April 22

Design as a Linking Force

by Brian Gillespie

Image of Renault concept carAt the recent Design Management Institute’s annual European Conference, this year held in Paris, leaders from global and local brands…some may be familiar (Microsoft, Renault, Orange, KONE), some may not (Roca, Legrand, Fauchon) convened to discuss the topic of a design as a linking force. The discussion revolved around the practical experiences these companies had where design played an important role as “an integrating activity and process, a way of thinking, (and) an increasingly significant contributor to organizational success.”

The representatives from these companies came from both business and design management with titles including CEO, Senior Managing Director VP Design, SVP Corporate Design, Design Director, and Senior Manager, User Experience. All shared a success story with design as a key player. Through the course of the conference, as they told their stories, several recurring themes kept rising to the surface:

  • Design is not just about creating shapes and colors, it is about creating experiences
  • Well-designed customer experiences can lead to a successful business enterprise
  • If your companies’ ambition is to innovate it is a good idea to include design teams early in your product and service planning and strategy. The tools and techniques of designers can supplement your own customer knowledge, provide an alternative creative perspective, and foster an even deeper customer understanding.
  • Design should not occur in a silo. It is most effective when considered as an integrated activity that impacts each company department and each customer channel & interface.
  • CEO’s love seeing the work tangibly reflected in the bottom line. Understand the business goal and have a solid set of benchmarks against which you can establish metrics and the success of your investment and efforts.
  • Everyone is talking about Service Design…it is hot!
  • Finally…big lesson…it is not easy, and not everything will always go according to plan…but you learn from your doing, and you get better. It is worth investing in.

Follow a few of these tips and design may be a linking force…and not a linking farce!

Creative Commons License
The Design as a Linking Force by Molecular Voices, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

posted to: Experience Design, Strategic Design 5 Comments »

Comments

  1. Laura Taylor said on April 23rd, 2008

    Sounds interesting. Some of the themes are old faithfulls – that design is more than shapes and colors and the power of a fulling integrated experience with a cohesive design at each interaction point. This has been on the top of marketing, design and business conferences for years. Any sense that there is more than talk happening on this topic? That businessess are putting these principles in action?

  2. erik roscam abbing said on April 28th, 2008

    Good summary of paris 08 brian! I was there as well, and to answer laura’s question, I was pleasantly surprised by seeing presenters like Miguel-Angel Munar of Roca, Clive Grinyer of Orange, Surya Vanka of Microsoft and Pierre Yves Panis of Legrand actually showcasing what has been said so many times before at so many conferences. To me this is proof that design management is gaining momentum as a profession. Theory and vision backed up by great cases. Or vise versa if you will.
    I have posted some insights on the conference as well on http://www.branddriveninnovation.com
    cheers,
    Erik Roscam Abbing

  3. Brian Gillespie said on April 29th, 2008

    Laura, yes…the themes are rather old these days…you would think that they would be par-for-the course these days. But they are not. There were indeed several good examples shoecased at the show.
    In fact, Erik mentions the best of them. I especially liked the stories from Roca (Spain) and Legrand (France). Good insights into the process, issues of design management, and not just a brand story that focuses on the finished results.
    Erik, sorry I didn’t get to meet you. Maybe next time. I see from your blog we have some things in common!

  4. » Blog Archive » dmi conference summary said on May 1st, 2008

    [...] another nice summary of the DMI paris conference at molecular’s blog, by Brian Gillespie. Go see! Bookmark [...]

    [WORDPRESS HASHCASH] The comment’s server IP (82.94.214.64) doesn’t match the comment’s URL host IP (82.94.214.144) and so is spam.

  5. Ralf Beuker said on May 2nd, 2008

    Hi Brian, good to hear from you again. Would have loved having a chat with you after all those years ;-) In any case thanks for sharing and you might want to see your blog posting covered in my conference review summary over at my blog: http//www.design-management.de.

    (from a technical perspective your company might want to consider trackbacks?!)

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