What shape are designers?

There is a long and dearly held assumption in the part of the design industry in which I work, that being T-shaped is a prerequisite for long the long term success of individual practitioners. And why not? The idea of the ‘T-shaped designer’ makes a lot of sense. Here it is defined by IDEO CEO Tim Brown in an interview as:

“T-shaped people have two kinds of characteristics, hence the use of the letter “T” to describe them. The vertical stroke of the “T” is a depth of skill that allows them to contribute to the creative process. That can be from any number of different fields: an industrial designer, an architect, a social scientist, a business specialist or a mechanical engineer. The horizontal stroke of the “T” is the disposition for collaboration across disciplines. It is composed of two things. First, empathy. It’s important because it allows people to imagine the problem from another perspective- to stand in somebody else’s shoes. Second, they tend to get very enthusiastic about other people’s disciplines, to the point that they may actually start to practice them. T-shaped people have both depth and breadth in their skills.”

Sounds great and makes sense.

This does however leave the door open for a problem to arise. Specifically when a company, wilfully or otherwise, distorts the T-shape and starts to insist either through it’s hiring process, or it’s culture, that the depth of the T should be a design discipline. That a design education somehow denotes a superior breed of design thinkers.

My experiences over the last two years have shown me that large parts of the ‘design toolkit’ I gathered during my design education and on through the first few years of my career no longer satisfy the challenges I am being asked to solve. When tackling increasingly abstract and cultural questions, those tangible skills struggle to find a grounding from which they can start to build a solution.

And I am unconvinced that pure strategy has the answer either (think-tanks anyone?). As that method seems to start in the abstract and stay there – struggling to come out of the clouds except in the form of 'recommendations' – which notoriously hard to design against.

So, imagine if the vertical part of a designers T is strategic thinking.

Making strategy actionable is the most important vertical skill in any T these days and people who can translate between the clouds and the ground are becoming the key member of any design team these days.

Ross.

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User led can mean users last.

So I have just finished possibly one of the hardest projects I have taken on so far. 

Phew ...

And it reinforced something I had been vaguely aware of for a while. Which is that sometimes it is easy to confuse the logistical version of user led design, with the philosophical version – with the result of delivering a well thought and soundly backed-up 'me too' run of the mill solution, rather than something truly different. 

In other words, it is sometimes better to speak to your users at the end of a piece of work, when you really understand the challenge and know what to ask them, rather than at the beginning, when you might be more likely to ask the wrong questions. 

The challenge of course is recognising when you are in that situation, and finding a way to get to the right set of questions (for example, in this case we spoke to sociologists to help us through the fog).

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Just a thought ...

For a designer to be of benefit to his/her/their clients, getting paid is the most important element. Not just in the Maslow way ... but because it affords us the opportunity to 'practice'. Clients give us a focus, a problem to solve, that stops us becoming self indulgent, and projects give us the vehicle or channel to push our craft(s). Payment sets a value on our offer, gives us a tool to express that value when all else is intangibe, and defines the boundaries of the profession. Boundaries that we can then push, knowing that there will be the push back from others that shows us context and keeps us honest. 

In this context, the craft of design can be any tool that solves the problem at hand – talking & thinking, drawing & building – and it's the opportunity to practice these that seems most valuable to our clients. This opportunity has been afforded by people matching our valuation of the benefits we bring, which means that if people are willing to pay, we must be doing something right, right?

RT

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Why door to door marketing is as bad as all the others ...

So a little rant today... :-)

I am wondering whether the x% of people companies reach through door to door marketing is worth the damage their image can suffer due to pushy and frankly crap sales people, and it's obvious opportunism. Now I assume that the recent increase of this I have experienced is due to measures to reduce that other incredibly annoying tactic - cold call telesales (in 2007, 14.8 Million numbers were registered exempt from cold calls). And, I guess one of the main reasons is that a company can be sure that they are reaching their target demographic directly, which much increase the percentage of success versus the effort they have to expend. 

In the last couple of months I have been door stepped by a couple of people from N-Power and EDF, both selling me identical services that apparently "... are only available today, on this street!" (their emphasis). Services identical to my current British Gas offer too, by the way. 

What really made me think about this though, was a visit from an Aviva salesman. Who's pitch for health insurance, was based around how bad the NHS is. Now this is an interesting departure. Never mind that I have absolutely no interest in talking about paying for my health on a cold Tuesday afternoon on my own doorstep, but to start your story by disparaging a competitor (which is what the NHS is) feels like a throwback to the pre-internet era. It feels incredibaly naive when you consider how available data and stories are today–and how much it could expose Aviva (or any other insurance provider) to extra scrutiny. 

Their attack on the failings of the NHS was based on data - as along with our schools, it is now one of the most analysed institutions around. It seems an unfair fight when Aviva are not currently subject to the same scrutiny, and are not judged by the same metrics. It also of course, opens a political debate - and I'm not too sure that the barely 20 year old lad who was selling this policy would have been ready for a heated public/private debate, had he stumbled across someone up for that fight.

Anyway - I walked away with the impression of a company attempting to profit on the (necessarily public) failings of one of our public services, and asking me to disengage from my interest in the success of that service to invest in my own private wellbeing, and ultimately, make their shareholders some more money. That does not seem a good deal to me, and it's not a good reflection on them either...

harumph!

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wonderful storytelling - http://youtube.com/searchstories?x=R31ge09jaXw

if only the movies were as elegant...

R.

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Reading Spa

Here is a thought: that you can't be a good shopper if you don't know what you are looking for. But what happens when you are looking to be inspired or entertained? How do you shop for ideas?

Seems to be that this bookshop has the right idea by overlaying the therapist's couch onto the proposition of book buying - and ending up with an intimate, guided customer experience.

And isn't the best bit of reading buying the book? The expectation of a beautiful cover, the smell of new pages, the tease of blurb… all that anticipation for a thrilling story - or maybe that is just me. Maybe this is a side effect of having worked in Publishing.

At Mr B's Emporium of Reading Delights in Bath (what a name!), you pay £55 and in return you have 45min chat with an expert bookseller over tea and cakes who will help diagnose your needs - likes and dislikes, info on special gems and new releases - and make recommendations. You will walk out with £40 worth of books that you have chosen during the session.

Even better, you can then sojourn to the Reading Booth to get right into the act of reading, along with a few extra treats to extend the experience into your home - a mug and hot chocolate, music, tickets to a literary event. It could be the beginning of a beautiful new relationship with paperbacks.

Seems that this level of personal attention is hard to replicate in the digital world and that despite the empowerment of being able to make our own choices in a world of proliferated content - a cup of tea and a chat is still a valid solution to finding the best content for our needs.

Why so sad...?

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