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Brian Gillespie

Posts written by Brian Gillespie

May 14

Usability and Design, neighbors or roommates?

I like the approach UPA is taking to their international conference…
The theme of the conference is “usability and design: cultivating diversity“.

“Usability and design are professional approaches that are often seen separately. Usability is perceived to be focused on establishing standards, rather than a culture of practices to make products and services simpler, easier, and more pleasant to us. Design on the other hand is often connected to creativity and innovation.

This conceptual separation - which this conference sets out to overcome - is reflected in how the consultancy market is composed, how companies organise their staff, and the different professional languages in use.”

Design as a Linking Force

by Brian Gillespie

At 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!

posted to: Experience Design, Strategic Design | 5 Comments »

February 8

Strategic design: in focus

by Brian Gillespie

Being strategic about design and its role in driving successful business has become a central part of many design firms core philosophy. It is realized in many ways…through our design methodologies, how we act and think, how we continually innovate how we work, how we engage the end-user in our work, and how we show business the value of design as measured by a concrete return on investment.

Here are a few recent stories, viewpoints, examples, and more from people who advance the strategic role of design in how they go about their work and how they communicate that work to others.

BOX— A nice piece in the New York Times on being able to get outside the box in order to think outside the box

Innovative Minds Don’t Think Alike

IT’S a pickle of a paradox: As our knowledge and expertise increase, our creativity and ability to innovate tend to taper off. Why? Because the walls of the proverbial box in which we think are thickening along with our experience.

GREEN— “Inhabitat.com is a weblog devoted to the future of design, tracking the innovations in technology, practices and materials that are pushing architecture and home design towards a smarter and more sustainable future.”

It’s worth a visit to check out their top 10 green design stories of 2007 at

FLOW— A piece on the concept of designing for flow…Flow as in that first proposed by Csikszentmihalyi in “Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience”.

The article starts as follows…In web design, when we think about flow we usually think about “task flows” or “flow charts” but there’s another type of flow that we should keep in mind. It’s that feeling of complete absorption when you’re engaged in something you love to do without being disrupted by anxiety or boredom caused by tasks that are confusing, repetitive or overly taxing.

Read on at Alistapart.

CAR— The car industry competes on innovation. Foxbusiness carries a story on Johnson Controls, a key player in many of the small innovations that you see every year in new models. Here they showcase a range of vehicle innovations in Detroit…“In the global auto industry, demand for systems and products that reflect innovation, ingenuity and smart design has never been greater than it is today,” said Jeff Williams, group vice president and general manager, North America for the Automotive Experience business of Johnson Controls. “With a commitment to ‘Creating Smart Environments,’ we acknowledge the importance of delivering products with features, functions and performance that are intelligently-crafted and well-integrated,” he said. “The ultimate goal is to provide innovative products and technology to our customers that enrich the experience of automotive consumers.”

posted to: Strategic Design | No Comments »