[Sigia-l] "Trust me. I'm a designer."

[Terrence Wood]

On 6/02/2007, at 4:31 PM, Ziya Oz wrote:
"It's the design world's dirty little secret. Despite the growing  
consensus
that "good design is good business," most companies lack objective  
financial
metrics to help them calculate whether increased investment in design  
will,
in fact, generate increased profits. Does it matter? Chuck Jones,
Whirlpool's design chief, certainly thinks so."

Focus groups as inputs to the design process? Interesting concept.

"With customer-based measurements, design-investment decisions are  
now based on fact, not opinion."
Delightful typo - surely that should read "factoid"?  Just how  
objective is all that empirical evidence?

"While it's way too early to pronounce that decision a success,  
initial results are promising: In the three months following launch,  
profits for the redesigned range were up 30% over the previous model."
Way, way too early... and how come marketing aren't claiming it as a  
victory for themselves?

"We can no longer get by on being the wacky creatives who can't be  
held to any kind of standard."
I'm creative, but I'm not wacky... and just what standard is  
Whirlpool's design being held to? The whole methodology is about  
removing design as a bottom-line metric and framing it as customer  
research (i.e. a cost). Essentially, they're building faster horses  ;-)

kind regards
Terrence Wood.