Sorry for that cliffhanger of an ending in that last post, where I announced that I would be leaving Philips Design at the end of September. I like to be a little dramatic at times and I thought it would be a nice lead in to the story I’m going to tell you today.

So what, you may ask, am I going to do next?

I have spent most of my life working for people, or more accurately, designing for other people and making said people rich! Well not really…but I did decide that it was a time for a change. It was time to do something different and, more importantly, something for myself. I decided that I would like to be in a position where I would be able to call the shots and for a change, make the ultimate decision. Central to this plan, as you probably guessed by now, is Design Sojourn.

The Design Sojourn blog has actually been in operation for almost 5 years now! Throughout the history of this website, I have shared my ideas and thoughts on design, bounced these ideas (and sparred) with designers from all over the world. I even helped and mentored designers whenever I could. I hope such efforts have contributed to the international design industry as a whole and in return allowed me to build credibility as a designer.

So it is then logical to expand Design Sojourn into other areas beyond just blogging. I plan for Design Sojourn to evolve into a full fletch design consultancy and brand management company. Yup, I’m going to be a full time entrepreneur.

Here are a few more details:

Design Sojourn The Blog

First and foremost Design Sojourn the blog, will continue, but it’s going back to its roots. This blog cut its teeth by helping designers be the best they can be. Design Sojourn was and is all about “How to do good design, and make clever products”. I did, in recent years, moved this blog into Strategic Design. However by helping designers become more strategic, was still really in the same vein of helping designers be the best they can be. Being strategic is the name of the game in today’s design industry.

I have also taken a look at the state of my blog, and I have to say I’m not happy with it. In the recent years, my heavy workloads and family commitments have influenced a drop in the quality of my posts. I had a shocking realization that the posts people come to Design Sojourn for are more than 2 years old. The numbers don’t lie, and so this needs to be fixed.

As I will likely now have an opportunity to become the master of my own domain, (literally) I will be able to better manage my time to write more useful and engaging posts that will make your visit to Design Sojourn worthwhile. Growing Design Sojourn is high on the priority list, with a target of doubling readership in the next six months.

Finally, now that I am on my own, I will not be tied down nor associated with any brand. I’m now a Design Rōnin. A master-less designer roaming the world and kicking ass! Sorry, too many Akira Kurosawa movies.

Of cause I’m not about to take a “dump in my own backyard”, but do expect a more edgy tone, more rants, and of course, constructive criticism. Not being associated to any brand does provide a lot of freedom.

Design Sojourn Consulting

After everything, the unfortunate hash realities of life still exist. We still need to eat and I have a mortgage to pay. This is where things here at Design Sojourn will start to be a little different.

Many companies setup a company then a blog to get them going. I’ve actually flipped this approach on its head by turning my blog into a company, Design Sojourn Pte Ltd. Here is what we do:

Design Sojourn is a strategic design collective that features a multi-disciplinary team of designers, whom are the best in their respective industries.

We see ourselves as guides or translators for clients and partners in their journey in design.

Anchoring our creative process around the tenets of Joy with Functionality and Simple but Edgy, we offer full end-to-end design solutions that range from design languages that fulfill business needs; to commercially viable and resolved designs; to marketing, communications and new media solutions. However we are also small, flexible and nimble enough to take on that “quick kill” design problem. No job too big or too small.

I can promise you that other than getting a “Hire me” banner up, and an update to my About page, I will not be constantly reminding you of my consulting services. However, in the coming weeks, I will share more about Design Sojourn Consulting and what it stands for. Especially its design process which, I think, you might be interested to see?

If you, or someone you know, need my services or want to collaborate with me, please do not hesitate to contact me at brian@designsojourn.com. I won’t bite, and if something does come out of this, I will be in your debt, as this will allow me to continue to blog, not to mention pay my mortgage…

Design Sojourn Brand Management

The other thing that Design Sojourn Pte Ltd is going into is Design Entrepreneurship. As Design Producers, we design, develop, and produce products under our own brand or basket of brands. We also work closely with awesome designers to collaborate on products from design to market. When the time is right you will know who these awesome designers are.

I’m sure by now, you also know about our Spaces for Ideas brand? Well you will be pleased to know that we have spun the brand off Design Sojourn and given it its own dedicated site at www.spacesforideas.com. To celebrate the launch of the site, we have reduced the prices for the Expandable Sketchbook, so if you have not gotten your Sketchbook yet, do head on over and get one now!

We will also be expanding the Spaces for Ideas product range to include more sketchbook solutions. On a side note, SpacesforIdeas.com will focus more on sales transactions and product information. My sharing of development efforts, as well as the design activities will still be here on Design Sojourn. I’m guessing that you don’t want to be bothered with all this blogging noise when you make your purchases or vice versa?

On Design Sojourn, you can expect some announcements as well as the banners you see now. I’ve dumped the ugly Google ads, and will continue to streamline the site’s design so these ads do not overpower your reading. However, they will be a necessary evil, as Design Sojourn is the main marketing engine for my Spaces for Ideas products. Please do let me know, if you have any feedback on this matter?

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There are a few other things in the works, but they are currently too premature to talk about it now. I’ll let you know as soon as they are ready to fly! All I can say is that they will be quite awesome.

What do you think? Am I out of my mind? Many of you have been part of my own design sojourn right from the start as friends and loyal supporters. It has been a great honor journeying with you and I do hope to get your continued support of this website and in all my future endeavors. Thank you.

Today, I have a guest post from my friend and a fellow industrial designer Tan Lun Cheak. Lun Cheak believes that design in Singapore, (and I dare say Asia and the rest of the world), needs to break out of the mass manufacturing of standardized soulless products and move towards authenticity. We can do so by adding more heart in our design. I hope you enjoy his Singaporean view point on design, and please share if you find his insights resonating with the type of design in your part of the world. I suspect it might be.

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Like all Singaporeans, I love my Carrot Cake, Char Kuay Teow, Chicken Rice, and my favorite, Bak Kut Teh (Ed: Awesome local fare you should try the next time you are here!). Unfortunately, the overall quality of our local delicacies have declined drastically over the recent years.

These days, I am hard pressed to find an appetizing bowl of Bah Kut Teh where the broth is not over laden with MSG to cover up for the lack of fresh ingredients. Gone is the authenticity of the recipe, the heart and soul of the dish.

Changes in lifestyle habits and the rise of the fast food culture are some of the obvious reasons leading to the overall decline of food quality and food culture. Furthermore, the surge in food franchises, serving standardized menus in shopping malls all over Singapore, are the biggest threat to food quality in Singapore.

Food Courts today sell customers the convenience of a one-stop food paradise, where you can always find something for everyone. They have turned traditional hawker cooking into projects of efficiency and mass production. You still get cheap food, but what is missing is the love of the cooking process and pride of the results.

Industrial Design is also very much about mass production and standardization. It is all about the one-size-fits-all, where the objective is trying to design for as large of a mass appeal as possible.

Industrial Design was introduced to Singapore in the early 1980s. The profession has a relatively short history here when compared to Europe, America or Japan. So unlike these countries which have seen the profession evolve and mature through various art and industrial revolutions, Singapore’s industrial designers got in at a time when the country was all about computerization, production efficiency and productivity.

As a result many Singaporean industrial designers are pre-occupied with the task of improving the design processes and methodologies so that MNCs (multi-national companies) can create products that are universally palatable enough to impact their bottom line. (Ed: Playing the mass manufacturing or economies of scale game.) We’ve referred to global trends for inspiration, followed structured design processes, and even devised design standards. So much so, the ID practice has become so “mechanical” that often times we loose the heart and soul of the design.

We need to relook at designing products that can offer more experiential meaning to the consumer, where the end result should be about enabling the user to be touched at a deeper level so that they can form lasting relationships with the products they buy. Create an experience that forces consumers to move beyond “buy and forget”, or “consume and throw”.

We need to re-examine the notion of designing for a mass appeal. We all know that when you try to design for everybody, you inevitably design for nobody. We need to explore designs that connect to the consumer the way Bak Kut Teh’s peppery soup does with a few and avoid watering down the soup to appeal to everyone.

We can then go on to ask, if it is not about designing for the masses, the is design more about a personal expression?

Maybe it is time for the design profession to step back from analytical tools or standardized processes, and re-look at focusing more on the subject of design as art. Should we find avenues where designers are able to express oneself at both an emotional and experiential level? Were we can weave personal stories through the designs that we create with much love and pride.

As much as it is about who we are designing for, it can very much be also about who we are designing as!

For example, the heritage, culture and social fabric of Singapore are poignant sources of inspiration. Living and growing up in this part of the world provides Singaporean designers with a unique platform by which many meaningful ideas, relevant to consumers in this part of the world, can come.

It will likely be a voice that not everyone would be interested to hear about, but then again it does not matter, as it is all about connecting with the few who will truly appreciate or get it.

I am also not talking about going totally nostalgic either.

Industrial or Product design should still be about innovation and making everyone’s lives better. Therefore I believe it is about striking the right balance between one’s heritage and innovation while finding that unique voice that can defines us. Let us all reject creating products like we do standardizing food and start injecting more heart and soul into our designs.

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Tan Lun Cheak is a member of the Little Thoughts Group, a collective of 20 industrial designers, which explores and challenges the known perception of industrial and product design. For more information on the group, please visit their website at littlethoughts.org

What was interesting was that I have been getting feedback that it sounds, from that last post, that I’m against Design Thinking. I have to say that on a cursory glance, that previous article did sound like I was bitching about Design Thinking.

So for the record, I like to say that I am not against Design Thinking. In fact I am fully for it and have said countless of times that I hope Design Thinking becomes a function within organizations so that there are more employment opportunities for graduate designers. What I am against is the way Design Thinking is being “pimped” as the next big thing and how everyone who is anyone is jumping on this bandwagon, rightly or wrongly.

In fact this article is all about fixing the problems with Design Thinking, assuming we all can agree there is a problem in the first place? What value I would have to the design community, if I just complained about it and did not offer some kind of solution?

Right, so now let’s get back to big can of worms shall we?

Design Thinking is Quite a Mess

So as I was saying, after the dust settled in my previous article, I have been involved in online forums and websites tracking this discussion and the sentiments from the bottom up. Sadly indeed, we can see that the Design Thinking is a mess and the confusion is huge.

Raymond Pirouz, in a similar Design Thinking discussion on Linkedin, shared a video of a panel of people discussing Design Thinking. You don’t have to watch it all the way through as it is pretty long, but after about 10 minutes you can tell that their definition of Design Thinking is, for lack of a better phrase, all over the place. It is clear that the panel members all have different opinions, influenced by their background and motivations, of what Design Thinking is.

The always-generous Rita Sue penned a reply to this video that I have shamelessly reproduced here:

The video is very enlightening. Such diversity of opinion about the same subject. No wonder it is such a hard job to explain all this to people in organizations who haven’t a clue. Actually, if they met the Jump guy one day, the Nestle guy another, and Nathan Shedroff another, they may just give up the idea of integrating design at a high level in their organization. It is very frustrating to talk to several experts with diverging opinions when you are trying to learn about what to you is virgin territory. How can you expect “civilians” to know how to move forward?

In the final analysis, I think there is not one way to do any of this. If any one of those points of view are introduced to a company and the activity is led by a very smart person, like one of them, I truly believe the design function/activity will get sorted out, be influenced by the culture, and influence the culture.

I had a friend (long dead) who was in a think tank in a top advertising agency and once wrote an article about how marketing got accepted into companies and or how internal marketing functions were built. It was a similar struggle. There were various configurations organizations adopted or developed for integrating marketing, which is now of course considered a vital function the way we all want design to be. Companies used to look to their ad agencies for their marketing expertise. I think it would be a useful exercise to uncover some of this info. Good discussion!

Indeed, in many ways Design Thinking is much like Marketing when it first had its day. During the early days, Marketing struggled to find acceptance and budgets to get things going. I remember discussing how Marketing ROI should be calculated, and have used similar techniques in my own discussions on Design ROI.

Design, a Core Function in Every Organization.

As mentioned briefly before, what I think should be happening is Design needs to be a function within an organization, core to any business. Just like finance, human resource etc. organizations serious in leveraging the value of design should not try to do it on its own, but hire the relevant people trained or skilled to do the job. My dream is to see companies hiring designers as leaders to drive that function. I’m not implying that this function should be lead by designers only, but I’m more of a view that this is a specialist job, like a CPA, so get people with the right skills and designers at this time seem to be the better choice. Though I do know of very suitable candidates that don’t have a classical design background but have been in the industry for a long time.

Raymond Pirouz, a lecturer in design strategy, also shared that he teaches MBAs design appreciation and design’s application to business strategy. This is similar to my previous comment and seems to be the right way to go. Indeed this would also fall inline with how MBAs learn to understand and appreciate finance, accounting, HR and even logistics.

In this manner we can reduce the backlash of businesses questioning the value of design thinking. Having a designer (or someone suitably trained) entrenched in an organization, responsible for looking after and managing the design process, will allow everyone instead to focus on the results and getting the job done, rather then getting bogged down in the semantics of the Design Thinking process.

It should seem by now, that the way we defined Design Thinking is getting less and less important. Still, if we need to get the man on the street to better appreciate Design Thinking we might need to also rethink how we approach educating the masses on design thinking.

Design Thinking + Design Doing = (Just) Design?

So, in my view, one of the big problems with Design Thinking is the overemphasis on the process. If now we should be focusing on results, then we really need to get back to design (doing) and coming out with meaningful solutions. Furthermore, Design Thinking is but one of the many tools available and should be seen and accepted that creative work is part of a larger system and not some magical panacea.

Ariel Guers writes:

From what I can tell (finishing Ph.D. thesis on decision making in design) Design Thinking cannot really be separated from design doing when the design problem can be characterized as a wicked problem. If you talk about simpler problems, for sure you could separate these two states.

To be able to generate “creative” (very complex term btw) solutions you need to have some kind of artistry (Donald Schön’s term), this artistry is acquired through lots of practice (reflection in-action and on-action). A couple of workshop with post-it are just not enough to turn you into a designer.

Also, according to my own research and understanding of several other researchers (Dorst, Cross or Lawson for instance) designers think in a very different way than what Design Thinking puts forward. Designers usually consider a *very limited* set of alternatives and develop guiding principles right from the start. They don’t postpone judgment and decision making in order to open-up to new alternatives, they rapidly create a rough (partial) solution (to a partially defined problem) and move forward to see what else they can learn about the problem, through iterations. Actually, it’s more complicated than this, of course, but I leave it like that for brevity’s sake.

Before we conclude this article with the few points on how we can fix Design Thinking, lets take a look at a quote by Roberto Verganti in a very awesome article on Core77 titled: Design Thinking Everywhere and Nowhere.

Let’s agree that all of humanity are designers, and that design is one of the things that separates us from the apes. As Jonathan Ive put it: ‘Design is not important. Good design is important.’

First, when we talk of designers, we usually mean professional designers, who have reached an accepted level of competence. They have survived a Darwinian selection process (there are far more graduates than jobs) and have clocked up well over 10,000 hours of practice on projects. We should remember that designers learn by doing, not by learning and practicing a theory, designing involves a lot more tacit knowledge than in other areas of business. It’s therefore hard to believe that senior managers can change their thinking habits of a lifetime after a workshop or two working with designers. And, to be frank, to suggest as much devalues what designers do.

Second, a key factor in creating good design that really does make a difference is great designers. These talented individuals are few and far between and provide critical competitive advantage. Let’s forget about Design Thinking as a magic process, and focus on how designers and managers should best work together to deliver great quality outputs.

He goes on to talk about how “user centered innovation is dead”, but that is another story.

So How Can We Fix the Problems of Design Thinking?

This is indeed a complex problem, that I don’t have a perfect solution. Perhaps Design Thinking needs some Design Thinking to fix it eh? But let me give it a go by synthesizing, then summarizing my key points above:

1) Teach Design Thinking with Design Doing.

2) Anchor Design Thinking as part of a larger holistic process.

3) Leave Design Thinking and managing the design process to the experts. Accept that, just like accounting, not everyone can do it.

4) Finally, call Design Thinking something else.

On that last point, I think Design Thinking has moved on and evolved partly because of this and many other discussions all over the world. I rather just call it Design, a noun, a verb, an action, a process and an object. What do you guy’s think, and do share your suggestions on how we can fix the problems of Design Thinking?

Recently, there has been a lot of buzz on the Internet about two similar events. What happened was basically this; The Masters of the Universe had proclaimed their decrees like dictators and the only thing the rest of the world could do was, for a lack of a better phrase, gnash their teeth in frustration.

The current king of micro blogging, Twitter, recently acquired Tweetie one of the best iPhone Apps on the iTunes store:

“We’re thrilled to announce that we’ve entered into an agreement with Atebits (aka Loren Brichter) to acquire Tweetie, a leading iPhone Twitter client. Tweetie will be renamed Twitter for iPhone and made free (currently $2.99) in the iTunes AppStore in the coming weeks. Loren will become a key member of our mobile team that is already having huge impact with device makers and service providers around the world.”
Source: Mashable

The key point of this discussion is highlighted in bold. Twitter decided that they needed an iPhone App, so not only did they purchase one and made it official, they made if free for all. This pretty much put many developers, who slaved over their own paid Twitter clients or applications, out of a job.

The next story should sit much closer to home for industrial designers.

Computing giant Apple, who topped Bloomberg’s 50 Most Innovative Companies in 2010, decided to ban Adobe flash on their iPhone and iPad platforms. Yep, this is the same Adobe who makes our beloved Photoshop and Illustrator tools. I won’t go into the merits of this decision, but suffice to say we are not going to see any cool websites with animations on our iPads.

But what I’m going to say is this: have we all gone collectively mad? Sorry guys, I’ve got a big rant coming.

If businesses are going to bet on creating solutions on platforms they do not own, they have to realize that this a huge business risk. When the platform owners change the rules of the game, everything pretty much goes down the drain and we will have likely no control or say over this decision. Oh, I can just see this story played out again with Facebook developers in the near future.

While software developers are only feeling the heat now, many product developers have been beaten black and blue for a long time now. I would say pretty much since the launch of the iPod. The multi-million dollar iPod/iPhone/iPad accessory market, suffers this same fate every 6 months when a new “i-something” gets launch. I though they get special privileges as official “i-something” developers with sneak peeks or development line charts. No way, they are just like everyone else! The moment Apple launches something new; they run like mad to be the first to get the next “i-condom” out.

Imagine living your life like this every 6 months? It sucks, but at least from what I hear the money is good.

Image: Freedomofcreation.

Making Apple accessories with simple molds and processes is one thing, but when you build entire product propositions around platforms you don’t own or control is risky indeed! Imagine dropping a $500,000 on an investment in manufacturing and part costs, and you can begin to see how risky it is in riding the Apple platform wave.

Despite these huge risks, companies are still jumping on the Apple bandwagon. It is almost as if Apple has defined the boundaries of the entire industry, and it is impossible to break out of it. For some examples, check out these recent Apple centric products making the rounds on the Internet. While they are nice designs, they do suffer from some of the risks I have highlighted above.

This iPhone desk phone dock by Kee Utility, looks great, and I’m sure fulfills a need, but the moment Apple decides to change their connectors or connection protocols it becomes a beautiful lump of recyclable plastic and metal. Especially when the product is completely useless without the iPhone in the dock.

This Parrot (Zikmu) speakers designed by Philippe Starck is jam packed with speakers, wireless electronics and Starck’s royalties. I’m pretty sure you can’t fit an iPad on it. I know that last comment is silly, but I think you get my drift.

This $300 Bowers and Wilkins P5 headphones produces great sound are just wonderfully retro styled. However it has an elaborate removable magnetic cover that allows access to a jack for interchangeable cables, one for an iPhone mic and the other without. While this product is not as high risk as some, the elaborately designed removable cover must have cost a bit of effort. This feature is really only necessary if you need to change the cables for the headphone’s use with an iPhone.

At the end of the day, product development is still risky business. Many businesses still see that if you have to put down a big investment in product development, you might as well bring in the Apple equation so that the risks can be better mitigated for a better chance of success. Finally as Apple’s track record has been impeccable of late, the lure of apparently easy money is really too strong to resist sometimes.

The question is what should strategic designers do? Encourage businesses to have faith in their own propositions, or ride the Apple wave? Whatever it is, it cannot be denied the reach and impact Apple has in consumer electronics today. Almost every product in the market has an “i-something” support of some kind.

I used to see myself as a person who has an aesthetic that flows with the different trends of the time. Thus I never really thought of generating something holistic like this. Recently, I am starting to realize there is a lot of value in having some kind of personal design philosophy tucked away somewhere.

Similar to a mission statement, a personal design philosophy defines a designer’s view on life. Along the same lines of thinking, Dieter Rams’ 10 Design Commandments helped define him as a designer, and perhaps by identifying my own principles or laws, I could better define myself as well.

The other reason why I think this blog is a great place to put up my design principles, is that it allows this to be a living document that is constantly in Beta. So here we go, and please be gentle as this list is by no means final?

[ Good Design ] ~

1. is a good investment.
This originally started as “Good Design is Good Business” courtesy of Mr. Watson. However in today’s commercial environment, I belief most people understand this concept. Unfortunately not many actually see it as an investment that has tangible returns. Therefore most Return on Investment (ROI) calculations can be applied here. This means there has to be risk assessments, planning, budget controls, and long term goals set out. Design should never be just about making something look good and flogging it for extra cash.

2. is all encompassing.
Good design is all encompassing and unifying. It should not just be about the product or look. It should include every single aspect that revolves around a product, including things like user interface, packaging and branding etc.

3. does not exist in vacuum.
Nothing comes from nothing. I find the best designs works best for the context it was developed in. Good understanding of user needs, a critical insight on a problem, and a well-defined brief is important for producing the good design.

4. satisfies all requirements.
A design solution cannot be successful if it does not satisfy all the requirements of the user, business and development constraints. This is more about prioritizing rather than about compromise. Pick your fights, learn to negotiate, and make sure you win the war not the battle.

5. is beautiful.
I don’t think too much needs to be said here, except our visual sense is one of the strongest of our 5 senses. There is no justification for ugly and over styled products. In other words you cannot polish crap. So it is better to be self-critical always, rather than face the consequences when the market tells you otherwise.

6. is innovative, logical and clever.
Good design does not stop at being beautiful. Good design goes beyond aesthetics, as it also needs to be an innovative and clever solution that evokes an emotional response from the user. Good design just makes sense.

7. is intuitive and uncomplicated.
This is my latest addition. Leonardo Da Vinci said, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication”. Making a product simple to use, intuitive and uncomplicated is probably one of the hardest things for a designer to do. It requires passion and dedication at every stage of the products’ development cycle.

8. is strategic.
This last one, I think is the most important. Design can and should be applied in all aspects of an organization. My favorite thought is that, Design should be a vital function in any organization, just like finance, accounting or logistics etc. This way Design is involved at the highest level of decision-making, and part of why an organization exists.

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So what do you think of my Principles of Good Design? I think it still needs some work, and can be made a lot simpler. I will leave it like this for now as I do intend to update this post from time to time. Also why not have your say by sharing your own Principles of Good Design for discussion? I look forward to hearing from you soon.