In Designer Q&A we sit down and chat with some of the thought leaders in the field of design.
For our fourth Q&A we are privileged to have with us Brian Ling. Brian is a Design Manager at a global electronics company and respected design commentator on his blog Design Sojourn where he predominately writes about the ins and outs of Strategic Design. Kick back, grab a beer and get into reading this insightful interview with Brian.
1. Hi Brian. Welcome to Design Droplets. Can you give us a brief run down on yourself.
Thanks for having me on design droplets. I have more than 10 years of design experience in both a consulting and corporate design environment. I have worked with and develop successful designs for many global consumer brands such as HP, Motorola, Ericsson/Flextronics, GE, Nakamichi, and Philips. I have also been blessed with a number of design awards including Red-Dot, Good Design and CES awards. These days my focus is in Strategic Industrial Design, or helping my business partners figure out not only what products they should make, but the right ones as well.
2. You have been occupying the space between entrepreneurship and design for a while now, with your blog and products such as ipoor. Can you tell us a bit about your take on entrepreneurship and design?
It is very interesting that you notice this and this has given me a lot of food for thought! I find entrepreneurship and design have very close ties. Both are about looking at opportunities, finding solutions, taking risks and the best ways of managing all three. I have always been very entrepreneurial in my mindset and this has made my approach to design very different. This I suppose is something that my business colleagues have found very useful.
On the flip side, I always encourage designers to have a go with design entrepreneurship as it really allows them to see a design as part of a much larger picture, something they might not see too much of at their “day job”. I have dabbled in design entrepreneurship on and off, but these days I have been too busy with my “day job” to do personal projects.
3. While you have a design based entrepreneurial flair, you have also worked with a number of consumer electronics companies as a Design Manager. In the corporate design studio context do you think entrepreneurship/intrapreneurship plays a role?
Personally, I find an entrepreneurial designer can be very effective in a corporate environment as the job scope tends to focus on end product or a complete solution. In a consulting environment the focus tends to be more about design activities rather than the final end product, as when you buy design services, things tend to be very task specific.
4. In question one you mentioned that you focus on Strategic Industrial Design, could you expand on what strategic design is all about? How does one be strategic in design?
A very good question and I have to admit I don’t have a perfect answer. From my point of view being strategic in design is about an approach or process of looking at design from a holistic point of view. It considers all aspects of the product’s requirements and then uses it as influences for the design solution. I am still looking for the right answer, and will be exploring it at my strategic industrial design blog DesignSojourn.com.
5. Design Sojourn has been up and running for about 3 years now, what effect has blogging had on your design?
I started my website as a means to connect with other industrial designers and to exchange ideas. I had, in a way hit a growth “glass ceiling”, and hungered for more exposure and knowledge. I needed to know if my thoughts on design were of a “world class” standard and that I was able to spar with the best of them. The results were beyond my expectations! Connecting with great design leaders from all over the world, PR people whom I consider my friends, great speaking and teaching gigs, and best of all blogging has allowed me to advanced in my design career.
6. You have worked in Asia and in Australia at various points in your career. Are there any key differences in the design cultures that you have noticed?
There are a lot of cultural differences in both Asia and Australia, I think that part is pretty clear, but a great designers often have very similar characteristics not only in Asia, Australia but also worldwide. The only difference is their approach to design. Specifically in Asia, Asian designers tend to be quieter and less extroverted than Australian designers. However Asian designers have a certain hunger and diligence that makes up for this. Australian designers have a much higher level of exposure than Asians, and have the courage to engage in great dialog.
7. As you mentioned you have won several design awards over the years, how and what do you think design awards contribute to the industry?
In the beginning I did not think too much of design awards, but lately my view has since softened. I find, out of everything, design awards give a designer a little sanity check within the days (and nights) of long projects and tough clients. It is testament to a designer’s ability that even after everything, he or she is able to still produce quality design work. Most design awards celebrate the design’s aesthetics and the meaning behind it, not the context that gave its birth.
8. A user centred approach to design is quite popular in Industrial Design these days, what do you think will be the “next big” approach in Industrial Design?
I would say it’s a tossup between crowd-sourcing design and open sourced design. Both are starting to make headway and both are only made possible because of the available technology.
Crowd sourcing is made possible because of the power of the Internet and the ability for the medium to reach the individual. As a result the “voice” of the consumer is now stronger than ever. A few companies have figured out that they can harness these collective “voices” and use the information to create winning products in our hyper competitive world. At this point of time the results are mixed. Personally, I’m not sure that the approach will work because consumers often say one thing and do the other. For example it is a proven fact that people want to mount their LCD TVs but never do. However I do not discount the power of this methodology, the trick here is to get the approach right.
Open sourced design is a little more interesting as it has a huge impact to our industrial design profession. If we consider how computing has evolved (from a size of a room to a desktop to a laptop etc) and draw the same parallels with manufacturing and rapid prototyping machines. We can safely say that we will soon get manufacturing machines that will sit next to our laptops. Ok, so now if everyone can get easy access to manufacturing machines, suddenly everyone can be a creator. Just like how everyone can now buy a Digital SLR, what will distinguish the professional photographer from the man from the street? Similarly what will distinguish the professional designers from anyone that wants to create? With the lay man now empowered with the ability to create, some of us hypothesize that design will be democratized and made open sourced. In this scenario, a person suitably motivated, can download royalty free 3D files of say his mobile phone cover, re-design it and print it to his desktop manufacturing machine. So what will happen to professional designers then?
9. What is your favorite material to work with? Plastics? Metals? New “space age” materials?
Actually, I am a little tired working with man-made materials. The results are expected, and the process or manufacturing methods so standard that products are quite alike and have no “soul”. Right now with my Un-P3 project I am exploring the use of wood with consumer electronics. Not just the manufacturing process, but also the material’s impact in the products entire lifecycle.
10. Rapid manufacturing processes are becoming more accessible and we are starting to see sites like ponoko appearing. Given that CAD and Rapid Manufacturing are becoming so prominent. How will this affect the role of the designer if anyone can design objects? And what affect do you think this will have on design in the next 5 years?
I’ve touched on this briefly in question 8 and intentionally left the answer open ended. But let’s look at it again here, because “fabbing” driven by open sourced or democratic design is getting a lot of designers worried about their jobs. Personally I think this is a damn good thing. Firstly almost anyone can now understand the difficulties in creating a good design. My next point can draw a lot of parallels to what happened to the photography profession in a market is flooded with cheap digital cameras. Like professional photographers, professional designers would now really need to push themselves to the next level, find ways and means to better themselves and their profession. Such hyper-competitive environment would in turn breed hyper-creative designers. For more of my thoughts on this please visit: http://www.designsojourn.com/fabbing-a-primer-for-guerilla-design-strategies/
11. Design and Business are slowly beginning to understand each other’s perspective much more than they used to, do you think it will be essential for designers to have strong business skills as well as a strong set of design skills in the future? Or maybe business people will need to have design skills?
I have to say that design and design thinking is fast becoming a strategic competitive advantage for many companies. This is due mainly to the success of companies such as Nokia, Apple and HP etc. However emulating such companies is no easy task.
I believe that business people should also have at least an appreciation of the value of design. Fortunately most business people do; otherwise they would not engage a designer in the first place. Unfortunately, what often happens is Designers are quick to blame business people if there is a communication breakdown and the business cannot understand design. I believe it always takes 2 hands to clap; instead designers should look to themselves first to see if they are communicating design in a language the others can understand.
I also firmly believe a strong set of design skills is important to be a good designer. However I don’t really think that strong business skills would be entirely necessary unless a designer is suitably inclined. Instead, what designers should have is the ability to “wear many hats” and empathize with the different people they may encounter navigating the entire design development process. A trait of good designers is that they can understand and appreciate where business people, engineers and marketing people are coming from.
12. Brian, thank you very much for taking the time to talk with us here at design droplets. In closing, do you have any last thoughts or advice you would like to share?
We are going into challenging times, but also a time of great opportunity. Well positioned designers with the right skills will come out of this recession winners. Never forget why you decided to be a designer in the first place, and make sure you keep that “fire” burning in you all the time. Finally, create a personal habit of learning to make sure you are learning something new every day.
