June 6, 2008
04:30 pm | 1 recommendation | Be the first to comment
Occassionally, a “design celebrity” says something that starts the Design Industry echo chamber buzzing. In April, mention of an interview that Philippe Starck gave popped up in several design blogs. Nussbaum On Design, Frog's Matter/Anti-Matter, and others. Each has a different take on Starck, and more importantly on design, so they are worth a look.
The statement that got them going is Starck’s declaration that “design is dead.” It’s not the first time that Starck has said this, but each time it is met with gasps.
Nussbaum argues, in essence that design isn’t dead, it’s just changing. The change he speaks of is design’s so-called democratization. The tools of design are now available to lots of people…everyone can take part. That’s great, but as I see it design is about judgment, not tools. That free license of Photoshop LE that came with your scanner does not make you a designer, at least not any more than having a skillet makes you a chef. It’s not about having tools, It’s about what you do with those tools.
The same goes for the more exclusive and expensive tools that designers use. Whether it’s Maya, Pro/Engineer, the Adobe Creative Suite, Processing, or a pen and paper. All of them, regardless of your technical acumen with them, can be used to express poor judgment.
Frog’s Tim Leberecht characterizes Starck’s statements as poignant and humbling. Starck certainly seems to be taking himself to task. Perhaps what he means is that he wants to do something different than he has been doing... to raise his game so to speak.
That said, I have a bit of trouble with the blanket nature of Starck’s declaration. Now, maybe I, along with everyone else reacting to the interview, am simply assigning too much weight to what Starck had to say.
Either way, here’s my take.
One quote in particular struck me, because I think it is indicative of a problem with the way design is defined, practiced, employed and valued.
“…I have designed so many things without ever really being interested in them.”
Taken alone, maybe this is Mr. Starck’s way of driving home his point that design is unimportant, but it makes me wonder what exactly he was doing that he called design. How exactly does he define this thing that he declares dead?
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think of design as something best left to a chosen few. If it were, I’m sure there would be those who would argue against my membership in that club. After all, I’m an engineer, and by some people’s thinking that disqualifies me. In any case, good design, the kind that is worth doing, the kind that addresses a problem meaningfully and adds value requires effort, thought and dedication. It is not about learning to use a piece of software, but about identifying and solving problems, recognizing and addressing opportunities. And it is not necessarily communicated in the beauty shots that adorn design firm web sites.
In the realm of Product Design it is about:
- how a task might be accomplished,
- how a user might relate to an object or tool,
- how that object or tool might better serve its purpose, or
- it may go further and examine the purpose itself.
The bottom line is, if you don’t have reasons for the solutions you propose, you are dangerously close, as I see it, to designing things “without having much interest in them.” Going through the motions so to speak.
All of these descriptors might be applied to invention, to engineering, to art or to architecture. Substitute observer, audience or client for user if you like. Decide whether you want to emphasize physical form, function or experience, either way you will address them all, either purposefully or passively, so it’s best not to ignore any of them.
Finally, Starck ends with this: “I have been a producer of materiality. I do feel ashamed for this. What I want to be instead now is a producer of concepts. This will be much more useful.” Perhaps, what Starck means to do, is to question the problems designers are called on to solve and their own complicity in creating things destined for a short trip to a landfill near you.
Design viewed as decoration, focused solely on the sale of shiny new objects, or stated another way, focused on short-term ROI at the expense of longer term usefulness, is a real problem. While creating and maintaining corporate profitability may be the goal, we must be careful of reducing the product, to mere background noise in the pursuit of profits. If the corporation and the designer produce things “without ever having any interest in them” we have a problem, but the problem is not with design, it’s with the designer and the corporation. It is a matter of priorities.
Perhaps what he’s trying to say is that he’s tired of not being taken seriously. For all his accolades, he along with many other designers are called on, not to take part in defining and solving problems, but to lend their names and ‘style’ for the sake of selling poorly conceived chotchkies.
What’s your definition of design? How does it fit into your business, and how should it?
For context, you can find a full translation of Starck's interview with German magazine, Die Zeit at mlle a.
David Oliver | Cusp | http://www.cuspdevelopment.com/
11:04 am | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment
Branding is often viewed as window dressing for the sake of making an initial impression and closing a sale. The problem is that if your company changes a slogan, but not its practices or service, the slogan will eventually fall flat. If you don't live up to the hype your customers will lose faith, as I did recently.
I purchased mobile phone services from a company I switched to after a bad experience with one of its competitors. Has anyone had a good experience with their cell phone provider?
Here’s my dilemma: My PDA phone is dead…Intermittent signal (a bad antenna). Difficulty charging and holding a charge, but not just a bad battery. The bottom line is that it’s not working and it’s time for a replacement.
Luckily, I thought, I insured my equipment, so it should be simple enough to get a replacement. Buying insurance for my phone was a bit of a leap of faith, because I am generally not one to buy the extended warrantee from big box stores. I think of them as a bit of a racket, just another profit center for the store offering pretty minimal value to the customer.
I dropped by my local mobile service provider, thinking I’d get a new phone, a different phone, since I wasn’t happy with the fact that my old one died shortly after it’s one year warrantee elapsed, as in on cue.
Here’s what I found:
My insurance policy does not allow me to get a different phone.
The PDA phone I have has not been discontinued.
I’ve paid about $120 in insurance fees and the deductible is $110. The phone retails for $300 new(it goes for $100 with a new plan).
Imagine if your auto insurance required you to replace your broken down car with one of the same make, model and year, and your deductible was more than a third the original cost of the car. No you can't take the money and put towards a different make.
I’m thinking my mobile service provider wants to keep me around. After all, I have a family plan, data plans, a couple of PDA phones, a Wifi plan. They are unmoved. It turns out that the replacement won’t come from them, but from the insurer. I can either call them from the phone store, or from home. It doesn’t matter, because the new phone will be shipped to me at home. Not very convenient when your phone dies in the middle of a business trip, as mine did.
I left the store with an 800 number and a web address for a company I had not heard of before(not particularly happy). I am reminded of why I don’t buy those extended warrantees.
When I got home I took a look at the insurance company web site. My replacement phone will be “either a new or refurbished phone” and I must send my broken phone in within 30 days or may be charged up to $300. Colors, features and accessory compatibility are not guaranteed.
Are you serious? Send us your money and your phone and we’ll decide what to send you in return. If it doesn’t work with your Bluetooth headset, you’re on your own. I imagine getting a phone in the mail. I open the box to find a pink phone, studded with fake rhinestones. Nevermind the fact that my phone doesn't come in pink and rhinestones aren't a factory option...this is my nightmare.
Imagine that replacement car again. The same model and year as your broken down car. It’s had a tune up, but color and features are not guaranteed. No A/C perhaps, or heated seats.
Part of me thinks I should have read the fine print. Part of me knows that if everyone in line to buy a new phone read the fine print of their contracts, the mobile service providers would go out of business.
Now I find myself shopping for a new phone and quite possibly a new service provider.
David Oliver | Cusp | http://www.cuspdevelopment.com/
11:39 pm | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment
I came across a service that I think is pretty ingenious.
The Point(www.thepoint.com), as they describe it, “is a platform for group action, helping you make things happen that you wouldn’t accomplish alone.”
Their web site allows people to set up campaigns to get stuff done, stuff that requires a group of people to help, lend support, or donate resources. On their web site there are examples of campaigns that run the gamut from organizing a boycott to cleaning up a park, to raising money for studio time to produce an album. All you have to do is convince other people to help out or participate.
The trick is that people commit to lend their support, funds, etc. only if a certain number of people or a certain amount of funds are pledged. The moment the tipping point, or criteria for making the campaign viable is reached, the group springs into action.
If you’d donate money to a cause, but want to know there’s enough money to accomplish the goal and your money won’t go to waste, the campaign will stipulate that a certain amount of money must be pledged before anyone’s credit cards are charged.
If a boycott seems ineffectual to you, unless you know 999 other people will be participating and have a real impact, nothing happens ‘till 1,000 people sign up.
It comes complete with widgets to track progress.
Take a look. What do you think and how would you use this service?
David Oliver | cusp | http://www.cuspdevelopment.com/
April 4, 2008
11:28 am | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment
Innovation requires an environment that is open to new ideas. That's all well and good, but innovation is more than blue sky. In order to encourage new and novel solutions, you have to ask the right questions.
Many brainstorming sessions are centered around questions that boil down to “What should we do in response to our competitor’s product or service?” Now the reason you are having the meeting in the first place may be because your competitor has just taken a big chunk of your market share, so that seems like a legitimate question.
The problem is that you are in danger of limiting the discussion with the question itself. Even new ideas in response to this question are limited by point by point comparison to your competitor.
If you find yourself using a spec sheet of common features as your roadmap for developing your next product, it should be easy to imagine that your competitor is doing the same in a parallel brainstorming session. I've been in a few of these meetings, and believe me they are more sunshower than storm.
Whatever your goals with respect to your competition, the product or service as an object and the problem or opportunity it addresses don’t care. This is why, despite the advantages of established players, there is always room for an insurgent with a new approach, a new set of core competencies and the wherewithal to make them real. This is the nature of innovation.
Take a step back and ask what seems like an obvious question: “What is the problem?” Seems simple enough, but framing the problem is your most difficult task.
If your solution, challenges the way your audience thinks about a problem and wins them over you have created a problem for your competitor that is more profound than the loss of a few points of marketshare; you are controlling the agenda as opposed to making an isolated point in an ongoing tit for tat with them. Now they must change the way they think about the problem or challenge the agenda that you set. If they are inclined to respond by pinning your spec sheet on the wall, then they are now following you and limiting themselves.
For an example of this dynamic at work, you need not look beyond the perhaps overused example of Apple’s iPods. There has been a lot of talk about the demand Apple has created with their interface, the aesthetics of the products, the small size, iTunes, their branding. All of these are contributing factors, but the real reason for the success of the iPod is that they reframed the problem, executed a plan that was not in anyone else’s playbook and surprised the market with a new set of possibilities.
To date, their competitors have not managed to present a compelling enough case for the existence of their new products. They simply add features and follow the media player world view that Apple established.
Apple's competitors can’t do anything about Apple’s propensity to push the envelope. What they can do is push the envelope a bit themselves. Their own envelope, not Apple’s.
I'm sure the guys responsible for mp3 product development for Creative, the Zune, Samsung and the rest are sick of pronouncements that make their task sound easy. The truth is that Apple is a formidable and agressive adversary that managed to get everyone involved in development, branding, etc. on the same page.
Most industries do not have a dominant player with such a grip on the product development agenda. Usually the advantage is much more fragile. The opportunities to create standout products, compelling stories and take control of the market abound. The payoffs as demonstrated by Apple should be motivation enough to shake things up.
Thanks to the Matter/Anti-Matter blog for pointing me to a related essay. "The Long Wow" by Adaptive Path's Brandon Schauer is definitely worth a read.
11:22 am | 1 recommendation | 1 comment
Put another way, do you give your clients what they ask for, or, do you offer your best judgment even when it’s not what they want to hear?
Now before you dismiss this as a question meant for someone else, let me say this: No number of design awards, glowing articles, or Fortune 100 clients grants you exemption from this question.
Design consultancies lead a precarious life. They rely on the good graces of their clients. Of course, a big part of doing business is nurturing relationships, but just because you have a relationship with a client doesn’t mean it’s a healthy one. An upset middle managers at one Client Company or another can ruin a quarter for a design firm - big or small.
When people ask questions, they often have an idea of what they want to hear in response. The desired answer is telegraphed along with the question - the business equivalent of fishing for a compliment.
It’s a whole lot easier to acquiesce than to go out on a limb. But remember, you told that client that you could do great things for their products, brand and bottom line. You said, "Sign here and 'Poof' you get a whole team, a whole studio full of change agents. What a bargain!"
The problem is that good ideas, even great ones, are not always welcome. They are inconvenient. They may step on toes. They may require new methods in manufacturing, marketing, or sales. They may force changes in a business model that you already know works. They may do none of the above, but demand that things taken for granted be reconsidered.
It may be better to hold your tongue, put your judgment (about the project anyway) on hold and give them what they asked for. Who would blame you?
12:49 pm | 1 recommendation | Be the first to comment
I have been wanting to post about The Carver for a while because it’s such a nice example of innovation. Too often there is a tendency to talk about innovation in terms of things that are a little different than the norm. The guys who developed the carver have merged concepts of motorcycle and automobile and solved some tricky engineering problems to make their creation real.
I won’t belabor the point, but take a look at this video and keep these questions in mind:
-
Are you pushing the envelope far enough in your brainstorming sessions?
-
Does engineering have the potential to elicit the sorts of emotional responses that we generally associate with design aesthetics?
The Carver concept has been licensed by Venture Vehicles in California and they may be on the way to introducing electric and plugin hybrid versions in the U.S. I wonder if it helps if I say publicly: I want one.
David Oliver | cusp | http://www.cuspdevelopment.com/
