Deans of Design
October 9th, 2006 by HalDesign is hot! The subject has been in numerous publications in the last month. Even US News and World Report has led with stories on design. In the Oct 2 issue they reported on IDEO's influence on new product developement and general design influences, The Deans of Design.
Design is important to all of us doing projects. Tom Kelley, principal of IDEO, claims, "We approach (design) from the point of view that the answer is out there, hidden in plain sight, so let's go observe human behavior and see where the opportunities are." Given that projects are usually one-off creations, design continues throughout the project. We need to get comfortable — anticipating design changes — with the process.
Participating in prototyping can make a big difference in the success of the project. Sometimes I see teams acting like they are at effect of design. They even say, "These guys still don't know what they want us to build." That's not good for anyone, particularly the client. When the project performers participate in design activities the overall project has less rework, delay, and lower cost.
This collaborative effort requires a rather enlightened design team. Designing with those people who will build the item takes a different set of skills. Those skills and practices are exactly what is needed to create products and projects that stand out.
Stay tuned. I'll write more on design in the coming weeks.
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October 10th, 2006 at 1:55 pm
Nice to hear that attention is shifting to collaborative design. What I’m always amazed at is how little focus is given to the design of the project within which the design needs to be developed.
You write: “This collaborative effort requires a rather enlightened design team.” I suggest that such successful collaborations require a more suitable and more deliberate approach. Perhaps the word ‘enlightened’ is appropriate but I prefer differently informed and deliberate.
Design is one of the ultimate appreciative inquiries - focusing on a positive solution to either a vexing problem or a largely invisible opportunity. And those who specialize in Appreciative Inquiry methods struggle with implementing their positively focused, solution-oriented designs - due to a lack of positively designed project approaches.
Those approaches exist but get drowned out by the overly structured, top down, predictively focused orientation of traditional project management methods or, these days, by single and often simple-minded focus on anorexia producing lean or myopic agile approaches. Each of these approaches is useful - in some contexts. Designing a successful project considers first the actual context of the project and adaptively matches methods (note plural) to project needs.
Perhaps we should start marketing our adaptive approach to project design as ‘enlightened’!