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Brian Gillespie

Posts written by Brian Gillespie

April 22

Design as a Linking Force

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 »

March 30

Design’s Role in Business Performance

by Brian Gillespie

I would like to share some thoughts from a design management conference I just had the pleasure to attend. The topic was “Improving and Measuring Design’s Role in Business Performance“. Though there were several great case studies illustrating how design had contributed to a company’s success (BMW, Helly Hansen, Patagonia) what always accompanied these stories was the reality that the methods to measure design success were invariably both tangible and intangible, both qualitative and quantitative.

At the conference this was exemplified by success stories provided by the UK and Danish Design Councils who have ample proof of design’s impact on business. Their research and experience shows a direct correlation between the use of design and three key business indicators: higher turnover, faster growth, and higher export rate.

The design management profession realizes that to build the business case for design with non-design senior management metrics are needed that are tied to the bottom line…metrics that drive profit. However, it is important not to lose site of the more intangible benefits of design and the design activities that contribute to these. As design is creativity-based with innovation often its output the measurement of the efforts tied to sales are often difficult at best to quantify. To successfully manage the use of design in business requires a combination of strategic/analytical and creative skills.

A summary of areas explored where design can have an impact and ways to measure it include the 10 areas listed below. There will be follow on information on specific methods within these that designers can bring to bear on selling the business case.

Design’s influence on the purchasing decision or the purchasing emotion
How it enables strategy (new markets)
Enabler of product and service innovation
Reputation/Awareness/brand value
Time to market/process improvement
Customer satisfaction
Cost savings/ROI
Developing communities of customers
Good design is good for all: triple bottom line accounting for social, environmental, and business impact

Good design improves competitiveness in a global economy. Though globalization provides the benefits of cheap imports produced by low-wage employees who are continually increasing the level of their skills, there is an opportunity for companies in countries advanced in design to create higher or new value through well-designed products and services. Companies are obliged to be more efficient and innovative. To this end companies like Molecular are very well placed to provide this higher value to companies willing to invest in our design capital. Many of our current corporate initiatives are aimed at this challenge right now especially around innovation, global services, Isobar networking, and services growth. Our recognition that experience is more than just user experience and that the impact of digital/interactive on business is growing rapidly puts us in a very good place right now.Thanks,

Brian

Posted By Brian Gillespie At 10:54 AM

posted to: Digital Marketing, Digital Strategy | 1 Comment »