Does Size Matter?: Size Matters

Design already has a voice in the boardrooms

2010-03-24T04:01:00.000-07:00

What Design needs to do is shut up and learn to listen. No more need of definitions, frameworks, methods and tools. A good engineer (problem solver) will find a way to get what needs to be done completed given the right set of criteria, conditions and operating environment characteristics. First principles need to be taught to human centered designers, along with the business ethics course from MBA with a sprinkling of finance and gaming theory.

Better design for the greater good

2007-07-17T09:01:00.000-07:00

This is the longest I've ever gone without posting I think and I appreciate those of you who wrote in to ask about my textual dissapearance. Well, I've good news and bad news - I'm not yet back blogging like I used to, a severe case of writer's block and lack of imagination is holding me hostage to silence. And the good news is that I thought well why not at least link to stuff online that I find interesting right now and who knows it might help me find my 'bloggy voice' again.

So, watch this space here. This is the blog that is part of my profile on the Design21 Social Design Network and I've just experimented with their publishing application. I've been involved in the judging of their recently concluded competition called "Heated Issue" which to quote ICOGRADA,

'Heated Issue', one of three competitions developed by UNESCO's Design 21: Social Design Network asked participants to create an educational campaign to raise public awareness of the problem of global warming and the contribution of our daily lifestyle and activities to this phenomenon. The aim of the campaign is to provoke people to think about the issue and how their individual consumer choices and energy consumption play into the equation.

Also, like ICOGRADA, I've been invited to become a member of the Advisory Panel of the UNESCO/Fellisimo Social Design Network, an honour which I've graciously accepted. Do check out the whole Social Design Network website, their theme is "Better design for the greater good".

500 designers in your pocket

2007-06-29T14:49:00.000-07:00

As I've said before

I think every designer in the world has been in a meeting where someone announces that their printer, toaster, telephone, breakfast cereal should become the iPod of its category.

It occurred to us today that IDEO has become the iPod of consulting firms (and thus the new logo I propose above). Consider:

They are perceived as equivalent to their entire category

They are perceived as the "best" solution even when there are other solutions available

It's the safest purchase decision, even if it costs more

It's a very good choice

Making the purchase is something you want to show off to everyone else

Others?

RIP frogdesign

2007-03-03T22:47:00.000-08:00

Tsk! What a strongly worded title this post has. What on earth? Well, I was just thinking that now that frogdesign is an SBU to a mobile software company with over 6500 people and wholly owned by a private equity firm, can it really be called a design studio or design house in the traditional sense of IDEO, Design Continuum, Metadesign, Method, Ziba, fuseproject etc etc etc?

Or is it now a service offered by a company with a different set of customers and markets? Cutting edge American design is a unique selling proposition for a global software company, I would think. Particularly when you look at the markets they serve - China, Eastern Europe, Africa, among others.

Why not move into the rapidly evolving economies where mobile phone penetration and greater reliance on interfacing with just that one little screen in order to connect with the rest of world is an excellent strategic move - I'm not going to link to the numbers of mobile phones sold in emerging markets last year yet again but it was 1 billion phones.

That's just plain good business, they're going to be extremely successful, if they can also create a special segment of products for the bottom of the pyramid in these nations. But I strongly recommend using local or more diverse design teams for this particular project. Or cross cultural communication training - especially now that design teams must work together with offices far flung from their own.

This is a post for Perspective

2007-01-13T01:28:00.000-08:00

But Typepad is down and you can't even visit www.nitibhan.com anymore?

Dudes, tell me if this isn't a major issue under the topic of Does Size Matter? Hello? My business runs on Typepad, people.... and I have a major presentation due Monday. Does size matter?

Yes it does. I am a tiny little business occupying very little space in the universe of megalithic behemoths called the Fortune 500. And I cannot get into my front door to welcome my visitors to my front office?

What kind of nonsense is that?

Sighed,

niti

It takes a village

2006-11-08T15:05:00.000-08:00

A smattering of thoughts and experiences about Size, and whether or not it Matters.

In talking today with a friend (who is figuring out his own new path after spending time in a small consultancy) about the different activities involved in running a small business, he said "It's hard to be good at everything." That was a validating sentiment, because it seems like the more I work in this field the less I realize I know about running a business. It seems like you can go along not-so-badly with lots of missing pieces, but then you need to reach the next plateau and those pieces need to be there.

And so turning to others is one way to move forward. I've been so pleased in just the last two weeks to have a flurry of extremely helpful interactions with others. One new colleague, after a coffee meeting, revisited our website and offered a helpful critique of what elements were missing, or needed to be emphasized, or de-emphasized (and then reviewed a new Portigal Consulting backgrounder that I put together). Earlier this week, another friend explained in some detail what he meant by business development and lead generation, with suggestions for tasks I could take on. Another friend walked me through some tricky bits of Photoshop, and some layout and design options in HTML.

This is all tangible stuff I can use; that I am using and will continue to use.

And today a past client explained to me why this latest project we proposed on was going to someone else - he perceived me as someone to work consultatively but wanted his longer projects to go to "a more established firm." I suspect that means a name, an office with a sign on the door. I don't agree with that perception (having taken on dozens of projects of various lengths over the years quite successfully) but I have to accept it as a perspective that is no doubt shared by others. Indeed, another guy asked me last week to explain how we were different from "frog-and-IDEO" (say it in your head as one word).

In the world of validity and reliability that Roger Martin talks about, crossing that gulf of believability with a client is a challenge all share.

I'd love to hear any thoughts on this mess of topics that this post may spawn....

The core competency of an industrial design house

2006-10-24T14:12:00.000-07:00

Reading about Dell's problems of late, particularly now that HP has overtaken them in global sales figures, albeit by a small percentage point, and reflecting on corporate strategy concepts such as Prahalad and Hamel's core competency theory leads to mind some thoughts.

Over the past few years we've seen a rise in the variety of services being offered by leading industrial design houses in the industry. Whether its corporate strategy, workshops and training sessions [frog's $35K a day session recently mentioned by Forbes comes to mind] or helping a trade union with their membership recruitment - design studios are certainly expanding their reach and pushing the envelope of what constitutes their strategic service offerings.

However, one asks, what about the drift away from their core competency? Any design studio that is currently top of the mind today in the media, certainly built its reputation and standing on the quality and consistency of the work for which they became wellknown, good product design or good graphic design, as the case maybe.

While the integration of business, strategy and design is one that one can see and evaluate in the market as a 'good thing', Dell's recent troubles with trying to reposition their corporate juggernaut's direction of growth implies that it may be easier for Dell to change by adding a component of design to add value to topline growth rather than for a design studio to add competency in supply chain efficiencies, just in time inventory management and other cost cutting process improvements.

The Industrial engineer in me notes that operational excellence and corporate strategy can be balanced in the case of a Dell, while without operational excellence, no corporate strategy, no matter how well conceived or designed, can succeed beyond a certain point.

What do you think?

Losing clients

2006-06-13T21:24:00.000-07:00

This comment is taken verbatim from Bruce Nussbaum's blog on BusinessWeek, as a response to the debate about 'no spec' for design services that has been going on over at Design Observer. It gives rise to many more issues than we have possibly considered, up until now. What do we do about it?

___________________________________________

Dear Mr. Naussbaum,
From the business side. I'm an entrepreneur transitioning my family business and developing a line of furniture. I read your posts about Inside Innovation with great interest as I saw they paralleled my experience trying to make something great with (very) limited resources.
I also considered providing designers the opportunity to submit spec designs. It seemed some designers are desperate for work that they'd work for free, one design firm even offered to.
This forced the question; why would someone (me) pay for design work when designers offer it for free?
Here is my theory as to why this is happening and why designers are so upset;
Supply and demand. I think there are far too many practicing designers just as the demand for and value of their work is declining.
For my business, we decided not to work with any designer. We did not see the value they could provide for the amount of time we would have to spend working with them.
So how did we do the design? Well, many of the firms we talked with highlighted how their process assured successful results. So we researched design processes, constructed one that fit our needs and limitations and executed it ourselves. We learned that much of great design is not talent, but time consuming work that anyone can accomplish if they spend the time.
How do we know the design is great? We used the same tools designers do, focus groups, lead user studies and interviews with potential customers. From these we’ve had universal enthusiasm for the design, some customers even highlighting the design as their main reason for desiring the furniture. If all goes well we’ll be on the market in a year and designers can see one example of how design has become the new “desktop publishing.”
Please don’t say that “design is innovation “ because I don't belive designers have the exclusive rights to creativity.

Posted by: A Lost Client at June 12, 2006 03:19 PM

Specialist jobs or design process phases?

2006-02-16T22:09:00.000-08:00

I'd written this on my blog but thought that it was also apropos to the conversation here.

There have been some extremely deep and thoughtful conversations lately in the comments section of my recent posts - Design thinker's dilemma, Strategy and Operational effectiveness and Poking a hole in the matrix. They've brought home to me that one key area where there seems to be a fog - this is not a value judgement but an observation - both within and without the design industry with respect to the applications of various kinds of design services within the context of a particular business. I'm still floundering for the right words here but am making this attempt to articulate the whole in the hope that it leads to further conversations and clarity.

We have designers, stylists, design researchers, strategists, inventors, engineers in the mix. Can we in fact articulate clearly what each does, in the course of the design process, at any reasonably large design consultancy? Are they separate specialist job functions or are they phases in the design process? Or are they the equivalent of 'tags' in helping create a project team for a particular project? In small firms, where everyone wears multiple hats, these differentiations do not arise, but at the same time, depending on the balance of skillsets the firm may lean towards some particular area of excellence over others.

I'd love to start with mapping these out AS they are 'commonly' understood today FIRST before we get any deeper in our conversations discussing them in the context of what they should be ideally. Why? Because I realized that while it looks as though niblettes, Dirk and myself are talking about the same 'tags' viz., design, styling, research, invention, and strategy - I quickly saw that our perception of what those 'tags' mean to each of us differs. Now niblettes and I have at least been fighting a war of words for some time now so we could be said to have reached some level of comprehension of where the other comes from (steeler kingdom :) but when Dirk entered the conversation I found myself floundering to comprehend some of the things he was saying - this is not a negative judgement in any way, I've talked to him and collaborated with him on stuff before - but it pointed out to me just how confusing all of this can be without clear articulations of the various terms and their corresponding definitions in the context of this discussion. Imagine what it must be like for those who are not working in the industry i.e. clients and their various representatives when they try to make sense of design firm websites, design firm processes and portfolios.

This brings me to my main contention, that while the news media and Davos et al have done wonders to bring design's value to business to the forefront of the public's imagination, it is still incumbent upon the providers of the service to communicate their value to their customers. Why design? is a question that has been answered in the broad strokes, but the details are still fuzzy. And without this clarity of communication we cannot hope to provide basic services to those who are yet new to the entire concept - the first time user of design services, say, one whose imagination has been sparked by the myriad stories about how design increased sales for company X or opened a new market for company Y.

Next, I'll throw out standard explanations derived from a quick look through the major design firm websites to see where we all agree and differ for further conversation.

Shedding some light on design firms and Web 2.0

2006-02-02T22:30:00.000-08:00

I received this very thoughtful email from a Douglass Turner and thought that it would serve better to answer his questions here, where we discuss the business of the design industry. It also prodded me to dig around the net a bit and find out what design firms are doing online. Douglass' email quoted in blue, my responses in black.

I am an Apple Computer alumnus and Silicon Valley veteran. I like to think of myself as the vanguard of a new wave of professionals from Apple, Pixar and other elite, visionary companies whose skillset spans design and technology.I recently returned to the States (Boston area) after eight years in Scandinavia (Iceland) involved in Internet projects, mobile wireless projects. I am currently looking for a position in the design industry and as I research the state of the industry I notice something truly strange: someone forgot to tell the elite design agencies how to properly leverage the Internet platform.How can companies so talented in other domains so completely miss the fundamental transformative and disruptive power of Internet 2.0?

Here, I'm going to assume that that 'elite design agencies' refers to those who specialize in product and industrial design, for the branding and interaction design firms that I know of are certainly leveraging the internet platform. Some examples that come immediately to mind include our own contributor, Luke Wroblewski, Dirk Knemeyer, Management Innovation Group - whose roots are certainly in Information Architecture and Interaction Design, Adaptive Path - while not 'designers' in the classical sense are certainly active in Internet 2.0, and of course more conventional design studios such as Method, Inc , who just launched their "Interface Innovation" at MacWorld 2006 and the Apple Store. [disclaimer: that was the project I worked on last fall]

For example, try and find an RSS feed at IDEO, Davos 2006 attendee and America's poster child of all things innovative. No luck? How about a weblog? Nuthin huh? Well surely they at least have web page of collected podcasts of David Kelley's most inspirational talks. Nope?

Here though, I must agree that these are missing from IDEO's site. It would indeed be nice to have a web page of collected podcasts like Lunar Design has here, and The Prepared Mind has here. As for design firm weblogs - there are individual weblogs of practicing industrial designers - Metacool by Diego Rodriguez who works at IDEO and teaches at Stanford's d.school is one of the better known, and Frogdesign, while not maintaining their own weblog, contribute a weekly newsletter to Gizmodo. Cheskin has a blog where their VP Design Strategy contributes along with other designers, both Lisa Leckie and Joanne Mendel are alums from the Institute of Design. And Pentagram's Michael Beirut is the founder of The Design Observer - which needs no introduction.

Kinda weird, no? Hang on a second, how can these companies adequately advice clients on design strategy with such a glaring weakness in their skillset? I just don't get. >From Pimp my Ride to Google Maps Mashups consumers have risen up and taken control of their product experiences to a degree never seen before. The Internet is at the center of this trend and elite design firms appear asleep at the wheel. They remain firmly planted somewhere circa 1995 cranking out pointless Flash powered vanity websites.

If you could shed some light on this odd state of affairs I would really appreciate it.

To summarize, there are firms who are indeed leveraging the power of the web and availing themselves of podcasts, blogs and other media to communicate their strategies. At the same time, there are a number of firms that could roll off the tip of my tongue who aren't using web 2.0 technologies. But does it necessarily mean that this is a glaring weakness in their skillset?

Yes - if, they are in the business of creating online strategies focused around the power of the technology that underpins the changing web.

No - if, they believe that they should focus on their core competencies - creating customer experiences and enabling users around products and processes that reach far beyond the web.

It would be easy to say, IMHO, that what an IDEO needs to do in order to address this 'glaring weakness' is put up podcasts - but the question then becomes, do they really need to? Why do firms blog or create podcasts? In order to communicate their design philosophy, create a brand, have a conversation with their audience. Are we really unaware of IDEO's design philosophy, brand or their audience? Their audience was at Davos, and they were conversing with them there.

On the other hand, for argument's sake, unlike the majority of the design firms mentioned above, IDEO is the single largest design firm with almost 400 employees - a corporation in the design industry. I'm minded of this post on "Big Blogging - 5 Steps to corporate rollout" which articulates some of the issues around corporate blogging. Perhaps it would be the same as asking why a DesignContinuum (250 plus employees) is not blogging? Because a quick look on their front page tells you about all the other people talking about them.

The bottomline, imho, is it's a choice, and it seems likely that there will come a time when not having a 'conversational two way' presence on the internet will be a 'must' and not a choice, just like today not having a website if you are a company is unthinkable. But is it necessarily a reflection of weakness and a demonstration of their 'backwardness' if they are innovators? I don't think so. The two concepts are separate and cannot be equated.