morning and it just “clicked” as you reached that “tipping point”. You now know how to handle that abusive client, your 3D models just work with the engineers, and best of all, your designs start to kick ass and win awards. Trust me, I’ve seen it over and over again, not only with me but with other designers, the 5 year mark seems to be that magical number when your time in the trenches finally pay off.

I like to end this little post on another uplifting note. I cannot understand why people do not talk about their failures. They make great and interesting stories, especially if you can articulate what you learned and how you grew from it. In my humble opinion, this is far more important than always looking to sell your winners. Think about this when you next update your portfolio?

Designers are in the business of doing business; their clients rely on them to make smart, market-savvy decisions and yet there is no resource to provide the necessary knowledge to make these decisions wisely. DBR is simple, pragmatic advice on the business of creativity. Our readers will gain a strategic advantage in their profession by learning how to get a job, win clients, and survive the recession.

I would say, it is about time that a publication is focused on the business of design or running a design organization. Chris Papasadero, “bookazine” creator and principal designer of graphic design firm FWIS, describes Design Business Review as your “go-to source of business creativity”.

The first issue includes articles by Michael Beirut on Surviving the Recession, how Duffy & Partners gets clients, and how 2 young under 25 designers have made it big.

Looks pretty good, but personally I would prefer a few more pictures! Regardless I will be looking to get my hands on a copy. Oh, if you are interested in submitting your articles, you can by emailing info@designbusinessreview.com.

Via: Joe Moak’s Twitter and Fast Company.

I like to bring back our regular Friday “link love” feature this Good Friday!

1) Design is The Problem : Tim Brown’s thoughts on Design Thinking

2) Make something Cool Everyday: Behance Network

3) 10 Industrial Designers worth following on Twitter: Design Droplets

4) Seth Godin: Sliced bread and other marketing delights: Ted Talks

5) Today’s Future Designer: Drivers of Change

“The role of the designer in the business world is changing. With increased activity at a strategic level and the innate skills that support community and collaboration, the designer has the skill set to play a pivotal role in today’s business. In addition, they have the desire to work with new tools and are experienced in making the complex simple. In a world where technological innovation has increased the complexity of both the products and services we consume, achieving elegance has become the hallmark of good design.”

Do enjoy and have a Happy Egg Hunting Easter friends!

Anders Ramsay, a UX designer, has done an excellent job in explaining on his blog the advantages of an Iterative Design Process versus a “Waterfall” (or Linear as I call it) design process.

He gets a nod from me for explaining that Industrial Designers have been practicing Iterative Design methodologies for a while. However, I have often noticed that with the pressures of time and budget, Industrial Designers tend to slide back to the more linear processes. This is very dangerous to do, why? Please let me explain.

The premise of an Iterative Design Process is, as described by Anders, “…until you have actually built what you are designing, you are not going to be able to fully understand it.”. He also adds that Iterative Design is more about reworking and refining, rather than Incremental Design that is about adding new features or specification.

What I also like to add to this discussion is, while an Iterative Design Process is about Do-Learn-Rework and Refine and then Do again, we should not forget that designers should apply an Iterative Process when there is new information or input introduced to a design solution.

The important thing here is to not keep going (ie in a Linear process), but to reflect this new information back to the design brief, and question if you need to start the whole Design process from scratch. Sometimes having to start from scratch is the most painful but right decision to make to ensure you can deliver the right design solution. For example, changing target market requirements often will change your product’s component specifications. As a result, the selected design concept will grow out of proportion, and thus the right thing to do is to start from scratch and come up with a new concept that works with these new requirements.

In closing I like to summarized Ander’s suggested 3 key benefits of an iterative process with my comments after:

1) Discover problems earlier
Rather than polishing up a perfect brief from the start, get the ball rolling, and then tweak the brief accordingly. Sounds great, but business leaders, designers and project managers will really need to be in a tight communication loop to keep track of the changes made. In today’s environment of limited budgets, one down side of this process is that the lack of up front clarity will mean less accuracy in planning and a possibility to blow the budget. Good communication with key stakeholders is vital for success here.

2) Get Reliable User Feedback
This one I whole heartily agree. Basically Anders is asking us to “Get Real Fast” and build prototypes to test with your business partners or target consumers. An Iterative Process will allow you to make changes to the design to respond to these insights uncovered during the testing. The trick here is to involve good project planning to allow additional time to execute these changes in the design. Unfortunately extra time is something that seems to be lacking all the time.

3) Spend less time documenting, more time designing
This is an interesting one that is perhaps more software related. The upfront specifying of scope in a Linear Process could be a huge documentation task that would bog down rather than facilitate. In industrial design, the upfront documentation is usually just the creation of a design brief. The full documentation only comes before the tooling for manufacturing phase, as the design should already be frozen by then.

That’s it from me, and if you have the chance, do check out Ander’s full write up on his blog.

I recently visited the website of the book “The Art of Client Service” written by veteran advertising Account Manager Robert Solomon. Though I have yet to read the book (I plan to eventually!), the content really resonates with me, as it is a snap shot of the Strategic Design Management role I play daily.

One thing that I find a little odd though about the Book’s title was the Book’s reference of the “client”. This is because I was part of a discussion where we agreed to reclassify “clients” as “business partners”. Please let me explain.

While the general gist of the relationship you would have with a “Client” or “Business Partner” is still essentially the same, the mindset of how we deal with them is fundamentally different. I would encourage, both designers working for in-house design teams or external consultancies, to seriously consider adopting a business partner mindset.

Business partners trust
As Robert shares on his website, trust is an integral factor in the ability to successfully create and deliver good work. Business partners trust each other implicitly and are privy to high-level strategic decision making discussions. Not only that, Business Partners are given a voice in such discussions and are able to influence each other and the outcome of the decisions made.

Mutual respect for each other
Business partners understand each other’s Strengths and Limitations. They also have full respect for each other’s counsel while challenging the other to do their very best. Business partners also respect each other enough to give each other the space to do their very best work.

Equal stake and thus equal responsibility
Business partners view their involvement in projects as equal shareholders. This means both have an equal stake should it become a success, and both have an equal responsibility should it be a failure.

A “Win Win” view to conflict resolution
All great relationships will have conflicts from time to time. That is just a fact of life! Business partners always resolve such conflicts as a Win-Win situation for both sides.

Talk solutions not problems
Business partners will never ignore a problem that might impact the other’s success or wellbeing. Such problems are then only tabled with solutions closely following behind.

Business partners have each other’s best interests at heart
Finally, when push comes to shove, business partners have their best interests at heart. This means when it comes to the very difficult decisions (budget, resource, schedule etc.) putting the business partner first is always the first yardstick.

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I like to end this short post with a quick comment. These few points I have suggested above I would consider as the “utopia” we should strive towards. From my experience working in our very tough and competitive market driven economy, I will concede that such suggestions are easier said than done.

Best of luck friends!