Opinions


Amrita Bhui

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:

  1. Corruption
  2. Lack of Awareness of Design
  3. Lack of facilities for Design
  4. Clients don’t have enough money
  5. 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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Posted in: Design Culture, Design Thinking |
Florian Weiss

Design Management Award – another arbitrary design award?


Florian Weiss, January 16th, 2012

Design is one of the major European resources and is increasingly seen as a key element of successful and innovative companies. The European Union has recognized this and initiated the current only Design Management Award, which last year marked the fifth time. Its goal is to promote innovation in small and medium enterprises, to honor outstanding design management practices and to educate the business community and the public in design management. The award has been announced as a Business Award, which aims to reward the excellent management skills of European companies to implement design.

Is this successful or is …

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Posted in: Design Management, Design Management Definition, Design Management Education |
Jay Peters

Simply Awesome


Jay Peters, January 5th, 2012

Innovation. The undisputed Holy Grail of business drivers for the past decade. Thanks to several run away successful companies with innovation at their core, the term is now rooted in almost every corporate mission. Those once on the outside waiting for the trend to stick are now quickly trying to figure out what it means. More importantly what it means for them. Unfortunately, with my experience consulting many companies, they often do not stop to think what innovation means for their customers.

Wikipedia defines Innovation as: the creation of better or more effective products, processes, services, technologies, or ideas that   …

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Posted in: Design Language, Design Strategy, Innovation Management |
Marjolein de Wilde

Women and Design Management


Marjolein de Wilde, December 23rd, 2011

I was recently asked to participate in a workshop on Leadership and Gender. The whole seminar was filmed by RTL Extra, who created a 15 minute film which will hopefully be broadcasted in the coming weeks.

Personally, I haven’t been bothered really much with the topic and I entered the seminar quite skeptical. However, talking to some of the participants I realised that I have a quite idealistic view, and that in reality there are definitely people that keep encountering challenges that can be related back to gender specific issues. So it made me think. What is so …

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Posted in: Design Management |
Florian Weiss

Top 20 design management apps


Florian Weiss, December 10th, 2011

Strict IT rules and out of date technology in many corporate work environments make it difficult to keep up with the challenges of modern working, e.g. flexible and creative work settings or being on the road. But there hasn’t been a better time than the present to make use of mobile technology to support the daily work. And one company in particular has pushed mobile utilities to the edge of what’s currently possible: Apple. This blog post gives an overview of existing iPhone and iPad apps that might be helpful for design managers and a wish list for future apps.…

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Posted in: Design Management, Design Tools |
Tim Selders

Making design management ideas happen…


Tim Selders, December 1st, 2011

“Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.”
Thomas Edison

This is one of the leading statements in Scott Belsky’s book: Making Ideas Happen (2010).
When I read the book, it felt I could have written it. I do not have the genius to do so, but still the content feels remarkably familar to me…

Scott Belsky’s key point is that having ideas is great, but it is the hard work afterwards that ultimately counts. Hard work in execution, collaboration and leadership. 

As mentioned before, we experience this too in our daily consultancy practice.
Often, lots of our ideas …

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Posted in: Design Management |
PARK

Manufacturing companies have to get serious about service design


PARK, November 25th, 2011

Very few big manufacturing firms are purely in manufacturing nowadays: they offer maintenance, repair, warranties and so on. That’s why service design has emerged as a task for them in recent years. However with service design the job of organising a coherent and delightful user or customer experience is more complicated than it is with simple products.

Ever since 1997, when Joseph Pine and James Gilmore first alerted the Wall Street Journal to the importance of user experiences, that issue has been firmly on the agenda of the design world. Indeed, the design of user experiences has been part of …

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Posted in: Design Management |
Jay Peters

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 |
Frans Joziasse

Drive! Don’t micro manage your designers!


Frans Joziasse, October 30th, 2011

Longtime it was the believe of companies that their employees do perform better if you motivate them through the carrot-and-stick method. Daniel Pink, also the author of the book The whole new mind, now published a controversial book that proves the contrary. Not external but intrinsic drive is what modern employees, especially creative workers, bring to higher performances. Give them autonomy, mastery and purpose!

That is what the creative class needs. As a consequence of that designer managers and design agencies should stop to base their internal resources and business model on hours (= costs), hence stop managing with …

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Posted in: Design Management, Design Teams |
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