Design is driven by data, insight, and creativity. Each of the three could drive the design practice alone, while it’s often a dynamic synthesis of the three that leads to real change based on business success. The relative strength of each in that synthesis reflects the design culture, and to a broader sense, work culture,…
Tag: business
Design in Business and Business in Design
What’s the relationship between business and design? How shall we think of the two in one big picture? Do designers need to understand business more? Should businesspeople understand design more? Those are tricky questions. And then Alan Cooper started a thread (in his characteristic fashion not so different from that of “And that’s when the…
The Best Quote on Bullshit
Bullshit is not the same thing as a lie. To lie, you need to have some respect for the truth. When you lie, you are trying to cover something up. Liars know they might be found out. They know that there is a truth, and that they are on the wrong side of it. Bullshit…
How Designers and Businesspeople Think of Design: A Joke
How Naive Designers Think of Design Design, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. De-sign: the tip of the tongue taking a shot down the palate to tap on the teeth and then refrain to liberate the vowel chamber that follows. De. Sign. As in: awe-some. How Naive Businesspeople Think…
Designerly Thought of the Day #20180321
Maybe you don’t need more designers, but more managers and employees who understand design, so that they know when to bring in more designers, how to collaborate with them, what makes good design, and who are good designers.
Designerly Thought of the Day #20180223
The first step to understand design is to know that the act of designing doesn’t quite fit into the traditional, analytical approach of problem solving ubiquitously seen in business. Design goes beyond deduction, inference, to the realm of abduction. Design abduction is the source of creativity in business.
Designerly Thought of the Day #20180221
There’s nothing wrong in thinking that certain things in business are immeasurable or intangible, until it becomes an unfortunately habit that facilitates indifference to creative problem solving or creativity itself. Don NOT ask “what have we been measuring lately?” Instead, ask “what haven’t we been measuring lately?”
Designerly Thought of the Day #20180214
In the business world, creativity in design is first and foremost creativity in solving business problems. It’s creative problem solving, at least initially. There are no dull scenarios in business, because there are always ways to be creative if you try hard enough.
Thoughts on Constraints in Design
A Constraint That Hinders Creative Freedom In both art and design, we can identify three dimensions of constraint: material, functional, and cultural. The beauty of art often lies in the freedom of expression where a constant, self-indulging or self-induced struggle over the constraints by those dimensions. All three pose fascinating challenges to an artist, who…
UX: The Trouble of a Term
The term UX (user experience) has probably come to the point where it’s becoming more misleading rather than encouraging, aspiring, or clarifying. “…the term [User Experience] has spread widely, so much so that it is starting to lose it’s meaning. …user experience, human centered design, usability; all those things, even affordances. They just sort of…
