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The first of what will hopefully prove to be many, this conversation dates from January 2006 and features Dirk Knemeyer, Jim Leftwich, Luke Wroblewski and myself. The topic at hand was broadly defined as "Design Vision" -- a subject that proved to evoke more than a bit of passion, enthusiasm, and word count.
With the better part of five decades of experience with such well-known start-ups as Adobe Systems, Apple Computer, eBay, Macromedia, Nike, Palm, and Yahoo!, we certainly weren't lacking for experience, insight, or war stories. Recognizing the critical role design vision has played in our professional lives, we recorded this exchange as the first step in a much broader public conversation about what design vision can do for you, your organization, and your products.
In the first exchange of "Design Vision" we look for a definition and discuss a few reasons why companies should care. This portion of the conversation is posted in four parts over at Luke's site. You can read them here: post 1, post 2, post 3, post 4.
The second exchange of "Design Vision" takes on the question of when companies are or are not ready to embrace design as an agent of change and competitive advantage. This portion of the conversation is posted over at Dirk's site and can be read here: posts 5-8.
Part three of "Design Vision" is hosted by Jim Leftwich over at Orbit Interaction. Jim has combined posts 9 - 12 into a single entry which can be found here.
Part four of "Design Vision" focuses on the a variety of issues related to the inevitable intersection of the rubber and the road. This part of the conversation can be found here on Baxley Design. In this initial post, Dirk and Luke talk about the importance of effectively translating the vision into reality as well as the importance of having the creators stick continue to participate all the way through implementation. In Luke's words, "A design vision needs to endure many obstacles on its way out the corporate production cycle- its best for it to have its champion or champions alongside."
The conversation about "Getting It Done" continues with Jim and I continuing to discuss the relative advantages and disadvantages of strong, individual designers versus larger design teams and inter-disciplinary collaboration.
In post 3, Dirk and I trade comments on the role of designers in creating, owning, and ultimately executing a comprehensive design and product vision. Dirk sets things up nicely with this thought, "Speaking, at least, for myself, when I talk about design vision being driven by one ultimate decision maker, the essence of that point is that a product, or isolated components of that product, should be owned and driven by one key decision maker, who I'm calling a design visionary."
In this, the final post of the Design Vision conversation, Luke and Jim take issue with many of the points I raised earlier, offering some specific recommendations for how to expand the influence of Big-D Design in corporate environments. This thought from Jim is certainly one we should all take to heart:
"More designers should take more risks. Instead of limiting themselves, or listening to those that claim they can only do so much, they should think expansively. They should try to do things beyond what's merely asked of them. They should realize that they can learn about business, and realize why any design that's not concerned with making profit for the company, is a design that's failing."