I recently ran across the fantastic short film “Design the New Business” which you can watch online. It talks about the trials and tribulations designers and business people go through when they work together in new ways to solve challenging problems facing businesses today (sounds familiar?). In particular, I really appreciate the fact that it covers business and designers outside the US: The Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Australia, UK, which in my opinion gives a much broader perspective on the state of design nowadays.
Few key points that stroke a chord with me:
1) Fail to Learn
Days of designing in the vacuum are gone. We need to experiment – see what works and what doesn’t work as early as possible so we can switch and adapt. We as designers have to change and find new ways to do things. That’s the only way we’re going to be able to create value for people, and for our partners and customers. Also, we need to realize that design isn’t linear (which becomes pretty obvious in multi-modal projects), meaning solutions nowadays have to consider different users, with various needs and lifestyles, as well as external systems we all need to interact with.
2) Skills for the Future
What skills will we need in this new world? How do we stay relevant and demonstrate the value of design to businesses? Fact is aesthetics are no longer enough. Any company that just worries about redesigns, improvements and optimizations is not going to survive for very long. Aesthetics are but just one outcome of the design process. Pure observations without interpretation are useless. And because it is as much about numbers as it is about users, social insights and understanding should be feeding the design so that it concentrates on creating something new, that satisfies the needs and desires of users, that yields an engaging experience that fulfill their expectations, while at the same time making sure they have a positive impact on our customer’s business bottom-lines.
3) The Era of Service Design and Innovation
Prices and Products are easily imitated, so I guess the key form of differentiation for us [Virgin] moving forward will be experience innovation.
Applying proven solutions from the past to new problems doesn’t work anymore because problems are now different (please read as – “VUI design solutions we’ve implemented in the past might not work anymore!!!). The solution that allows you to think differently is Design. One interesting way of thinking mentioned in the book is that during design, we should start by exploring multiple solutions and problems, and that the last thing we should define is the problem we’re trying to solve, to make sure we identify the right one to pursue. On this point, I feel that we very often rush to identify the problem with the [fill in the blank - requirement, prompt, grammar, text, code, etc.] instead of taking a step back and exploring the universe of solutions and problems.
And of course, design cannot happen in isolation anymore; designers now have to work with cross-functional teams, that take into account lots of variables, until the design reaches a good level of maturity and is ready to go out into the world.
Finally, here are some links for further reading based on some of the things discussed throughout the movie:
Enjoy, and would love to hear your thoughts on these ideas, your experiences, etc.
