Design Attitude

I have been working with designers throughout my whole career, in FMCG, Internet and technology companies. It started a long time ago with projects on packaging and label development, and it later moved to corporate identity and branding. More recently, it is all about “Service Design”, or “Design-Inspired Frameworks”, as defined by the author.

Michlewski talks about this “Evolution of Design”, from a full focus on “physical objects” to design “services”, “concepts” and “strategies”. In my personal experience of such progression, I found a common denominator. This is the mysterious ability of designers to provide “new” and “easy to implement” solutions to quite complex problems. We, corporate people, always thought that this was the field of pure “creativity”, unbelievable “intuition” or even “genius”. For us, “design” and “method” has always been an oxymoron.

As books on design – usually written by designers – tend to focus on the design results more than the process, I have always thought that something inexplicable – some sort of “Deus Ex-Machina” as in the Latin comedy – would intervene along the process and heavily influence it.

Michlewski’s book demonstrates that I was completely wrong! Its core message is that there is “method” in design and this comes from a professional culture that is completely different from the business culture. Based on detailed interviews with design professionals, the book is written in a form and style that unveils the world of design to “not-initiated”, like me.

There is a lesson to learn in each of the five elements defining the design culture, but I found that “Embracing Uncertainty and Ambiguity” is key for businesses. As corporations are not anymore in control of their markets and consumers, adopting the designers’ "Let it Go Attitude" could really boost innovation. But most of the corporate processes are still designed to minimise the likeability of an error more than taking risks.

So, there is a lesson for businesses in this book that goes beyond design. And it is about this universal “Design Attitude” that design professionals seem to embrace. Warmly recommended.

This review was by Riccardo Brenna, head of market strategy and insights at Sony Mobile. Follow him @riccardo66UK

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