Design Sojourn | Strategic Industrial Design Blog

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We designers have got it tough.

We seem to get blamed for almost everything these days. From seemingly lack of sustainable efforts to poor packaging or just lousy product experiences, we seem to cop it all. However the reality is we cannot and should not feel as we are entirely to blame.

As Bill Buxton lamented in his recent keynote speech “The Design Ecosystem” during the Interaction 08 Interaction Design conference:

He (Buxton) started off by emphasizing that designers alone cannot take credit for any great business solution; everyone in an organization has equal value – and he noted the tripod of design, engineering and sales. He spoke about Apple’s success and the industry’s tendency to credit its principal designer Jonathan Ive. While Apple certainly turned itself around through industrial design, admits Buxton who is a principal scientist at Microsoft Research, credit is as much due to the Apple lawyers who managed to convince the major record labels to let them sell their songs for 99 cents each, and to the advertising team who came up with the unmistakable silhouette commercials. Via: Pleasure and Pain

The flip side of this can be also true. If something goes wrong, it is therefore not always the designer’s fault, though he is always the first scapegoat. So we should not be too hard on ourselves nor take ourselves too seriously all the time.

Often there are forces that move around us that are way beyond our control. Thus when a project is running away from the design intent or component creep is causing a design to spiral into the depths of fatness, I have found the best thing to do at anyone one time is to use the power of a recommendation. While we can’t be blamed entirely, we still have a duty as designers to say something especially if it impacts the environment.

A recommendation is a powerful form of a suggestion. The great thing is that it steps on no one’s toes, as is not a commandment or a must do. Also it highlights the fact that you are making a point, while not bruising other egos as it still defers the ultimate responsibility to the decision maker. Also when you make a recommendation, it is also processed in the other person’s memory as an option and thus a powerful influencer on making a decision that you might want.

So the next time, when you need a client to accept a proposal, or a design direction, try making a recommendation instead!

Oh do check out Bills hard hitting keynote as well as he does do a good job laying it on us!

Image: Thumbs Down by CraigPJ

About time I got to this one and I though it makes a great post to face the year end with!

I also hope to keep this as a living document that gets constantly updated (with additional input from all my readers), and a good reference guide for industrial designers that want to learn to rule the world!

1) Looking at other products for inspiration.

2) Not creating or studying the design brief.

3) Not checking if the concept fulfils the design brief.

4) Spending too much time on the computer.

5) Not improving their sketch communication skills.

6) Not improving their verbal communication skills.

7) Not making a concept model because they were lazy or not wanting to get dirty.

8) Coming to work late.

9) Not understanding that a design is not theirs but the company’s.

10) Getting too emotionally involved in their designs.

11) Not being friends with Engineering.

12) Forgetting to compromise.

13) Not being friends with Marketing.

14) Mistaking arrogance for confidence.

15) Forgetting Industrial Design requires multi-disciplinary skills.

16) Being disorganized in mind and/or space.

17) Poor Time management.

18) Not planning a 3D construction process before doing 3D modelling.

19) Designing in a 3D program.

20) Forgetting to document their work.

21) Forgetting that there are costs impacts to design decisions.

22) Not including draft angles and part lines in 3D models or design files.

23) Forgetting to save work or worst deleting it by accident.

24) Not thinking through a design to the very end and it gets ripped to shreds.

25) Forgetting that a presentation board is also a design element.

Edit: User submitted content!

26) Over satisfied with the first design. (by Design Monkey)

27) Sketching the same design over and over again. (by Design Monkey)

28) Making things that can be produced instead of creating “insanely” great products. (by Idris Mootee)

29) Forgetting the goal of design is to improve not just make something different. (by Dave Pinter)

30) Being apathetic to sustainable and green design. (by Dave Pinter)

The following four are by Raghuraj Ananthoj with some editing on my part.

31) Not understanding if the form inspiration is appropriate to the form being created.

32) Failing to understand the brand philosophy of the company.

33) Not building a good relationship between fellow designers by sharing knowledge and work.

34) Avoiding critics, which can help improve the current design and other product features.

I have always felt and encouraged designers to update their trusty (probably rusty) portfolios at least every 6 months. While many designers feel that they should only update their portfolios when they are looking for new work or job hunting, I find there are another few reasons why it should be done more frequently.

The period you stay in a job can last anywhere from 1 year to 5 years or more. If you were like me in a busy consultancy, you could be working on new projects every 3 to 6 weeks. At the end of 1 year you could have accumulated upwards of 20 design projects! This would be a major investment in time and effort if you needed to update your portfolio right away. Furthermore there could be instances that you can’t find the right images and data for your portfolio because it was lost in that data pile of mess you call a server, or some errant intern could have deleted it. (Has happened!)

Often times, a portfolio crunch comes when you need to update your portfolio for a potential job opportunity, and like most good job opportunities, they do not wait. I had interviewed designers that kept on saying they have better and newer work, as well as gave up waiting on designers to submit their portfolios. Needless to say they did not even get considered for the job. Having a constantly updated portfolio, means you are ready to grab that fantastic job opportunity that rarely comes by in our all too competitive world.

Finally and most importantly, frequently updating your portfolio means you get to take stock of what you have accomplished. In our daily grind of spinning 3D models, managing vendors, and sanding foam etc. we tend to forget that whatever we do is an extra notch in our belt or that it is a foundation stone that builds our career as designers. So by regularly updating your portfolio work, you might find that you feel a great sense of satisfaction and accomplishment of what you have done so far. It also allows you to access areas in design that you might or want to improve on. Hopefully this will allow you to rise above that daily grind many designers gripe about and from my experience, its only when you do rise above it that you will achieve greatness.

So do try updating that dusty portfolio and let me know how it feels?

On the side note for my non-designer readers, the same effect can be felt by updating your resume or CV frequently.

Our budding young Industrial Designer David is back this week with a new question on his education and training in Industrial Design. He asks:

If I were to take up a course such as Engineering/Industrial Design double degree or take something up like Product Design Engineering, would it give me a better edge in the competitive world of jobs?

Or would taking up a Bachelor of Industrial Design be sufficient to get jobs?

Right now I’m tossing up between the two. Problem is that my maths is average and my chemistry is no better. (They are subjects required to get into the engineering courses)

Oh, also, sorry to be intrusive, but what course did you do and where? Like did you just do a Bachelor of ID or did you take a double degree as well?

First off David, not to worry my design background is not a big secret so I don’t mind sharing it with you. I graduated with a Bachelor of Industrial Design (Hons) from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney, Australia. I was one of their first few graduates. Currently I believe the course is doing well with a few notable award winning graduates with big name brands or employed in the design consultancies in Australia. If you like more information do check out their course website here.

Types of Industrial Education

There are essentially 2 types of Industrial Design courses or degrees. One is an art based approached and the other is a multi-disciplinary approach.

The Art School or Art based approach focuses on the styling and form creation and the nuances that come with such creative approach to design. They are also very craft base with lots of exploration with materials and different manufacturing processes. Often such degree courses require you, as an admission criteria, to have a portfolio of strong varied work done while you were in high school or during your past time.

Some of the art school advantages are that graduates are very strong in their understanding of form and in form development. However these students may need a lot of tutoring when it comes to making their designs more commercially viable or fiesable in manufacturing. These days though the art school graduates have become a lot better those aspects, but purely technical design work, such as case part design, will not be their strong point.

The other type of Industrial Design course focuses on a more multi-disciplinary approach, and is the approach that I studied at UNSW. This course structure finds it roots from a more European approach toward Industrial Design which believes that a successful product needs to consider all aspects of its success including marketing, ergonomics, engineering, manufacturing and design constraints. The students often take, in addition to design subjects, classes in the schools of Business and Engineering. This often results in design graduates that are well suited for commercial environments. Entry into such courses often don’t require a portfolio, but may require some ability in maths.

The advantage of a multi-disciplinary approach is that graduates get a strong understanding in what it takes to create a successful product as well as strong research and analytical skills. The down side is such graduates may not always be sensitive when it comes to form or design languages.

Choices?

At the end of the day, David, you need to look at this from a stand point of what sort of design career you want to have of the type of products you want to design. If you like to do boutique design work, the likes of Marc Newson or Karim Rashid, then an art school approach is for you. If you prefer are more commercial approach like working for brands like Nokia or Philips then a more multi-disciplinary approach will give you the skills you need.

Engineering work is also a good entry point, and creative engineers are in very high demand. But the scope of engineering often focuses on detailed work that considers manufacturing and materials processes. The reason for high math is the amount of calculations required to do those work.

I like to close this post to say that you might like to study the product development process in detail and identify which level you might like to “play” at. In fact there is one other degree you might like to consider which is a business degree in Marketing. At the end of the day though, I personally picked a multi-disciplinary approach simple because I wanted exposure and skills in both marketing and engineering as if I had failed as a designer, at least I would have the skills to move in those other directions!

This week’s question is from David, and avid 11 grader looking to get into a career in design. Wow they start young these days don’t they?

He writes:

I stumbled upon this blog by accident. I was actually typing in Google: “Sketching Tips” and found your article on the 11 tips. I’m still trying to work on my sketching skills.

Sorry before I continue, I should tell you a little a bit about myself. I’m a year 11 student, recently an Industrial Designer came into our Visual Communication class and introduced us to ID techniques. He basically taught us how to render with markers, ink wash and using Adobe Illustrator. I got a feel for it and I am loving it.

I have loved drawing since I was a kid. I’m good at copying a drawing really well. Yet this is going to sound contradictory, but sometimes I make up details without sticking to what is there. Haha.

Sorry I’m am getting side tracked, the reason I wanted to contact you was to get some advice. Right now, I am trying to develop my sketching skills AS WELL AS my design skills. Unfortunately, I have not been able to tap into the thinking outside the box bit.

I have tried some of your tips. Like Drawing with pen and such. I am making progress, but my drawings tend to look really flat and well, doesn’t have any punch when you look at it. Guess you will understand if I send you some of them. I hope to hear from you if possible. It would be great to learn from someone as great at design as you.

First of all, thanks for the great compliments.

You have now touched on an amazing point and one of the reasons why someone that can draw does not necessary make a good designer. Drawing is a technical skill that essentially reproduces on paper what the eye sees. It is to a certain extent sort of a biological photocopier if you would like. Of cause there is that interpretation element, but at the end of the day if you focus too much on drawing what will result is that you will have the ability to draw what you see, but not what you think.

To switch into designer mode, what you should be doing is now thinking of a shape or form and then using your technical skill of drawing to visualise it on paper. Have I lost you so far? Thus with this in mind, I continue to argue that you don’t have to have amazing drawing skills to be a great designer. Your drawing skills needs to be good enough to communicate what you have though up in your mind.

From your comments, the fact you are finishing up your sketches by making up details is a great start. This means you are starting to put in your own design thought into the drawing. Going forward what you now need to do is to improve your design sense or what elements make up a good design. This can be done in concurrent with your drawing ability.

1) Look for some books that describe design fundamentals or basic elements of design. It will talk about how a point, line, shape, volume, composition, proportion etc. all work together to make a great design.

2) After that take a conscious effort to not just look at objects around you, but to see it in its elements. Ask yourself when you see a beautiful object what sort of elements (line, shape, composition etc.) makes it a beautiful object. When you look at an ugly object, you ask yourself the opposite, what elements don’t work on this design.

3) Practice what you have observed by taking these objects you find that have poor design, and improve on it by drawing or sketching your designs on paper. Consider if you had to design a similar product, how would you do it.

4) Continue to read, look and see constantly. Design books and magazines as well as the internet all make great sources to inspire you as well as fill up that “design memory bank” in you head. I assume, as you read blogs, you would be computer savvy. So what you should now do is start a photo collection that can contain objects, architecture, environments, textures etc. that will make great source of inspiration in your future designs.

I hope these tips do help, and like anything, keep practising as you bound to get better in time. Also don’t be too hard on yourself, you still have another year to go in high school. But if you keep this up, by the time you get into design school you will be far ahead or any first year designer I have ever seen. Good Luck!

Update: Here are some great links to resources and books that were mentioned in this post.

1) Good books on Design Sketching

2) Do I have to be able to draw well to be a good designer?

3) Tips on how to improve your drawing ability.

You can look at this in another way, as one of my friends like to call it “Don’t Bull Sh*t yourself”, if a work is bad it is bad. That leads to and another oldie but goodie or as what most call it “You Cant Polish Sh*t”.

I think one of the interesting characteristics of good designers is that they have this internal filtering system that consistently allows them to do good work. They intuitively know which of their designs are good, as well as they know how to keep going if their work is not quite there. Not only that, their standards of their own deliverables are very high and can somehow consistently deliver designs that not only hit the mark but also surprise the viewers.

You might argue that to a certain extent good design is subjective, but often the acid test is the general consensus so get as much feedback as you can. However a design genius would bucks this trend as he often walks the lonely path, but honestly if you are one, you properly don’t have this problem anyway!

So how do you know know if you are still treading in the BS zone, so that you can then take the right steps to cross that line into designing success? Here are 8 tips to for you to consider:

1) You can’t explain the objective of your concept in 30 seconds or in a few sentences.

2) You find that you are changing your idea behind your design as a response to critique, as you struggle to justify it to your team.

3) You are still working on the same concept after 20 minutes, and can’t decide if its working or not.

4) You insist you can make your design work and it is really only about just rounding a few edges or working on proportions.

5) You don’t feel happy about your work but complain about the lack of time to do so due to many reasons.

6) You wonder when it is time to stop the designing part and do something else.

7) You stop designing the product or looking for the solution.

8) You let pride cloud your judgement, and continue to insists your design works even when everyone tells you otherwise. (Edit: This is in context of a designer working with other designers or in a design team.)

I always say, I rather designers shortlist their own work, than to get someone else to do it for them. In the end of the day, you will know when your design has hit the mark and justifying it will be easy. In the end, my answer to designers who always lament that they are not happy with their work is “why did you not take the effort to get it right?”

My former lecturer in design used to say that designers need to get into a state of readiness before they can become productive in design work or concept sketching. Some designers require more time, some require less. Some require going through fifty sketches, some require five sketches. Therefore the time required for each designer to get into that productive state is different. The trick is to know what is yours.

The young designers and the designers fresh out of school often require longer times to get into Design Readiness. The problem is most give up before they get there. Fortunately, like wine, it does get better with age. This is one of the reasons also why experienced designers are highly sort after, their ability to come up with ideas quick.

It gets better; you can train your self to be in a state of Design Readiness. There are many different techniques and you have to find what works best for you. However in general, the way to do it is like memorising the times table, every time you discuss design try to visualise how it would look like as a complete product. For example, if you are in a concept review, and some one suggests making your concept longer, sketch that suggestion in your mind. Or if you are flipping through a magazine of surfing the myriad of design aggregators out there and you discover a wonderful material or detail, visualise how it would look like as a product.

Now, it does not have to be 100% perfect visualisation. In fact it would be better to keep it as a sketch visualisation. The next step, though not always necessary, is to get it on to paper to solidify the idea. The thing you really want to do, as my lecturer used to say, is to warm up your creativity or in my example to keep your mind running warm. Just like a warm car engine, it always moves to peak efficiency a lot quicker.

Now here is a challenge, if you really want to stretch your mental engine, think of 3 or more variations of the idea when you get that mental trigger!

This week’s welcomed question comes from none other that Drew Kora:

I mean to ask can a designer work from home AND BE PRODUCTIVE? And how might it affect the rest of the team?

It is quite a difficult question as there are a lot of considerations and here again it is a yes and no answer. With all our technology and the internet today, working off site is a possibility for any profession. The issue here comes when there is some sort of interaction required with other people or departments as well as a few other considerations. They are:

1) Individual Designer or Team Designer
Does this designer need to be managed or does he show initiative? Is this designer a cog in the design process? In other words does he need to work with other people in a constant back and forth interaction? Again this has variables to the equation. Off site work is possible if the designer’s job is only focuses on CAD or Web data files, and not possible the job requires human to human brain storming or concept sketching.

Off site arrangements is also a possibility if the designer is a senior one that does not do much actual hands on design work but instead focuses on more business development and account management work. In this scenario this senior designer would have a team of designers under him that he can manage off site.

2) Scope of work
Similar to point 1, does this designer focus on one aspect of the project and needs constant overseeing by a supervisor, or is this designer capable of running a project from start to end? Designers that can work on their own steam and need little supervision is more likely to be able to work off site.

3) Trust and value
Finally this is the most important. Does this designer have a good working relationship with his/her superior, and can that supervisor trust that the designer’s work and responsibilities be maintained. Also another question is how valued or senior is this designer? One of the big problems of working off-site or part time work, is that it is a huge burden for the people around that designer.

This falls along the same category of why office hours have to be a standard across the board, that is if you need to contact someone, you are likely to reach that person during office hours. Therefore people will have to manage their schedules so that they can only talk to him when he is in or take the extra effort to digitize design work to send it to the designer at home. It is a simple equation, the value of the designer has to our weight the sacrifices made by the organisation.

———–

At the end of the day, there is no hard and fast rule, and my suggestions are very general at best as I do not know your full situation. It might be best if you consider proposing to go off-site, consider it during certain stages of a project when you have high autonomy and stick around when close interaction is required. Good Luck Drew and please let me know how things pan out for you?

Without sounding like a broken record or stating the obvious, if there is one and only one design tip you will ever need as a professional designer, it has to be don’t forget to SAVE your work! Save it frequently and save it regularly.

Don’t laugh, as I can’t imagine the number of times I’ve seen people forget to save their work and suffer the consequences of it. Some of the other things you could do along this same defensive line of thought include:

1) Know and use that Ctrl + “S” on your keyboard! It is probably the universal short cut key for “save” in almost all Windows program. I think its “Apple” + “S” on the Mac, correct me if I am wrong? If your right hand is on your mouse your left should be on Ctrl + “S”. Get use to it, and make it second nature. I hit mine, almost unconsciously, every few minutes.

2) Set your program’s auto save to a timing you are comfortable with. I like mine to save every 5mins. The default is often 20mins. In a time crunch, I can’t even afford to lose 20mins of work.

3) Save your work incrementally. I like to do this as it gives me a reference point from my work from the past. Furthermore if I accidentally deleted a feature, I can always go back and cut/past it back into my current document.

4) Pick good file names. May it be reference numbers or dates, but do pick a system that is easy for you to follow, remember, as well as upkeep.

5) Keep a save log. With my more complex CAD design files, I keep a log book or diary to help me remember what I was doing at the time I made that particular save file. If you then convert your diary into a .txt file, it becomes good practice for the future as it makes it easy for other people that need to reference your files.

6) Finally backup your save files. Yep, I have a copy on CD-Rom and my portable hard drive. Your hard drive may crash or your computer die, or even your CAD program stalls and/or exits, such events occur more frequently than you can imagine. Murphy’s Law does exist, and it happens in threes so they tell me!

The latest August issue of Icon Magazine has a super-human collection of 50 manifestos of the word’s leading designers on their view of design in the future and today. It’s a great read on insights in the mind of some of our greatest design “Icons”. (excuse the pun?) Icon has gracefully put all of it up online, but I find it’s a pretty good read and an issue worth purchasing. Especially as the magazine market a field of pollution of “glossy lifestyle magazines“.

Via: Gems Sty