This article has been edited and re-published from the author’s blog.
It’s this time of year where companies who sell products worry about what they are going to sell this Christmas. The company I work for is no exception. Projects in-progress get a swift kick in the behind, furthermore we all start scraping concepts together to prototype and show. Not the most ideal situation but at least things are happening and every year I am reminded how Santa must feel like.
As I am knee deep in design and designer management, the issue of “do companies in Asia truly understanding and embrace the value of design as a business strategy?” keeps on popping up in my mind’s eye. It’s in such a time when the truly skilled design manager can navigate the stormy waters of product development and still keep a balance between design intent and business economics.
I’m no expert in this design management thing, but after my recent in-depth discussion with the “head†of the BMW DesignworksUSA Singapore studio, I must admit that its nice to be validated by an industry expert that some of what I’m doing with this design strategy is at least heading in the right direction.
It’s a pity but I’m still thinking of a way to collaborate with DesignworksUSA, seeing as they have a huge font of knowledge in design strategy, but their fees are a real issue for the small to medium size companies that really need their help the most.
Anyways back to the discussion at hand. Unlike what most people in the west think, most companies in Asia (Singapore included) all know the value of what a great design can to for the company. But the real issue is that it’s not merely about designing a product, but an all encompassing 360 degree design strategy that satisfies all aspect of the company’s requirements.
As the head of DesignworksUSA Singapore, nicely puts it to me, “creating that special magic for a brandâ€.
Now again most companies know this or are not far off but this is much more difficult to implement so much so that designing a product actually becomes the easy part.
Here are some strategies I have found useful and successful in managing and fostering design as a business strategy in an organisation. It should not matter if you are an in-house employee or an external design consultant the processes and thinking are the same.
Designer as the lead
This is an interesting one. No matter what they tell you, unless you are reporting to a designer, you will need to take the lead. This is simply because no one understands the design process better than you. Convincing them to listen to you is the problem.
Really there are a lot of fly by night managers who think they know how it is to be a product designer or design strategist, after creating (I would not even say designing) a few products. Personally the smart ones I respect actually hire trained designers to help them.
It’s similar to the perennial problem in Asia in that every body thinks they are an Interior Designer. Building contractors, furniture retailers, real interior designers, and architects all seem to be able to do Interior design. Some more qualified than others.
This means if you take the lead you will have certain responsibilities outside your general designing job. So you will need to ask yourself if you want to do this. On the upside, you will start to understand the bigger picture, become and overall better designer and you will find you will actually stop complaining about the management’s lack of understanding or respect for a designer!
Reporting to the top
In all the most successful design strategies I have heard or read about, the implementation of it always came directly from the top. This also almost always applies to getting strategies to work in any form.
Either as an in-house designer or a design consultant you will need to always report to the top or to at least the decision maker. Even better is for a senior designer to be part of the board of directors and thus really be able to spear head a design strategy within an organisation.
The reason behind this is the nature of innovation and creative thinking. Innovation is about a phase change, a different mindset and a different way to do things. This will invariable rub people the wrong way, thus to implement innovative design strategies it needs to be commanded from the top. It’s the only way.
A consultative product development style never creates revolutionary products only evolutionarily ones.
Do you think the iMac or iPod would have found its foot hold if Steve Jobs was not the CEO? Do you think the design of the iMac would have been approved if Jonathan Ives did not report directly to Steve?
Designers communicating the value of design better
If there is one and only one skill a great designer needs out off school, is the ability to communicate the value of design better.
There is a lot of focus in schools on the hard skills like drawing, computer skills and to a certain extent form development. Though this is important, it is also important to develop a design sense and the ability to turn this design sense into a language people can understand. The training the soft skills should also be a requirement.
As designers we also need to be able to communicate a lot better with non-designer people such as CEO or marketing managers. Something designers are not very good at.
Designers come with so much “emotional baggage†of the quirky, ranting and raving designers the advertising industry so loves to show they have. Industrial Design is a different industry and we cannot adopt the same general design mindset.
We need to get off our high horse and talk to people in a language they can understand. Treat every job and client as an education process as believe me most people know about design but don’t really know how its done. Also people generally fear designers, but in a good way.
Putting a dollar value to design?
Ultimately design, marketing and advertising all suffer from the same thing and that it provides an intangible benefit but with real tangible implications.
Yes you need money to create designs. So how do you then justify your design’s form, colour, finish when many decisions are made based on what the product cost as it affects the margin or profit.
There are a few ways to do this. The first and most important step to justify your design is to formulate a design strategy that encompasses all aspect of the business, and then develop a strategic product route map to support your design decision. See we are back to strategy again. The strategy should include the influences of the brand, design language, manufacturing requirements and even logistics. As you can see the most successful design strategies satisfy almost all the corporate requirements set out.
Another great way is the cost incurred with your design allows an increase in selling price that in the end betters the ROI of that product. There are a lot more ways, but I wont go into them here, do contact me if you are interested to know more.
Design does not occur in a vacuum
Finally, I think this point sums it all up nicely. A lot of designers fail to understand that their design work has a lot of implications within organisations.
I’ve seem many a design consultancy fail, by providing great designs that never make it as their approach never considered the fallout effect within an organisation.
Here again communication is vital, and a good designer needs to carefully consider the effects and also ask himself is the company ready for such a innovative strategy? If not perhaps another strategy is required to make the company ready for the big strategy.
A strategy to implement the main strategy!
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