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As part of Google’s Authors@Google, Kenya Hara discusses his awesome book “Designing Design” and his new book “White”. Warning, it runs for 53 mins and is about 78 MB!
If you have not already get the book here on Amazon:
Designing Design
Originally Published July 09, 2006, edited and updated.
It is not necessary, but if you are interested in the background of this article, do read Part 1 first.
Here are some strategies I have found useful and successful in managing and fostering design as a business strategy in an organization. It should not matter if you are an in-house employee or an external design consultant the processes and thinking are the same.
Designer in the lead
Unless you are reporting to a designer, you will need to take the lead in the creation and development of a design strategy. This is simply because no one understands the design process better than you. Convincing the business to listen to you is the problem.
There are a lot of “fly by night” managers who think they know how it is to be a product designer or design strategist, after creating (I would not even say designing) a few products. Personally, the smart ones I respect know that they need to hire trained designers to help them. It’s similar to the perennial problem in Asia in that everybody thinks they are an Interior Designer. Building contractors, furniture retailers, real interior designers, and architects all seem to be able to do Interior design. Yep, just like Industrial Design there are some more qualified than others.
So if you have decided you want to take on this role, it is likely you will have more responsibilities outside your general designing job. Therefore you should ask yourself if you want to do this? On the upside, you will start to understand the bigger picture, become a better designer and you will find you will actually stop complaining about the management’s lack of understanding or respect for a designer!
Edit 1: Originally published 08 June, 2006. Edited and updated.
Can you actually quantify something so subjective and intangible as a design or an Idea? Can it then be used as a foundation to tell you if its a good design/idea or not?
As someone who base most of my decisions on a “gut” feel developed through years of experience and critical insight, this quantifying concept really got me thinking…
It must be fate, as I had this topic broached to me twice in a day.
The first was an interview I conducted with a pleasant fellow who was extremely passionate about applying logic and quantifiable methodology in the selection process of designs and concepts. Apparently in very big companies like Nokia, Sony-Ericsson, and Dell, such methodology is common place. Makes sense as it helps justify the subsequent huge manufacturing and marketing investments.
The second time was this article at cph127. The gist of the article was:
How do you measure the effect of design from a business point of view? How do you know that design played a role in achieving business success?
Combining the two instances together we actually cover all aspects of this idea of “measuring” design. The first way is to use these methods to help designers select the right design during the concept phase within a corporate environment. The second method, as highlighted by the cph127 blog, checks to see if the designs have been successful outside of the corporate environment after it is launched.
Either way I think as designers we need to be careful.
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, and even provided a vector Illustrator file for your use.
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.
Original graphic I used:
You start with the light blue frame and move towards the dark blue frame which represents a completed product.
I have been pondering over the new Macbook Pro’s “Unibody”, with my thoughts often sliding from sheer audacity of execution, to disbelieve, to the wonderment of who got threaten at gun point, and then finally going back full circle.
But as I thought more about it, I suddenly realized that this was probably one of the best examples of a new school of thought of Industrial Design that I observed about 5 or more years ago. First finding its roots in the furniture/interiors industry (those guys can really experiment!), it has now finally come to main stream consumer electronics with the new Macbook. In short Industrial Design has evolved into a holistic expression of “everything” that is required to create the product. Expanding on this, the Industrial Design of these products were inspired by the product’s manufacturing processes or materials and specifically designed to express it as much as possible.
But wait, there’s more! [ more ]
Edit 1: Tim is from Frog! Sorry Tim!
Edit 2: Completely forgot to highlight, original seed concept “Just Plain Old Thinking” is from csven of rebang.
Edit 3: Lesson: Blog when awake! Duh!
Tim Leberecht, Frog Design’s VP of Marketing, has written about Design Thinking and how it is the new Marketing “Buzzword”. He goes on to describe how Marketing people have even managed to trick themselves into embracing this next big thing, especially after how he defines Design Thinking according to Wikipedia as: “Design thinking is a process for practical, creative resolution of problems or issues that looks for an improved future result.”
So…by Wikipedia’s definition, it looks to me that Design Thinking is just plain old “Thinking”. Nice to know that till today the only people thinking all the time are designers!
But seriously, what is Design Thinking, especially when every management guru seems to be claiming to know or wanting to teach it?
Honestly, I don’t really know what it is all about and I’m in the business. Well actually I have an idea and here is my hypothesis:
“Design Thinking is a thinking process that anchors your decision making with multi-disciplinary influences”.
Otherwise how would we, as designers, are able to come up with designs that are meaningful and relevant to consumers?
Over to you dear reader, what is your definition of Design Thinking?
I think this would have done the rounds in the design blogosphere by this time. Sorry, it is a little late as I completely forgot to post it. But here it is, and all I can say is I WANT THIS!
ILoveSketch from Seok-Hyung Bae on Vimeo.
ILOVESketch is a 3D curve sketching system that captures some of the affordances of pen and paper for professional designers, allowing them to iterate directly on concept 3D curve models. The system coherently integrates existing techniques of sketch-based interaction with a number of novel and enhanced features. Novel contributions of the system include automatic view rotation to improve curve sketchability, an axis widget for sketch surface selection, and implicitly inferred changes between sketching techniques. We also improve on a number of existing ideas such as a virtual sketchbook, simplified 2D and 3D view navigation, multi-stroke NURBS curve creation, and a cohesive gesture vocabulary.
Looks like there is a pretty steep learning curve, but based on its potential, I would take a day off to learn it! Great stuff guys and I hope you can realize it!
The title of this quick post came up in a recent discussion I had with a business partner. After further reflection, I find this very true. It is applicable to all forms of strategy including design. So let me reword this:
A good design strategy is like a good movie. A beautiful sum of parts that come together under great direction.
Who do we have? The actor, the script writer, the sound guys, the casting crew, support crew, and let us also not forget the director.
Who do you want to be? I suggest the director if you want to really make a change.
It is how and the way it all comes together, the various still images and sound, that makes a movie great. Miss a part or segment (for example by censoring) it seems to all fall apart.
Similarly, everyone in your development team has a role to play. More importantly, no one is above anyone else nor should anyone be excluded. Sometimes as designers we forget eh?
Edit 1: Improved grammar and phrasing.
I finally got the time today to sit down and really think about the impact of these troubled times.
It has been a very hectic month since I officially started my new role, as a result I really only hovered around the global impact from the US Sub-Prime Crises. With only snippets of news via early morning radio and the occasional Stock Market update on my iPhone, I never really had a chance to think about this crisis till today.
It’s about time, the (M)Ad Men figured that out. Well they sort of did before and there always been Industrial Designers in advertising and branding. But much of the focus then was on packaging design, and Industrial Design was often seen as nothing more than skinning.
Core77 has a pretty good article called “Stepmothers of Invention: Branding Firms Enter the Industrial Design Fray“. While the article comes across a little wishy-washy at times as the author tries to play both sides, the central message is clear:
“…branding and ID are different sides of the same coin. We’re both satisfying the needs of the customer.” ~ John Winsor, Crispin Porter + Bogusky.
I have another take on this:
Design is the silent ambassador of your brand. ~ Paul Rand
Basically, nothing shouts your brand more than your logo/product/graphic/interface design. Therefore, designers need to understand the important role branding plays in Industrial Design, correction, in Strategic Design.
This is but one aspect of the design strategy that we need to consider before we start designing. In other words, one of the ingredients we would need so that the entire dish (or product) can come out right.
I’m no expert in branding, but this basic credo has always stuck with me, “branding is all about the product”. In today’s emphasis in authentic branding, the focus should be about the product or idea, and not the the other way around. Just look at Viao, iPhone and Playstation! Even better, if you want to build a great authentic brand ground up, build it around a product such as James Dyson did.
For something as focused and well-defined as a brand-building product design, hiring a few skilled designers to extend your service list can potentially work out, because the problem is so specific. When we look for examples of “authentic,” “innovative” design, however, we’re almost always looking at a different sort of team. The current poster children of innovation-spawned market success–the Wii, the iPhone, the Flip video camera–emerged from large groups of researchers, designers, engineers, programmers and manufacturing specialists who worked together for a long time, and knew both their brand and the applicable technologies intimately. This type of work cannot be emulated by assembling a team or hiring an agency and handing them a brand bible, no matter how good they are at their jobs.
However I’m quite please that the article got it right in the end. Many companies, not just the “poster children” have engaged such great development teams. Perhaps some more successful than others.
Now, that my friends, is what Strategic Design is all about. Welcome to the club!
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All opinions expressed on this blog are solely the author's own and should not be attributed to his employer or their clients.
