Design for an evolving world: Case Study on Smart Design
I would like to thank Our course leader, Sara Ekenger, for giving us an opportunity to do this case study which enabled us to engage with a design company of our choice. Smart Design, for doing amazing work that inspired me to do this assignment on them. Noelia, for getting me through to Nate, despite Smart's hectic schedule. And Nate himself (director of strategy for Smart), for sparing some time to not only answer my questions but engaging in an honest, insightful conversation that helped me in forming a strong groundwork.
The Flow Starting off • Simprints, the first association • Smart - Simple but different • Interview and approach • The experience
Mission & Values • When and where it all started • Snowball Effect
S t r u c tu re & Te a m s • Flat or Fizzy? • The Perfect Mix
Design as a tool for Innovation • Decoding the Frameworks • Prototype Cycles
Some of their Clients • New York Taxi Commission • Gatorade • OXO Good Grips
Interview Conclusion Bibliography
Starting off
Simprints, the first association While searching for a company/ projects that had effectively made a difference through social design, design management and have impacted the lives of others I came across Simprints in the Core 77 Design Awards page. Simprints is a nonprofit tech company started by a group of students from University of Cambridge that developed a technology which was able to identify and scan fingerprints of those populations in countries where frontline workers and their families were devoid of access to healthcare, education and resources for lack of identification, (Word Bank estimates 1.1 billion people in the world lack formal identification.) Simprints worked with Smart Design to deliver this solution to the largest number of people in countries like Bangaldesh and Nepal, amongst many others through a process that integrated the principles of inclusive and universal design, which also highlighted a fitting example of effective design management in recent times.
Simprints: a biometric device that can detect the most rugged fingerprints.
On stumbling upon this project I decided to try and get in touch with Smart Design, an innovative led design consultancy based in New York and London, that helped Simprints reach its intended audience. As I proceeded to do my research on them, their website reflected a lot of content that resonated with the idea we had developed over a period of time of design, strategy and innovation.
methods before I formed my list of questions. Under a section named ‘food for thought’ Smart gives its virtual visitors a glance of what they think of the future of design, the questions we should be asking and some of their projects that they feel have demonstrated these values and benchmarks effectively. A lot of the articles are written by VPs and design directors about talks and workshops that discuss the probable future of human life in relation to technology and design, how experts anticipate their impact and its possible merits and
Simple, clean, powerful were
demerits. You almost get a sense
some of the words that came to
of the larger picture and a certain
my mind as I scrolled through
interest that urges you to delve
their projects to strengthen my
deeper after the first bit of interest
knowledge before I wrote to them
is sparked.
requesting for an interview. I was able to gather quite a bit about their ideologies, design process and
Image Source: Simprints
Simple but different
Interview & Approach I was able to interview the director of strategy, Nathaniel Giraitis, where we were able to touch topics ranging from the inception of Smart Design, importance of design research, the future of artificial intelligence with a repeated emphasis on designing for people, at the crux of any mission or design process. I built my case study primarily on the interview and the understanding of design systems and management that I gained from our core module, ‘Design Innovation, Management and Leadership.’ I tried to frame the questions such that it covered the areas of enquiry that seemed relevant to reach insights and conclusions on how a design consultancy functions and survives the challenges of the rapidly growing creative industry (It has been the fastest growing sector of the UK economy since the 2008 crash, worth ÂŁ87 billion, more than car manufacturing or aerospace, according to a telegraph article published last year).
Nate in an event on Designing for people on the move. (Image source: Smart Design, 141curtainroad.com)
Part detective, part designer, Nathaniel directs the user insight and design strategy efforts for large-scale projects across industries like transportation, healthcare, financial services, CPG, and entertainment. -Smart Design
Located in 141 – 145 Curtain Road, in the bustling creative hipster capital of London, Shoreditch Smart Design’s London office spans across two floors, with spaces allocated for prototyping and design iterations as well as large spacious rooms for meeting and conferences. Nate says there is much activity between the two floors with people shuffling around with their coffee cups and bags.
The experience The experience
Design over the years has morphed into a entity that has a role in not only defining how a product is externally perceived but can also be imbibed in different facets of an organization, industry, society for their respective growth. There is Walker's study that theorises this notion and puts in effective words, "Walker's notion of design maturity, in which he argues that the more mature an organization becomes, the greater use it makes of more varied design specialisms and thus the broader its concept of design and management becomes".
There are levels at which design can within an organization - the internal creative process, an external productive process, the planning process and of the practical of managing a design process. Thus we have more design 'consultancies' rather than 'agencies' Smart Design is one such consultancy that has a holistic approach to design and it is reflected in their approach to human centred design with the various disciplines merging together seamlessly, with 'design as problem solving' as their core value.
Mission &Values
When and where it all started Smart Design was started 37 years ago by Davin Stowell in 14th Street in New York City. In Fast Company’s article published in April 2015 (when Smart Design completed 35 years) Davin talks about his first tryst with designing a product that was based on a basic everyday need, while working with Corning Glassworks as a student in Syracuse. Even though it (the product - the first stove to table
Davin Stowell - founder of Smart Design. (Image source: Designboom)
bowl before microwave ovens) wasn’t exactly given a stamp of approval by focus groups at the time it went on to become one of the largest selling items by Corning Ware two years later.
“It’s not rocket science. It comes down to a very simple principle: If you’re able to create design with real meaning for clients and companies, instead of just designing product that you throw out there and will sell well until the next hot thing, then you’ll continue to thrive and grow.”
Thus Davin believed in design being simple and meaningful, “having a deep understanding and empathy for what people really need. They often can’t articulate it. But you have to understand why they do things like they do. If you’re really able to understand that, you can make solutions that are so much more meaningful.” On being asked about how they’ve managed to stay relevant in the challenging creative industry Davin explains there are consultancies and firms that have managed to ride the wave of change and thrive in the face of new design shifts, and as a result have retained their postiton in the forefront of the creative industry.
On being asked about the mission and vision of the company Nate talks about how the values of Smart and what it focuses on, have evolved over a period of 37 years. He elaborates through the example of the snow ball effect where the kernel was always about user centric problem solving.
electronic needs of a product to
Thus Smart started out as an
The strategy discipline helped
industrial design company and
them tie the ends together and see
then once they mastered the
the whole spectrum of an efficient
basic need of figuring out how
design process that was able to
to solve a design problem, they
deliver solutions for the present
began to look at other factors like
and also come up with possible
brand communication and brand
opportunities and for the future.
experience part of the product
Nate also touches upon change
(as brand positioning and
management, and the importance
communication are one of the keys
of taking handholding a client
to making sure that the consumer
through the introduction and initial
has access to the product and
induction of the product to the
is able to resonate with and
consumer, as easing the client and
understand its use). Then they
consumer to the idea of a product
looked at the how they could merge
is a bigger battle than just churning
the industrial design need and
out a product.
create a more holistic experience for the user. In order to achieve this, they added interaction design to the mix along while trying to accumulate disciplines and escape any kind of tunnel vision approach. The next step was looking beyond just the immediate product space and explore the opportunities space which led them to flesh out the strategy discipline.
Snowball Effect
The role of leadership Smart, from what and management and as I gathered as an the and the role of both organization believes in in instrumenting "It’s really quite simple – my own and Smartsuccess Design’s distributed approach toleadership, design has fordeveloping the team has been where the collective always been focused around a very deep understanding of people’s a topic that is always nature of leading needs, desires, and behaviors"- David Stowell, Founder of Smart Designa team in the corporate world. is encouraged. Kotter illustrates the With organizations diifferent settings where becoming more one gains importance complex and plurastic over the other through Bolden observes that an example. "individuals at all levels " A peacetime army in an organization can can usually survive exercise leadership with good administration over colleagues and and management up thus influence the and down the hierarchy, overall direction of the coupled with good organization." leadership concentrated at the top. A wartime army, however needs competant leadership at all levels."
Structure & Teams
Flat or fizzy? The concept of a flat company structure is something that creative companies associate themselves more often than not, with smaller start ups and studios doing work that is being recognized throughout the world through design awards and recognitions. The subject of leadership and how it should be approached has been discussed extensively in the realm of management.
and now the design director of strategy) stresses on how having this trajectory helped him and many others draw out a path for themselves, from employee to a leader. He drew out the structure of the team explaining the different positions in the company, where the head of the flow chart would consist of the CEO, founding partner, the managing partner, the VPs who have shares in the company and make the “big decisions that impact the wellbeing of the company.�
Nate in the interview stresses on the importance of having the
CEOs, VPs, MD
impression of a culturally flat company i.e. where a person any position, whether it is an intern or a junior level feels the free to communicate with a person at
Dept directors
a VP or CEO level without any hesitation. But at the same time he stresses on the importance of having a hierarchy for the benefit of keeping team members motivated and create a journey for themselves within the company. Nate, who worked at Smart Design for 11 years, (he started off as an intern
Senior/ mid level/ junior designer/ strategists
There are also department heads
designers and strategists. The
who are influential in making
reason for this is simple, the
operational and strategy level
company believes that no design
decisions, independent of financial
project that doesn’t require
shares like directors and associate
strategy and vice versa. Strategy
directors of the various disciplines.
which operates on different levels,
Nate talks about associate directors
which includes policy building in
as a key position (connective
the outermost sphere, operational
tissue) that helps senior designers
and process oriented strategy
transition from design leads to
and in the middle and the most
directors, where they not only
innermost circle being the design
focus on being a project lead but
strategy for product development.
also start looking at business
They also have a director/VP
development aspects of the project.
overlooking the project at regular
In terms of teams working on a
intervals to ensure that the work
projects Smart usually have three
that is produced matches a certain
or four people “who can eat sleep
standard that is associated with
and breathe the project�. Usually
Smart Design.
the core team has a mixture of
Policy building
Process oriented strategy
Strategy for product development
Kathyrn Best's model of design strategy
The Perfect Mix
"Design can exist Design research tools without 'the give the designer research.'But if we don't a chance to put study the world, we themselves in others' "It’s really quite simple – my own and Smart Design’s approach design has don't knowDesign’s how shoes andto use certain "It’s really quite simple – my ownalways and Smart approach to design has always been focused around developing a very deep understanding of methods people’s or what to create." tried and tested always been focused around developing a very deep understanding of people’s needs, desires, and behaviors"Stowell, Founder of Smart Design - Jon David Freach which develop over time needs, desires, and behaviors"David Stowell, Founder of Smart Design called 'design research Terence Coran has methods.' These also spoken about add to the efficiency the importance of and framework of a understanding the design consultancy as user in order to be able they may find some to design things that methods might work add value to society. better than others." I He says, "You find out enquired if Smart had what people want by any particular design observing them: their research framework lifestyles; where they go that they stick to as on holiday; what they they cover such a large read;what music they realm of different design listen to; what they eat. disciplines. You're thinking about their lives."
Design Research as a tool for Innovation
Decoding the framework Nate talks about Patrick Whitney’s
“One thing that I can say from
(Dean of Illinois Institute of
historical perspective is that the
Technology) graph of a design
way you design physical objects has
framework that works for Smart and
lots of overlap but also fundamental
the way they design framework they
differences of the way you design
follow to explore new opportunity
a service or a digital experience.
markets within the user centric
And to paint that cartoon is to
design space.
come up with a plastic object, like I have to do all my homework and
abstract
really figure this out and nail it and get it right and then they they take tomorrow
today
gigantic pieces of steel and carve it into a mould and that costs millions of dollars. I mean this is done at
concrete
least for a year until we decide to do it again- that’s the cartoon of the
(With reference to the diagram
plastic world. The digital world the
above) Nate touches on how for
cartoon is I have the first inkling of
making products in the concrete-
the idea form the shower, let’s build
today sphere one can only enable
it and put it out there, I thought it
“incremental changes but it
was a viable project, let’s see if it is
doesn’t allow for like big changes
and if it’s broken, we can always fix
in thinking.” While exploring the
it, we can always keep fixing it and
abstract-tomorrow space one can
so it grows into something.”
actually let go of the more obvious solutions and begin looking at a more experimental space where the scenarios are endless. Then one can proceed to take some of these ideas in the abstract-tomorrow space, bring it back to the concrete space and see if a combination of ideas generated in that space could be used to develop designs products which aren’t an obvious outcome of the existing problem.
Image Source: Passel.com
He also points lays stress on the fact that design research cannot only be contained as the initial stage for a project and is something that needs to be looked at through the different stages of development. It’s more circular in nature and can be revisited at different points as the product/design is developed and the intent and ease of user experience is examined. Nate demonstrates with the Simprints project how they had multiple versions of the device in terms of how the target audience would interact with it, which they had to test and experiment with through a period of time, which can be classified prototyping. Nate says,
“A real concrete example, the challenge of Simprints was getting people who had very little interaction with digital products to do something really simple.” With context to Simprints he emphasizes that cultural meanings and contexts also influence the output and user experience part of the product. On assuming that the object vibrating would be a good indication for the user to know that the scanning has been done Nate says, “when we had it vibrate we thought it would be a great idea cause we experience objects that vibrate all the time, they thought the object was possessed.”
Design Process
Design Process
Prototype Cycles
Smart has worked with a plethora of companies since it’s inception. Their website boasts of working with clients from every possible sector that required any kind of design intervention. From Gatorade (Pepsi) to HSBC, from New York Taxi Commission to a social design project like Simprints, Smart has helped companies re envision the way consumers see and use their products.
Some of their Clients
New York Taxi & Limousine Commission Smart Design worked with Nissan
and hacked two actual taxis in
collaboration with companies
New York, and explored various
like Cooper Hewitt, Design Trust
user experiences and scenarios
for Public Space, independent
to develop the ‘Taxi of tomorrow’.
engineers, taxi drivers and taxi fleet
“More than a decade after project
owners to reimagine the iconic New
kick-off, hundreds thousands of
York taxis. They joined forces to
Smart-designed defined cabs
redesign this ‘ideal taxi experience’
roam the streets of New York City,
which included certain modifications
offering a dramatically improved
like sliding doors for easier access,
rider experience to keep yellow cabs
spacious interiors with plenty of
competitive in the age of Uber.”
extra leg room, brightly marked
David Yassky, the TLC commissioner
seatbelts and doors handles and
says, ‘You feel like you’re in a space
grab bars, crash safety tested
that is designed for you, for the
partition with passenger airbags.
passenger as opposed to the taxis
This happened over a period of
we have today where it’s thrown in
time during which Smart dissected
together feel.”
Image Source: Smart Design
Smart worked with Gatorade to develop a personalized fuelled system for athletes and their coaches during the Brazilian world cup. They worked closely with the Gatorade Sports Science Institute to come up with an ‘integrated platform across multiple touch points to deliver personalized fuel recommendations for each athlete to optimize their training.’ Thus Smart helped transform an energy drink for athletes into something that was a lot more personalized and gave the user knowledge and awareness about their physiology and body patterns. Nate talks about how the team from Smart went down to Brazil at the time of the world cup and help guide them through this transition; of adopting technology as an important facet of one of the leading FMCG brands in the market.
Image Source: Smart Design
Gatorade
This to me, this is a great example of a design consultancy helping with change management in client corporate strategy, i.e. helping brands to innovate and adapt to remain relevant in fiercely competitive markets. This new innovation was noted and written about by a lot of tech and design blogs like Fast company, Techradar, Forbes, Macworld etc. Michelle Greenwald, contributing editor of Forbes writes about how this innovation by Gatorade, not only has functional benefits but helps in extending brand equity “ Gatorade Gx further elevates the brand from competitors by setting new standards in data-centric personalization.”
OXO Good Grips Since I have already started my
products should be designed
case study by introducing Simprints
keeping in mind users on every end
I would like to end it with discussing
of the spectrum which can be used
the OXO line of kitchen products
by EVERYONE.
which was developed by Smart in collaboration with Sam Farber.
This project effectively brings to
One of the oldest clients, dating
light the importance of universal
back to 1990 when the company
design –” the belief products should
was first started by David Stowell,
be accessible by the broadest
Smart has been OXO Good Grips
spectrum of users.” The book
strategic design partner over the
‘Scenario Focused Engineering – A
years. Farber who had started
toolbox for innovation and customer
Copco, a kitchenware company, on
centricity’ also highlights the OXO
one occasion noticed that his wife
line of products demonstrated the
was struggling to use a peeler as
success of a design phenomenon
she was suffering from arthritis and
called carryover.
had difficulty using the product. This made him realise that these
Line of products from OXO Good Grips
Carryover is achieving broad market appeal by focusing on and building a truly understanding solution for a narrow target market, which then appeals to a “halo” of similar customer segments. Getting this carryover from a narrow target market (people who suffered arthritis) into a much broader market (anyone who enjoys using products with good ergonomics) enjoyed immense business success as well- “Since its founding in 1990, it has developed a portfolio of 800 products that are sold in 50 countries and has received more than 100 design awards.”
Image source: Smart Design, OXO products website, johnlewis.com
“Carryover”
The Interview that is cooking but also make something that does not 1) I’ve gathered a lot about your company from your website, but would like to know your personal look like a assistance product, make it look beautiful vision and what the company culture of Smart is. for everyone to enjoy and it also happens to be super Smart Design has been around for 37 years. so that’s a long time. Smart Design is 10 years older than IDEO, IDEO is great because they were the first people to put the idea of design into the public space but we’ve been doing it for quite some time before that. Over the time Smart Design has found different ways to phrase its mission over the years. I’ve seen a couple of different taglines, one of the first taglines we used was design is about people, not things.
I always liked that one because it really cut to the chase you know, really talked about design as a people oriented and problem solving. It’s problem solving but its also bringing joy, inspiration, happiness into life, into people’s everyday experiences. Smart has always been about being human centred,
comfortable and easy. This case study really cuts to what Smart Design is all about and so design being about people not things was a headline that happened for quite some time.
The challenge of what Smart Design focuses on has evolved a lot over 37 years. We were founded ages ago as an industrial design company and we became very good at being user centred so figuring out how we solve this problem for this user. And then initital problem started going upstream. Started off with thinking how do we a better one of these for this person, and this is great, this is the best solution for this person, the end user but how is this for my brand versus someone else’s brand. (Nate goes on to explain the small ball effect, how one discipline linked to another)
first and foremost. I think even when I was in industrial design school, it was in the textbooks, smart design was so old it was in the textbooks, it talked about how smart design almost founded the concept of human centred design and universal design specifically and one of our favourite case studies for that, our poster child for that is the oxo kitchen products. Oxo is a line of products designed for people who have arthritis, people who have difficulty. The story came from Sam Farber who founded OXO. He said I spent my entire career creating a kitchen wares empire yet my wife is having difficulty making a pie. Certainly there is a way to solve, make it easier for her to do what she loves
Image Source: archinect.com
His take on Strategy (answered as part of the same question)
Strategy is kind of a bar bell which on one end is user centric design strategy and the other end is client centric design strategy helping them understand how they have to change the company, how they can road map things, and then actually holding their hands and saying actually, let’s do a pilot together acknowledging that they’ve never done this before.
2) What is your company structure like, is there a clear flow chart of how the projects are taken on and delegated?
I think when it comes to setting up any organization that way, design being one type, maybe one of the biggest challenges of the modern company is to find that balance of feeling culturally like a fairly flat organization so you can talk to the person that’s one up from you or you can talk to the person that’s three up from you. But the danger is if you take that quite literally it’s very difficult to create a structure that motivates people to keep going, moving. I’m not alone at being at Smart for a very long time. Smart’s kind of a funny company like that, the way to motivate people to keep going is to have some sort of vertical structure as well and so
You saw the Gatorade work on the website. Pepsi had actually never done anything like this before, Gatorade has forever been a beverage and now they’re trying to do electronic and digital ecosystem. We said we’ll hold your hand, go down to Brazil with you, walk you through the pilot, we’ll do a game with the Brazil team. They didn’t win but we did learn a lot of things, and then you say what’s the next game, let’s start the next step of the pilot. So therefore the mission has evolved over time and the end of the day the reason why we do all that is not because you can make a lot of money doing it, it’s not because we’re acting to what the company’s asked for, it goes all the way back full circle to the first point that design is about people not things and if we come with great ideas that’s fine but the only thing that actually makes a difference is if that great idea makes it all the way into the hands of people and impacts them. So we added all the things to the snowball just to make sure the kernel at the centre of it, the great idea can successfully impact people’s life in a positive way.
over the time we found ways to create enough vertical structure so that with time people could do the full journey if they wanted from intern to director and that had never happened before. We’re privately held still, so that means we’re held by our core partners (I think there are six right now), the original funder is still the chief partner the CEO, founded the company just as he came out of university with a bunch of his buddies in 14th street in New York City. So he’s still one of the partners, there’s the managing partner who (Richard Whitehall) own shares and have to make big decisions that impact the wellbeing of the company. There’s also VPs that generally at the decision making level and don’t own the company (goes on to draw the structure). There’s directors who tend to oversee entire disciplines, depending on the size of disciplines we have multiple directors for the same department, for example we have two directors for strategy here. That’s because it’s a bar belled shaped discipline. I overlook the user centric part of it and Anna overlooks client and corporate strategy.
Then there’s senior designers, staff designers and
So there’s the team lead and designers and strategists,
junior designers. In terms of discipline we have
then you have two characters that are part time on a
effectively four disciplines- we have user centre
project. One is the project manager. PM means a lot of
strategy, organizational strategy, there’s design
different things in a lot of different organizations but in
of which there are all the sub disciplines and then
Smart because the team lead is focusing on the content
there’s technology. Technology would include
the PM tries to take away from anything that might
different aspects. Originally it included mechanical
distract them from focusing on the content, so they
engineering where they would make stuff and then we
focus on logistics, they focus on schedule, they focus
added electronic energy and then digital development
on the budget, they’ll manage client communication
and now recently there’s also AI and voice interaction.
if needed, they’ll manage coordination with partners,
The operational bit includes finance, business
with recruiters and anything else that we need. They’re
developments and project management.
kind of in charge of making sure the mechanics of the project are working, and then to make sure we have
3)What is an estimated time period of a project and how many member teams are assigned to each project?
an outside perspective/ bigger picture we often have a creative director. That is someone who is probably director/VP level and they might not get into the full time problem solving of the project, but their
Team consists of a project lead, who are full time for
responsibility is to make sure that they give an outside
a project and responsible really for the core of the
perspective, able to drop some knowledge from the
content and answering the question of the brief. SO
past, ensure Smart quality, ensure everything happens
they have the number of designers and strategists that
here and goes out the door is at our level. That’s kind
they need to solve the problem.
of how we shape the teams.
Our teams’ tend to be fairly lean and then might have a core team like two or three people that can eat sleep and breathe the project and I always think that projects are like babies with parents, if you have more than one parent that’s great cause you have lots of different people to look over it, no one is asked to do an entire project by themselves, we have a number if designers and strategists, we tend to have both on all projects regardless cause I would say there is no design project that doesn’t require strategy and there aren’t any strategy projects that couldn’t benefit from a designer’s mind as well.
Image Source: Passel.com
4) Do you hire design managers or is it something that happens over time with seniority? Project leads, if you think of them as design managers I suppose, they often come from senior designers that evolve as associate directors but we also hire directors straight into the company as well, they come from a bunch of different backgrounds. They may never have been designers on the floor per say, thinking about my colleague Anna Solis. So she has background in economics and she had been working a lot in change management and she worked at LBI, Digitas and now she works here. She was hired as a director and now she’s VP. So it maybe you’re coming in from a more strategic door rather than a design discipline door but that’s fine, that happens. People also get hired as senior staff in junior positions sometimes, we get students from LSE to become interns for business strategy, masters from Royal College of Art, who become the researchers and user centric design strategists. People can come in through various different doors to land in a position of being a design manager. Project managers themselves can come from any type of space. You might have been like an office manager or an executive manager or you just have a sense of how to keep things organized, work well with teams, anticipate problems.
There’s a list of criteria- like what would make a great person and they can come in from a bunch of different doors.
5) Since research is a such a big part of the whole process, how do you go about it? a) Are there any particular tools you use? b) Can you envision Smart building a design research toolkit of their own? In order to be user centric it is has to be about research and insight. There’s also insights for understanding your client as well, there’s that conversation of researching your client and interviewing them and stakeholder interviews and understanding the structure. We’ve been doing design research even before they called it design research. Back in 1984, the first set of sunglasses that were designed to fit someone’s face, we were like we better start measuring some faces.
We got out there, you can’t measure randomly, you come up with a process, you get some ergonomic data bases, you talk to people and you find your most challenging user and then again like they’re some philosophies that go throughout so universal design is a major philosophy for us and the core of that is not just finding the average person or your target and talking to them but like if this is the space they’re trying to cover who are the most challenging users in that space and if we can use them to guide us and if we can come up with one thing that solves both of their problems and everyone else in the middle is taken care of. And that is just a philosophy that can touch lives. I’ve been involved in design research since day one, I started off as a design researcher staff level, and your criteria is to solve the problem and we don’t necessarily have a deck of cards or a set of books, we have tried to compile different sets of tools and activities that we do and keep it in our data base just so that when a
new client comes on the table we say ok we’re gonna
(On the difference between prototyping between the
do some lo fi prototyping and then they’re like what
physical and digital worlds, whole excerpt in decoding
does that mean and so we show them this and say
the framework) The digital world the cartoon is I have
ok this is what lo fi prototyping is, for your world it’s
the first inkling of the idea form the shower, let’s build
gonna look like this and so key elements are universal
it and put it out there, I thought it was a viable project,
design focusing on your more challenging users,
let’s see if it is and if it’s broken, we can always fix it, we
understanding what’s that spectrum, then something
can always keep fixing it and so it grows into something
for the ends of the spectrum, prototyping throughout
and I think it’s interesting because that’s two different
and at different levels of concreteness to abstraction
worlds. The issue with this (physical) world is that it is
and so you can prototype an idea even before it’s a
quite stuck and static at the end of the day, you finish
physical thing, you can do card sorts and understand
it and you don’t touch it for a while, that’s for a certain
how different people prioritize different benefits and
rhythm.
needs and that’s one very abstract level of prototyping and then you can build a couple of pieces that try to answer that and have them take that part and that’s another level of prototyping and then you can have something that looks real and get people to live with it for a week, and that’s the third level of prototyping.
So Prototyping is kind of a kit and parcel, it’s core to the design process and in showing that people are involved constantly throughout the process. There is no research phase and then it’s done and then we do a design phase and then we do an engineering phase. It’s much more, it does go through a circular loop of like understanding the world as it is today (draws diagram). So there’s a really cool guy named Patrick Whitney and he is a friend of Smart Design. He was the Dean of the IIT School of Design in Chicago and he is an academic so he has lots of time to think about the visual abstract framework process. One of his frameworks that I like a lot and we use it all the time and for certain companies try to teach them how to espouse this is to think about how things are made.
Image Source: Passel.com
The problem with the other world is that I mean you call it a minimum viable product and I say is it really, you can do a little bit of this and get that first idea a little bit more advance, and so and then get it to a point when you can really put it put there and continue to iterate and evolve and change it. The first thing you get out there, if you did a little bit more homework, you would save yourself so much time and get to a space where you’re much more confident and then put it out there and then it’s just optimizing, don’t explore by putting something out there.
There’s some kind of hybrid model that’s happening in the world where there’s a little bit of more classic design thinking to get to a better initial stage and then have the flexibility and agile model of now we’re just going to like build stuff and tweak it and that’s cool, and you can do that in the physical space as well. Simprints you mentioned, when Simprints product was out as the first version, not the first version but the version after we had done our homework and come up with a new design for the scanner, that scanner when we sent it to Bangladesh, had things inside it that we didn’t even turn on. We were like we don’t know if we’re gonna need this, so for the first round of products, let’s just kind of put a whole bunch of hidden Easter eggs in there, and then remotely cause it’s digitally connected
meanings of different colours of light are different from country to country so you have to understand that. This other group when we had it vibrate we thought it would be a great idea cause we experience objects that vibrate all the time, they thought the object was possessed.
So that’s the way these methodologies are starting to merge to create products that are kind of alive and then you can get to a point where you’re like alright we know they don’t’ want a vibration scanner but we do need a multicolour LED and to do all this we feel like now version 2 will only have what it needs, and then we’re more optimized. I love Simprints because it’s such a modern example of how things are changing and how we got to this really interesting space.
cause this isn’t just like a dumb object, this is a smart objector at least a connected object, remotely we can turn things on and off, figure out is this helping, is this not working, and so, and of course you do the same thing on the screen, this is the easy part cause like everyone knows that remotely you can like send an update but you can like send updates to products. A real concrete example, the challenge of Simprints was getting people who had very little interaction with digital products to do something really simple. Just scan a fingerprint but like originally you’re like so put your finger on the scanner and people would be like (gestures) you know you have to start from scratch and so we had a question of like how much feedback should we give from when something is scanned and should there be a light, should there be sound, should it vibrate. So what we could do is make a product that has the capability to do all three, and this is for the first round (the first five hundred of them), and then you can do AB testing with physical worlds like this group used the light, we got a certain reaction but cultural
Image Source: medium.com
6) So do you think there should be some sort of benchmarking for products in the digital space? I think what’s interesting is that in the more digital service space as you said you can prototype a lot more easily, prototyping method and tools are more accessible like if you wanna (points) prototype this as a physical object you’ll have to know how to carve a phone, you’ll have to know how to re create buttons, learning sketch or learning digital tools is a lot faster, I just consider that another level of prototyping. I mean prototype a service and have people role play it out in the world and say oh well this is kinda working but instead of a transportation service, instead of being picked up at my door I could walk to the corner of the street and everyone gets to their destination a lot faster or sharing a vehicle so let’s try that. So you can even prototype things like that, like there’s physical prototyping with bodies and space and like let’s just rent a van and like drive around the city and see what happens (actually not see what happens) but role-play and experience, try to learn and it’s hard for you to conceptualize and imagine all the variables and what might happen, the only way to find that out is to try it and then something unexpected happens, you know how do we solve that, and there’s an insight
Even the light switches on the street, street lights change in certain cities are leant from traffic flow and figure out how to make that traffic flow go more smoothly or we can give AI a simple task like my input is like I listen to my music on Spotify, my output is Spotify gives me you know five new radio stations based on different genres I listen to and they’re pretty good, they introduce me to new stuff. I think that’s definitely here to stay, that’s just the new element of an operating system. AR and VR: I think those are new interfaces. I can definitely imagine them evolving in many different ways. I think AR is potentially more impactful, because it augments the world as it exists, add another layer of information, potential of interaction. VR is fun too but it has more specific use cases because when you enter a VR space you’re actually going into a different space, you are no longer where you were, I think we can expect more of that. Went down to Thorpe Park and they had the Ghost’s train by Derren Brown and you get on this train and there’s 60 different VR headsets and everyone puts on VR headsets and that’s the ride. So yeah, there’s interesting developments happening in that space.
because it’s kind of a truth but you know it’s surprising.
7) Design and innovation has seen the industry experimenting with AI, VR and AI as alternative brand experience factors. Do you think the inclusion of VR in retail, real estate and more recently healthcare is a trend that is here to stay?
AI is definitely a new operating system that’s here to stay. There’s different types of AI. When people first say AI they think of general artificial intelligence, like an intelligence that can do anything like a super brain, but there’s specific artificial intelligence that’s been around for a long time.
Image Source: roadtovr.com
But AI, is gonna much more promiment. Right now one
When is it useful to be able to talk to something versus
of the questions we’re exploring right now is what’s the
be able to see something, versus be able to touch
appropriate use of different interfaces so it used to be
something and I work a lot in the car space and cars
like interfaces were mostly tactile, like light switch or
were one of the first things that had a really meaningful
buttons you know things like that. In order to do that
application of voice control because for cars it was
we had to put all the options in the top level, that’s the
defined by safety, in the industry you call it eyes free
only way to know what this thing can do so we put all
and hands free. I need to keep my eyes on the road so
the options there, why we still make remote controls
I can’t look at this thing and I need to keep my hands
that look like this I don’t know. And then we make
on the wheel so I can’t touch this thing so now a voice
things like this where we have visual interaction and so
makes sense, and there’s only so many things I can do
we can put things in layers and you can show what’s
so the menson model is reasonable and I know that I
relevant to you now, I don’t have to show you all the
can ask for music or make phonecalls, that’s enough for
different things it can do,
me. So yeah I can think exploring that more specifically,
I can hide the different layers. So we have this visual
and also look at different interesting combinations now
and tactile interaction here. Voice is tricky because
with these things so you have a variety of combinations
with voice now all the information is invisible and you
so if you don’t want someone to be listening you have
can’t see any of it and you don’t know, technically we
remote controls and you have speaker buttons or you
say there are no affordances, it doesn’t give you any
can talk to Siri but you have her not listen for the rest
instruction or guidance as to how to use it, there’s no
of the day. Or Amazon just came up with Amazon show
semiotics (pointing to the remote). I look at this and
which is like a little screen with an Alexa underneath it
this gives me a sense of where my finger goes, that’s
so you can say Alexa what movies are you showing this
semiotic, it’s a message. Some may say that’s natural
weekend and instead of her reading like a newspaper
human language, semiotics is talk to it like you talk to
article, the movies are this one and that one and this
a person, that’s all fine and good but that takes a little
one, by the time you get to the bottom you forget,
bit of time to catch up but it will catch up. We’re in this
she’ll just show you a list and so these are the really
funny middle space where our AIs have training wheels
interesting spaces that we’re learning about now, what
on them like a bicycle, like a tricycle and they can only
are the combinations and when are they most relevant
respond to certain phrases that you programme. You
because to be honest sometimes it’s easier to flip the
have to think of every different option of how someone
light switch.
would ask to turn on the light, let’s say make it light, make it brighter, I’m home.
You have to like literally feed it right now, all these things. Very soon these will all be in libraries and databases and you will just be able to plug into it and it will be able to download all the phrases and natural language human interface will become more mature. But I think there’s this question of even if we solve it and make voice interface really functional when is it useful?
Image Source: lifx.com
8) Can you tell me about some of your favourite projects? I guess I have two favourite projects. Simprints is one of my favourites because a) there was such a meaningful problem to be solved and to be fair it was the Simprints team, the genius kids from Cambridge that identified the problem, that have the PhDs in public health and in all the science and technology that they do. They came up with a technology that could scan fingers that are really worn cause your phone can’t scan fingers of a person who works everyday, that is designed for these perfect fingerprints, people that never work or don’t have scars or burns tissues so they come up with the tech. One things that isn’t really published that much about Simprints but its true is that Smart Design did Simprints for free. Simprints came to us, came to Heather actually. One of their interns saw Heather in a talk, chased after her at the end of the talk, and said hey we’re doing this thing, I’m a student and then we did a coffee (and then they came here) and all the stars aligned in the right way and we said this is something that we should support but as result we couldn’t go into Bangladesh.
But the Simprints team, were full time on the project and they could so what we had to do was kind of train them in some of the tenants of design thinking and how to be more creative and how to be more design capable cause they started as a tech company but now they think of themselves as like a design thinking company which is a great evolution because now their superpowers which are their tech can be used much more effectively, we taught them how to do field research and how to make discussion guides and how to do stimuli and we talked about the idea of making prototypes that can turn on and off.
Then they went to Bangladesh and they did the testing and while they were there, and at the same time they were Cambridge students, they had to come back to the UK so they, while in Bangladesh working with the non profits there, they found team members in the non profits, and they were like will you be our user ambassador, will you be our eyes and ears and voice in this village, and work with us when we go back home, so then they developed those relationships and passed the baton of design as we had passed on to them, and they said I will be your user ambassador and so now Simprints was able to come back to the UK and still maintain connections with their teams in Bangladesh and Nepal and continue that feedback and that dialogue loop so that the end solutions can be something that’s created not just for but by the beneficiaries which never happens in a non profit space. That’s why I love Simprints so much. And the other project that I really love a lot because I hope it’s the future of the types of things we do these days is we’ve been working in the mobility space and if you had asked me 12, 14 years ago when I was in industrial design school, would you want to work in cars I’d say hell no, cars are big sculpted pieces of steel, they’re all the same.
But now it’s so interesting the mobility space because cars have never been more interesting because we’re at this moment where the biggest fundamental change in transportation since we took the horse from the carriage is now happening when we’re taking the driver out of the car, we’re developing the AI that will drive the vehicle as a system and travel by vehicle will be astronomically safer and its’ gonna open up so many new opportunities for what people do and also what’s the impact on our spaces .
Our journey time for commute will be different cause now we’re not worried about driving, the impact on the environment is gonna be great because when I get to where I’m going instead of looping around the park, trying to find a spot to park, I’m just going to get out and go to the thing and the car will park itself and it will know exactly where to go, you’re not going to waste any extra petrol looking for a parking spot. Then push even further, well, if I Don’t need all this space for parking lots because maybe when I get out to go to the shop the car goes off and moves somewhere from A to B so it never has to park, so we don’t need parking lots. If we don’t have parking lots, what do we do with that space? You can make that green, you can make that into a public park. We can make that something that is more enjoyable and meaningful to people than giant asphalt space, so the impact on cities and how cities are designed (cities and suburbs) is gonna be profound so I guess I didn’t focus on one project but the whole topic of mobility and what’s happening in that space. This is the same as when they invented the light bulb or when they the first cars rolled off the line in 1904, we’re at that moment right now, we’re gonna talk to our grandkids and tell them the stories of those crazy days, 2000 something to 2020 when he whole world changed.
9) Lastly, where do you see Smart five years from now?
I’m trying to figure out how much more you can roll into the snowball. The only reason we added to the snowball is to enable that kernel to impact the world so if you think about that I can imagine us maybe working with more governing bodies like working with the city themselves. It goes all the way back to 10 years ago we were working with the Design for Public Trust in New York City, it was my first project when I was an intern. And the New York City guy heads up to say hey, we’re not gonna make Crown Victorias anymore, I’m giving you a five years heads up. We’re giving you five years to come up with a game plan, that’s the manufacturer so we had to come up with what’s the next taxi. Coming up with a substitute for the taxi was the smallest part of the battle. We had ten years to integrate that into the city, you know if we want them to kind of have any kind of impact we had to work with the city now to see how this is going to integrate and if we think about mobility, if we think about all the things that are happening there today we’re working with the manufacturers and those were interesting ideas but these ideas still need to see the light of day and impact people so that’s kind of where I see our next challenge.
Conclusion Sir Terence Conran, the famous British English designer said, “Design is 98% common sense and 2% that mystical ingredient that you call ingredient.”
that as our economic system becomes knowledge based, so the generation of ideas becomes the lifeblood of business.” Smart design is an example of a creative company that has managed to link the different entities to emerge
Design is something that has
as a well oiled machine to deliver
penetrated and solidified its place
some of the finest products of our
in society over a period of time in
time, converging and diverging
the post modern economy. Design
the disciplines and departments
management as a term is still widely
according to user and client
debated over, many still ponder,
requirements.
is there such a thing? Design and
As a design manager I feel it is
management, if we were to look
important to be multifaceted but
at it from a traditional perspective
also know which discipline one is
come from completely schools of
interested or is skilled at, to keep
thought. “Designers and managers
growing in that particular field
have different educations, different
while also contributing to the larger
attitudes and different styles of
mission and vision of the company.
thought, which can cause problems of communication. For management this means creating the appropriate environment to encourage creative thought. Alvin Toffler has argued
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Deisgned for MA Design Management and Cultures , London College of Communication