Design Sojourn | Strategic Industrial Design Blog

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Thanks for visiting and please keep in touch? ~ D.T.

Edit 1: Tim is from Frog! Sorry Tim!
Edit 2: Completely forgot to highlight, original seed concept “Just Plain Old Thinking” is from csven of rebang.
Edit 3: Lesson: Blog when awake! Duh!

Tim Leberecht, Frog Design’s VP of Marketing, has written about Design Thinking and how it is the new Marketing “Buzzword”. He goes on to describe how Marketing people have even managed to trick themselves into embracing this next big thing, especially after how he defines Design Thinking according to Wikipedia as: “Design thinking is a process for practical, creative resolution of problems or issues that looks for an improved future result.â€

So…by Wikipedia’s definition, it looks to me that Design Thinking is just plain old “Thinking”. Nice to know that till today the only people thinking all the time are designers!

But seriously, what is Design Thinking, especially when every management guru seems to be claiming to know or wanting to teach it?

Honestly, I don’t really know what it is all about and I’m in the business. Well actually I have an idea and here is my hypothesis:

“Design Thinking is a thinking process that anchors your decision making with multi-disciplinary influences”.

Otherwise how would we, as designers, are able to come up with designs that are meaningful and relevant to consumers?

Over to you dear reader, what is your definition of Design Thinking?

I think this would have done the rounds in the design blogosphere by this time. Sorry, it is a little late as I completely forgot to post it. But here it is, and all I can say is I WANT THIS!

ILoveSketch from Seok-Hyung Bae on Vimeo.

Looks like there is a pretty steep learning curve, but based on its potential, I would take a day off to learn it! Great stuff guys and I hope you can realize it!

The title of this quick post came up in a recent discussion I had with a business partner. After further reflection, I find this very true. It is applicable to all forms of strategy including design. So let me reword this:

A good design strategy is like a good movie. A beautiful sum of parts that come together under great direction.

Who do we have? The actor, the script writer, the sound guys, the casting crew, support crew, and let us also not forget the director.

Who do you want to be? I suggest the director if you want to really make a change.

It is how and the way it all comes together, the various still images and sound, that makes a movie great. Miss a part or segment (for example by censoring) it seems to all fall apart.

Similarly, everyone in your development team has a role to play. More importantly, no one is above anyone else nor should anyone be excluded. Sometimes as designers we forget eh?

I finally got the time today to sit down and really think about the impact of these troubled times.

It has been a very hectic month since I officially started my new role, as a result I really only hovered around the “doom and gloom” of the global impact from the US Sub-Prime Crises. With only snippets of news via early morning radio and the occasional Stock Market update on my iPhone, I never really had a chance to think about this crisis till today.

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It’s about time, the (M)Ad Men figured that out. Well they sort of did before and there always been Industrial Designers in advertising and branding. But much of the focus then was on packaging design, and Industrial Design was often seen as nothing more than skinning.

Core77 has a pretty good article called “Stepmothers of Invention: Branding Firms Enter the Industrial Design Fray“. While the article comes across a little wishy-washy at times as the author tries to play both sides, the central message is clear:

I have another take on this:

Basically, nothing shouts your brand more than your logo/product/graphic/interface design. Therefore, designers need to understand the important role branding plays in Industrial Design, correction, in Strategic Design.

This is but one aspect of the design strategy that we need to consider before we start designing. In other words, one of the ingredients we would need so that the entire dish (or product) can come out right.

I’m no expert in branding, but this basic credo has always stuck with me, “branding is all about the product”. In today’s emphasis in authentic branding, the focus should be about the product or idea, and not the the other way around. Just look at Viao, iPhone and Playstation! Even better, if you want to build a great authentic brand ground up, build it around a product such as James Dyson did.

However I’m quite please that the article got it right in the end. Many companies, not just the “poster children” have engaged such great development teams. Perhaps some more successful than others.

Now, that my friends, is what Strategic Design is all about. Welcome to the club!

With my vacation last week and a shorten week this week, I have been just too exhausted to update my blog.

However, I have not been idle. I have been collecting lots of juicy design tips and thoughts. Not only that, I have been testing out the iPhone as a blogging tool. It’s not too bad, but touch typing is sloooow and good for short posts like this one!

Anyways do stay tuned as there might be something out end of this week.

I have always liked to use the term “Strategy Visualization” as an activity for designers to solidify, by design, a company’s business strategy.

So recently, I was having a chat with my boss about getting some “visualizations” done for a design strategy by our client. My boss correctly pointed out to me that Designers should be “articulating” a strategy rather than “visualizing” one.

Think about it? There is actually a subtle difference between “visualization” and “articulation” and I also agree that “articulation of a strategy” is a much better application of what strategic designers do.

Before we go on, lets take a look at how Dictionary.com defines “Visualize” as:

and “Articulate” as:

Do you see what I mean?

When we say we “visualize” something it seems to imply that designers just dream but do not get real. However if you say designers “articulate”, there is now an element of making things tangible with a level of precision.

This post is not so much an English lesson or a play of words, but it is a nice reminder of what we do.

Have a nice weekend friends!

Dear Designers,

Where do you Think?

What level should we be playing at?

What sort of conversations should we be having?

Think about it?

Sincerely,
DT

In my opinion, design in China has leapfrogged ahead faster than the West did. But have they arrived?

I recently stumbled over a interesting interview, “Taking the Pulse of Chinese Design” with Jia Wei the founder of LKK Design.

Here are some of the good bits.

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One of the world’s leading product design consultancies, Smart Design, has a spin-off initiative called Femme Den that focuses on Designing for Women. Set up by 4 female designers, their motives do not stray far from the Smart Design methodology which uses “the understanding of people’s perceptions and emotional connections” as a strategic competitive advantage for their customers. It seems this is more important than even their customer’s brand! Very interesting.

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