Without an understanding of the underlying characteristics of Design, we restrict our ability to improvise and innovate the processes and methods we use to undertake our work as designers. A lack of discourse about Design quickly leads to stagnation, unless external sources provide a transformative—evolutionary or revolutionary—influence. It is a sign of a lack of reflection, self-awareness and critical analysis.
As designers looking to improve our Design work, such reflection plays an important role, for it allows us to look at several facets of Design at once:
» Quality of execution of our process and methods
» Appropriateness of the process and methods to the challenge at hand
» Success of our designs
Project post-mortems tend to look at the first of these two; our customers (or lack) tell us the third. But in order to understand and answer questions of appropriateness, we must first understand the intent of a Design process and the methods therein. What is often discussed are the variants of overall process or variants of the individual methods. An articulation of the pros and cons of these variations focuses on a range of attributes such as efficiency or productivity, but rarely evaluates how the process or method satisfies the intent of the design activity. This omission is due to the fact that the intellectual discourse of design spends little time on articulating a deconstruction of the design process with respect to its intent, and instead looks primarily at its component tasks or methods. That intent is a realization of the characteristics of Design as a means of understanding and solving problems.
Intent
The basic intent of a design activity is the creation of some ‘thing,’ the specifics of which depend entirely on the problem being addressed. That ‘thing’ begins as an idea; it is extended, detailed, tested and refined.
There are, then, several different considerations in operation during the design activity. The first is the origin of the idea or ideas, so as to maximize our chances of success. But more ideas do not immediately or necessarily lead to success. There is, then, the desire for many different ideas to be generated; a method by which these are evaluated and methods by which these are developed, refined and ultimately delivered.
A second consideration is that the refinement of ideas be directed. And directed towards the solution of the identified problem.
Thirdly, there is the question of from whence such ideas are born. What are the triggers, the seeds and the form of each.
Finally, there is the question of how it is we arrive at our understanding of the problem we are serving. And how that understanding is both articulated and shared.
And so, in an attempt to address the various considerations, the design process seeks to:
Understanding the Problem
At its heart, design seeks to purposefully improve the lot of some segment of humanity through the enablement or improvement of some human endeavor. To understand the gap or the current shortcomings of that human endeavor design undertakes direct, primary research with our ‘target’ segment—along with whatever secondary to tertiary research is appropriate. More importantly, and philosophically, design seeks such understanding from the perspective of the people engaged in the end result—our target a.k.a. the people we are attempting to help.
Our tool here, and the vehicle for such understanding, is empathy. Empathy should be employed with eyes wide open to our surroundings, and the broader activity or purpose within which our ‘problem’ resides. From this vantage we have access to culture, personal motivation, meaning and significance. We can see why someone chooses to do a thing and why they choose not to.
We have one more significant vehicle at our disposal in our efforts to understand the problem: a deconstructed worldview through which the designer identifies and critically appraises each constraint, real or perceived, within the problem area. This combination of empathy and deconstruction allow for a third vehicle or tool: that of reframing. Reframing a problem is the path through which we ask the question: “What problem are we really solving?”
All designers have the potential for hubris and arrogance that comes with the belief that we have answers to questions others don’t; an arrogance borne of being correct some of the time and asking questions that most others don’t think to ask. But the reality is that we can be wrong—wildly wrong—and we need self-awareness of this tendency. To temper this arrogance we involve a broad cross-section of people into the process of understanding the problem: people like customers and non-customers, the people who help them make decisions and the people within our organization that make the products and services they purchase. Although it is ultimately our role to appropriately frame the problem, by engaging these people in the process of understanding, we increase our chances of success dramatically.
Generating & Evaluating Ideas
There is a critical step the designer must take in order to move from an understanding of the problem to a design idea. In many respects, analysis is crucial to realizing the value of our research since good analysis can salvage something from bad research, but the converse is not so true.
Analysis has many component techniques from deconstruction to abstraction and generalization. These provide us with tools to collate individual observations into more and more generalized knowledge about people and to identify patterns within our data. During our research our aim is to learn as much as we can about the problem area. We capture photographs, stories, facts and trends. We dissect the foundations of the status quo and ask “Why?” and “What if?”.
This process of deconstruction provides the raw materials with which the designer works, not in form, but concept.
During this process of understanding we are able to say, explicitly, two things:
1. I saw this
2. I know this
Together these provide an insight, a window of understanding into the problem. To this insight we can add a broad trend or design pattern, something that shapes our reaction to the world around us. Insight and pattern provide the spark for an idea. This is the process of synthesis, the act of joining two disconnected concepts or facts. With synthesis we have the generative engine of design. But if there is a strength and power to design, then it lies in the leap taken during synthesis. This leap can be shown and understood in hindsight, but not seen beforehand. This abductive thought process is the means by which the designer generates disruptive ideas.
The beauty of ideas is that they are a never-ending resource. With time and energy we can come up with an endless supply of them. When we capture many ideas, our emotional attachment to each is thereby diminished. This is an important characteristic of design: it allows the designer to more meaningfully and objectively assess the value of each idea. The designer not only generates a multitude of ideas, they maintain those ideas for the extent to which they demonstrate value. The multiplicity of the designer’s approach allows them to be more exhaustive without sacrificing time. It is this characteristic of design, rather than iteration, that truly to leads to success.
With experience and practice designers can generate more ideas, more quickly, and of higher quality. Even so, not all ideas are good; some don’t achieve the objectives for the solution. The designer has three methods at their disposal for evaluating the quality of an idea:
Self-evaluation allows a designer to assess a design on the basis of intrinsic qualities. It is difficult for a designer to generate the objectivity necessary for a thorough evaluation of their own work.
During critique, the designer presents each of their concepts to the rest of the project team and receives feedback on the elements of the design that meet the objectives and those that require refinement in order to meet them. Critique provides an objective, time-efficient and effective method of winnowing out those concepts that least meet the objectives of the project. There are a few things to note about critique. Firstly, it’s an implicit recognition on the part of the designer that they’re fallible. This admission is an important one in maintaining the humility of the designer. Secondly, it is another example of how the involvement of other people in our design work can help to strengthen the quality of our designs. The review of our fellow designers provides numerous additional perspectives.
The third method of testing and evaluation is a further example of the participatory nature of the design activity. During these activities, customers representative of our intended audience are given access to a version of the design and asked to provide feedback. That feedback might be explicit, an evaluation—commentary or critique—or implicit—observations from a researcher/tester, the successful, or otherwise, completion of a task, facial expressions and gestures. In some cases the designer will use these sessions to trigger direct design input from the customer, asking them to provide new concepts and ideas. Such input, known as co-design, is another characteristic of Design.
Communicating a Shared Understanding
In order to communicate, share and evaluate concepts the designer must make them tangible. It is not enough to simply attempt a verbal or written description. Words can be evocative, but they can never do justice to the richness of a design concept. Instead, the designer gives their ideas form as a sketch or prototype, and removes the ambiguity that comes with the written and spoken word. Further, a sketch or prototype uses a language of its own—one which we all share regardless of cultural or ethnic background.
A sketch might be a quick drawing to communicate a detail of the design or an abstract, conceptual map of the entire concept. Sketches come in a wide range of fidelity and quality, defined more by their purpose than their quality. Sketches are intended to be discarded, a sign-post along the way, not the destination.
A sketch can be shared with others, re-drawn, annotated, refined or discarded—all with little or no expense. The low cost of creation makes sketching an ideal tool to be used in early, exploratory phases of a design process. Regardless of method, the intention of a sketch is that it makes concrete and explicit an idea. A rough drawing, a theatre improv, an eraser tied to a marker—these are equally sketches.
As a concept develops, our use of the quality of tangibility shifts to an implementation (rather than conceptual) mode, and our needs move to the realm of understanding the mechanics of a concept. How will the pieces fit together? How will a person interact with the object? Does it still meet its intended purpose? Prototypes are still cheap relative to a production model, although only when we take into account the full cost of readying for production. Motor vehicle prototypes, for example, tend to be much more expensive on an individual basis than their production counterparts, but the prototype avoids the machining and configuration costs of an assembly line needed to make production versions. A prototype is the ultimate in “this is what I mean” when it comes to communicating, sharing and evaluating an idea. As a means of rigorously testing a concept prior to the expense of manufacture or production, prototypes make a great deal of sense.
Qualities of Design
These are the qualities of a Design process:
* Deconstructionist perspective
* Understanding born of empathy
* Abductive thinking and synthesis
* Multiplicity
* Critique
* Participatory and co-design
* Tangibility
Regardless of the overall process or the individual methods used, these qualities are what we strive for when conducting design activities. Combined, they provide a great deal of power in defining, framing and solving problems of any type, but they are particularly well-suited to problems of a more complex nature. Ensuring that your process and methods deliver on each of these qualities significantly increases your chances of success as you embark on your project.
By Caroline Tiger – Entrepreneur
There’s no better way to discover how closely design and business are intertwined than to go looking for trends that present opportunities for business owners. Even if a trend isn’t directly applicable to all industries, the notions behind it can inform and influence a diverse range of product development, distribution methods and business processes.
Here, we look at emerging trends that address the intersection of design and technology and reflect the ways in which Generation Y, the Millennials, are exerting real influence as drivers of business.
Incrementalism
Comprehensive redesigns can be risky, wasteful and expensive–three adjectives that don’t gel with a tough economy. As an alternative, designers have been stepping back to analyze entire product life cycles in search of small adjustments; in other words, taking an incremental approach. These are quiet changes, but they go a long way toward meeting desired goals.
“Many times the answer is right in front of you,” says James Moustafellos, associate director of the Center for Design and Innovation at Temple University’s Fox School of Business. “It doesn’t always have to be the newest unknown thing. It’s more about, How do you design a better system?” When Lititz, Pa.-based Woodstream sought to make its Victor Quick Set Mouse Trap more environmentally friendly, it turned to Philadelphia design firm Bresslergroup, which homed in on the product’s packaging. The designers decided to replace the plastic blister pack with cardboard; by integrating the cardboard into the assembly, they condensed the manufacturing process.
“It’s a very small product, but the brand is sold all over North America,” says Bresslergroup design director Mathieu Turpault. “So if you can change the amount of plastic in the packaging, that makes a big difference when you multiply it by the number of units sold.”
Incrementalism can also mean investing in the full exploration of a new product to ensure that every opportunity will be met. Evolution Products, a producer of industrial copper wire, found that the reels for transporting the product were so heavy, it was cost-prohibitive to ship them back to their points of origin for reuse. Bresslergroup designed a lightweight, collapsible reel; the client was so pleased it started a side business to sell them to other wire producers.
From Mass Consumption to Quality Consumption
Several recently touted design trends–a focus on nostalgia and heritage-based wares, a demand for authenticity and an interest in provenance–reflect the growing distaste for generic merchandise and mistrust of big corporations.
“As people are more conscious in considering their choices, there’s a shift from quantity to quality,” Moustafellos says. “There’s an interest in the quality of the making and who designed it.”
“We can’t make the cheapest thing, so we want to make the best thing.” –Victor Lytvinenko, Raleigh Denim
Raleigh Denim is a beneficiary of this vibe. The seeds for the Raleigh, N.C.-based jeans label were sown when owner Victor Lytvinenko became obsessed with re-creating a pair of pants he’d found at a thrift shop in Europe. He and his wife, Sarah, sought out informal apprenticeships with former denim-factory workers to learn pattern-cutting and construction methods, and they sewed their first order–for 114 pairs of jeans for Barneys New York–working through the winter in an unheated live-work space.
Raleigh Denim now has 20 employees, including a 77-year-old patternmaker. The jeans, priced from $215 to $285, are handcrafted in small batches on vintage equipment and sold at high-end boutiques around the world as well as at the store fronting the downtown Raleigh factory. “Our whole model is about quality and style,” Lytvinenko says. “Our clothes aren’t cheap, and they can’t be. We can’t make the cheapest thing, so we want to make the best thing.”
Digitizing the User Experience
Technological innovations are reshaping user experience–a key facet of quality design–in all realms. Even practical-minded industries such as personal health are enjoying the advancements: Jawbone’s Up wristband, launched in late 2011, monitors movement and sleep patterns and analyzes nutritional intake to offer personalized recommendations.
Attempts to reframe the experience of shopping loom large for business owners seeking to capitalize on the ubiquity of smartphones. Innovations range from apps that aggregate daily deals to the virtual supermarkets lining Shanghai subways–QR code-embedded LED screens simulate stocked supermarket shelves, allowing commuters to buy groceries while waiting for their trains; the goods are then delivered to their homes.
Dallas-based ModoPayments enables phones to offer shoppers incrementally better discounts based on individualized purchasing patterns. A registered user texts Modo
to receive a business-specific offer, then buys products or a meal using the phone. The next time the consumer patronizes that merchant, the Modo discount is deeper.
Modo CEO Bruce Parker says users are hungry for simplified interaction in the face of pervasive new technology. He cites reports of “app fatigue,” noting that downloading another app is beginning to be perceived as too much of a commitment. “The point is to start conversations around purchases,” he says, “and to create a relationship around certain brands. It’s about infusing character into something that’s flat and inert like a screen.”
Service Design
“Eighteen months ago the headlines were all about design thinking,” says Ric Grefé, executive director of AIGA, the professional association for design. “Soon they’re going to be all about service design.” The pioneering work in this emerging field is in health care. When the SSM DePaul Health Center in St. Louis hired design firm Ideo to revamp its emergency room, a designer documented the patient experience via a video camera strapped to his head. For hours, the tape captured ceiling tiles–nary a human face. The data led to significant retraining of the ER staff.
The Dubberly Design Office took a similar approach to the Starbucks experience, mapping the typical customer’s path from entrance to exit. The results yielded refinements such as rejiggering the drink framework for easier customization and moving the order pickup away from the registers. “Design was once all about form and content,” Grefé says. “Now it’s about context, or where you receive it and how you receive it over time.”
In a buyers’ market, experience becomes a key point of differentiation. “There are a million places to buy a computer,” says Temple University’s Moustafellos, “so why do people seek out Apple products at an Apple store?” There are also plenty of places to buy a beer along H Street in Washington, D.C., but the Big Board bar is always overflowing. Here, beer is treated as a commodity. The prices fluctuate from one minute to the next depending on supply and demand; the more one type of beer is ordered, the lower its price dips, and customers track the fluctuations on a big digital board. It’s a uniquely designed service experience.
Mass Customization
Making products that are easy to personalize is a newly popular direction for industrial design, a field that has traditionally been skewed toward mass production. “The ability to customize encourages a greater connection between consumer and object,” Moustafellos says. “When something’s designed on a computer,” he says, “it’s no longer a laborious process to transmit specs from designer to manufacturer.”
Mass customization is about integrating variability into a product’s design. Philadelphia’s Mio, which makes stylish, sustainable home goods, has a 3-D ceiling tile that can be painted and configured to create different patterns. Mio had been focused on experimenting with materials and processes until co-founder Jaime Salm learned why his most popular products were resonating with customers. “After getting feedback and pictures,” he says, “we realized customization is what they’re after.” Now Salm begins the design process by considering how he can build customization into the product. “Philosophically, people are buying the story of a product,” he says, “not just the product.” That story is more appealing when it’s in the first person.
Social Responsibility
During the weeks leading up to Christmas last year, visitors to the website of outdoor clothing and gear company Patagonia were met with a homepage imploring, “Don’t buy this jacket,” and a message about reusing and recycling. Progressive companies like Patagonia are demonstrating that business for the sake of business is becoming less acceptable from a consumer standpoint.
“Millennials have integrated social responsibility into their ethos,” AIGA’s Grefé says. “It’s a fundamental part of them, and companies are realizing their future is going to be building toward that.”
Yves Behar and his San Francisco-based firm Fuseproject may be the most conspicuous practitioners of values-driven design. His One Laptop per Child and eyeglass initiatives for impoverished children embody his “design for good” motto.
Similarly, Hideaki Matsui created Cleanup Soap to raise awareness of the global land-mine crisis. The product achieves this both literally and metaphorically: Matsui’s vision is for the land-mine problem to disappear just as his mine-shape soaps shrink over time in a soap dish. Two dollars from each $8 soap sold is donated to the Cambodia Landmine Museum. Any profits are a consequence of designing an effective solution.
This article was originally published in the March 2012 print edition of Entrepreneur with the headline: Design Directions.
Fred Sparks Design Helps Local Businesses Elevate Their Brand
Since founding Fred Sparks Design in August 2004, Ken Harris, Aaron Brookhart and Brandon Hefer have been helping businesses capitalize on their potential through strategic, innovative and sustainable product, package, and brand design. “We start by doing consumer insight research to find out what they really desire,” says Harris. “Then we take our findings and develop strategies for clients, which typically result in a product.”Whether clients are looking for just consumer research or for a branding strategy from start to finish, Fred Sparks can fulfill whatever level of innovation its client needs. “We’re a good value because we size our service to the customers’ needs,” says Harris. “We develop specific design programs that execute exactly what they need without extraneous added on services or fees.
For some clients it’s an entire turn-key brand strategy with market and user research, product design, packaging design, and web design. For others it’s just a few sketches or CAD work.”Fred Sparks is also one of the few product design consulting companies in the nation who measure and quantify the environmental impact that products have. “Then we’re able to help our clients reduce their environmental impact or develop new sustainable products.” says Harris.
As your organization travels through these challenging economic times, no doubt your management and executive teams, business partners, and decision-makers have been gathering to figure out how to get out of this mess positively. Naturally, we all gravitate to innovation. We must be innovative in order to rise out of this downturn! But is it really innovation that your team is looking for?
What is the point of innovation? Innovation happens when something is done, thought of, or created differently. Anything can be innovative; an idea, a product, a process, As we all harp about needing something new and fresh, perhaps we are overlooking an important step. Why should we innovate?
But it’s been said “organizations that innovate must have a point for innovating. Yes, you can innovate, and be wacky and exciting, but if the innovation doesn’t fit, you’re not being efficient.”
Let’s apply this to our creative activities. Yes, we want to bring the best and freshest ideas to the table so our clients love us. But rather than simply throw new ideas out there, because it’s “innovative” and the “next-best thing,” we innovate with a purpose.
What’s the point? Once we know why we need to innovate, and we build a culture where innovation will be supported and cultivated, then we can achieve the next big and exciting thing.
Our clients understand the value of design to their business, and hire us to come up with a “design” that would appeal to their target audience. Our progressive clients ask us to offer research and strategy during front-end phase of design. They understand the importance of additional investment in research to align the design idea with the expectations and needs of the target audience, thereby ensuring its success. These clients will also hire us to ensure seamless integration of insights into go-to market strategies. In this way we often serve as planners, managers and translators of design research.
Sometimes our clients have intangible objectives; the expected outcome of their intended design research project is not necessarily a tangible object, image or an environment. They will charge us with objectives such as understanding behaviors of people, cultivating internal knowledge about an unfamiliar or emerging market, or building team synergies around future opportunities for business growth through value addition.
Our clients now increasingly become aware of our design research services, They may approach us for ethnographic research, co-creation, design thinking, business transformation research, sense-making, innovation research or market research.
We tailor our explanation of our offerings based on what the client is looking for and what the client is expected to deliver within his/her organization. One question we always ask a client is, “how will the outcomes of this research be used by your organization?” Prior to meeting the client we do research and/or have conversations with them about their organization, organizational or team culture, product line, recent successes and failures, and the changes in the environment in which they deliver their product/services. Doing prior research helps reframe the clients’ questions and aligns our explanation of our capabilities and their need.
“Reframing the research question” is crucial for the success of a design research or insights project because the dialogue that leads to well-aligned questions also helps gauge client expectations and ensure a successful outcome. This process begins before research engagement is kicked off and continues throughout the project. The clients who have an open mind and are willing to restate their original research question can benefit most from insight or design research. We have had more successes communicating value of design research to clients who know that they don’t know what they don’t know. These clients have greater tolerance for ambiguity, are open to surprises, and allow new directions to emerge from the research which challenge their pre-conceived notions.
A typical client of design research understands the value of qualitative research. On the other hand, a lot more dialogue and reframing of expectations is required with clients who have quantitative research backgrounds. We have noticed that today more clients in senior positions are recognizing that they need to invest in updating their knowledge of their audience, changing lifestyles, and impact of technology on life in order to compete, survive and thrive. They understand the importance of design research in bringing clarity to fuzzy and complex information about the context for design that has critical implications for business decisions.
A key question faced by clients of design research today is, “How do we remain relevant in a competitive marketplace that is continually inventing and offering new value to the customer?” Complexity and unpredictability are two key areas in which clients face challenges.
Organizations that make significant investment in consumer insights face another challenge—that of aligning available insights with new teams that are restructured often. Consumer insights buried in reports do not become actionable unless they are collectively owned and acted upon by individuals and teams responsible for translating insights into ideas and taking those ideas to the market. It is hard to keep new teams informed of market realities and inspired by the future opportunities within a specific business unit when they are restructured regularly.
There is a need for a catalyst agency that evangelizes customer experience for a business unit and helps them co-own, co-imagine and co-create the future products and services as the teams get restructured. Overall, design research can help clients determine how to make smart use of creative resources and smart technologies to develop products, brands, services and value propositions that are aligned with the needs and aspirations of their customers.
We are that catalyst.
At fredsparks we use Sustainable Minds to evaluate concept decisions early in the process for our clients. That capability allowed us to capture an equity stake in a start up business developing sustainable reading eyewear. Read more.
Brand is much more than a name or a logo. Brand is everything, and everything is brand. A brand can have a great logo, but a great logo alone won’t make the brand great. Even a great product alone can’t make a brand great. Making a profit doesn’t even mean that a brand is great. Like Aristotle wrote in the fourth century BC, “The whole is more than the sum of its parts.”
A logo doesn’t make a brand in the same way that simply having a Facebook page doesn’t automatically make a brand social — it’s a good thing to have, but it’s what a brand does with these things that matters. A brand with a beautiful logo can put it on a billboard or put it in the back of a pizzeria menu — these placements will say more about the brand than the logo itself, but even that doesn’t determine a brand in its entirety. Brand is made up of numerous and varied parts, but even further, it’s the combination of these elements that develop a brand. Additionally factored in is the consumer — the consumer says as much about a brand as the brand’s own actions, but the consumer is out of the brand’s control. Considering all of these elements, it can be said, “brand is everything, and everything is brand.”
Beyond things, brand is also everywhere. The concept is one of ubiquity . . . it isn’t about online or offline. It is not about digital vs. traditional . . . What will be important is that, as a brand, you can be everywhere that your customers are and expect you to be. Ultimately, brand is about caring about your business at every level and in every detail, from the big things like mission and vision, to your people, your customers, and every interaction anyone is ever going to have with you, no matter how small.”
Sometimes a brand that introduces a new logo will be described as having undergone a “rebranding.” But considering all of the elements really involved in the brand experience, it isn’t a rebrand at all — just a logo redesign, a part of the brand. And as we’ve known for over 2,300 years, “the whole is more than the sum of its parts.”
I learned some hard lessons about communicating with people in an earlier life. I always believed that if I had the facts on my side, and logically laid out my arguments to those I was trying to influence, that my message would win the day. What would happen after I explained my finely crafted argument is that I would get my head handed to me on a platter.
Luckily, after one bloody beheading, one of the “old-timers” had mercy on me and told me to remember: “It’s not what you say; it’s what other people hear.” He explained that it’s not enough to be smart and logical. People will always be listening through the filter of his or her emotions, needs, opinions, judgments, and preconceived notions.
Only by walking in their shoes, he told me, and working to understand what they are feeling and thinking in their heart and mind can you become a successful communicator. Made great sense to me and I have tried to wear other people’s shoes since that conversation.
How does this impact your corporate brand? Simply, one usually wants to talk about the great product or service one delivers, and forgets about the wants, needs, opinions, and prejudices of customers.
When you get right down to it, few people buy on price. They buy on emotion. They buy because they have pain, fear, a want, or a need. They buy because they have hopes. Yet, I see marketing messages all the time that only explain the wonderful technology of product X and never once consider the needs and desires of their customers.
Tune in to the needs and wants of others. Deliver value with your product or service that solves emotional needs and wants — and talk about it on their terms, not yours. Become used to wearing different shapes and sizes of shoes and focus on the human element.
fredsparks is most effective as an agent of positive change for sustainability when we use environmental innovations to make better products that change user perceptions and ultimately make our clients’ categories evolve.
We find novel materials and designs with embodied environmental benefit and use them to create better and more effective product experiences, packaging that’s easier to use, and product that make consumers happy and healthy.
Relying on product sustainability as a platform for improved user experience is the conceptual opposite of conventional green product design, in which a solitary and peripheral green attribute is tacked onto an existing product. [As an example of the latter, think of bottled water “now with 5 percent less plastic” or paper products, harvested from clear-cut forests but “made using renewable energy”.]
Our emphasis on the design process helps us focus our research lens on the product or packaging environmental profile at the start of the development process. We believe in a science-based approach to sustainability and use detailed technical research to deliver material environmental benefit.
Knowing environmental implications at the front end of the design process means we’re making informed decisions and points us squarely at where improvements are most meaningful.
Design should be a verb. Design is about doing something – a process more than a product.
That isn’t to say that what’s at the end of the process is unimportant. It is. But getting the process right greatly improves the chances of the getting the product (or service) right.
Design is about identifying problems, asking good questions, and finding better answers. We think that businesses can be better by design. That the principles of design strategy and design process can be applied to companies to help build the bottom line.
We’re not the only ones thinking this way.
The investigation and application of design thinking is a global phenomenon. Design strategy is taught at the most influential business schools, and it’s applied in some of the best boardrooms
Design integrated businesses are all sizes and on all points of the growth curve. They’re local, national, and global. They are open to new ideas, and understand that asking the right questions helps unlock the best answers for their businesses. Doing business these days means having a better understanding of your customer.
A design integrated approach helps maintain the customer-oriented focus vital to long term success, and to the development of breakthrough products and services.
Design integrated businesses understand that markets change, and that opportunities ebb and flow. Most of all, they are ambitious. Many companies have growth targets that cannot be achieved through ‘business as usual’. They’re looking for strategies that challenge the status quo, that are about doing new things to create exponential rather than organic growth.
Why does design matter? I would invite anyone reading these words to look around them, wherever they are, and ask the question: What is there, in my immediate environment, that’s truly natural? The odds are there will be very little – most aspects will be the result of human intervention. So, in general terms, design is really important in the sense that in all kinds of ways great and small it forms our material world.
Two factors are crucial for the work of any designer. Firstly, the arena in which most design is practiced is that of business, where profit is necessary to survive. If designers cannot contribute to the economic viability of a company, there is no reason to employ them. The particular contribution designers can make is to design products, communications, environments and services – and the combination of all or some – into systems that are tangible interfaces connecting companies to their customers. Engineers ensure things work, marketers position goods appropriately, but designers specialize in the detailed interaction between what a company produces and the lives of its users, which is a different matter from the cosmetic function often assigned to it.
The second imperative is that what is designed becomes part of a wider social and economic world – of the home, workplace, school, church, mall, place of entertainment and so on. Only if what is designed is affordable, useful, accessible and pleasurable will it sell and give continuing satisfaction. In other words, I’m suggesting that users ultimately determine what constitutes value and innovation, and a focus on their needs and an emphasis on providing greater and deeper satisfaction to them is the key to sustainable profitability.
To successfully achieve this will require substantial changes from both designers and managers. Designers need to take on board new methodologies enabling them to better understand user needs, both actual and latent, and to comprehend design functions at a strategic and planning level, enabling them to function not as second-rate artists but first-rate business professionals. None of this will be possible, however, unless design in any company – large or small – is effectively managed. Markets do not just exist, I believe, but are created, and the best way to achieve this is by embedding design into all aspects of corporate activities. Understanding, by management of the full complexity of design, how it can best be matched to company needs and most effectively integrated into development processes at all levels is imperative – and the precondition on which all else hinges.
Before an attempt is made to capture the customer’s needs for the purpose of innovation, fredsparks methodology requires that a company first understand exactly what job the customer is trying to get done.
This is accomplished by conducting customer interviews to understand the discrete process steps that comprise the job. The breakdown of the job into these discrete steps is translated graphically into a job or behavior map. Job or behavior mapping has many benefits. Its primary purpose is to provide a framework around which to capture and organize need statements and to ensure that all the customer’s needs are captures. Without this insight, a researcher will never know where questioning should be focused or whether or not all the customer’s needs have been uncovered. This has been another ongoing problem with traditional “voice-of-the-customer” [VOC] methods.
The goal of innovation is to devise new product and service concepts that address unmet needs. The best way to accomplish this is to first uncover ALL the customer’s needs, then determine which are unmet, and then devise solutions that address them. Traditional VOC practices are ineffective because companies are incapable of capturing or knowing when they have captures all the customer’s needs. VOC group methods, such as affinity diagrams, not only create an imprecise structure for knowing whether all needs have been captures, but also limit the level of detail at which a market can be studied. This thinking is restricting and self-serving: it makes the life of the practitioner easier, but at the expense of getting to the level of detail needed to achieve higher success rates. With a focus on the job, customers are able to articulate all their needs regarding its execution. If a customer has 100 or more different, detailed needs, why wouldn’t a company want to understand exactly which ones represent the best opportunities for innovation?
Strategy is one of the things we do. Strategery is someone else’s thing.
Strategy isn’t always what we’re hired to do, but our intellectual horsepower, our unique ability to dig quickly and thoroughly to core issues, and a subsequent perspective on our clients’ needs, puts us quickly in a position to go far beyond expectations for our clients.
Let us give you an example. We’re just a few short hours from deadline, and every tick on the clock is a jab at your strategic and creative confidence. The client has already told you to simply use what works; don’t be too strategic or creative. This obstacle becomes more and more daunting.
We’ve all been there. The client knows what they want: safety. We, the design consultancy, know what they need, and we need to fight for that.
However, the proverbial line in the sand between consultancy and client strategic control is becoming less defined and turning into a morphed, unrecognizable blur because of today’s economic climate. Design consultancies, in fear of losing clients and subsequent contracts, play it safe and push the envelope less to ensure client approval.
Clients have the same fear of losing business. They don’t want to scare off purchasers with new, “untested” stuff . . . much in the same way that some design consultancies don’t want to scare off clients with an out-of-the-box idea. Often times, the client will be weary of change and will try to stick with the safe, so that’s what they get . . . just not from us.
When this “let’s play it safe” thing happens, the designers sell themselves short, and the clients get sold short. The client hires our company because they saw the strategic and creative intuition and business savvy that will push their brand/product/service to the next level of innovation and sales.
If we were to play it safe, we’d not be giving our clients innovation. We’d be giving them mediocrity . . . and that’s not what we do. We do strategy. We innovate. We design success.
We chose to be product designers because we were and are the early adopters and thought leaders. We revolutionize ideas and shift paradigms, and when we settle into this client-approved mediocrity, we lose what makes us and our industry great.
When we find our clients asking whether they should use a “safer” new product, that “old way of thinking”, or that “played-out strategy”, we have to keep in mind that we’re here as individuals and as a design consultancy. The client may tell you to “go with what’s safe”, but they hired you because they need to be strategic and innovative. Safety is the enemy, so we give them something great. It also reminds them why they really hired us.
We dig in.
We listen . . . well.
We probe.
We discover . . . and in the process of bringing value to one project, we end up providing inroads to other products, complete brands, and total business strategies . . . resulting in our being a purveyor of strategy for all your business needs.
We recently dropped ‘design’ from our name. Now you know why.
How often do you truly get more than you expect?
Sustainability is much more than superficial efforts and marketing-speak to customers. Businesses that grow will make the world’s future more sustainable than it is today.
Business leaders that “get it” and lead their company with sustainability in mind will outperform those that don’t. Smart companies realize there are costs to be saved, markets to be created, and revenues to be gained by advancing sustainability. They will profit and grow while other, less sustainably minded companies will decline and die. Through that basic market mechanism, with selective public policy encouragement, we can have a more sustainable world.
Obviously, we take our sustainable design work very seriously. What we provide for our clients is real world, hard numbers that reflect actual results.
The greatest advantages go beyond just very detailed measurements however. It’s what we here at fredsparks do with that information and the opportunities that we can identify that ultimately bring about our client’s successes. We see three ways to grow with sustainability:
Be mindful of the dark side of this environmental conscienceness. There are those that try to find ways to get around the realities of true environmental stewardship. They usually are guilty of one or more of the “7 Sins of Greenwashing” as described below [from an article from TerraChoice]:
Call us if you want to make some real progress in the environmental impact area.
The Midwest Regional IDSA Conference was held in Saint Louis on April 1st through the 3rd and fredsparks played a role in making it educational and fun.
We train kids to deal with teachers in a certain way: Find out what they want, and do that, just barely, because there are other things to work on. Figure out how to say back exactly what they want to hear, with the least amount of effort, and you are a ‘good student.’
We train employees to deal with bosses in a certain way: Find out what they want, and do that, just barely, because there are other things to do. Figure out how to do exactly what they want, with the least amount of effort, and the last risk of failure and you are a ‘good worker.’
Sometimes we even train we designers to deal with clients in a certain way; Find out what they want, and do that, just barely, because there are other things to do. Figure out how to do exactly what they want, with the least amount of effort, and the last risk of failure and you are a ‘good consultant’.
The attitude of minimize is a matter of self-preservation. Raise the bar, the thinking goes, and the teacher, the boss, the client will work you harder and harder. Take initiative and you might fail, leading to a reprimand or termination (think about that word for a second . . . pretty frightening).
The standout designer, of course, can’t abide the attitude of minimize. It leaves no room for real growth and certainly doesn’t permit an individual to become irreplaceable.
If your “boss” is seen as a librarian, she becomes a resource, not a limit. If you view the people you work with as coaches, and your job as a platform, it can transform what you do each day, starting right now. “My boss won’t let me,” doesn’t deserve to be in your vocabulary. Instead, it can become, “I don’t want to do that because it’s not worth the time/resources.” (Or better, it can become, “go!”)
The opportunity of our age is to get out of this boss as teacher as taskmaster as limiter mindset. We need more from you than that.
Please join us at our studio for The After Party on Saturday April 2, 2011 from 10 PM to 1 AM.
Vodka cocktails compliments of Purus.
Entertainment by DJ Super Conductor.
Shuttle transport provided 9:45PM to 1:15AM outside the Hyatt on 4th street. Good times created by you.
Student design competition cosponsored by Purus and fredsparks. Design the ideal Purus glass. $500 prize! Winning design will be produced and offered as part of the Purus holiday gift set. Check details at The After Party.
It better represents who we are, how we work, the impact we have, and what you can expect from working with us.
At the heart of this new site and all our communication materials is a simple, clean, straightforward and impactful presence . . . just like our work. It clearly demonstrates the three clear contributions we make to our clients; strategy, innovation and sustainability.
Like the essence of our work, the website is easy to use and navigate. Like our design work which is born of discovery, analysis & innovative thinking, and executed with clear purpose in every element, the logotype comes with meaning. It’s strong, simple, clear & clean with great balance.
The logotype is new too.
We dropped the ‘design’ from our name because we contribute so much more than design.
As does all our communication, it uses Helvetica Neue; a font that was originally designed to create a neutral typeface that had great clarity, with no intrinsic meaning in its form.
It represents our three principals.
It shows a seemingly incomplete ‘+’ sign. Our clients add that final piece of the ‘+’.
The world of design is dynamic. It changes. We assess, innovate through it, and amplify the world around us.
It’s what we do.