Design Culture | PARK day by day

Category: Design Culture

Holistic Design: Are we ready for the challenge?

Amrita Bhui, February 2nd, 2012

Recently on linkedin I happened to come across a poll organized by POOL magazine. POOL magazine is a design magazine from India “for the design community interested in the creative field”.

The poll was as follows:

As a designer in India what do you think is holding back you from doing great work in India? And the options to choose were:

Corruption
Lack of Awareness of Design
Lack of facilities for Design
Clients don’t have enough money
Not enough time for Design

The options for this poll got me thinking. I understand that in the Indian context where design …

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Tags: Holistic design
Posted in: Design Culture, Design Thinking |

Customer Centricity

Jay Peters, November 10th, 2011

An old college friend recently contacted me and asked: “How can companies be more consumer centric”? It got me thinking… and thus the topic of my post. While today many companies are keen on the idea of listening more to their customers (often because they do not have a choice thanks to social media), not many companies know how to best approach this. The old adage of “Customer is King”, often owned by marketing, has lost its luster. So, how can a company be more customer centric? One way is through Design Management.

At PARK, we work with many clients …

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Posted in: Design Culture, Design Management, Design Strategy |

Grow your own Design Manager

Jay Peters, September 26th, 2011

There is an ongoing debate about who is actually a designer. In one camp, the view is everyone is a designer. After all, everyone designs their own social life, wardrobe, sandwich (place noun here). Enhanced by the democratization of design through web & POS customization tools, together with social media, this is quite an argument. This notion is further supported by books proclaiming that everyone can be a designer such as The Third Teacher’s transformative teaching & learning guide and the Design manifest books / books by Mieke Gerritzens and Geert Lovink all which adds fuel to the fire. Furthered …

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Posted in: Design Culture, Design Leadership, Design Management, Design Management Education |

What’s the DNA of an innovative culture?

Marjolein de Wilde, July 15th, 2011

In a recent video interview, Jeff Dyer, co-author of the Innovators’ DNA, talks about what it takes to think like an innovator. Their model for behaviours that trigger creative ideas highlights five skills that are vital for innovation: questioning, observing, networking, experimenting and associating.

Now doesn’t that sound familiar? I believe that many of these skills are inherent to creativity & design. For designers, it is daily business to experiment, to repeatedly ask question, make associations and look for an even better solutions. Most designers are also trained in observation skills and truly understanding not only the …

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Posted in: Design Culture, Design Management, Innovation Management |

Ingredient for a successful design culture: Hire the right people!

Amrita Bhui, May 31st, 2011

“At Google we give the impression of not managing the company because we don’t really.” - Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman at Google

Is the above statement by Eric Schmidt as clear as it reads or does one need to read between the lines? Are we unnecessarily concerned about managing design or designing management when a company like Google says that it is really not managing one of the most successful companies in the world?

To find out lets delve deeper into what Mr. Schmidt had to say because as they say, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing (but didn’t …

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Posted in: Design Culture |

Creativity & efficiency; an impossible combination?

Sorena Veerman, January 24th, 2011

Nowadays, more and more design departments strive for efficiency. Within an environment that is stressed for time, an often heard complaint from designers is that they feel there’s no room for creativity anymore. They feel, for instance, management is keeping them from being creative, or there’s simply no time for creativity anymore.

Contradictionary to this perception, is the general statement in literature that creativity doesn’t require time. Instead creativity requires skills, focus and the right attitude.

The book Creativity Today^[1] shares this statement and claims that by improving the basic skills of creativity; confidence, motivation and your creative potential …

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Tags: creativity
Posted in: Design Culture, Design Management, Design Teams |

Re-thinking Design & It’s Transformation

Jay Peters, August 31st, 2010

Next week the PARK team rolls into London to attend the (postponed) 14^th annual DMI European conference with this years theme on Design Transformation. I recently had the opportunity to attend the 22^nd Design/Management Thinking conference in June in San Francisco with the theme of Re-Thinking the future of Design. Comparing the topics covered between the two conferences, it is great to see that design is continuing to gain headway into more facets of organizations, globally, thus enabling design to take new roles and responsibilities. A few hot topics I am concentrating to stay abreast upon …

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Tags: conference, culture, design thinking
Posted in: Conferences & Events, Design Culture |

Norms, simple, clear and agreed…

PARK, August 17th, 2010

… are now the way forward in design management!

Over the past decade, the practice of design management has become more professionalised. Corporate boards take leaders of design functions seriously. Boards, however, affirm top design managers informally. In the recruitment of design managers, they don’t have a whole lot of evidence to go on, apart from candidate résumés and war stories. Introducing some sensible norms for design management practice would help designers continue the process of professionalisation into the next decade.

The way design managers do their work and succeed in it cannot be left at the level of oral …

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Tags: culture, norms, responsibility, rules
Posted in: Design Culture, Design Management |

Engage silent designers

Florian Weiss, July 23rd, 2010

Design managers in technology-oriented companies often face the challenge to create awareness for design throughout the company. Many design related decisions are made by employees with no or limited design knowledge. Those people are not educated as designers, but make decisions that have an impact on the final design of the product. Two papers from the London Business School by Peter Gorb and Angela Dumas adressed this issue of “Silent Designers” already over twenty years ago (Silent Design and Why Design is Difficult to Manage).

It can be argued that a great deal of design activity goes on

…

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Tags: communication, education, silent designers
Posted in: Design Culture, Design Management, Design Management Education, Design Presentation |

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Activities

What are we doing?

Sorena: Preparing a case study for capturing a design language to share during a workshop with designers.
03-02-2012
Amrita: Planning validation phase in the concept development phase.
02-02-2012
Sorena: Brainstorming possible future business scenarios with client.
24-01-2012
Florian: Defining a stage gate process and design strategy for the design department.
18-01-2012
Marjolein: Creating a poster to communicate the companies vision of design management.
18-01-2012

Meet the team

name:		Frans Joziasse, MSc MBA
Position:		partner
Office:		PARK advanced design management Waterloohain 9 22769 Hamburg Germany
Phone:		+49 (0)40 28056233
Fax:		+49 (0)40 22925852
		LinkedIn profile
		Xing profile

name:		Tim Selders, MSc
Position:		partner
Office:		PARK advanced design management Nieuwendijk 8a 4225 PD Noordeloos The Netherlands
Phone:		+31 (0)183 589131
Fax:		+31 (0)183 589132
		LinkedIn profile

name:		Sorena Veerman, MSc
Position:		consultant
Office:		PARK advanced design management Nieuwendijk 8a 4225 PD Noordeloos The Netherlands
Phone:		+31 (0)183 589131
Fax:		+31 (0)183 589132
		LinkedIn profile

name:		Florian Weiss, MA
Position:		consultant
Office:		PARK advanced design management Waterloohain 9 22769 Hamburg Germany
Phone:		+49 (0)40 28056233
Fax:		+49 (0)40 22925852
		LinkedIn profile
		Xing profile

name:		Marjolein de Wilde, MSc
Position:		consultant
Office:		PARK advanced design management Waterloohain 9 22769 Hamburg Germany
Phone:		+49 (0)40 28056233
Fax:		+49 (0)40 22925852
		LinkedIn profile
		Xing profile

name:		Jay Peters, MA
Position:		consultant
Office:		PARK advanced design management Nieuwendijk 8a 4225 PD Noordeloos The Netherlands
Phone:		+31 (0)183 589131
Fax:		+31 (0)183 589132
		LinkedIn profile

name:		Amrita Bhui, MSc
Position:		junior consultant
Office:		PARK advanced design management Nieuwendijk 8a 4225 PD Noordeloos The Netherlands
Phone:		+31 (0)183 589131
Fax:		+31 (0)183 589132
		LinkedIn profile

name:		Freek Wallaard, BA
Position:		junior developer
Office:		PARK advanced design management Nieuwendijk 8a 4225 PD Noordeloos The Netherlands
Phone:		+31 (0)183 589131
Fax:		+31 (0)183 589132
		LinkedIn profile

name:		Kaylee Gruber, BA
Position:		trainee
Office:		PARK advanced design management Waterloohain 9 22769 Hamburg Germany
Phone:		+49 (0)40 28056233
Fax:		+49 (0)40 22925852
		LinkedIn profile

name:		Carola Boogerd
Position:		office manager
Office:		PARK advanced design management Nieuwendijk 8a 4225 PD Noordeloos The Netherlands
Phone:		+31 (0)183 589131
Fax:		+31 (0)183 589132
		LinkedIn profile

name:		Sarah Blesius, DipMA
Position:		office manager
Office:		PARK advanced design management Waterloohain 9 22769 Hamburg Germany
Phone:		+49 (0)40 28056233
Fax:		+49 (0)40 22925852
		LinkedIn profile

External opinion

name:		Aart van Bezooyen, MSc
Position:		owner
Office:		Material Stories
		LinkedIn profile
		Xing profile

Inspiration

Things that inspire us

Please find a list of materials that inspired us on this site and a preview below.

Semantic transformation in design
(by Toni-Matti Karjalainen)

This book analyses the role of design in product recognition, differentiation and strategic brand communication through product design references. It gives good insights in the area of product design languages.

The incorporation of design management in today's business practices
(by InHolland and InnoActions)

This report is an analysis of design management practice in Europe in 2009.

» open pdf

More inspirations »

Definitions, definitions

Since we started the Wikipedia articles on design management in 2005, we continuously improve and update the descriptions.

Definition of design management in English language.
[en.wikipedia.org]
Definition of design management in German language.
[de.wikipedia.org]

Please co-define, translate and help in creating a better understanding of design management.

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