Design Sojourn

A short note today.

During my usual blog maintenance, I’ve decided to create a new category called Design Process. This category is specifically meant as a place for you to locate design process discussions and visualizations that can help you better under our complex design processes and methodology. Design process discussions have always been central to this blog, but never had its own category for organization purposes. It was often embedded in Design Leadership (or Strategy) and occasionally Designing Designers.

So it is about time that Design Process has its own well-deserved category. Check it out here!

Ariane Prin, a Masters student at RCA, shares her thinking and conceptual process behind her Air Hair Project: hair dryer for hairdressers.

As part of my survey, I visited many hairdressers and I was able to observe that they use the hairdryer for approximately 4.5 hours a day but that this was not very well adapted. They taught me that this object has to be smaller, lighter, wireless, that they often use the same nozzle, and that the switch allowing distinct levels of power is useless because they habitually use the maximum mode.

The most impressive thing is the fact that a majority of hairdressers do not use the handle because they cannot be precise, then efficient, then rapid, then have a lot of clients, and earn a lot of money. They hold it by the body of the object even if this is the hottest part. Moreover, at the end of their career, 70% of the hairdressers have wrist and shoulder articulation problems.

This is for all those reasons that I started to work on the ergonomics of the hairdryer. I have made research on different shapes in blue foam and I came back to the hairdressers to decide together what could be the three most adapted shapes.

The fascinating part of her process is what I like to call “design by making”. Ariane jumps head on into making sketch models from her sketches to test out her form. As you can see, her meaningful design solutions was because she got real quick. Sadly, this sort of “design by making” methodology is almost hardly done these days.

Designers are getting lazy due to the easy access to CAD (yes you!), as CAD is a much “cleaner” way of doing design. I myself am also guilty of this. Unfortunately by going from sketch straight to CAD, you lose the opportunity to get in touch with the “feel” of an object, its proportions, its weight, and the ergonomics.

You may say that this should be limited to products like hair dryers of mobile phones. However if the car industry still sculpts and refines the lines of a concept car in clay, I don’t see why we should give up this crucial step in our design process?

When was the last time you got “real” quick? How early in your design process did you get “real”? You might also be surprised to know that by getting “real” quick you could speed up your design process, as you can get to your design solution quicker and make less mistakes or iterations. So why not give it a try in your next design project?

Via: Core77.

Click on the image for a larger size.

@Issue Journal has shared a wonderful graphic visualization of Disney’s internal organization chart. What is interesting to note is the organization’s structure is build up around a process, in this case the creative process, instead of the usual hierarchical top down or even the so-called flat reporting structure.

Businesses who are passionate about design and creativity or want to make design thinking a central feature in their organization can learn something from this. If you look at how Disney has been set up, the organization respects the process, and all positions including management, supports the creation of the end product.

Why not eh?

Via: Fast Company

Click on the image to zoom in.

Check out this visualization of the Design Process taught at the Stanford D-School . The photo was taken by Nina, a senior at Stanford majoring in product design.

The visual is familiar, logical and strangely alluring. The design process made sexy? Just follow the curves!

Via: Young and Brilliant.

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.

Check out Alexandros Stasinopoulos’ very cool Ora watch! What is even more exciting is that Alexandros has generously shared his concept sketches so that we are able to have a deeper insight into his thinking process.

the purpose of mechanical watches is not just to display the time. they are, and ought to be, the showcase of human achievements in the fields of engineering, aesthetics and of course craftsmanship – just to mention a few. it is essential for mechanical watches through their form and functions to reflect these values and therefore to be the mediums to push the limits and discover new territories of creation and technological advancement.

ora concept is a study on the field of haute horlogerie. it focuses on the display of time via an unconventional mode, by replacing the expected dial arrangement found in the vast majority of the mechanical watches with a set of three interwoven tapes – one to indicate the hour(s), one to indicate the minute(s), and one to indicate the day.
the arrangement of the indications derived from the aspiration to demonstrate in a bold and dramatic way the passage of time. the design of the case reflects an “inside-out” design approach as it was the mechanism’s arrangement that prescribed the overall form in an attempt to enhance its uniqueness and create a distinctive silhouette.

ora [awr-uh] : phonetically a) “hour” in greek b) in greek the imperative “look!”

It is very clear that Alexandros has strong thinking foundation that drives his concept’s uniqueness. However, I do have few thoughts in my mind that popped up after looking at his sketches and design philosophy.

I find, from the design sketches, a very strong symmetrical element to the concept. So I was surprised to see, in the final design, the slightly off angled X that, in my humble opinion, makes the design more quirky than engineered. While I don’t think it should look like an asterisk, I wonder how it would look if the X was balanced more evenly? Also from a usability and readability point of view, I believe the hour tape should actually be read from an ascending orientation rather than the descending set up it is currently in.

Regardless, as they always say, hindsight is 20/20. So these thoughts (or improvements?) are by no means intended to put down the effort Alexandros has put into the design. Well done Alexandros and do check out the rest of the Ora watch and its different colors at his personal portfolio site.

Via: Yanko Design

Click here for a bigger picture!

This little chart was inspired by my Interaction Design colleagues. If you come from an Industrial Design or Interaction Design point of view, you might just end up focusing on one part of this chart and miss the whole equation. Personally, I find creating silos of design disciplines with hard lines in between is just an incorrect way of working. Designing an engaging product experience should be well considered journey lead by a multidisciplinary designer managing every touch point your consumer engages with either your product or brand.

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.

Post originally published on May 27, 2006.
Edit 1: Updated with new written copy, updated links and images.

Squiggle by Damien Newman

Years ago…kidding, about 2 years ago I published this awesome little representation of the design process created by Damien Newman from Central Office of Design.

Lovingly called the “Squiggle”, it seems to have found a life of its own all over the place. Don’t you just love the Internet? Damien has since released it under a Creative Commons License.

We really need more of such design process diagrams or visualizations. It helps brings to the table a certain level of clarity and succinctness rarely seen in the difficult client education aspect of our design business. Thanks Damien!

Via Noise between Stations Blog.

First of all, I like to apologize for the lack of my usual “insanely useful” design articles lately. I have been in the last couple of months really busy resettling back in Singapore. Not only that, work has been really busy as we have kicked off a good year of product development. Lastly as the title of this post alludes to, I have been working on something that I would like to give back to the Design Industry that I love so much.

>Think>Draw>Make> (at www.thinkdrawmake.com) was something that I have been thinking about for quite a bit. This was really born out of my frustration seeing designers both young and old:

• Think & Draw but don’t Make
• Draw & Make but don’t Think
• Think & Make but don’t Draw

Perhaps it is about the failure of educators to teach design in such a manner, or maybe students just forget that 3D does not tell you everything. I don’t really know. However what I do know is this basic principle is vital for creating any form of good design as the reality is this process naturally weeds out the crap from good.

As a result I decided to create this Design Sojourn Mini-Site as a living reminder for everyone of this basic design process, and for the betterment of our Design Industry. A call for designers to be more self-critical and have “Zero Tolerance for Poor Design”.

No only that, as I am also a big fan of design visualizations, I have open this site Design Sojourn to anyone interested in submitting their interpretation of what their favorite design process is. It does not necessary have to be about Think/Draw/Make per say, but about what they think it could be. This then opens the many design processes to dialogs and debate. Hopefully we can all learn something from this. Regardless it would make a great repository of process visualizations for your next design presentation!

So I like to encourage all design sojourn readers, designers and non-designers, in fact anyone who uses design and creative principles at work to submit their version of their Design process. Not to worry, there will be full kudos to the designer, and the site will be 100% Ad free. It is a public service announcement after all.

Edit: For simplicity and ease of blog maintenance, Think>Draw>Make will not be updated anymore, and all future Design Process Visualizations will be updated here. The mini site will still run to pay homage to the cause!

If you are interested in submitting your interpretation, do email me a 550 x 450 pixel Jpeg to: dt [at] designsojourn.com

I look forward to hearing from all of you soon! Please keep in touch.