Rotman Excellence in Teaching Award
After teaching an introductory marketing course two times and receiving an award for each course, I learned the value of “my own voice.” When I taught the courses, I kept looking back on my university days and to find what I liked and what I did not like about my teachers as a student. Although this does not mean that I, as an instructor, ignored the voice of my students, I seem to have placed enormous weight on my own perspective.
I wonder if designers also follow their own ideas rather than following what consumers want. Indeed, Don Norman recently wrote an interesting essay on his blog. Going beyond this conflict, I am particularly wondering how designers do and should manage the conflict between their inner voice and the voice of consumers.
World’s Best Design Schools @ Business Week
I participated in listing up the 2009 World’s Best Design Schools in Business Week as one of the 42 panelists. Please find the schools from the World’s Best Design Schools and find who are the panelists.
Designers’ theme
Consumers tend to be ignorant about evaluating holistic objects consisting of multiple components. One example is interior which consists of furniture, clocks, wall, window, etc.
Prior works suggest that when consumers need to evaluate holistic objects, they should break them down to a list of components. Doing so helps consumers identify how much each component contributes to its holistic object. This suggest that, for instance, if consumers find the relative value of furniture, clock and wall, they will evaluate the interior. Therefore, “learning” is suggested as an important topic. If consumers are exposed to multiple interiors, each of which has its evaluation score and various interior components, they will “learn” the contribution (or importance) of each interior component and other interior rooms. In sum, “breaking down holistic objects” benefits consumers.
However, I believe that consumers can benefit by “putting together components” because doing so helps consumers infer the theme that designers create. Note that when designers design an interior, they generally set up a theme and then choose approrpriate interior components. For instance, if the theme is jungle, designers may choose brown desks and green chairs to represent trees, paint walls with red dots to represent bugs, and place a round-shaped yellow clock on the wall to represent sun. If consumers identify the theme, they will evaluate the contribution (or importance) of holistic objects more accurately without breaking them down into components.
I believe themes explain why designers choose specific shapes and specific colors. I wonder if consumers identify a designer’s theme when they see an interior? Put differently, are consumers able to reversely engineer the designer’s message? If not, how can I help consumers find the designer’s theme?
“Play” with diabetes
Half an year ago, a friend of mine approached me and asked me if I am interested in joining her submitting a work to a design contest, 2009 DiabetesMine™ Design Challenge. It was an online competition about new tools for improving life with diabetes. I answered ‘why not?’ and had several times of discussions with her and another designer friend.
First of all, it was fun to work with two professional designers. They constantly pumped out interesting and wacky ideas. I was impressed by the amount of effort they invested and the quality of the final outcome.
What did I learn from this experience? “Business people talk a lot, but designers make a lot.”
Different design consulting firms, different approaches
I wonder if design consulting firms use different approaches (e.g., different research methods, different ways of data usage, different ways of idea generation, etc.). If so, why and when different approaches are used? I believe this is an important question that needs to be answered because, for now, there is no guidance that (non-design) managers use when they look for which design consulting firms they need to contact initially. (IDEO may not always available, isn’t it? 
)
Imagine that a hospital manager wants to make the experience of the patients better in his hospital. Then, the designers from a design consulting firm uses one type of market research (e.g., interview rather than survey), collect one type of data (e.g., “Parking lot is dirty” rather than “nurses are not friendly”), and suggest one type of solutions (e.g., “cleaning up the parking space” rather than “educating nurses”). This sequence of design activity shows that even before designers identify problems (data) and generate solutions (ideas), the initial moment of the design process (e.g., choice of research methods) determines the overall design process. Therefore, I believe, if the pattern of the design outcome of each design consulting firm, we might be able to tell which consulting firm fits which projects, which will be of great help to managers to find their right consultants!
Hypothesis-driven thinking
Jeanne Liedtka @ U of Toronto
Jeanne Liedtka, a professor at the University of Virginia’s Darden Graduate School of Business, visited University of Toronto and presented her work on growth. She argues that “catalysts” succeed against odds because they (1) have a broad repertoire (e.g., cross-functionally trained), (2) have a learning mindset, and have an empathy.
What was interesting in her talk was to compare between growth mindset business people (based on hypothesis-driven thinking) and fixed mindset business people.
- When people have a growth mindset, they consider life as a journey of learning, embrace uncertainty, seek new experience, broaden repertoire, manage risks through action, place small bets quickly (i.e., rapid prototyping), and thus succeed more often in new situations.
- When people have a fixed mindset, they consider life as a test to avoid mistake, fear uncertainty, avoid new experience, narrow repertore, fail to manage risks without action, place large bets slowly, and thus fail more often in new situations.
She emphasized that “learning” is important when people make failures. “Learning people” learn from their failures because failures are opportunity for them to test their hypotheses, whereas “non-learning people” do not have the same chance.
I am very much with her in that life-long learning with hypothesis-driven thinking is essential to succeed in ANY domain, let alone design and new product development.
So far, I have met only two academically sound literature on the topic of design thinking or how designers think. One is abductive thinking suggested by Nigel Cross and the other is this: hypothesis-driven thinking. If there is any other thought about how designers think, hope to talk more.
Psychology of designers
How do managers identify who are good designers and what does someone teach designers to improve their works?
I believe psychology could answer these two questions. In particular, the psychological traits or skill-sets that successful designers have will be the answers for the questions.
Long time ago, I conjectured that the asnwers were (1) empathy and (2) creativity. I did some experimental studies but hold them now mainly because I found that designers seem to desperately need something others.
About several months ago, I posted this question on the discussion board at Core 77, where lots of graphical, architectural, and industrial designers live with. I expected to hear from them that empathy, creativity, visualization ability, and so on are key driver to survive and be successful as designers. Interestingly, however, many of them said that they need some type of “self-orientedness” (ego, thick skin, desire for stressful situation) to survive. Although they did not elaborate me why they need it, they seem to argue that designers need strong self-confidence.
On a related note, I also heard from my designer friend, Chihiro Hosoe, that designers create super excellent but completely useless ideas at first and then cannot help but throw them out because others do not need their ideas, which leads them to lack in their self confidence. As this “masterbation” continues, designers’ ego becomes damaged.
Then, are great designers self-oriented rather than other-oriented to some extent? My impression about designers is that they are open minded, enjoy discussions with others, and welcome chaos, all of which looks different from self-orientednes. If both self-orientedness and other-orientedness need to be coexisted in designers’ mind, how do designers balance between speaking up their own voices (self-oriented creativity) and listening to others (other-oriented empathy)?
leave a comment