Design Sojourn

This morning, my colleague pointed me in the direction of this great little New York Times interview with Tim Brown, the chief executive and president of IDEO. (Wow, he even gets on the NY Times!)

In the interview, Tim shares that (design) leadership is not about having all the answers but asking the right questions. There is no point in creating a great design that answers the wrong question. Unfortunately, this is something that many designers are guilty of. Here’s a juicy snippet:

Q. What other important leadership lessons have you learned?

A. As a design consultant, I get to work with all kinds of interesting people who are leaders of their own businesses. So I constantly learn from watching some of the great leaders do what they do.

A. G. Lafley is a great example. I’ve spent a lot of time with him over the last seven or eight years, until he retired. I’m a member of his design board at Procter & Gamble, and we would get together every four months, and the various divisions would come and show their work.

He was willing to get involved really early on in new ideas — not in a way where his opinion was overly influencing what was happening, but where his support would really push an idea along quickly. I learned a lot from him in terms of style of leadership, which was involved without being dictatorial. He seems to see his role as constantly reminding teams of what they should be focusing on, rather than telling them whether they’ve got the right idea or not.

Somebody else I worked with a lot is Jim Hackett, the C.E.O. of Steelcase. He’s somebody who, no matter how compelling and short-term an issue might be, is always forcing the conversation up to being strategic. How are we thinking about this long term?

As a designer, I’m always looking for solutions to the problems I see in front of me. And the big trick to being a successful designer is always making sure you’re asking the right questions and focusing on the right problems.

It’s very easy in business to get sucked into being reactive to the problems and questions that are right in front of you. And it doesn’t matter how creative you are as a leader, it doesn’t matter how good the answers you come up with. If you’re focusing on the wrong questions, you’re not really providing the leadership you should.

Q. Can you talk more about that?

A. I do think that’s something that we forget — as leaders, probably the most important role we can play is asking the right questions. But the bit we forget is that it is in itself a creative process. Those right questions aren’t just kind of lying around on the ground to be picked up and asked.

When I go back and look at the great leaders — Roosevelt, Churchill — one of the things that occurs to me is they somehow had the ability to frame the question in a way that nobody else would have thought about.

In design, that’s everything, right? If you don’t ask the right questions, , then you’re never going get to the right solution. I spent too much of my career feeling like I’d done a really good job answering the wrong question.

And that was because I was letting other people give me the question. One of the things that I’ve tried to do more and more — and I obviously have the opportunity to do as a leader — is to take ownership of the question. And so I’m much more interested these days in having debates about what the questions should be than I necessarily am about the solutions.

Enjoy the rest of the interview here as it is a pretty good read.

While all the fan boys were getting Macgasms over the new 27″ iMac or the Macbook with the sausage shaped profile, I was interested in only one thing: Apple’s financial results. I tweeted my response on my twitter stream. Here’s a screen-shot.

Yep, I wanted to run to every rooftop and yell it out, nice and loud.

Here are the key numbers from Business Week.

1) The company reported revenues that grew 25% over the same quarter a year ago and profits that grew 46%.

2) Apple reported revenue of $9.87 billion, and a profit of $1.67 billion or $1.82 per share.

3) Apple’s stock finished the regular trading session higher at $189.96, up $1.81 or nearly 1% after opening at $187.84. On Oct. 15 Apple stock hit a 52-week high of $192.32, less than 6% off its all-time high of $202.96 set on Dec. 27, 2007.

4) Apple set an all-time single-quarter sales record with its Macintosh computers, selling 3.05 million, accounting for $3.95 billion, or 40% of sales. Apple finished the year just short of the 13 million unit mark for the fiscal year, an improvement over the prior year of nearly 3.3 million units.

5) iPhone unit sales also set a quarterly record or 7.4 million units, amounting to a year-on-year improvement of nearly 7%. IPhone sales broke the 20-million unit mark for the fiscal year.

6) iPod sales declined slightly year-on-year to 10.177 million, down from 11.05 million, and also down sequentially from 10.215 million from the third quarter.

7) Apple finishes its fiscal year 2009 with sales of $36.5 billion, up more than 12% from fiscal 2008, and per-share profit for the year $6.29, beating the consensus estimate by 41 cents.

I think this proves two things.

Firstly, people have not stopped buying. (Just look at the number of Macs sold!) Under such tough economic conditions, consumers have instead become very picky in the things they buy. Also Macs are not cheap, and yet it sells. This means people are willing to spend on purchases that makes sense to them. So what do we do? Focus on making better products. Correction. Focus on making your product is the best in class.

Next, I’m sure you would agree that Design plays a very important role in the success of Apple. I would even go as far to say that Design is their key strategic competitive advantage. In good times of excess, people could easily dismiss Apple’s success as a result of a “tide that raises all boats”. However, if we consider that Apple has successfully operated during a recession, it’s proof that Design can keep a company profitable and resilient.

So now do it! Spread the word, tell everyone, email, link to this post, re-tweet it so that the world will know the Golden Age of Design has come!

Joe Duffy’s “Demystifying Design: An Argument for Simplicity” is a great little piece that calls out Design like it should be. Here is my favorite bit:

What is design? It begins with ideas–ideas based in purpose. It requires a plan or a process. It yields innovation, invention or creation. It is successful if it elicits response–attention, desire, interaction or purchase.

Design is as much a process as it is an end product. The process should be simple.

After all my years in design, I remain wary of the branding and design consultancies that sell the strategic process before the work. The work should speak for itself. Did it deliver on its objectives? Did it break through in the market? Did people vote with interest, conversation, interaction or purchase? Was it beautiful? That’s what really matters.

…snip…

Honestly it’s simple. The best talent understands that. Rarely does the most extensive or unique “process” produce the simple insights necessary to do more than document a situation. The proof is in the pudding. Talented designers create it.

I had a recent discussion with a talented designer that had a few years of experience under his belt. He was full of passion and, as expected, impatient. He wanted more out of his design career and decided on a Masters in Design Strategy. The advice I gave him echoes this quote.

If you want to learn about Design Strategy, join a great company that is an advocate of Design and work your butt off! That’s because the best way to show the world the strength of your design strategies is through your work.

Check out the rest of Joe’s excellent post on Fast Company.

Many of us have been taught in design school to be very user focused when seeking design solutions. However if you have been in the industry as long as I have, there is this insidious sickness that tends to influence this fundamental approach we have with design.

The reason is that the majority of brands or products are sold to “customers” or channels rather than directly to the ultimate consumer. These “customers” include distributors, sales organizations and retailers etc. As a result, you can get a number of odd requests to design products that have only one aim and that is to make the lives of these “middle men easier. We designers need to be constantly aware and sensitive to this influence.

Some of these requests could include: “design everything to fit in the front because when it is placed on the shelf you can’t see the back”, or perhaps “forget about spending money on the packaging because the product is not sold in the box”, or the ever popular “make it taller/bigger/wider because everyone else is like that”. The list goes on, but the basis of these requests usually comes as a response to some kind of retail strategy that often contradicts with the needs of the ultimate consumer.

At the end of the day though, I belief that a successful product has to fulfill all requirements of the brief including these retail needs. So designers will need to reconcile this problem by both keeping in mind the original design intent and aligning it with the consumer’s needs.

I like to now leave you with a quote a clever marketer told me:

If consumers do not want our products, it would not matter how great our customers are in their jobs. However, if every consumer wants or demands our products, no customer can stand in our way.

The last time we spoke about Design and the stock market in my post titled: Looks like Innovation moves Markets, not Design, I had a great response from Design Sojourn’s awesome readers.

So I think this little nugget, from the Design MBA Blog, might get an even bigger response as this chart (image above) makes our last stock chart look like a kid’s drawing! Heh-heh.

Briefly, in our last post we talked about innovation as a key driver for the stock market. This chart by the California College of the Arts: MBA in Design Strategy program, seems to show that companies that invest in design win in the long run as they the financial results to justify it.

The CCA MBA in Design Strategy program has compiled an index of the top 63 public companies internationally using design strategically in their organizations, for the 10 year period from January 1998 to January 2008. The index shows that for companies who invest in design and use it as part of their strategic management, on average, they’ve gained 274% of their value. This considerably beats all market averages and indexes for the same time period.

Wow! I honestly don’t really know how they manged to get 274%, as it seems to me that some of the big familiar brands on the list don’t seem to be doing that well. But if their calculations are correct, this should be a huge date proof point that will convince companies in the effectiveness of investing in a good holistic design strategy.

Oh, I also quite like their definition of Design Strategy that I have shamelessly reproduced here.

What is Design Strategy?

Design Strategy is the use of design processes, perspectives, and tools to create truly meaningful, sustainable, and successful innovation across a variety of design disciplines, including industrial, interaction, visual, experience, and fashion design. Organizations who use design strategically create lasting value beyond that of their peers. These organizations often hire high-level managers focused on design and innovation, include significant design input in strategic decisions, dedicate resources toward design-derived product and service development, and empower the design innovation functions with authority over development.

To be sure, the organizations which perform best don’t focus only on design in their product, service, and customer experience development and management. Many also create significant value through more traditional growth strategies, such as operational efficiencies, mergers and acquisitions, and technology research and development. However, each of the companies in this index places a high value on strategically using design processes to provide better customer offerings and experiences and integrate all functions of the organization more effectively.

Check out the full list of design savvy companies at their Design MBA Blog and I look forward to reading your comments below.

A while ago I worked with a colleague that was a huge fan of Six Sigma. Six Sigma is a set of statistical and analytical tools use to measure and track the efficiency of a business or operations. My colleague was fanatical in improving the quality control of the organization and introduced all kinds of Six Sigma control points, or “gates” into the development process. He succeeded in creating a firmer structure in the process, but unfortunately, this new system created a lot of drag in the small organization.

Inevitability, he approached me and proposed for it to be applied to the design process.

Believe me, I fought tooth and nail. After studying the Six Sigma process, I point blank said: “There was no way any of my designers are going to be judged on the quality and success of a design based on how many sketches or iterations we did before we deliver it.” In this case efficiency would mean limiting or striving to use as little sketch or design iterations as possible to get to a design solution. I firmly believe that design and designers could never be managed in such a calculated manner.

Sara Beckman, in a discussion with Chuck Jones, vice president for global consumer design at Whirlpool, explains why that may be so.

Design thinkers, he says, are like quantum physicists, able to consider a world in which anything — like traveling at the speed of light — is theoretically possible. But a majority of people, including the Six Sigma advocates in most corporations, think more like Newtonian physicists — focused on measurement along three well-defined dimensions.

These days, I am starting to see the value of Six Sigma in delivering a completed product. Companies and brands competing in ultra-competitive environments need such systems to make sure the product is delivered well, and I agree with Sara that Design Process/Thinking has to find a way to work with a Six Sigma process.

While one cannot be used to drive the other, they can compliment each other. Design Thinking coming up front to identify and create the propositions, Six Sigmar used to deliver it.

Opposites do attract, no?

Via: Tim Brown

David Sherwin on his very cool ChangeOrder blog writes that:

Good design is the enemy of great design.

This isn’t to say that good design gets in the way of great design, since the latter is only possible when surrounded by the former. But our hardest struggles as designers emerge when we confront what could be great, rather than what is thoroughly good.

While not the most original quote, (anyone know who first said it?) it comes back to us at the right time. As we move towards a hyper competitive environment when everyone in more than capable of Good Design, going with just Good is really going with mediocrity.

I often cringe when I hear, “this is good enough”, because it will not be. Someone, likely the competition, will take that extra step or that extra iteration and make it better than you. The end result is that you will likely have a failed product in the market place.

So we keep pushing our designs and give it our best. But how do we know when to stop? People often complain that designers can’t stop designing. The engine just keeps going on and on. I honestly don’t have a simple answer for you, but part of a designer coming of age is to know when to stop and take a step back to access the situation.

However I like to look at it from another point of view. I prefer designers go as far as possible and then get brought back to earth, rather than not go far enough. Simply because no one else will do this and if left to others you will likely get less than Good, by which we already know, is the new mediocre.

So are you ready to go from good to great? If so check out David’s 7 tips, which I’ve taken the liberty to summarize. (My additional comments in brackets)

1) We often don’t know what’s great until someone else points it out for us.

2) We choose to lose ourselves in a flow experience, rather than opting for key moments in our work where we gauge our level of effort versus the result.

3) Great design requires great waste. (or the willingness to throw it all away and start again.)

4) We lack a strong sense of design’s history, which keeps us from recognizing the circadian rhythms of our daily output. (Learn from successes from the past, as well as understand what consumers recognize or are able to relate to.)

5) Great design work frequently seeks to transcend the boundaries of design itself. (Design can be art.)

6) Great design becomes like water over time. The designer’s ego must be cast aside in the face of society’s desire. (Great design at the end of the day is all about the user and how he/she will enjoy using it.)

7) Great design is identified in hindsight. (The environment or the “context” the product exists in, influences a great design. Great examples I can think of are the original Mini or VW Beetle,.)

Do check out the full version at his blog. Well done David.

iPod Touch marketed and positioned as a Pocket Computer

I’m a firm believer that a good design strategy expresses the a product’s marketing concept, or great marketing should be a reflection of a design’s intent. They are quite interrelated, especially if a design or marketing strategy is consumer focused.

Thus if you look at the iPod Touch’s marketing tagline, you can safely say, intentional or not, that Apple embraces the fact that their iPod Touch is a Pocket Computer. In a way it could also be seen as retro fitting as the iPod Touch struggled to find its place between an iPhone and an iPod. To round it up its benefits Apple has position the Touch as also a iPod and a entertainment (gaming) system. Regardless, it is clear that the iPod Touch is not an iPhone minus. Interestingly enough, the iPhone has been position with as phone, iPod and an internet device.

So do you think there will be a Mac Tablet?

There could be one, but I doubt so. Based on conventional thinking, a Mac tablet would fall in between a Macbook Air/Pro and the iPod Touch. It does not seem to be a logical product. I either want quick access to information via iPhone/iPod Touch or something more substantial on a Macbook with a bigger screen and keyboard. The Mac tablet will then likely just be a Macbook minus and struggle to find its place.

Let’s see how Apple goes, I could be wrong as knowing Apple their thinking is far from conventional.

Check out this very well written article by Dan Harding President of Whipsaw on “Doing More With Less: Using the Down Economy as a Design Brief”.

Here is a snippet:

Contrary to logic, a good economy compromises quality more than a bad one. In good times corporations seek to supply rising demand as fast as possible for non-discriminating consumers that have more disposable income. Flush with R&D budgets, companies fund programs that keep the current best sellers buoyed by tweaking the brand message with advertising, and designing new products as fast as they can.

[snip…]

It’s harder to design simple inexpensive products than complex expensive ones. One needs to focus more on the essential user needs and less on the endless feature possibilities or extraneous embellishments. It requires more purity, so that no matter how much they take away from it, it’s more likely to survive intact through its development. Simple inexpensive products are also better for the environment. They consume less material, have fewer parts, and use less energy to manufacture and ship.

There is a flip-side to every story. It is about adjusting our point of view and how we want to approach the problem at hand. Designers are capable of using their creative talents to solve problems, but we tend to forget that this also means creatively working with and within the constraints we have. So the next time we get to situations where designs may be compromised (materials vs. cost etc.) think of the big picture and focus on what the product should really be about and if making it in brush metal is that important to the equation.

Never give up!

Check out the full write up at : Fast Company

Very fun concept iPhone App for Design Managers by Lunchbreath.

Via: Core 77