For this Q&A we are extremely lucky to have with us RitaSue Siegel. RitaSue is the President of RitaSue Siegel Resources (RSSR), which has been the premier search and advisory firm to the world’s top design firms and in house design organizations for the past 30 years. RSSR clients include Cisco.com, Procter & Gamble, Whirlpool, HP and Smart Design.
RitaSue has had a very broad design related career which has included designing for Knoll, sitting on the boards of ID Magazine and The Design Management Institue (DMI), serving as Placement Director at Pratt Institue for almost 8 years and writing many articles and books (including Get A Design Job) on various areas of the design profession. ‘The expert’ in the field of sourcing design leaders, she gained both her Bachelor and Masters degree in Industrial Design from the Pratt Institue in the USA. Design Droplets editor, Raph Goldsworthy, asked her for her thoughts on sourcing & recruiting designers, internships, readying design students for the work place and good table manners.
Highlights - don’t have time to read the whole interview? Well now you don’t have too! Although you might learn a bit more if you do. Below is a super quick round up of some of the highlights from the design droplets interview with RSSR President RitaSue Siegel.
“Today I do not have to explain the value of design or what designers are capable of to most individuals working in an organization. While many of the individuals may not be able to articulate the value, or even say what design is all about, in the US we are now blessed. We do not have to explain these things anymore. It is a given that any company developing a product, communicating a message, or moving to a new space, needs a designer.”
“When I was on the board of ID magazine years ago, they would do surveys every now and then. The findings were the same each time: designers want to see pictures. I think this has changed somewhat because design has evolved and is no longer only about delivering stylish eye candy.”
“Yes. Roll up your sleeves, folks. There’s lots of work to be done. Doctors without Borders…How about Designers without Borders?”
“There is too much mediocrity in the ranks of design school graduates and if this is a problem for designers out in the field then they have to make themselves available for teaching. This is not necessarily a solution though.”
1. RitaSue, Welcome to design droplets. Can you give us a brief run down on yourself?
I am an expert on how design, designers, the design business have evolved over the last 30 years. I graduated from Pratt Institute with a degree in Industrial Design, probably the best decision I ever made. My teachers at Pratt, especially the legendary Rowena Reed Kostellow, were incredible and I had a very interesting student life because of the mix of students from all over the world and returning Korean War veterans.
When I graduated, I worked for another Pratt industrial design graduate who was designing chairs for Knoll. I left for personal reasons and asked the Pratt Placement director to find me something else. He asked me to work for him for the summer while his assistant director was in England. Well, the assistant never returned, the director left and I stayed at Pratt for 7 ½ years and eventually became the Placement Director. Taking advantage of free tuition for employees, I went to Pratt at night and graduated with a masters degree in industrial design.
The Placement Director’s job at the time involved finding opportunities for graphic design, advertising design, illustration, industrial and interior design and architecture students to work part time, freelance and summers in jobs related to their studies, and full time jobs when they graduated. Because of the network I built I was also getting requests for design alumni with experience.
I was fired from that job by the Dean of Student Affairs who I learned later had promised my job to his partner. After a disastrously depressing few months when I could not find out why I was fired, he was fired. The school apologized to me and offered me the job again. But by then, I had no desire to return.
I have probably interviewed over 100,000 designers and believe I have seen more design than almost anyone, even a design magazine editor. This has made my life unbelievably great. I love design; I can’t help it. Because of my work, I have been invited to speak all over the world, at conferences, design schools and universities. I also spend a lot of time writing. Most of my articles and the latest edition of my book can be seen at RitaSue.com. The book is really helpful for new graduates and also has very good information for seasoned people looking for new jobs. It’s free.
I am also a gymnast, a photographer, and a photo collagist. I am addicted to museums and gravitate to art that is three dimensional.
2. You have spent more than 30 years sourcing and recruiting designers and design managers for the worlds top design firms and in house design organizations. In this time what has been your biggest challenge?
My company recruits designers for corporations like Hewlett Packard and non-profits like The Monterrey Bay Aquarium. We also recruit faculty, department heads and deans for schools. Recruiting for in house design organizations is very different from recruiting for consultancies because the roles (as described in job descriptions which can be read in my book ), are different. My challenges have actually evolved. Today I do not have to explain the value of design or what designers are capable of to most individuals working in an organization. While many of the individuals may not be able to articulate the value, or even say what design is all about, in the US we are now blessed. We do not have to explain these things anymore. It is a given that any company developing a product, communicating a message, or moving to a new space, needs a designer.
In the old days, every encounter we had with a potential client (our clients are potential employers) became an opportunity for us to educate. Mostly we did it with case histories. That was the biggest challenge, and it was worth the effort. Of course the Design Management Institute (conferences and publications) on whose board I served for 8 years, and the Corporate Design Foundation (conferences), as well as the old ID Magazine, were excellent at articulating design’s value and how it was evolving. Bruce Nussbaum has done a great deal to educate non-designers first about design, and more recently about innovation and design thinking.
Our biggest challenge now is finding enough design leaders for very senior roles in organizations where they have to operate on an equal footing with other senior executives. One caveat: not every designer aspires to leadership and management positions inside organizations or consultancies, and that’s OK too.
3. How has the advent of the internet changed the way designers network, search and apply for jobs?
The same way all people use it with one glaring exception. Most people do not have to show samples of their work and the internet makes it very simple for designers to show samples. When jobs are scarce, the sheer numbers of resumes candidates send in response to postings can overwhelm search consultants, and recruiters in employment agencies and employing organizations. The challenge for designers is to find a way to transcend the clutter that comes into their targets’ emails each day.
4. You have written several books and magazine articles in your career, including the excellent e-book Get a Design Job, do you think that writing and publication are important to help build a profession like industrial design?
Writing is important to me personally because it helps me to explore subjects I am interested in. What I find most interesting in terms of building the profession are stories about how designers accomplished something. When I was on the board of ID magazine years ago, they would do surveys every now and then and the findings were the same each time: designers want to see pictures. I think this has changed somewhat because design has evolved and is no longer only about delivering stylish eye candy.
The deliverable of the design process can be an ecosystem of products, or a road map which defines and envisions the 2015 brand destination of a restaurant chain, or a product development roadmap to grow a niche line of products into a mass channel brand, or an interface to improve a patient’s experience with a diagnostic product. Some people are tuned to take in and understand information from reading and others do better by listening. This is why we have blogs as well as YouTube.
There are three recent books I can recommend: Bob Brunner’s Do you Matter? How great design will make people love your company, Bill Moggridge’s Designing Interactions, which comes with a DVD, and Diller Shedroff and Rhea’s Making Meaning. Anyone interested in Industrial Design today will get a great perspective from all of them.
5. With the world in such a turbulent state economically, many designers are losing their jobs and many graduates are finding there just aren’t any jobs available in the design field. What do you think designers should be doing to combat this and survive the recession?
Many designers are not losing their jobs. The fact that organizations’ need to invest in design to be prepared for the upswing does not diminish in a down economy, although it is not easy to convince most potential employers about this. Designers need to advocate for this point of view. The website of the UK Design Council is loaded with great information and case studies to use when proselytizing. Yes, there are fewer jobs available in the design field for new graduates.
From my vantage point, having been through many waves of recession and prosperity (although none as bad as this one), I advise thinking of every job as a design job; like mine is. Designers are not going to die because of the recession. What so many designer’s have: imagination, ingenuity, entrepreneurship, adaptation, being able to deal with ambiguity, ability to provide a framework for situations, the ability to visualize, are very useful talents and skills to have in life and society.
It’s worth getting up to speed with the concept of Design Thinking, because it will provide designers with a process that they can use regardless of the position they may have to take if one in design is not available. Designers’ posses an incredibly useful point of view (all problems have a solution) and skill set. I have a friend who built a business around meeting with scientists who are envisioning such things as moon landings. His company makes them real with computer animation. The scientists are then able to iterate, make changes and hone in on a better solution because they can all see what each other is thinking due to my friend’s company’s work.
There are lots of problems to solve in the world. Go out there and get involved. Coming right out of school most graduates do not have a family or a mortgage. This mean they can work for or build their own organization like Cameron Sinclair did with Architecture for Humanity. Making ideas visible has more applications than I can possibly enumerate here. Learn enough about Design Thinking and sharpen your visualizing, convincing, sales and presentation skills to enhance your pitches for non design jobs. For example develop an appropriate project and show a portfolio for a job as an administrator in a hospital.
During the Great Depression in the US, some of the smartest new graduates could not get jobs in their fields. So, what did they do? They became teachers, kindergarten through high school. The best and the brightest new grads have not thought of that as a career path for a long time, and it shows in the quality of the education US students get these days. I could not do my job without my industrial design education – what I did learn, aside from developing meaningful form, sketching, materials and history was how to figure out a path to a goal.
Persistence, that’s the word of the day, or segue into something else like teaching. The need for educators of the youngest people will not go away. Keep busy with pro bono or freelance work in design, and developing your own ideas and get them ready for your portfolio when things turn around. Keep up with the latest design software. The last thing you want to do three years from now is show the same portfolio you came out of school with. There must be some evolution to show and evidence of your continued commitment to design. Or become a dentist. (Forget an MBA-look what the financial types did to our economy!)
6. Do you think that Design can be a vehicle to help companies and countries rebuild and reinvent in such harsh economic times?
Yes. Roll up your sleeves, folks. There’s lots of work to be done. Doctors without Borders…How about Designers without Borders? From what Bruce Nussbaum, who was at Davos with other designers, says on his blog, not much headway was made there selling the processes we know can deliver innovation to conventional economists.
Also the people that Obama has appointed to get the US out of the mess we are in are mostly retreads. They may use Blackberries and email, but they are using old frameworks. Read Nussbaum’s posts from late January to about February 8, 2009. He explains it better than I can. The larger framework that US partisan politicians have defined for the bailout does not leave a fertile ground for designers to work within. If you read the Design Council (UK) site, they have a more optimistic outlook than I do.
7. For many years the preferred way for companies offering any type of design service to provide students with experience was, and still is, through internships. Which in many cases are unpaid. Here at Design Droplets we feel that this model is quite outdated as more often than not students are expected to have skills and knowledge that can only be gained through years of experience. What are your thoughts on this?
Internships and removing barriers between education and practice are more important than ever. Students need to see what the real world needs. Unpaid is not part of the equation where internships are organized by an educational institution, like the University of Cincinnati, where co-op is considered an integral part of the educational experience. (Worth reading about: uc.edu/propractice/). If an educational institution does not want to do this for students, the students need to organize it for themselves. Like the free pitching discussions in the UK, (the US doesn’t seem to raise this issue much), there will always be students who can afford to work without pay.
Let’s not confuse interns with apprentices. I think the architecture profession started the tradition of unpaid internships which also meant working outrageously long hours as well as weekends for the “privilege” of serving the master architect. Traditions are hard to break, but we did eliminate smoking in public places in the US. Until design students can organize to boycott and eliminate this outrageous policy, and until none of them are willing to work without pay, design students have no choice but to take unpaid internships (where unpaid internships are the norm) and to make money to live on, wait tables nights and weekends. In this economy, no one can afford to work without pay, except students with rich parents.
8. Employers of designers often lament that students come out of university unprepared for the realities of working in design, how would you suggest this gap between the students and readiness for employment can be bridged? Is it up to students, universities, practicing designers or companies?
Think about how they do it in the medical profession. The gap can be bridged by internships and raising the quality of those who are teaching. The Design Council in the UK sponsored an examination of the subject of teaching design, the quality of instruction, and internships that is worth reading. If you go to the University of Cincinnati, a five year school, you graduate with 18 months of work experience. Years ago I tried to get the IDSA interested in developing an internship program. In retrospect I think schools organizing them for their own students makes more sense.
Surely students, universities, practicing designers and organizations all have a stake in breaking down the barriers, but someone has to drive the idea. It won’t just happen because we put the idea out into the ether. Many schools do not offer readiness for employment which is a must, in my opinion, in addition to preparing students for learning on their own in the future and dealing with the larger issues of the economy and so on.
An educational institution can prepare students for the realities of working in design. This is a human effort that the administration and faculty and the people they can reach out to and count on in the world have to decide is the mission they want to accomplish. There are lots of people in these jobs who want to go home at 6:00 p.m. and do their own thing or enjoy their families. There is too much mediocrity in the ranks of design school graduates and if this is a problem for designers out in the field then they have to make themselves available for teaching. This is not necessarily a solution though.
A good graphic designer who was working in New York for a few years returned home to the midwest and began a teaching career. One of this person’s new graduates this year called to say she recommended that I interview him. I don’t usually interview new graduates these days (except when I am at conferences or visit their schools for reasons I won’t get into here), but I agreed to see him. What a disappointment. He had a portfolio full of work that a high school student interested in design might show. Because he was smart, I told him that he was in a very poor program and that he had a lot of work to do if he wanted to get a good job in New York. He sent me a thank you note because no one else had given him any constructive criticism. How dare a school mislead a student like that?
9. In an article you wrote in 2007, you discussed table manners as being an essential skill that designers needed to develop for interviews and meetings done over lunch/dinner. This is not a traditionally talked about or taught approach to interview skills, what other untaught and unconsidered skills to you believe designers should learn?
Basic good manners (etiquette, politeness). Saying thank you to a person who opens a door for you. Knowing the appropriate or proper action or response is in any situation. (If traveling, read about appropriate behavior in the destination.) Good manners are a confidence builder. Stand up straight. Tuck in your shirt. Act like a grown up. You are no longer a student. Smile at everyone you meet. Shake hands. Focus: answer the question being asked. Don’t ramble on. Ask good questions.
Get comfortable saying, “I don’t know, but I will find out and get back to you.” Get rid of communication tics such as “like,” “ya know,” “I mean,” and “basically.” Spell people’s names and pronounce them correctly. Get rid of a heavy accent if you have one. If you want to work in a country that uses English for business, learn to speak, read and write it fluently before you look for a job. No matter how talented or intelligent a designer is, if he or she can’t pursuade (which requires good language skills), they might as well give up. There are good books on this and many helpful websites. Even entrepreneurial designers like Marcel Wanders are great salespeople. If you can’t explain or sell your idea, become something else.
10. Many organizations are beginning to see design as a new way create innovation and are attempting to integrate it into their organization. For designers this presents many opportunities and often problems. Like being told by executives that think that are utilizing design correctly to “just do it like we did last time”. How would you suggest that designers can help business to understand how to properly utilize the potential of design and designers?
I haven’t heard this kind of stuff in 25 years. The US is much further along in having integrated the design function into organizations-businesses if you prefer. And understanding what happens at the intersection of design, marketing and technology. I think that it is the responsibility of each designer to be prepared to deal with this kind of situation at the outset, in the interview. Like: This is what my skills and knowledge are and this is what I can do for you—after finding out what they need of course. The website of the Design Council (UK) has some of the best information and case histories that designers can use to deal with these types of questions or commands. It may be that the UK is now integrating designers into organizations more than they did before. In the recent past, UK designers who worked inside organizations (not consultancies) were denied membership in one of the important designers’ organizations, as if they were inferior. This is a silly prejudice we got rid of in this country some time ago.
I like to talk about designing inside of organizations in countries where most of the design is done by consultancies. Working in a consultancy is wonderful and we all know the merits, but working inside of an organization you have to make work the concepts you propose and you have to live with the results.
In almost all of my early articles, I used to write about evangelizing or proselytizing. That these types of activities are the responsibility of every designer. Now I talk about collaboration. Nothing in design is accomplished by a single individual. It is the responsibility of every designer to develop the skills of advocating, educating and collaborating because he or she might find him or herself in an organization of silos. Designers can be agents for organizational change. At Texas Instruments, Gene Sulek was hired as a draftsperson. He became friendly with the chief scientist and began explaining to him what industrial design could do for the company. Gene was able to build a design function that invented the Little Professor, for example, not to mention enhancing the calculator business which TI was famous for. At Whirlpool, Chuck Jones spent the first two years talking with senior executives about what design could do for a company in the commodity business that had nothing to do with doing it cheaper than the next guy, which is what the appliance business used to be about. He also spent a few years traveling to Asia and Europe talking to engineers and marketing people about how design and observational research could differentiate Whirlpools products and guide innovation and how designers proposed working with them.
Designers have to educate all the time and forever. When Shiro Nakamura went to Nissan, design was led by engineers. One of the conditions he insisted upon before taking the job as head of design was to have the engineers report to him. And he made the case for it. Fortunately the people at the top of Nissan who hired him were from Renault and they knew what design could do for a company. He spent time gaining the confidence and respect of the engineers to make them a willing part of the design renaissance he was leading. If you learn how to encourage people to become world class by sharpening their skills and training them in new behaviors, they will come around. I said before that Marcel Wanders is a great sales person, well; there are many other skills that are needed to be a successful design leader that they do not teach you about in school. Behavioral skills, presentation skills, understanding how to motivate and reward people are just some of them.
Designers are not alone, doctors do this all the time and so do PR people. Any specialist whose work or way of working is not readily obvious is obliged to do this. It is as important as sketching. You have to raise people’s level of understanding about what you do while finding out what they do so that you can collaborate with them and understand what they can contribute to the process.
11. Given that you are have a vast amount of experience in knowing what employers of designers require – what skills and knowledge will industrial designers need to be equipped with in the next 5 – 10 years?
Intelligence, persuading skills, passion and commitment. If in the form making end of the business, traditional design skills plus intelligence, persuading skills, etc. (These are outlined in my book.) Understanding that what you start out doing will eventually develop into your doing something else that may not have a name yet. I was never good at predicting the future but I know it will be different from the past. Just don’t be surprised.
12. RitaSue, thank you very much for your time and for sharing your knowledge and experience with Design Droplets readers. Before we wrap up do you have any last comments, thoughts or advice?
Today most students can’t earn enough working part time and summers to pay tuition and living costs. It was manageable in the old days. Many students today graduate burdened with debt only to learn that they are not going to become major players in the design business, will never rise above a mid level salary, and won’t be able to pay off their debt for many more years than they had in mind when they incurred it. But, I once read in the Wall Street Journal that 50% of those who go to dental school do not become dentists.
Explaining to ambitious young designers that they just don’t have the talent to compete is difficult. But then there are so many jobs one can do in the design business that require brains and do not require the traditional form making or sketching skills of traditional design. Designers have to be encouraged to explore them. Most schools are generally not very discriminating and do not purge classes of people who won’t make it as designers. The problem with purging is that everyone learns and blossoms at a different rate, so this had to be done very skillfully. Actually, if you tell many students that they won’t make it, they won’t believe you anyway. In my opinion, it is cruel not to discuss this with them. Are there people whose talent doesn’t show up early on? Yes. There are always exceptions. But usually if you do discern a spark in someone who is not a top performer, the person needs to be counseled about how to develop their talents. I don’t care what anyone says, there is such a thing as talent, and it can be developed. For design planning, for example, design talent is not a prerequisite for success. Design has so many facets to it and will have even more in the future.
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“While many of the individuals may not be able to articulate the value, or even say what design is all about, in the US we are now blessed. We do not have to explain these things anymore. It is a given that any company developing a product, communicating a message, or moving to a new space, needs a designer.”
There are a few things I’d dispute, but in particular this idea that “in the US we are now blessed” with companies that truly understand the industrial design profession is, as far as I’m concerned, completely off-base; a perspective which likely comes from working with a relatively small percentage of exceptional organizations.
I could name large companies with recognizable brands which would *seem* to understand what industrial design offers because they give it lip-service, but their ID group (usually all one of them) isn’t led by a trained professional Industrial Designer. Their ID manager is the CAD person with a two-year technical degree who likes to doodle or who, because they’re amiable and enthusiastic, occupies a role the company won’t pay a professional to fill.
- Would these U.S.-based manufacturers put a mail room sorter in charge of corporate public relations?
- Would these U.S.-based companies offer warehouse tow operators a position overseeing their national distribution system?
- Would these industrial design-savvy corporations put the shopaholic administrative assistant in charge of Sales & Marketing?
No.
While I respect RitaSue’s experience, it is not, in my opinion, experience that offers her an unbiased view of the state of the profession. This is just another “Design Has Won” assertion (reference: http://blog.rebang.com/?p=363 ). The companies to which I’m referring most likely wouldn’t come up on her radar because – among other things – they’re not in the market for her services and they don’t have people within their organization who travel in her circles (like Nussbaum) where Industrial Designers no longer have to explain the value they add to a company’s offerings.
I only wish her assertion were true, but I’m not spending time in the rarefied air of Davos. I’m in the trenches.