Design

The business of design

Design can no longer be consigned to just the visual layer - or in the inimitable words of a number of our clients and technical partners over the years - the colouring in stuff! Design has always been more than that but stereotypes can become defining.

Whether it’s digital, retail, identity, communications, product or service design, every part of what is done is designed. Not all people on a project consider themselves designers but the design process includes them and often design thinking is what they are contributing. This means our clients design, non-designers design and customers design things alongside us.

Design is no longer the domain of a select few. Instead, it is an approach to solve problems creatively that works best when it is inclusive and openly collaborative. This is something that has crept up on designers by and large, but its not a bad thing. Listening and observing are things we've been known for, brainstorming and the vagaries of the creative process have always relied on a range of external inputs and a dash of serendipity.

When more people are contributing to design, the challenge is never to loose sight of what you are using design to do. The trick is to remember that design is about thinking your way to a solution by observing, ideating, testing and prototyping, not by dictating what you want it to deliver at the outset - sticking to these rules is definitely required in a collaborative forum. As design professionals our role is as the guardians of the process as much as creative provocateurs or even the party accountable for executing the solution. This means we need to share our ability to focus on the gap, the challenge and the opportunity and design a solution that is differentiated, feasible and viable. It also means we need to be adept at proving the likely impact of that solution - before we embark on building it.

But going a step further and having 'customers' help you design is a challenging notion for some. It means identifying and then engaging intimately with your consumers and being open to having the solution be determined by others. It requires openness, but also some rigor so you are guided by deep seated goals and needs and in order to not be sidetracked by grinches, gripes and unrealistic, un-commercial or unfounded desire. Its challenging sure - but it seems it’s here to stay.

If design is a more collaborative endeavour now - are consumers better off? The customer centricity, relevance and intimacy evident in the design of everything from airline travel to banking certainly suggests so.

Is design better off? A diversity of perspectives, a balance between the voice of the consumer and the will of the guys down in IT and Finance can't hurt. Having the customer or user at the centre of a solution is fundamental, best practice for the design process and becoming indicative of the power of the likely outcome. A few notable local examples are Trade me, Air New Zealand and Powershop - so that should prove it has some worth.

And finally, is our industry better off? It will be when more of the profession adopt and adapt to these new methods. Collaboration, co-creation and co-location are common in the projects we do now - while business imperatives, customer needs and goals direct what we deliver. The new way of designing is here to stay.

For the record - this post was first published by Idealog - to see more of Grens ranting check out Idealog's design ruminations.

Design

What a difference (a) design makes

The Designers Institute of New Zealand (DINZ) should be applauded for adding the best effect award to the best programme.

We have lagged for a while - across town CAANZ have AXIS and have brought the Effies in to play (they are now a few years on and here to stay) - the MA and TVNZ have been focussing on outcomes and effect in their annual awards, and TUANZ and others have made the ROI of any given entry central to their recognition. These categories and awards programs have always been spot on when they have celebrated by asking "not what you can create, but what can creative do for your client".

The parallels around the world are the likes of AIGA and DBA in the UK (The Design Business Association) - both of these organizations are champions of effective design that is accountable, delivering both creatively and commercially.

Meanwhile we have too often been seen as just the colouring in guys. Don't get me wrong - there is value and merit in the craft of design delivery that we need to uphold and celebrate…but the 'Best's' have been a bastion of that alone for too long.

The industry has struggled to have top table conversations and be taken seriously by much of NZ business, and we have lagged as a contributor alongside the likes of NZTE's Better by Design programme. That said there are many smart design thinkers, and some very strong examples of effective design delivered annually - but to me this still signals the need for a growing determination by New Zealand design Inc (not just by the institute) to elevate the debate and highlight the success stories we have to prove the effectiveness of design for New Zealand business.

The best effect finalists represent a broad, deep and significant contribution to New Zealand business. Amongst the effects are moving primary produce up the value chain, revolutionising pest management, making people care about their power usage, deploying digital media inventively to enrich engagement whilst slashing costs.

The challenge for design has been to be taken seriously by business for many years. That imperative is all the greater in these constrained times. The effect of any activity is scrutinised in ROI terms. What we do is no longer commissioned because of what design is – but rather because of what design does.

For the record - this post was first published by Idealog - to see more of Grens ranting check out Idealog's design ruminations.

Service Design

Clever Government?

Design

Is 'below the line' simply a pejorative?

I have been wondering for a while about the genesis of the term ‘above the line’ to describe mass media advertising – and its corollary, ‘below the line’, for everything else.

A little bit of online research hasn’t unearthed the source, other than to clarify its association with the same term used in financials. And that’s fascinating. In financial vernacular, the line separates where you make your money from where you spend it – and guess what – above the line is where you make money.

Business managers understand the difference between investments and costs, and what that means: maximise the return on the former and minimise the latter. It’s not absolute, but the things to invest in are mostly found above the line and the costs to minimise are found below it.

Service Design

Not all services are designed equal

Every service experience you love or loathe has been designed – maybe in bits, sometimes as a whole. And that includes even the really, really bad ones. Lately we have been 'talking' Service Design with a few of our clients and 'doing' Service Design with others. What we have observed is that Service Design can be both a big, scary spectre and a liberating and transformative opportunity for businesses. People have described it as either small, iterative and manageable or all- encompassing and holistic – but, simply put, Service Design is the practice of delivering great on-brand customer experiences using optimised and efficient business systems and operations. 

The thing we've noticed is that many businesses look to improve customer experience, and many also look to streamline processes, improve their offers, migrate to the channels and Touchpoints their customers most use, cut costs and so on. Service Design is the practice of doing both in unison.

Service Design

Mean What You Say, Say What You Mean

Increasingly we are seeing clients purporting to be this, that, and the other; all entwined in highly crafted/litigated value and corporate mission statements. The reality of gaining consensus from the populous for such things means ending up with generic statements that can be applied the world over: like ‘People focussed…’ or ‘Trusted…’ or ‘Integrity…’. Excuse me, but aren’t these baseline requirements of doing business today? Worse still are those that are bandying around words like ‘innovative…’, ‘responsive…’ or ‘genuine…’. By golly, you start putting these up, you’d better be prepared to be that. So, the danger is in being too vanilla in one sense, or over-promising in another. Finding an organisation’s true character, one that is expressed uniquely with a healthy dose of reality is a much harder game. You can run all the group sessions you want, but you’ve got to dig deep for the golden grains; the nuggets of irrefutable truth. They generally won’t come from the mouth of the CEO (or his wife), but from someone who’s doing the hard yards, like the call centre operator doing the graveyard shift. Time to tune into a bit of old-fashioned, fine-tuned listening.

Service Design

Getting over usability

Service Design

Consistency of service across partners

Service Design

Like changing airplanes in mid-flight

A client the other day used the analogy of changing airplanes in mid-flight to describe what service design is like for most businesses.

Imagine yourself flying along at 31,000 feet in a rather old aircraft that is getting a bit tatty around the edges – it smells a bit, rattles and shakes constantly, is not very fuel efficient and the food really sucks.

A brand new shiny, gleaming, fuel efficient and much more comfortable plane – representing what your business could and potentially should be – is flying right next to you. You really want to be on the that plane and not the one you are on.

It's easy to want to be on that other plane – the hard bit is transferring yourself and all your passenges (customers) while you are in mid-flight.

Through applying service design thinking it may be relatively easy to identify what needs to change with your business – the challenge still remains how you will make those changes especially when your business probably doesn't have the funding, resources, capability or time.

Service Design

Wear more black

Black has always been in style for the customer, so its great news companies are on board to. The thing is, I think they always knew, but it was all too hard. After all service design is all about rhythm and sequencing. It’s synchronising the front of house shown to customers with the back of house behind the scenes systems and processes.

As customers we are highly sensitive to the rhythm of service design. We feel the irritant of the lunchtime queues as staff go on their own lunch break; of nifty internet banking calendars which tell us when my visa is due but not the amount; of calling the 0800 number and having to tell each person I am passed onto my account number; of having to print out and remember my discount voucher even though it is sitting on my phone.

Check out the capitalized statement which upsets the rhythm on this brand spanking new homepage. Front end, all bright and smiley. Back end, business as usual. Am sure their mortgage customers wished they had worn more black.

The absolute good news is black is always in style. Ask any designer or architect.