It won’t surprise anyone who read this blog that I am not an admirer of the Design Thinking phenomenon. I will call myself a skeptic observer. However I am not directly oppose to it. If you wonder how come, you should consider the confused and blurred presentation of Design Thinking throughout the design world - I don’t know if I’m ‘against’ or ‘for’ something so ill defined. So while trying to refine the point for myself, I am defining it in three ways, noting two major problems and asking a question.
First, Design Thinking as Synthetic thinking.
At first, in 1960’s, researchers from the field of Cognitive Psychology (notably Herbert Simon -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Simon) used Design Thinking in parallel with the term Synthetic Thinking - the combination of ideas into a complex whole. The general notion is to define a philosophical difference between the traditional scientific analytical thinking and a type of thinking specializing in convergence, rather than divergence. Implicitly it should be noted that Design Thinking is not new and has nothing to add to the well-discussed subject of the limitation of analytical thinking and management. In fact, I was first exposed to the term over 20 years ago by my dad, an architect. Today I find it more than ironic that the people who promote the Design thinking notion are among the more analytical, systemic and process-driven persona in the design world. After all, the notion of Design Thinking, as well as Synthetic thinking, was originated to a degree as the antithesis of Analytical thinking. Naturally as a ‘classic’ designer, I am fully on-board with the notion that the convergence of ideas into a cohesive whole, or to be precise, the Quality of such convergence, is at the core of what I do as much as any designer work since Brunelleschi. I also believe non-designers acting and implementing Synthetic thinking daily, throughout many aspects of life. Possibly any large complex problem is by definition solved through Synthetic/design thinking since by analysis alone you get nowhere.
Second, Design Thinking as a Methodology.
Over the last decade, in part because of the growing recognition in Design, the methodology of design was gaining credit as a worthy management method. This lead to formulating Design Thinking as a methodology - the prescribed process of Define-Research-Ideate-Prototype-Choose-Implement-Learn (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_thinking). Again, there is nothing new about it since it resembles any design process description I heard off. I have two major problems with the Design Thinking methodology-
a. I think Design thinking is regressive and risky for design since it is placing thought (‘define’) always before action (‘prototype’) and analysis (‘research’) as the precursor to creativity (‘ideate’). I simply don’t believe the wheel was created through this process. In fact, the real challenge designers face is the opposite - a recognition that action (prototyping, sketching) often precede thinking and many products, inventions and great companies were born out of a burst of creativity and not through a regimented thought process. Furthermore, the notion of linear process as the absolute gold-standard for proper management and creativity is, in reality, one big fallacy. Linear process’ are seldom the way the world works. The non-linear and even chaotic nature of creative thinking is curtailed by a false presentation of a sqeeky-clean linear process.
b. I find it disingenuous to retroactively assign ‘design thinking’ label over the work of some of our best entrepreneurial thinkers. The ‘Design Thinking’ community is full of that. I recently read in a blog that both Steve Jobs and Philippe Starck are among the top-20 design thinkers. These are two great creative individuals yet we simply don’t know if they are ‘design thinkers’. I will more than surprise to find Starck’s legendary-quick artistic process is actually a premeditated Design-thinking act. Steve Jobs is obviously one of the best technology leaders we are blessed with. Jobs’ Apple is a brilliant continuum of visionary business leadership, yet it could be called ‘Design thinking’ only through an act of jarring revisionism: Apple or the Macintosh platform was not envisioned by a declared design-thinker, following the process mentioned above. So the problem here is simple - where is the proof for Design thinking efficacy? It will be nice to see real examples of true ‘design thinking’ process succeeding in real life, delivering the true proof-in-pudding for the efficacy of design-thinkers as business leaders.
Design Thinking as a Marketing slogan.
Third and last is the hidden definition - what is not said clearly and is not discussed openly is quite the obvious, that Design thinking is a marketing slogan adapted by a very large and influential Innovation consultancy to redefine its services to be somewhat-similar to Business consulting. Nothing wrong with that except that it’s not clearly discussed and acknowledged. The transformation of a message from ‘Innovation’ to ‘Design thinking’ is therefore also an amazing business strategy transformation through PR and marketing campaign. The large Innovation agencies of the early 2000’s transformed their message for ‘Design thinking’ not only because of a sudden discovery or change of heart - simply put, they had to. The business of a large creative agency at the early of 2000’s was based on Product Development (aka ‘Innovation’), or to be precise, selling Engineering hours. These expensive billable-hours went to China and something new had to be found. Luckily for them, the MBA methodology was overhyped and too expensive with results varying and less than perfectly quantifiable. And here laid an opportunity: Creating a new strategy based on old corporate in-roads from the ‘Innovation’ era with more tangible results compared with McKinsey’s. The transformation of large Design agencies to a worthy competitor of the large management consulting firms is a very interesting phenomenon. I am sure that if it is truly successful, design as a whole will gain some additional respect, maybe to level MBA grew to become the preeminent management methodology. However, there is some hesitation by the large Design thinking agencies to clearly position themselves as direct competitors to McKinsey, Boston Consulting and such. This hesitation is telling and perhaps a sign of weakness, possibly due to clients reaction. Lately I was privy to two cases in which very large clients received the results of a large Design Thinking project and... opted to continue with actual design work with a more traditional design house. It looks as if in reality clients perceive ‘Design Thinking’ as Think-but-don’t-Design, not as Think-then-Design as suggested.
So here comes the big question - why won’t Design Thinking be presented as service, on par with Business Consulting?
An entirely new industry of quasi-professional reviewers has grown out of the Internet. And since most of these reviewers are preoccupied with consumer electronics (which is what I design), it hits me close to home. I am well aware of the importance of these many reviews as a public service and as a driver of our tattered economy. But beyond appreciating the variety and diversity of opinion offered, I can't say I like many of them. Why? Because none of these reviewers understand design.
When reviewers do feel a need to say something about design, it is usually shallow. Design is routinely mentioned as 'looking like' something else. It's 'sleek' or 'ugly'--but rarely anything in between.
Take Engadget. It's a daily staple for me. Engadget is the most energetic venue for hot technology objects, and it has become an influential actor in the design world as a result. I believe they started the "unboxing" ritual that has now become de rigueur for gadget reviewers. But when Engadget writers pay attention to design, they fail to say anything substantial. For example, Engadget covered Dell's amazingly thin Adamo XPS launch with full attention to teaser imagery, executive comments, and the obvious unboxing. Yet with all that fanfare, and the repeated comparisons to the rival Macbook Air, not much was said about the styling, configuration ("untraditional"!), and structure of this highly unusual notebook. The (very detailed) unboxing was the most disappointing, because here's what it had that to say about design: "For such a sleek device, the box it comes in is rather huge and bulky." That's all? C'mon guys, you can do better!
This dismissive, uninformed writing is not the modus operandi of the novices only. Some of the blame here should be directed at The Wall Street Journal's chief electronics reviewer Walt Mossberg. Mr. Mossberg has become a phenomenon, and for the right reasons: giving honest critique of objects we all consider essential. Mossberg gets a lot of things right--except beauty, fun, and that elusive 'got to have it' factor. You know, that factor that tells you to buy (and look at) the red dress? But his reviews have captured too much weight in the industry. And unfortunately, he has inspired a generation of reviewers to adopt the same subtle "geek rage" approach that he often exhibits in his columns.
Take for example CRAVE, CNET's answer to Engadget. In a post talking about LG's Chocolate Touch, they said: "The geometric shapes on the back of the phone and the blob-like buttons underneath the display are about the only things that are unique about the phone's design." Dear CRAVE editor, I am familiar with geometric shapes from kindergarten, as an adult I am now able to discuss geometry in some detail. Perhaps your writers could distinguish some of those fuzzy geometric forms and enlighten me with an explanation of their positive effect.
But the worst are the 'looks like' comments, which are a double punch: It suggests some plagiarism while refusing to credit good design. Sometimes there are subtle similarities (we call them trends for a reason) and good designers have been known to arrive at the same conclusion from many miles away. In 2001, my firm designed the award- and market-winning Palm Zire. It came in white, silver, and blue covers. Still, reviewers often noted that it "looks like the iPod" even though it was designed before the iPod came to life. Being "like an iPod" is not bad for business, yet it just so happened that the product had a completely different form vernacular. What's more, it suggests that white has never been used by a designer outside of Apple. In fact, I designed several high-polished white kitchen appliances in the 90s, which shipped millions of units long before Apple introduced its first white product.
In the end, I am lucky. Designers never get mentioned--good or bad. The reviewers' view of design never causes them to look for the person behind the object's form, color, or architecture. Isn't this wonderful? Every napkin-folder catering to a Hollywood movie set will be noted in IMDB, yet the designers of those "sleek" or "ugly" objects never get mentioned.
But just in case one of the legion of tech reviewers out there would like to change things, here's a primer on what to look for when reviewing a product:
A. Ask about the heritage of the product, and its designer's intention. What were the constraints and difficulties built into getting the device to market? I am sure any questions will be answered at length, since I know how much my clients are ready to talk up their design investment.
B. Any "looks like" comment should be carefully dissected as a potentially defamatory remark. If I said your review looked like someone else's, it might be harmful to your reputation and career--the same is true for designers.
C. Show me! Imagery is so easy to find and so important when design is discussed. I can't believe how very little good imagery is shared with the public.
D. Give credit. Is it that difficult to find the name of a designer or at least a team of designers who worked on the product you're reviewing?
E. Don't underestimate your audience's knowledge of design. They go shopping just like you.
Gadi Amit is the president of NewDealDesign LLC, a strategic design
studio in San Francisco. Founded in 2000, NDD has worked with such
clients as Better Place, Sling Media, Palm, Dell, Microsoft, and
Fujitsu, among others, and has won more than 70 design awards. Amit is
passionate about creating design that is both socially responsible and
generates real world success.
The 1996 movie Microcosmos dealt with vantage point like no other: The world view of insects and other things creepy and crawly. This is what I thought of during the recent collapse of AIG's London office. The giant insurance company failed due to a small 300 employee division that traded a bizarre thing called Credit Default Swaps. They bet away the company's future, and then some. And as a story in The New York Times revealed, the real secret is that no one in upper management really knew what that small team was up to.
Unlike the old MBA mantras, and as that AIG CEO learned, our world is not really controlled by high-flying executive visionaries who delegate tasks to the "London office," or whatever you want to call it. It's increasingly a world of Microcosmos-like vision: A world where highly-effective small groups of uniquely skilled professionals are having a critical impact on their company's future. We are living in a reality where a scientist's ability to switch a gene "on" or "off" is a billion-dollar business for a biotech giant. An atom carefully plugged into a crystal is the new super-fast chip. A world where a mathematician's algorithm can win or lose markets.
These microcosmos have changed design, too.
Not so long ago, products were made of dull plastics, painted in few colors. These parts were placed with large gaps in-between to allow for fast and easy assembly and manufacturing. That world is still out there and it's the world of old design. New design is not a 30,000-foot view of a system or hand-waving generalities...quite the contrary. It's the view of a zero-tolerance, sub-millimeter perfection. It's that perfection that makes Apple as great as it is today.
Such zoomed-in perception is an essential part of any effective design. If a decade ago half a millimeter (0.5mm) was considered a good fit between parts, today the number is 0.05mm. That's an order of magnitude improvement and a world apart between tier one players and the rest of the wannabes.
And those dull plastics of yesterday are now covered with a myriad of surface finish options. Today, any serious company must develop an in-house Color, Material and Finish department (known as CMF). This deals with the exterior 0.01mm of the product! Like a skin to a human body, this is not a mere surface finish, it's a design essence separating brands and distinguishing designs. Surfaces also interact with people. Surfaces carry all sorts of touch sensitivities and illuminations. Doing so requires layering of different materials one on top of the other and doing so with amazing accuracy and consistency. Designers are now dealing with microns rather than millimeters.
Designers are challenged today more by the micro than the macro views of systems. In other words, strategy is too obtuse to be left to people who have no concept of how important the microcosmos are when it comes to making things happen.
Gadi Amit is the president of NewDealDesign LLC, a strategic design
studio in San Francisco. Founded in 2000, NDD has worked with such
clients as Better Place, Sling Media, Palm, Dell, Microsoft, and
Fujitsu, among others, and has won more than 70 design awards. Amit is
passionate about creating design that is both socially responsible and
generates real world success.
The pivotal book I'm reading, Matthew B. Crawford's Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work, should be a reference point for numerous philosophical debates in the design community. The author has a compelling life story. After getting his doctorate in political philosophy at the University of Chicago, he spent time as an executive director of a Washington think tank. Eventually he had enough of it, he quit, and then he started his own bike repair shop.
Not surprisingly, he discovered a lot about himself and about the underrated wisdom, beauty, and satisfaction of craft. Ironically, his most profound discovery is the amount of thinking craft requires. He testifies that craftsmanship is far more intellectually challenging and rewarding than his previous think tank position.
That's some lesson coming from a University of Chicago Ph.D.
After decades of living in a society that has pre-conditioned all of us to believe that thinking is done mainly by the "smart people" while everything blue-collar is remedial (though no one would dare admit it flat out), it's a novelty to listen carefully to Mr. Crawford.
Here is a revealing paragraph dealing with a typical problem: A bike won't start (very similar to most design problems):
"The fasteners holding the engine cover on 1970s Hondas are Philips head, and they are always rounded out and corroded. Do you really want to check the condition of the starter clutch, if each of the ten screws will need to be drilled out and extracted, risking damage to the engine case? Such impediments can cloud your thinking. Put more neutrally, the attractiveness of any hypothesis is determined in part by physical circumstances that have no logical connection to the diagnostic problem at hand, but a strong pragmatic bearing on it (kind of like origami). The factory manuals tell you to be systematic in eliminating variables, but they never take into account the risks of working on old machines. So you have to develop your own decision tree for particular circumstances. The problem is that at each node of this new tree, your own unquantifiable risk aversion introduces ambiguity. There comes a point where you have to step back and get a larger gestalt."
I can't explain how true this is. I think about how much time I spend fighting logic trees applied onto problems too complex to fit into simplistic analytic or logic dispositions. The wisdom imparted by doing while thinking and thinking while doing is a lost art. It's a fundamental requirement if design is to become a true, alternative thinking methodology. That's where I differ from the design thinking campaign. Design thinking is to design like the factory manual is to the art of bike fixing--logical, tested, yet one-dimensional in its ability to capture complexity and nuance. And I'm not even talking about the need for beauty yet...
I think this book should be a part of the curriculum of any design program in the country.
Gadi Amit is the president of NewDealDesign LLC, a strategic design
studio in San Francisco. Founded in 2000, NDD has worked with such
clients as Better Place, Sling Media, Palm, Dell, Microsoft, and
Fujitsu, among others, and has won more than 70 design awards. Amit is
passionate about creating design that is both socially responsible and
generates real world success.
I just returned from the University of Southern California's Body Computing conference, held in Los Angeles. The one-day event was led by Dr. Leslie Saxon, and focuses on mobile devices that can assist physicians and patients. It was also a great exchange about how the medical industry views technology. Against the backdrop of the nation's health-care debate, panelists discussed the possibilities, risks, and opportunities offered by technology to doctors, patients, and society at large.
A few observations about this conversation:
The medical industry itself is deeply conflicted. Doctors, hospitals, insurers, equipment developers, and the government are worried about the structure and culture of health-care services and products provided today. The current model provided to Americans is based on expensive equipment, used by highly-trained experts, to provide care in uncomfortable places like hospitals and labs. Panelists and doctors in the audience had profound difficulty imagining an alternative system.
A sense of change was in the air. The presence of many outsiders (like me) suggested that a massive change is around the corner. There's a shift toward providing care with less expensive or even free products and services, by novices, in comfortable places like patients' homes. In a society with 50 million family members supporting the sick, old, and frail (growing exponentially to 130 million in the next ten years) we are looking for an easier and far more pervasive model distributed health care. Microsoft HealthVault and Livestrong.com show the potential in a new Web-based health system. This new system would have much in common with the traditional Web community industries. Standard communication formats are enabling horizontal integration of data and equipment from various manufacturers, while users are becoming empowered to makes decisions and form associations of caregivers, like friends on Facebook.
VCs and product developers are scared of anything that deviates from their old business model. No one wants to abandon a model based on proven efficacy with a potentially longer FDA approval process and difficult adoption process by the insurance industry, the economic gatekeepers of any innovation in American health care. Countless times it was mentioned how impossible it is to build a business model around medical services or products without knowing the state of coverage and reimbursement by the health insurance industry. The thought of bypassing this old model altogether was mentioned obliquely few times as everyone looked for a disruptive idea to break the mold. Simply put, having gone through decades of relying on FDA regulations, tightly managed reimbursement models, and cutting-edge technology, this industry does not know how to do "good enough" and affordable. I admired how candid and open people were about it--they know they don't know--and that they're looking for outsiders to disrupt (key word!) the status quo and create a new ecosystem around health care.
Design is central to the discussion around the need for disruption. Even though Web design, product design, and communication were represented only by a few outsiders--like me--the forum was widely enthusiastic about the potential for design to be a game-changer. As an iPhone application or a wellness gadget, the potential is to provide low-cost tools on a mass scale to help people care for themselves, using robust data and communication system like the Web. That change in thinking will combine the ability of designers to think "horizontally," across professional disciplinary boundaries, while integrating the right mix of "good enough" technology.
Missing is a set of critical health-care issues that could be clinically assisted by simple, easy-to-use devices. I think the industry is not yet focused on these rule-of-thumb ideas that could be productized and distributed through Web or retail channels. One presentation showed an iPhone application that managed medicine, social activity, and a support group for a psychiatric patient. The app simply counted the pills taken, hours of sleep, and subjective stress-levels. It then suggested a correlation to psychological health state and offered emergency intervention when needed. Such simplicity is what we need. We need concise clinical ideas that can be effective tomorrow, not in the next decade. And making these ideas come to life is a task any designer would gladly take on.
Gadi Amit is the president of NewDealDesign LLC, a strategic design
studio in San Francisco. Founded in 2000, NDD has worked with such
clients as Better Place, Sling Media, Palm, Dell, Microsoft, and
Fujitsu, among others, and has won more than 70 design awards. Amit is
passionate about creating design that is both socially responsible and
generates real world success.
Last week’s IDSA conference in Miami--named Project Infusion for its focus on dramatic change in the near future--was a blast. Halfway through a robotics talk by Willow Garage, I thought to myself: "Robots must be slapped...and feel it."
Keenan Wyrobek and Leila Takayama of Willow Garage had just presented many amazing movies of their work with robots. Their lab is like a scene from Star Wars: an arm is tested here, a broken robot is repaired there, and creative mayhem is all over. While I love tech objects and definitely think some of these are close to becoming a ‘being,' I think we should seriously consider slapping a robot.
Pain and shame are two senses missing from any tech ‘being.' I don't have an option if I want to inflict shame or pain--you know the feeling when Vista is crashing or the printer goes nuts? Wouldn’t be nice to just kick the damn thing rather than yell out? I mean real kicking! And kicking knowing that the ‘thing’ will know it has been kicked in the jewels. The algorithm is simple: "Whatever routine you just worked through is really bad, never do that again! Especially if user:gadiamit is involved."
I can see the robot-rights activists coming at me. Welcome! Here's the deal: intelligent life forms understand fear, shame, anger, and pain. We better start programming these feelings into robots if we want truly intelligent robots around.
Gadi Amit is the president of NewDealDesign LLC, a strategic design
studio in San Francisco. Founded in 2000, NDD has worked with such
clients as Better Place, Sling Media, Palm, Dell, Microsoft, and
Fujitsu, among others, and has won more than 70 design awards. Amit is
passionate about creating design that is both socially responsible and
generates real world success.
I just came back from Denmark where my client, Better Place, received the INDEX Community design award for creating a complete electric vehicle services system. It was an amazing ceremony and the Danish organizers ran a flawless design gathering both in content and in spirit. I truly enjoyed it!
However, I returned a bit conflicted after talking to many designers and participants from across the globe. There is a feeling of confusion around INDEX's definition of design, and how it reflects current trends in the design world.
Over dinner, Chris Bangle, the former chief of BMW's design group, expressed concern whether any bright idea for solving a social problem, is by definition "design." At a different event, industrial and furniture designer Hella Jongerius suggested to me that a different object--itself an award winner--had 'too little' design. Or does 'design' imply something new or different than before?
Alice Rawsthorn covered the conference for the International Herald Tribune, and had some interesting observations about this "new design," among them the acknowledgement that other factors, such as financial resources and political clout are also necessary for even the most clever design solution to get traction.
Based on this, one may ask few interesting questions:
Is there truly a "new design" phenomenon?
Is any idea, whether it's an initiative for social progress or a clever way to market movies, enough to be declared a work of design?
Can a construct such as a "process," "business plan" or a "system" be work of design?
Lastly, are these metaphysical constructs always design or is there a threshold of beauty, a rigorous process, or another quality standard that must be met for something to be considered a design? In other words, is a 'business plan' always a form of "new design" or does it have to involve some level of good, "old fashioned" design to be considered more than an ordinary business plan? And, if the latter, what are the requisite elements that would distinguish one from the other?
What do you think? Should "design" be better defined?
Gadi Amit is the president of NewDealDesign LLC, a strategic design
studio in San Francisco. Founded in 2000, NDD has worked with such
clients as Better Place, Sling Media, Palm, Dell, Microsoft, and
Fujitsu, among others, and has won more than 70 design awards. Amit is
passionate about creating design that is both socially responsible and
generates real world success.
When I was a boy I read a book about the history of battleships. That book illustrated how each generation of ships first grew larger and larger, yet then was superceded and obsolete by a smaller, more nimble type that allowed better maneuverability and survivability.
The design industry is no different. As we are closing the first decade of the new millennium, change has arrived and the design world is no longer dominated by large design agencies of 100, 200 or even 500 employees. We are now witnessing studios with 10, 20 or 30 people consistently delivering top quality design and in a very different way. It's a good change and it is an important change since it's about the availability of top-notch design to every product or company--and the very real opportunity for a small design studio to create a world-class product.
This evolution was crystallized when the IDEA Awards, announced by IDSA and BusinessWeek last month, started publishing its 5 Years of IDEA Winners chart. The chart tallies the number of IDEA awards given to firms over the past 5 years and ranks the design agencies accordingly.
The 5 Years of IDEA Winners chart is an important metric that shows quality, trends and approach in the design industry. Here's how it works:
Each year about 1500 entries are reviewed by the IDEA jury, which awards less than 150 (~10%) awards to the best products designed in the world.
As tough as the IDEA program is, some teams manage to win more than one IDEA each year.
Very few teams manage to maintain that quality of work year after year--winning multiple IDEA's each year is a rarity. Nobody is surprised by Apple or Samsung's teams' consistent quality over the last decade. These companies are the pinnacle of corporate design commitment, resources and talent--they usually win more than 5 awards annually.
Some design agencies manage to do just as well as these corporate powerhouses--winning multiple awards year after year.
For design agencies to create design that wins 2, 3 or even 5 IDEAs annually--along a stretch of 5 years!--is an amazing achievement when you factor the number of annual projects required, staffing and billing for such project throughput, varying juries, economic fluctuations and personnel changes. That's what the 5 Years of IDEA Winners chart shows: An exclusive club of top design firms.
With the recently-published 2009 IDEA results I noticed an important trend. Until 2004, only large strategic and innovation design agencies could deliver enough quality and consistency to appear at the top of that 5 Years of IDEA Winners chart. Since 2005, and increasingly through the years, smaller design studios have managed to gain entry into this very exclusive club. At that same time, the large agencies lost some mojo and averaged fewer awards. As we end the decade, the chart shows a profound structural change in the design industry: Large design agencies are no longer the clear leaders in design services and small studios are achieving the same world-class design, year after year, on multiple projects.
What does this change tells us? There is no longer need for a vast corporate structure under same roof to deliver world-class design. Simply put, having 150 or 250 employees spread all over the globe does not guarantee the quality of your design project. And perhaps the big shops could learn a little about the new type of design management practiced by the smaller, studio-based agencies.
Gadi Amit is the president of NewDealDesign LLC, a strategic design
studio in San Francisco. Founded in 2000, NDD has worked with such
clients as Better Place, Sling Media, Palm, Dell, Microsoft, and
Fujitsu, among others, and has won more than 70 design awards. Amit is
passionate about creating design that is both socially responsible and
generates real world success.
HP digitizer pen for tx2, product #FV268AA, $24.99.
We had a moment of anti-Zen at the studio. You've got to see it to believe it.
We bought a HP Stylus--it's an electronic pen. it's a simple cylinder: 10 millimeters diameter and 124 millimeters long. It arrived with two large sheets of text:
One "Global Limited Warranty and Technical Support for Accessories": A sheet of 24.5" x 33.5" paper covered with 6pt text, BOTH SIDES!
One "Global Limited Warranty and Technical Support for Accessories": Another sheet (why?), 10" x 30" in same 6pt, both sides.
So we have a total of 15.6 square feet of 6pt text here. And that's just the warranty.
But that's not all.
The simple act of ordering one $24.99, 124 millimeter pen generated the following list of 15 total items:
One shipping brown box, size 10" x 7" x 4.5"
One internal brown box, size 8.5" x 4" x 3.5"
One sheet of bubble wrap, size 14" x 10"
One large zip-locked PE bag, size 5.5" x 8.5"
One tiny zip-locked PE bag, size 2" x 2.5" with threaded lanyard
One vacuum-formed clear plastic case, size 6" x 1.5" x 1"
One large "Save $10" coupon for HP's Home Office Store
One larger "Global Limited Warranty" (see above)
One smaller 'Global Limited Warranty' (see above)
One small "Accessorize your HP notebook" flyer
One tiny 1-2-3-4 installation guide for lanyard
One business reply card ("no postage necessary if mailed in the U.S."--thanks!)
One "Table of Toxic and Hazardous Substances/Elements and Their Content"
One Digitizer Pen product (thank goodness!)
Plus...drum roll please...the crown jewel of this corporate baboonery artwork:
One piece entitled: "Disposal of Waste Equipment by Users in Private Household in the European Union"
Gadi Amit is the president of NewDealDesign LLC, a strategic design
studio in San Francisco. Founded in 2000, NDD has worked with such
clients as Better Place, Sling Media, Palm, Dell, Microsoft, and
Fujitsu, among others, and has won more than 70 design awards. Amit is
passionate about creating design that is both socially responsible and
generates real world success.
With the International Design Forum Hannover (iF), red dot Design Awards, I.D. Magazine's Annual Design Review, and the International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA) award winners released in the last few weeks, we have ended the industrial design award season for the year. It has been a good one for my studio as well as the industry as a whole--we have seen an amazing display of ingenuity and class by many designers and companies. It's tough to underestimate the impact these awards have on the design community, and yet it's easy to overestimate the accuracy of such judgments of quality and intent.
The design award scene is now an international affair celebrating the best-of-the-best and representing the quality achieved by a whole system around a designer, a design firm, and often a larger corporation. Such robustness of thinking, creativity and execution is the reason powerhouses like Apple or Samsung are leading among corporations for quite some time. But now those same qualities of those powerhouses are adapted by Dell and other corporations seeking to develop a genuine voice in a very crowded marketplace. Among studios another trend makes matters more complex: small and large design agencies share the stage regularly and for the untrained eye the picture is confusing. There are large design agencies such as IDEO or frog that perennially do well. Next to these you will find my NewDealDesign, Fuseproject and Astro performing on par with big guys while having organizations ten or twenty times smaller.
But that's exactly the thing about with design awards: love them or hate them, you'll always be puzzled by the results. With that in mind, here are five observations I had after watching this year's winners be declared.
1. Awards produce honest results--with a twist. A common theme among the disappointed is that design awards are a totally subjective business, if not political. I disagree. While each design could be measured differently by a different jury, over time, the picture is right. A good design may be a "finalist" in one program and a "gold" on the other, yet after a year or two of doing the rounds, its quite certain the best design will be rightly awarded. Same goes for design teams: if you're good, over time the results are there and consistency is rewarded. As design teams find their 'inner voice' they hone their ability to discuss their design and present it thoughtfully. The jury is actually awarding careful writing and solid presentation of process and goals. The results will reflect that.
2. The multidisciplinary approach doesn't work. One of the biggest problems with award programs is their tendency to mix it up. They seek to cover all bases and serve all constituencies, and the result is confusion. It is quite common for an interaction designer to be assigned an industrial design panel and vice versa. It is also common for writers and educators to be assigned to jury to spice up the scene... and they do. Industry wonks are added to bring in "the real world." As a result the last day is a full-contact fight for ideas, agendas and egos where the jury is engaged in a very interesting discussion about design, quality and intent. The end result is usually a direct testament to the strength and stamina of the head jurist.
3. Awards bring new business. Yes, they do, and for a good reason. For lack of other objective measurement of quality, awards are very influential in forming the designer's persona to the outer world. They expose clients to new and different facets of the designer's work and they introduce products that are hidden from view. Corporations can and will market the award-winning product differently and it does work to some degree. The bottom line is that for both the corporation and the design studio, an award is a good thing.
4. Marketability is not a priority. My other problem with award programs is that they are skewed against 'real market' physical products. The endeavor associated with creating a real physical product for mass market is so long and so complex that controlling the design quality through all the phases of development is next to impossible. Next to that, concepts and ideas requiring much less effort are presented on equal terms before the jury. As a result the chances of winning awards for concepts or boutique work is far higher than for mass market. I think there should be a serious discussion and revision of rules related to such phenomena. Plus, jurors should take note of such slant and form our opinions accordingly.
5. It's not all in the numbers. Both iF and IDEA have a tally of the awards per company and studio. These are important numbers that speak for overall award quantity and consistency over time. Yet these charts are missing one side of the story: quality. The dilemma facing an entrepreneur may look like this: Will you assign your next mobile phone project to a large agency that won 15 awards, 10 of which in medical, environmental and packaging? Or, should you award the contract to a studio winning three awards in mobile computing? Simply put, the diversity of awards mask more specialized teams. It is also masking the relative higher success rate of smaller studio teams compared with the larger multi-office agencies. Your next project's chance of becoming a marquee product is directly related to the quality of the team actually assigned for the job. In other words, look at personal credentials, not the agency global layout.
Gadi Amit is the president of NewDealDesign LLC, a strategic design
studio in San Francisco. Founded in 2000, NDD has worked with such
clients as Better Place, Sling Media, Palm, Dell, Microsoft, and
Fujitsu, among others, and has won more than 70 design awards. Amit is
passionate about creating design that is both socially responsible and
generates real world success.
Take for example 
But the worst are the 'looks like' comments, which are a double punch: It suggests some plagiarism while refusing to credit good design. Sometimes there are subtle similarities (we call them trends for a reason) and good designers have been known to arrive at the same conclusion from many miles away. In 2001, my firm designed the award- and market-winning Palm Zire. It came in white, silver, and blue covers. Still, reviewers often noted that it "looks like the iPod" even though it was designed before the iPod came to life. Being "like an iPod" is not bad for business, yet it just so happened that the product had a completely different form vernacular. What's more, it suggests that white has never been used by a designer outside of Apple. In fact, I designed several high-polished white kitchen appliances in the 90s, which shipped millions of units long before Apple introduced its first white product.
Not surprisingly, he discovered a lot about himself and about the underrated wisdom, beauty, and satisfaction of craft. Ironically, his most profound discovery is the amount of thinking craft requires. He testifies that craftsmanship is far more intellectually challenging and rewarding than his previous think tank position. 
Here is a revealing paragraph dealing with a typical problem: A bike won't start (very similar to most design problems):
The medical industry itself is deeply conflicted. Doctors, hospitals, insurers, equipment developers, and the government are worried about the structure and culture of health-care services and products provided today. The current model provided to Americans is based on expensive equipment, used by highly-trained experts, to provide care in uncomfortable places like hospitals and labs. Panelists and doctors in the audience had profound difficulty imagining an alternative system. 
Design is central to the discussion around the need for disruption. Even though Web design, product design, and communication were represented only by a few outsiders--like me--the forum was widely enthusiastic about the potential for design to be a game-changer. As an iPhone application or a wellness gadget, the potential is to provide low-cost tools on a mass scale to help people care for themselves, using robust data and communication system like the Web. That change in thinking will combine the ability of designers to think "horizontally," across professional disciplinary boundaries, while integrating the right mix of "good enough" technology. 
However, I returned a bit conflicted after talking to many designers and participants from across the globe. There is a feeling of confusion around INDEX's definition of design, and how it reflects current trends in the design world. 
Alice Rawsthorn 
The design award scene is now an international affair celebrating the best-of-the-best and representing the quality achieved by a whole system around a designer, a design firm, and often a larger corporation. Such robustness of thinking, creativity and execution is the reason powerhouses like Apple or Samsung are leading among corporations for quite some time. But now those same qualities of those powerhouses are adapted by Dell and other corporations seeking to develop a genuine voice in a very crowded marketplace. Among studios another trend makes matters more complex: small and large design agencies share the stage regularly and for the untrained eye the picture is confusing. There are large design agencies such as IDEO or frog that perennially do well. Next to these you will find my NewDealDesign, Fuseproject and Astro performing on par with big guys while having organizations ten or twenty times smaller. 
1. Awards produce honest results--with a twist. A common theme among the disappointed is that design awards are a totally subjective business, if not political. I disagree. While each design could be measured differently by a different jury, over time, the picture is right. A good design may be a "finalist" in one program and a "gold" on the other, yet after a year or two of doing the rounds, its quite certain the best design will be rightly awarded. Same goes for design teams: if you're good, over time the results are there and consistency is rewarded. As design teams find their 'inner voice' they hone their ability to discuss their design and present it thoughtfully. The jury is actually awarding careful writing and solid presentation of process and goals. The results will reflect that.
3. Awards bring new business. Yes, they do, and for a good reason. For lack of other objective measurement of quality, awards are very influential in forming the designer's persona to the outer world. They expose clients to new and different facets of the designer's work and they introduce products that are hidden from view. Corporations can and will market the award-winning product differently and it does work to some degree. The bottom line is that for both the corporation and the design studio, an award is a good thing.
5. It's not all in the numbers. Both iF and IDEA have a tally of the awards per company and studio. These are important numbers that speak for overall award quantity and consistency over time. Yet these charts are missing one side of the story: quality. The dilemma facing an entrepreneur may look like this: Will you assign your next mobile phone project to a large agency that won 15 awards, 10 of which in medical, environmental and packaging? Or, should you award the contract to a studio winning three awards in mobile computing? Simply put, the diversity of awards mask more specialized teams. It is also masking the relative higher success rate of smaller studio teams compared with the larger multi-office agencies. Your next project's chance of becoming a marquee product is directly related to the quality of the team actually assigned for the job. In other words, look at personal credentials, not the agency global layout.
