Internship in designaffairs GmbH Feb. to Aug. 2014 Xing Wang Tutor in Company: Efrat Friedland Tutor In University: Marta Corubolo Matricola: 781258 Master of Science in Product-Service-System Design Scuola del Design, Politecnico di Milano
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Table of Contents
1 Introduction
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2 Motivation
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2.1
My Competence Development Plan
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2.2
Objective of the Internship
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The Company
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3.1
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Organization Identification
3.2 Services 3.3
Divisions & Material Technologies
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3.4
Methodological Approach In MT
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3.5
Equipment Relevant to MT
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4 Activities 4.1
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Daily Tasks
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4.2 Projects
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Lessons Learnt
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Introduction
Currently I am completing my master degree in Product Service System Design at Politecnico di Milano. As a compulsory practice in the study plan, a half-year internship was conducted in designaffairs GmbH in Munich, Germany. I worked in the division of Material Technologies, which is responsible to find creative material solutions for industrial design products. Besides that, I also had some cross-department projects, such as Industrial desgin, User Interface design, etc. There were a lot of lessons I learnt during the internship and it was one of the most valuable experiences in my life. Lots of thanks are due to my supervisor, Efrat Friedland, for her continuing supervising from the first day of the internship to the end. I would like to acknowledge all the supports from all the lovely colleagues in designaffairs. I consider it an honour to work with them.
Reference Links: Designaffairs http://www.designaffairs.com/ Product Service System Design http://www.design.polimi.it/pssd/
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Motivation
2.1 My Competence Development Plan As a design student, I was mainly trained by practising in projects of different topics, with different teams and clients. In the past, I was more focused on the deliverables of the projects rather than my own competence development. Through different kinds of design tasks and working experiences, my package of design capabilities will be changed. However, I cannot clearly know what capabilities I was lacking. In order to have a continuous and comprehensive self-development, I need to have a system to track myself, where my superiorities and weaknesses are exposed. Since the autumn of 2012, I created a competence development system for myself which has four main dimensions: Business & Innovation, Human-centered design, Prototyping & Visualization, Materials & Technologies. Business & Innovation: Idea Generation, Society and Market Investigation, Business Model Development, Design Thinking, Insight of History and Future, Entrepreneurship, etc. Human-centered Design: User Research, Teamwork & Communication, Product and Service Design Methods and Processes, Ergonomics, User Experience Analysis and Design, etc. Prototyping & Visualization: Sketching, Physical and Digital Modeling & Testing, Illustrating & Layouting, Photography, Storytelling & Role Playing, Video Making, Presentation Skills, etc. Materials & Technologies: Material Selection, Production Technologies, Coding, Physical Computing, Data Analysis and Visualization, etc. Each of the dimension has five levels of development: None, Aware, Depth, Expertise and Visionary. The ideal knowledge development is that these four dimensions growing together in the studying and practices.
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Blank
Aware
Business & Innovation
User-centred Design
Prototyping & Visualization
Materials & Technologies
Figure 1: The Competence Development Rate before the internship and expectation after the internship. this is my self assessment, that means, this is how I percieve my knowledge
Past
Expected Growth
Depth
Expertise
Out of Current Plan
Visionary
2.2 Objective of the Internship Raising the level of competence in Material and Technology is one of my goals in my personal competence development plan. Regardless if in service design or pure product design, to answer the questions such as industrial implementation, optimum color matching or a choice of ideal production methods is significant when realizing the designers‘ proposals. Feasibility and sustainablity assassment is on the basis of sufficient knowledge about materials and technologies. Thus, it supports and facilitates decission making and avoids the imaginary proposal. I regard a good understanding of material and production technology as a strong strength in my future career. Since the „Material & Technologies„ was the weakest dimension in my competence development system, some related experience will be a complementary training to have a balanced competence package. designaffairs is one of the best desgin agency in product design with solid material supports. The department in designaffairs I was enrolled in was Material Technologies (MT), and a big material sample libary with search engine gave me great oppotunities to systematically study the material knowledge. Besides that, some projects with/in other departments are anticipated from the beginning of the internship, which also gave me a chance to utilize and develop my competences of other dimensions by real clients projects. What I learnt about service design was also helpful in some new business development in MT department. The figure 1 shows the competence I planned to gain in this internship.
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The Company
3.1 Organization Identification designaffairs was founded in 1997 and is an owner-managed design consultancy for product and brand development with studios in Munich, Erlangen and Shanghai. The agency operates internationally and is among the most award-winning creative agencies in the world. Before 2007, designaffairs was a 100% Siemens-owned subsidiary as the Central Design Department of Siemens AG. Since March 14, 2007 Gerd Helmreich, Michael Lanz, Nico Michler and Claude Toussaint are the new owners of designaffairs GmbH. Since late 2008, the company trades as designaffairs GmbH. In collaboration with clients, the interdisciplinary team of more than 80 employees develops products and into-market strategies that define the clients’ brands on a lasting basis.
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3.2 Services designaffairs provides global clients with support on all issues in the fields of industrial design, interface design, packaging design, color & material design, as well as in design and brand strategy, design research and engineering. The service spectrum extends from market and consumer research, via design and programming (MMI and GUI), right through to CMF (colour material finishing), engineering and sourcing.
Research
Strategy
User Market Technology Trend
Market Brand Portfolio Product
Design
Engineering
Industrial Interface Material Packaging
Usability Mechanical Software Electronic
The group of four areas shown above is a summary of the services offered by designaffairs. The interdisciplinary approach supports clients from the project inception to the market launch. Transforming the identification of new market openings and client needs into realistic solutions that build a client’s identity is its core competence.
3.3 Divisions & Material Technologies designaffairs consists of several divisions: Industrial Design, User Interface Design, Usability, Software Engineering, Material Technology, Strategy Design, and Color Material, as well as some internal management units, such as Business Development, Financial, Assistence, HR, IT and PR. designaffairs is one of the few creative agencies with its own Color & Material design as well as Material Technologies departments. The resources associated with material is regarded as one of the most valuable treasures in the company. The Material Technologies division offers the clients materialrelated consulting services, proposing inspirational materials, alternative and potential materials and supporting the decision-making. The Material Technologies division is usually integrated into multi-disciplinary project teams and takes the responsibility of material research, material analysis, material concept generation and material engineering. Thus, the department accumulates a lot of experience and has a strong competence in the material topic.
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3.4 Methodological Approach In MT Material Technologies Division at designaffairs shares Material & Technology Insights within a project by fully integrating into the project team, from the kick-off to the end. Therefore, projects can get material mind-set and technical supports in the whole process.
Process
Global Tasks
Material Technologies Tasks
Research & Analysis
Target group surveys Focus groups Online panels Insights Global Trend Observation
Trend Research Material Technologies
Strategy
Target Brand perception Brand Stretch Design Style Observation Branded Landscape
Material Strategy Technology Strategy
Concept
Design Strategy Radar Industrial Design Concepts UI/Usability Concepts
Material Concepts Technology Concepts
Modelling Mock Ups User Testing
Material Concept Detailing
Engineering Packaging Into-Market Strategy
Material Engineering
Detailing
Implementation
3.5 Equipment Relevant to MT
Materials Library The Materials Library of designaffairs, in Munich, is an area of over 100 square meters, with around 1,800 samples of unique materials, surfaces, colors and technologies, from over 600 producers. These samples are systematically coded and organized by material groups in more than 100 display boxes that can be perused as desired. To this collection are constantly added the latest materials and production technologies.
materialaffairs Search Engine materialaffairs is a search engine, data base and a material management system for designers, engineers and product managers. It contains information on materials used in the production of products, their technical characteristics, production methods and their suppliers, including contact details. As a huge source of inspiration, it also provides detailed pictures of the materials and application fields. Invented and developed by designaffairs GmbH, it is based on its physical collection of 1.800 unique materials and over 7.000 different samples.
Workshop Area and Equipped Meeting Room Since the space of the Materials Library is open and some display cabinets are dynamic, the room can be re-configured into a cozy collaborative space, providing a professional yet relaxed setting for workshops and meetings. Additionally, several meeting rooms just meters away with a large pin wall, a classic whiteboard, a video projector and Internet access, are able to offer a place that visitors can work undisturbed and keep their work confidential.
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Activities
During my internship at designaffairs, I have worked on multiple tasks, projects and activities. The projects and activities can be divided into daily tasks that involve material library work, and the internal and clients‘ projects.
4.1 Daily Tasks The daily tasks that I have performed during my internship can be divided into the following 5 work areas: • Material Samples Photo Shooting; • Material Cards Writing; • Paticipation in Supplier‘s Meetings; • materialaffairs and Material Library Management; • Event Photography for Public Relation; • Some Excel File Maintaining for Recording;
Beyond that, some work flows were optimised, in order to make some repetitive intern‘s work more effecient and save some time: • Developed PicLab for Material Sample Photo Processing based on Adobe Lightroom; • Internal Camera Borrowing Sheet to Track the Camera.
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Routine 1 Material Samples Photo Shooting There are around 1,800 material samples in the Material Library, and the number is increasing on a daily basis. The material knowledge engine materialaffairs needs professional and detailed photos for every material profile. Because of quality control and some copyright limitation, the MT department takes photos by itself.
Routine 2 Material Card Writing The brochures and data sheets from the material suppliers are seldom understood by product designers. What I did is reading the data sheets and translating them into simple and scrutable language for designer. Properties with numbers are turned into verbal scales.
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Routine 3 Paticipation in Supplier‘s Meetings MT department invites some material suppliers for new material presentation and Q&A session. Material Suppliers are also interested in this since it is a good potential to promote and exhibit the materials. Therefore, the MT department is always updated with the cutting edge material knowledge.
Routine 4 Materialaffairs & Library Management New material samples are added to the material library on a daily basis. The efforts of coding, registering, arranging the samples into the libary, as well as the folder management in the server, take a certain amout of time as a routine every week.
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Routine 5 Event Photography for Public Relation At some events or internal activities of designaffairs, such as Open House Day during the MCBW, I was responsible to take event photos for the Public Relation department. Expressing the real atomosphere and capturing the people‘s moods were the objective.
Routine 6 Excel File Maintaining for Recording Certain logs are maintained by interns. I updated three Excel files every week: the material library updates, visitors to the CMUI lab, viewed number of the materialaffairs video on Youtube and Vimeo.
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4.2 Projects
During my internship, I had been assigned to work on a couple of projects and activities. The involved projects consisted of the following:
Project Type
Objects
Service Design & Business Development
Material Library Work- designaffairs MT deshop partment
Mar. - Aug, 2014
Product Line Design
Two Series of Household Appliances
A Consumer Electronics and Home Appliances Company
Feb. - Apr, 2014
Material & Technolo- Medical Imaging Magy Selection chine
A Health Care Sector in a Corporation
Apr. - May, 2014
Innovative Mechanism Design
Sofa Bed in Future
A Top Global Funiture Brand
Mar. - Oct, 2014
Product Design
High-end Coffee Machine & Accessories
A Capsule Coffee Brand
Jun. - Aug, 2014
OBD Box in Vehicle
A Top Telecommunications Equipment Company
Jun. - Aug, 2014
ID & UI Design, Storytelling
Clients
Project Period
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Project 1 Material Library Workshop designaffairs owns a Material Library with around 1,800 samples of unique materials and technologies, in an area of over 100 square meters. However, most of the time, this space is not sufficiently used. MT department would like to develop a new profitable service, a collaborative material workshop with clients, in order to meet the related growing needs from clients. My Activities
Project Planning, Market Research, Customer Strategy Planning, Business Model Generation, Financial Planning, Workshop Organization for Brainstorming, Service Process & Touchpoint Development, Identity Design, Promotion Planning, etc.
Project Type Service Design & Business Development Client designaffairs MT department Project Period Mar. - Aug, 2014 Confidentiality non-confidential
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Project 2 Two Series of Household Appliances Design five sets of design concepts for seven household appliances (Fridge, Stove, Hood, Washing, Hot Water, Wine Cooler and AC) according to future living scenarios for Chinese premium mass market. Overall objective is to strengthen brand with a clear future vision and a unique distinction to the competition. Future is determined in this project to 3-5 years. My Activities
Brainstorming & Ideation
Project Type Product Line Design Client A Consumer Electronics and Home Appliances Company Project Period Feb. - Apr, 2014 Confidentiality confidential
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Note: This is a previous model that is already on the market
Project 3 Medical Imaging Machine In parallel to product design for a medical Imaging Machine, the client also required the detailed definitions of the material of the housing and lumination technology for the calm-down mood lighting around the donut. Due to the various and strict technical constraints in magnetic medical device, a lot the researches, tests of samples and comparisions were made before the decision making. As a design agency, we also link material & technology suppliers with our clients. My Activities
Material and Technology Reasearch, Requesting Supports and Samples from Material Suppliers
Project Type Material & Technology Selection Client A Health Care Sector in a Corporation Project Period Apr. - May, 2014 Confidentiality confidential
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Project 4 Sofa Bed in Future The goal of the project is to find several innovative and feasible solutions for foldable sofa beds, to make it easy to transform everyday, even for singles and elderly people. The team proposed more than 20 concepts of the flexible bedstead, bed frame, mattress, sheet and even quilt, with the support of new materials and technologies. Some scaled and 1:1 models were made for usability tests. My Activities
Prototyping
Project Type Innovative Mechanism Design Client A Top Global Funiture Brand Project Period Mar. - Oct, 2014 Confidentiality confidential
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Project 5 High-end Coffee Machine & Accessories A new capsule coffee brand with unique modern character needs to develop its coffee machine and a set of coffee accessories, to create a unified brand identity and holistic user experience. As a newcomer to the market, competitor researching to understand the frontrunners and differentiating products to express its own brand value are significant. A lot of explorations in demension and usability were carried out with the help of foam models. My Activities
Competitor Analysis, Prototyping
Project Type Product Design Client A Capsule Coffee Brand Project Period Jun. - Aug, 2014 Confidentiality confidential
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Project 6 OBD Box in Vehicle A top telecom company develops an OBD (OnBoard Diagnostics) box that allows some data of the car, such as fuel consumption and engine temperature, to be communicated with cellphone and other stakeholders via the Internet in real time. The 4G module inside can convert the car into a network device. Besides of the product design of the box, some use cases are developed and presented as a video. My Activities
Competitor Analysis, Industrial Design Style Orientation, Use Cases Development, Wireframe of UI, StoryBoard, Video Making
Project Type ID & UI Design, Storytelling Client A Top Telecommunications Equipment Company Project Period Jun. - Aug, 2014 Confidentiality confidential
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Lessons Learnt
„ multiply labor-hours by hourly rates is the budget of design project. “ Lesson 1
In designaffairs, budget is an important issue and the hours spent on a task have to meet the calculated budget. Project members need to register their hours so that the project manager can calculate the budget. The working time and project management system Maringo is a tool for cost control. Before a project started, the project manager estimates and budgets the needed hours for the members. Then he/she will multiply the hours by different hourly rates to get the cost of the project. All the employees and interns need to register their hours into different projects for every working day. Thus, the project managers have the ability to control the project time invested in order to avoid exceeding the budget. This is an effective and efficient approach to manage the project that can be applied to many circumstences in the future.
Reference
www.maringo.de
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„ Don‘t always be an ABS guy. “ Lesson 2
Before I got the chance to immerse into different materials, I didn‘t have a clear idea about which material best fits in my industrial design projects. Sometimes, the material selection was even ignored, or thought it is a task for engineers. As a result, the creative solutions based on new materials and technologies were excluded from my competence. After I got the ticket to the material world, I discover the right material could dramatically change the charactor, function and cost of a product. An impressive project done at designaffairs was the material selection for a foldable Chopping Board. Its material should be food-safe, flexible and cut resistant. The right material is the most significant requirement for the project.
„ There is a number behind every offer in a service. “ Lesson 3
When I was developing the service „Material Library Workshop„ as a new business in MT division, a financial plan was required at an early phase. This financial plan really took me more than one week to accomplish, with market size, expense, revenue, net cash flow and net present value estimation. This plan indeed helps avoiding investing a lot of time in inviable ideas. Besides that, I also got a deeper understanding about investment after this practical financial planning. For profitable projects, the reason you invest a business is not a positive net cash flow, but the rate of return in a certain period is higher than the discount rate in the same period.
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„ Teamwork goes first. “ Lesson 4
„It is difficult to hire designers nowaday, who are skillful and also able to work in teams.„ This is an impressive sentence Nico Michler said in the intern training. Indeed, individualism is not a good working style in a design team. Great efforts need to be taken to manage the relations among the team members, as well as the relations between the designers and the clients. The lessons in Polimi about Archetypes of team members (Orphan, Warrior, Caregiver, Seeker, Destroyer, Magician, Innocent, Ruler, etc.) are still valuable to identify the type of the team members and thus take the right way to get along with them and achieve the best result.
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Thanks.
The text, data and pictures in this report have received the company permission to publish, according to privacy law D.L.196/93 in Italy and Bundesdatenschutzgesetz in Germany.