An Article by: Mark Dziersk, Senior Vice President of Design and Marketing, Herbst LaZar Bell
There is a movie by the same name. A deeply ironic title of a film depicting a crime planned and executed, gone terribly wrong. At each stage of the debacle more things go wrong, causing layer after layer of complexity. It is amazing how quickly things can become complicated. This is especially true when considering the implications of designing for a global audience. Crossing cultures and understanding needs take on a new importance when they are matrixed across different users, countries and local interests. In the end, what is needed is a simple plan.
Recently, I was in China working on a global project with a team from Thailand, London, Buenos Aries and New York. It's an important project, and for me it was important learning to be on the ground there, talking with people, immersing in the culture, especially given all the recent press about outsourcing. I realized that I could very much benefit from a deeper understanding of Chinese culture. In fact, I've read that China is going to graduate 1 million new design students this year.
I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact. Claude Levi-Strauss (1908), French philosopher
OK, maybe not a million, but it is interesting how stories of demise are sometimes premature and ideas that are threatening in some way seem to always become exaggerated.
Myth is an attempt to narrate a whole human experience, of which the purpose is too deep, going too deep in the blood and soul, for mental explanation or description. D.H. Lawrence (1885 - 1930), British writer
Maybe it affects design more intensely and more quickly because designers are so passionate and believe so much in what they do.
If we believe most of what we read, design services will soon be entirely outsourced to countries like China and India. Many Western companies are already turning to a global network of outsourcing: engineering, software development, manufacturing. It can and does lead to terrific efficiencies. So why can't innovation and design thinking be outsourced also?
The simple truth is that it can. The real question is, why is that a problem?
It all depends on how we look at things, and not on how they are themselves. Carl Jung (1875 - 1961), Swiss psychiatrist and founder of analytical psychology
Since outsourcing is here to stay, we need to learn to deal with it. The whole idea of global reach is going to require taking some chances and doing things a bit differently. If we embrace this moment, we can learn from it.
I find myself asking the question, why can't I also outsource services?
“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” Alan Kay (1940), architect of the graphical user interface
Developing global products is difficult; their design can never be too simple. Adding layers of complexity when designing for global markets is a slippery slope. Once you start down it, it can stall and confuse the project team as well as the customers. Designers are the ones who can bring much needed clarity to the development of the strategy or the object itself because design thinking allows for the envisioning of the future.
Engineering, medicine, business, architecture and painting are concerned not with the necessary but with the contingent not with how things are but with how they might be in short, with design. Herbert Simon, The Sciences of the Artificial, 1969
It's about the thinking not the doing, isn't it? In a way, it always has been. The spotlight is more intense in this globally influenced pregnant moment, and watching others play with your toys can be painful. But take heart, maybe there is still a good living in design if we come at it from a different angle.
Design is a response to social change. George Nelson (1908 - 1986), American designer
There is nothing new about globalization. It is a cyclical event. Our society and world changes constantly, and the influences are always shifting. We can make good use of this shifting if we grasp the moment.
We should not underestimate the crucial importance of leadership and design joining forces. Our global future depends on it. We will either design our way through the deadly challenges of this century, or we won't make it. For our institutions in truth, for our civilization to survive and prosper, we must solve extremely complex problems and cope with many bewildering dilemmas. We cannot assume that, following our present path, we will simply evolve toward a better world. But we can design that better world. That is why designers need to become leaders, and why leaders need to become designers. Richard Farson, Management by Design, 2000
Grasp the moment and shift our focus. The key is in taking on the harder, more difficult challenges and approaching them with design thinking and the ability to see past the obvious.
By the way, that doesn't mean we never create an object again. Jerry Hirschberg of Nissan fame writes in his wonderful book The Creative Priority about the challenge of being asked to design a global car. The design teams fear that it would need to be “all things to all people” and therefore mush. When his team “embraced the dragon” and researched what it meant to be a world car, they discovered that instead of having to water down the design, successful world cars have great personality and character. Think the Beetle, the Jeep, the Mini.
Myths and creeds are heroic struggles to comprehend the truth in the world. Ansel Adams (1902 - 1984), American photographer
Now that I'm thinking of it, at a conference a few years back I participated in two days of serious conversations around the complexity of designing products (mostly small electronics, cell phones, etc.) for a global audience. The group concluded it simply couldn't be done. Then along comes something like Apple's iPod Shuffle. We all got a kick-in-the-teeth lesson that simplicity rules and at its core the human condition responds to a great many things the same way. We all wash our hair, we all kiss our children and we all prepare food.
Mythology: the body of a primitive people's beliefs, concerning its origin, early history, heroes, deities and so forth, as distinguished from the true accounts, which it invents later. Ambrose Bierce (1842 - 1914), American writer
Not that there aren't obstacles to overcome. On my recent trip to China, I was in a small restaurant in Shanghai eating a black fish not just on the outside but black throughout and the party I was with, mostly Westerners, were anxiously eying the door while dutifully attempting a few bites of each dish. At that moment, the world seemed anything but flat. So, I don't mean to suggest that crossing cultures is a simple thing, especially if you don't have an adventurous palette. But it is important to try.
I get that the kid in Bangalore now has the opportunity that once only the Western kid had. So, what does it mean if India competes at a high level of design? How does the designer in India design for the American market? The German market? What is the difference between Germany and China having great design capabilities? Isn't the conversation and competition simply elevated, and with each design-fueled success, say the Aeron Chair, OXO good grips or the Mini, don't more opportunities appear?
There is great strength in simplicity. What we need is a simple plan.
Mark Dziersk