Category: Brand & Consumer Experience
Competitive Benchmark | Viaᔥ Blog AMAI
POR: AGUSTÍN CASTAÑEDA RAMÍREZ, Viaᔥ AMAI
De acuerdo con el estudio global From Stretched to Strengthened realizado recientemente por IBM mediante entrevistas face to face con más de 1,734 CMO´s ( Chief Marketing Officers) pertenecientes a empresas de cerca de una veintena de industrias en 64 países, para entender qué están haciendo a fin de enfrentar las transformaciones en los mercados y la nueva dinámica del entorno de los negocios, destaca que entre las fuentes que brindan información para la toma de decisiones estratégicas y orientar la dirección de las mismas, se encuentra la investigación de mercados como la herramienta más frecuentemente utilizada para obtener información sobre el mercado, la propia organización, los consumidores y el entorno competitivo.
Después de la investigación de mercados, y ocupando el segundo lugar, los directivos siguen a la letra los lineamientos corporativos establecidos por las matrices y en tercera posición de importancia recurren al Competitive Benchmark.
Siguen en orden de importancia las métricas sobre los consumidores y los análisis generados por las áreas de marketing y el flujo defeedback generado por los mismos consumidores a través de los touch points de las organizaciones, entre otras múltiples fuentes de información.
No obstante, el presente artículo se enfocará a la utilización del Competitive Benchmark como herramienta de análisis y soporte a la gestión de las áreas de marketing, servicio, canales, desarrollo de producto, factor humano y otras relacionadas con el producto y los procesos comerciales para la entrega al consumidor.
El Benchmark es una herramienta, como sabemos introducida por Xerox, para realizar evaluaciones de carácter comparativo y determinar la posición competitiva de una práctica comercial en relación con las de otros oferentes –normalmente competidores– o en relación al state of the art; busca detectar las brechas existentes en los productos y procesos de las empresas, para generar acciones que reduzcan sus gapscon las best practices.
A través de la aplicación sistemática del Competitive Benchmark es posible comparar y analizar, desde la perspectiva del cliente o del negocio:
La oferta comercialProductosServiciosSolucionesLos procesos de atención y entrega del servicio en los distintos canalesEl modelo de atención y desempeño de los touch pointsLa atención postventa
Entre otros procesos críticos que permitan la operación exitosa de la compañía.
En la etapa de planeación para el desarrollo del Competitive Benchmark, las unidades o departamentos de una empresa deben determinar qué se quiere comparar, con quién y los factores a considerar dentro de la evaluación; definir los parámetros y condiciones de la evaluación, así como los criterios que seguirán los evaluadores, esto con el propósito de brindarle mayor objetividad a la evaluación y reducir el sesgo subjetivo, particularmente en la calificación de procesos realizados por las personas durante su interacción con los clientes.
Con la intención de aportar algunos elementos a los gerentes e investigadores que ilustren esta técnica de análisis, brindamos algunos ejemplos para un Competitive Benchmark de producto.
El primer paso es determinar los factores a evaluar:
– Portafolio de productos y servicios
– Procesos
– Requisitos
– Características y atributos
– Condiciones comerciales
– Funcionalidad
– Desempeño
– Beneficios
– Garantías, etcétera
Para analizar los procesos comerciales, es posible comparar entre algunas otras variables:
– Modelo de atención
– Calidad en el servicio
– Touch points
Performance
Conocimiento y dominio de la oferta
Orientación al cross selling
– Proceso de venta postventa
– Seguimiento
Interacciones con el consumidor
Interacciones con los proveedores
Un elemento clave es que el Competitive Benchmark debe generar información accionable y de forma sistemática para que las áreas responsables implementen a la brevedad los cambios y ajustes pertinentes, por ello es importante dimensionar en una primera instancia el alcance de esta práctica; debemos preguntarnos entonces:
¿Con quién me comparo?
– Mi empresa. ¿Cuáles son las brechas en relación con los protocolos de servicio, las políticas de venta, la calidad de los productos, la entrega del servicio?
– Líder del mercado. Es generalmente la referencia para cualquier empresa y quitarle participación del mercado es el objetivo.
– Best practices. Las mejores prácticas pueden ser nacionales o internacionales, ya sea competencia funcional o algún modelo de una industria diversa, pero representa un modelo a seguir.
Con la incorporación de las plataformas digitales a los negocios, el Competitive Benchmark adopta una clara dimensión digital, toda vez que el espacio virtual se ha convertido, a un ritmo excesivamente acelerado, en un campo más donde las marcas disputan su liderazgo comercial con los consumidores que han adoptado los patrones digitales en su estilo de vida y consumo.
En la imagen inferior, que es una matriz de competitividad, observamos el performance de las principales marcas fabricantes de automóviles en el ámbito online, como resultado de un análisis de Digital Intelligence, en el cual se observa claramente la posición de cada competidor y las brechas en relación con las variables de audiencia y tiempo de permanencia.
Beneficios tangibles del Competitive Benchmark
Con la adopción y empleo sistemático de esta herramienta es posible:
– Desarrollar ventajas competitivas sostenibles y definir estrategias de mercado acordes con la dinámica del entorno competitivo en el cual participa la empresa; a partir del conocimiento de nuestra posición, es curioso conocer que existen hoy en día, negocios que ignoran las aplicaciones y beneficios de esta herramienta.
– Detectar los factores clave en los procesos de atención y venta proporcionados a los consumidores; generalmente mediante capacitación y programas de incentivos, disminuir o eliminar los momentos críticos y establecer un sistema de monitoreo del desempeño con énfasis en los mismos.
– Proporcionar capacitación a la fuerza de ventas; desarrollar un sistema de certificación y evaluación constante del desempeño, para atender con oportunidad las brechas en el cumplimiento de los estándares de servicio y protocolo de atención.
– Mediante un análisis FODA generar acciones concretas para atender las debilidades y aprovechar las oportunidades en el mercado.
Competitive Benchmark paso por paso
Determinar los pasos a seguir como parte de las actividades para definir los métodos de evaluación, alcance, factores de ponderación y criterios de calificación.
Es necesario asimismo definir con quién nos queremos comparar, siendo posible confrontar nuestros procesos para mejorar la calidad, la eficiencia y la efectividad.
El valor cuantitativo del Competitive Benchmark es un factor para el que es conveniente parametrizar correctamente los criterios de evaluación, de tal forma que nos arroje una lectura objetiva y confiable de la posición que tenemos en relación con otras prácticas.
Con la medición de cada uno de los factores del Competitive Benchmark es posible identificar claramente la posición de nuestros productos, procesos o servicios respecto de las demás prácticas analizadas, lo cual nos dará al finalizar, una visión de las brechas detectadas, en la tabla de abajo, el competidor 1 (C1), presenta un área de oportunidad en el factor de funcionalidad.
Los directivos y tomadores de decisión deben reconocer que el Competitive Benchmark es un recurso clave que puede adoptar cualquier organización para conocer su posición competitiva actual y desarrollar la estrategia y acciones puntuales, para mantener ventajas competitivas sostenibles.
Semblanza
Agustín Castañeda Ramírez es director comercial de MASTER Research; por sus actividades profesionales cuenta con poco tiempo libre, el que dedica a la lectura, particularmente sobre temas histórics que le apasionan, y a su hija, con la que día a día aprende a ser padre de una adolescente.
Identidad y la propuesta de nuestras empresas.
Por: Federico Hernández Ruiz
En nuestro entorno y quehacer como empresarios hay una constante que aparece una y otra vez, esta constante es como debe ser la propuesta. Nos referimos a la propuesta de servicio o a la propuesta de producto.
Muchos de nosotros como empresarios definimos un producto o servicio y creemos que lo que sigue es comercializarlo para lo cual están las áreas de mercadotecnia y ventas.
La verdad es que todos comenzamos haciendo una propuesta con lo que tenemos o lo que creemos que debe de ser, esto no es un mal inicio. Es más, es el mejor inicio que hay, solo que este debe estar enriquecido por un halo de duda. A lo que me refiero es, lo que hemos mandado al mercado es una propuesta y como tal puede ser bien solamente recibida, bien recibida o incluso puede ser rechazada. Si concebimos que lo que hicimos fue una propuesta y que estamos reconociendo lo que la gente o el mercado quiere, entonces podremos mejorar o cambiar nuestra propuesta. Y es justo ahí donde muchos nos atoramos. Creemos que lo que proponemos es lo adecuado y que solo debe ser mercadeado o vendido adecuadamente, pero eso no es del todo cierto.
Efectivamente, mercadotecnia nos ayudará muchísimo. Sus técnicas y procesos facilitarán la manera en que nos comunicamos con la gente pero siempre necesitará contar con la clara identidad de la empresa. Si esta identidad tiene oportunidades no atendidas, mercadotecnia y ventas se verán limitadas en sus capacidades para entregar un mensaje claro, contundente y con la fuerza necesaria no solo para entregar, sino para que la gente lo pida.
Les comparto, hacer una propuesta necesita incluir una palabra: “Valor”. Necesitamos hacer una propuesta de valor. En la cual está implícito un beneficio para la persona o entidad que va a usar o consumir el producto o servicio. Así es, nuestra propuesta debe beneficiar a alguien y por supuesto a nosotros también.
En este diálogo que existe entre lo que ofrecemos y entregamos, con quien recibe y usa, es donde muchos perdemos camino o dejamos de ver con claridad hacia dónde vamos. Creemos que si cambiamos nuestra propuesta, dejaremos de beneficiarnos, dejaremos de ser quiénes somos, perderemos nuestra identidad, la razón de ser. Yo les comparto que esto no es así.
La razón es que antes que nada, nuestras empresas y nosotros somos entes sociales y funcionamos en sistemas de convivencia. Nuestro intercambio es eso, un sistema en el que participan diferentes actores o elementos y todos construyen una experiencia que sucede.
Todos vivimos la empresa y sus productos. Al manejar un carro, no solo consideramos la marca, sentimos los asientos, olemos el interior del carro, escuchamos el motor, vemos los accesorios y tocamos las vestiduras, los asientos y el volante; al manejar, escuchamos el sonido de todo el carro en tránsito. En fin, es un sistema que vivimos con la marca y el modelo, sabemos que la identidad y su propuesta es la que nos gusta.
Es por está razón que nuestra propuesta y nuestra identidad están estrechamente relacionadas, necesitan reconocerse en un sistema en el que ante todo hay intercambios. Intercambios de productos y servicios por dinero, pero también hay emociones, relaciones, vivencias, espacios… Es un conjunto de elementos que debe tomarse en cuenta para reconocer con mayor claridad: quiénes somos, cómo participamos, cómo somos percibidos y lo mejor, cómo nos concebimos.
Es un sistema que está vivo y que puede moldearse o cambiarse en el momento que sea necesario.
Esta dinámica de vivencias le sucede tanto a la gran empresa como al micro empresario. Todos participamos y contribuimos en estos sistemas. Todos podemos cambiar y transformarnos para tener una mejor relación con nuestro entorno, para ser más competentes, si así lo queremos ver.
Podemos ser y tener la identidad que decidamos, para hacer la mejor propuesta al mercado. Una propuesta de valor que nos beneficia a todos.
Si reflexionamos sobre nuestra identidad como empresa y recordamos que la identidad se vive y sucede, entonces podemos relacionarla con el cómo queremos que esto suceda. Yo tomo como principio las características que definen ser competente y éstas son:
“Parecer ser, ser y actitud”
Todos conocemos empresas que podríamos colocar en esta definición. Es más, por ella tomamos muchas decisiones para relacionarnos con ella. Nuestras decisiones van desde el coche que usamos, el lugar en el que vivimos, el grupo con el que convivimos, etc. Como personas nos sucede exactamente igual. Convivimos en el sistema y llegamos a acuerdos o principios que nos guían para actuar.
La identidad de una empresa está estrechamente relacionada con su propuesta y es por ésta que podemos ver con claridad si nos propone un beneficio.
A todos nos ha pasado que hemos sentido desconfianza sobre un artículo, un servicio o una persona. Hay algo que no nos gusta. La respuesta está en cómo nos sucede ese contacto, cómo identificamos si nos conviene o no. La razón atrás es que el sistema está actuando y el conjunto de elementos que están participando no entregan un mensaje coherente y congruente. Sencillamente hay algo fuera de lugar. Y no digo que algo esté mal, digo que hay algo fuera de lugar, algo que desentona y que muy posiblemente necesite ajustarse.
Parecer ser, ser y actitud no son características que se dan por creación espontánea, son expresiones de la empresa. La empresa, sus empresarios y colaboradores construyen de manera cotidiana esta identidad.
La identidad por eso no se puede inventar o colocarse, la identidad es una expresión única de cada empresa.
Como dice el dicho: “La mona aunque se vista de seda, mona se queda”, y la empresa no es ajena a este dicho.
Un buen ejemplo del manejo común de la identidad es la de crear un logotipo. Un logotipo puede servir para identificar a la empresa, para que la ubiquen solamente. Pero no llegará a ser una identidad hasta que contenga y represente a ese sistema dinámico que es la empresa. Un logotipo se transformará en identidad hecha marca al contener esa expresión cultural de empresa.
Una identidad puede tener diferentes propuestas, entendiendo propuesta de servicio o producto durante el tiempo. Además es la manera en que interactúa con su entorno. Una identidad es un proceso que nunca termina, que trasciende en el tiempo y contribuye a la construcción de una cultura.
Una identidad implica poder ofrecer un servicio desde el interior de su razón de ser. -Por quien somos, proponemos y resolvemos para tu beneficio, para el beneficio de todos-.
Tener una identidad con una propuesta clara parece sencillo y sí lo es. Lo único que se requiere es disposición para reconocer que participamos en un sistema. En el cual tenemos características únicas por las que hacemos y ofrecemos un producto o servicio. Lo hacemos con una propuesta que corresponde a nosotros, gracias al proceso de reflexión constante, continuo y estructurado que hacemos. Tener identidad y una propuesta significa que hemos diseñado quiénes somos y cómo nos relacionamos.
El secreto está en el diseño. La palabra clave es: “Diseñamos”. Diseñar no es otra cosa que recrear un proceso de reflexión que nos permite cuestionarnos el por qué hacemos lo que hacemos, cómo lo hacemos, para quién lo hacemos, qué esperamos y qué esperan de nuestro producto o servicio. Diseñar no es embellecer, no es acomodar para que se vea bien. Diseñar implica observar, reconocer, crear ideas, hipótesis, probar y experimentar.
Diseñar nos invita a instalar un proceso continuo de reflexión, capaz de alimentar a la empresa y expresarse en todas las áreas, incluyendo la manera en que se entregan o se brindan servicios. Identidad y propuesta requieren ser definidos por diseñadores. Si eres empresario, este es el momento de comenzar a diseñar tu empresa, sus productos y servicios. Con ello podrás contar con una de los capitales más grandes que una empresa puede tener: el ser querida, deseada o admirada.
Podrás lograr con tu empresa ser la razón por la que muchas personas conducen sus vidas, ser un contribuyente de valores y riqueza en la sociedad. Con tu aportación, la sociedad entera te retribuirá con lealtad y con sentido de pertenencia. La gente adentro y afuera de la empresa se sentirá orgullosa de pertenecer a ella, a tu empresa.
Ahora sí, si en tus planes está darle identidad a tu empresa y crear una propuesta, acompáñate de los diseñadores adecuados como lo son los consultores de la comisión de Consultores de Coparmex en Querétaro. Más de uno podrá acompañarte, pero sobre todo, podrás liberarte de los mitos que te detienen.
Si decides contratar a un diseñador para crear una imagen que te identifique, cuida que no sea solo un embellecedor o creador de disfraces. Con él o sin él, saldrá a relucir la verdadera identidad de quién eres y cómo es tu empresa.
| D.G. Federico Hernández RuizSocio fundador y Consultor en Identidad estratégica en asimetagraf y representante para la CGTFL en México de Duraznos, Nectarinas y Ciruelas California
Como consultor se destaca en la creación de sistemas de identidad especializado en productos de consumos. Su trayectoria cuenta con más de 20 años de experiencia y ha colabora desde grandes transnacionales hasta pequeñas y micro empresas. Algunas de éstas son: Kellogg’s, Heinz, La Perla, Grupo Pando, entre otros. Actualmente representa a la California Grape and Tree Fruit League “CGTFL” para la promoción de duraznos, nectarinas y ciruelas California en México. https://www.facebook.com/CaliforniaDNC Para conocer más de asimetagraf y su propuesta, favor de entrar a: http://www.asimetagraf.com Para contactar a Federico y conocer más sobre su trayectoria, entrar a: http://www.linkedin.com/in/federicohernandezruiz |
Apple’s logo identity
Check this image about apple logo development and standard
Meaning Is Healthier Than Happiness | Viaᔥ theatlantic.com
People who are happy but have little-to-no sense of meaning in their lives have the same gene expression patterns as people who are enduring chronic adversity.
![[IMAGE DESCRIPTION]](https://i0.wp.com/cdn.theatlantic.com/newsroom/img/posts/happybuddahmain.jpg)
For at least the last decade, the happiness craze has been building. In the last three months alone, over 1,000 books on happiness were released on Amazon, including Happy Money, Happy-People-Pills For All, and, for those just starting out, Happiness for Beginners.
One of the consistent claims of books like these is that happiness is associated with all sorts of good life outcomes, including — most promisingly — good health. Many studies have noted the connection between a happy mind and a healthy body — the happier you are, the better health outcomes we seem to have. In a meta-analysis (overview) of 150 studies on this topic, researchers put it like this: “Inductions of well-being lead to healthy functioning, and inductions of ill-being lead to compromised health.”
But a new study, just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) challenges the rosy picture. Happiness may not be as good for the body as researchers thought. It might even be bad.
Of course, it’s important to first define happiness. A few months ago, I wrote a piece called “There’s More to Life Than Being Happy” about a psychology study that dug into what happiness really means to people. It specifically explored the difference between a meaningful life and a happy life.
It seems strange that there would be a difference at all. But the researchers, who looked at a large sample of people over a month-long period, found that happiness is associated with selfish “taking” behavior and that having a sense of meaning in life is associated with selfless “giving” behavior.
“Happiness without meaning characterizes a relatively shallow, self-absorbed or even selfish life, in which things go well, needs and desire are easily satisfied, and difficult or taxing entanglements are avoided,” the authors of the study wrote. “If anything, pure happiness is linked to not helping others in need.” While being happy is about feeling good, meaning is derived from contributing to others or to society in a bigger way. As Roy Baumeister, one of the researchers, told me, “Partly what we do as human beings is to take care of others and contribute to others. This makes life meaningful but it does not necessarily make us happy.”
The new PNAS study also sheds light on the difference between meaning and happiness, but on the biological level. Barbara Fredrickson, a psychological researcher who specializes in positive emotions at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and Steve Cole, a genetics and psychiatric researcher at UCLA, examined the self-reported levels of happiness and meaning in 80 research subjects.
Happiness was defined, as in the earlier study, byfeeling good. The researchers measured happiness by asking subjects questions like “How often did you feel happy?” “How often did you feel interested in life?” and “How often did you feel satisfied?” The more strongly people endorsed these measures of “hedonic well-being,” or pleasure, the higher they scored on happiness.
Meaning was defined as an orientation to something bigger than the self. They measured meaning by asking questions like “How often did you feel that your life has a sense of direction or meaning to it?”, “How often did you feel that you had something to contribute to society?”, and “How often did you feel that you belonged to a community/social group?” The more people endorsed these measures of “eudaimonic well-being” — or, simply put, virtue — the more meaning they felt in life.
After noting the sense of meaning and happiness that each subject had, Fredrickson and Cole, with their research colleagues, looked at the ways certain genes expressed themselves in each of the participants. Like neuroscientists who use fMRI scanning to determine how regions in the brain respond to different stimuli, Cole and Fredrickson are interested in how the body, at the genetic level, responds to feelings of happiness and meaning.
Cole’s past work has linked various kinds of chronic adversity to a particular gene expression pattern. When people feel lonely, are grieving the loss of a loved one, or are struggling to make ends meet, their bodies go into threat mode. This triggers the activation of a stress-related gene pattern that has two features: an increase in the activity of proinflammatory genes and a decrease in the activity of genes involved in anti-viral responses.
“You have a forward-looking immune system,” Fredrickson told me, “If you have a long track record of adversity, it prepares you for bacterial infections. For our ancestors, loneliness and adversity were associated with bacterial infections from wounds with predators and fights with conspecifics.” On the other hand, if you are doing well and having a lot of healthy social connections, your immune system shifts forward to prepare you for viruses, which you’re more likely to contract if you’re interacting with a lot of people.
What does this have to do with happiness?
Cole and Fredrickson found that people who are happy but have little to no sense of meaning in their lives — proverbially, simply here for the party — have the same gene expression patterns as people who are responding to and enduring chronic adversity. That is, the bodies of these happy people are preparing them for bacterial threats by activating the pro-inflammatory response. Chronic inflammation is, of course, associated with major illnesses like heart disease and various cancers.
“Empty positive emotions” — like the kind people experience during manic episodes or artificially induced euphoria from alcohol and drugs — ”are about as good for you for as adversity,” says Fredrickson.
It’s important to understand that for many people, a sense of meaning and happiness in life overlap; many people score jointly high (or jointly low) on the happiness and meaning measures in the study. But for many others, there is a dissonance — they feel that they are low on happiness and high on meaning or that their lives are very high in happiness, but low in meaning. This last group, which has the gene expression pattern associated with adversity, formed a whopping 75 percent of study participants. Only one quarter of the study participants had what the researchers call “eudaimonic predominance” — that is, their sense of meaning outpaced their feelings of happiness.
This is too bad given the more beneficial gene expression pattern associated with meaningfulness. People whose levels of happiness and meaning line up, and people who have a strong sense of meaning but are not necessarily happy, showed a deactivation of the adversity stress response. Their bodies were not preparing them for the bacterial infections that we get when we are alone or in trouble, but for the viral infections we get when surrounded by a lot of other people.
Fredrickson’s past research, described in her two books, Positivity and Love 2.0, has mapped the benefits of positive emotions in individuals. She has found that positive emotions broaden a person’s perspective and buffers people against adversity. So it was surprising to her that hedonistic well-being, which is associated with positive emotions and pleasure, did so badly in this study compared with eudaimonic well-being.
“It’s not the amount of hedonic happiness that’s a problem,” Fredrickson tells me, “It’s that it’s not matched by eudaimonic well-being. It’s great when both are in step. But if you have more hedonic well-being than would be expected, that’s when this [gene] pattern that’s akin to adversity emerged.”
The terms hedonism and eudaimonism bring to mind the great philosophical debate, which has shaped Western civilization for over 2,000 years, about the nature of the good life. Does happiness lie in feeling good, as hedonists think, or in doing and being good, as Aristotle and his intellectual descendants, the virtue ethicists, think? From the evidence of this study, it seems that feeling good is not enough. People need meaning to thrive. In the words of Carl Jung, “The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.” Jung’s wisdom certainly seems to apply to our bodies, if not also to our hearts and our minds.
Link to the original article: http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/08/meaning-is-healthier-than-happiness/278250/
Curators code: http://www.curatorscode.org
From Airbnb To Warby Parker: 7 Tips From Leading Design Entrepreneurs | Via Co.Design
IN KERN AND BURN, TWO DESIGNERS COMPILE PEARLS OF WISDOM FROM THE BIGGEST PLAYERS IN THE FIELD.
In Kern and Burn: Conversations with Designer Entrepreneurs, they’ve cataloged stories, reflections, and lessons-learned from the creative minds shaping the business landscape. Here, we’ve collected words and some tough love from nine of those designers.
1. BITE THE BULLET: LEARN HOW CODING AND WEB ANALYTICS WORK.
“Learn how to code a web application, learn how to print a design you’re designing for print, and not be limited to renderings and mock-ups. By learning ‘how to build’ a few things happen: You learn what it takes to build things, and can therefore better empathize with and appreciate those who are expert builders. You extend the potential influence of design. You can kick-start a building process, learn about the challenges your design decisions impose on the building process, and otherwise iterate on design throughout the building process.”
–Randy J. Hunt, Creative Director at Etsy
“The day that I started sitting in on meetings with the CEO and talked about things such as conversion metrics and the lifetime of a customer as it relates to our product, it definitely changed the way I think about what I was working on and how I solve certain problems.”
–Josh Brewer, designer at Twitter
2. NEVER UNDERESTIMATE HOW IMPORTANT DESIGNERS ARE TO BUSINESSES…
“We’ve definitely crossed over a threshold in the startup world, where it’s an assumption that it’s a good idea to pay attention to design from the very beginning. But there’s still a big gap in understanding what that means and how to find designers who can contribute in a meaningful way to the early stage of product design. We have a responsibility as designers to step up to the plate here. We’re invited to the table now–we need to bring something to it.”
–Wilson Miner, designer at Facebook
3. …BUT DON’T ALLOW THAT TO DAMAGE YOUR FOCUS.
“If you want to be the best UX designer in the world, then concentrate on that. Don’t let your ego and your thirst for experience distract you into thinking your opinion needs to be heard at the same level as your cofounder’s on all topic, such as hiring, copywriting, product scheduling, business relationships, etc. Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg are a poison in this regard.”
–Ben Pieratt, cofounder of Svpply
4. KEEP A SIDE PROJECT–THEY CLEAR THE COBWEBS OUT.
“I worked as an art director at The New York Times, but I always worked on side projects to maintain my sanity. Something I try to instill in the students and young designers whom I meet is this idea of doing a side project. No matter how small, it is always important. I think when you go to the corporation, and when you’re entry level and just starting out, a lot is asked of you, and you can lose yourself and get washed up in it.”
–Peter Buchanan-Smith, founder of Best Made
5. READ EVERYTHING. A DIVERSE MEDIA DIET WILL LEAD TO RANDOM SPARKS OF INSPIRATION.
“Droog is invariably witty and socially on point. Fine artists would probably be the other inspiration category. I also really appreciate reading about the experiences and approaches of other businesspeople. One column I love is the Corner Office series in The New York Times. There’s also a collected book—The Corner Office: Indispensable and Unexpected Lessons from CEOs on How to Lead and Succeed. Reality TV is my friend. I mean, where else would you hear a Real Housewife of Atlanta say, ‘Irony is so ironic?’ ”
–Jen Bilik, founder of Knock Knock
6. A PROTOTYPE IS WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS.
“No matter how well you visualize, until you see that first hyper-real rendering of the product or the prototype, it’s just an idea—it sits around, and it gestates in your head, but it doesn’t become tangible until you make it real…IDEO’s Tom Hulme said, ‘Talk – Action = Shit.’ I don’t know how many times I’ve sat in meetings where people just talk, talk, talk and show renderings that just don’t sell the idea until they put this physical thing on the table.”
–Scott Wilson, founder of MINIMAL
7. MOST IMPORTANTLY, CONTINUE TO THINK WITH THE UNFETTERED IMAGINATION OF A STUDENT. THE ROLE OF A DESIGNER IS TO RETHINK HOW THE WORLD WORKS.
“We’re offering a $95 product for something that is typically sold at $500, and that question automatically is well, ‘Why?’ And ‘How?’ The why is because we personally experienced the effects of overpriced glasses, and we want to change the world. We want to transfer billions of dollars from these big multinational corporations to normal people. The how is that we’re able to design the frames ourselves and produce them under our own brand. We’ve made relationships with the suppliers that make the hinges and the screws, and then custom-acetate and assemble the frames, and cut and etch the lenses so we’re able to bypass the middleman by having those direct-to-supplier relationships, and by filling orders online, we have direct-to-consumer relationships.”
–Neil Blumenthal, cofounder of Warby Parker
“The Internet startup world’s convention of thinking is that you need to solve problems in a scalable way. You need to solve problems with lines of code, and the Internet allows you to do that. The same line of code can touch one user or 10,000 users. But, as soon as we started to do things that didn’t scale, everything started to click…We traveled to New York City; we talked to hosts; we did unofficial ethnographic research. We observed people using Airbnb. We experienced all of the pain points firsthand it for ourselves…We came back to our roots and applied the industrial design process to the Internet—merging customer feedback with our obsession for good design. Once we did that, everything clicked, and we began making money rapidly.”
–Joe Gebbia, cofounder of Airbnb
Buy Kern and Burn: Conversations with Designer Entrepreneurs for $30here.
[Illustration: Joe Gebbia and Warby Parker, Kelly Rakowski/Co.Design]
Original article: http://www.fastcodesign.com/1673079/from-facebook-to-warby-parker-7-tips-from-leading-design-entrepreneurs?partner=newsletter
Jean Paul Gaultier Unveils Coke Light Limited-Edition Bottle Designs – DesignTAXI.com
Jean Paul Gaultier Unveils Coke Light Limited-Edition Bottle Designs13 Apr 2012 | Subscribe to RSS | Get news delivered to your emailRecently-appointed creative director of Coca-Cola Light, Jean Paul Gaultier, has unveiled the new limited-edition bottle designs for the soft-drink brand.
The two bottles are designed in the couturier’s signature blue-and-white Breton sailor stripes, corsets, and unique tattoos.
[via L’Officiel]
Incomplete Manifesto for Growth
Incomplete Manifesto for Growth
- Allow events to change you.
You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.- Forget about good.
Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you’ll never have real growth.- Process is more important than outcome.
When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we’ve already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.- Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child).
Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.- Go deep.
The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value.- Capture accidents.
The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions.- Study.
A studio is a place of study. Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study. Everyone will benefit.- Drift.
Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism.- Begin anywhere.
John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.- Everyone is a leader.
Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead.- Harvest ideas.
Edit applications. Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas to applications.- Keep moving.
The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice.- Slow down.
Desynchronize from standard time frames and surprising opportunities may present themselves.- Don’t be cool.
Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.- Ask stupid questions.
Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant.- Collaborate.
The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential.- ____________________.
Intentionally left blank. Allow space for the ideas you haven’t had yet, and for the ideas of others.- Stay up late.
Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you’re separated from the rest of the world.- Work the metaphor.
Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for.- Be careful to take risks.
Time is genetic. Today is the child of yesterday and the parent of tomorrow. The work you produce today will create your future.- Repeat yourself.
If you like it, do it again. If you don’t like it, do it again.- Make your own tools.
Hybridize your tools in order to build unique things. Even simple tools that are your own can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. Remember, tools amplify our capacities, so even a small tool can make a big difference.- Stand on someone’s shoulders.
You can travel farther carried on the accomplishments of those who came before you. And the view is so much better.- Avoid software.
The problem with software is that everyone has it.- Don’t clean your desk.
You might find something in the morning that you can’t see tonight.- Don’t enter awards competitions.
Just don’t. It’s not good for you.- Read only left-hand pages.
Marshall McLuhan did this. By decreasing the amount of information, we leave room for what he called our “noodle.”- Make new words.
Expand the lexicon. The new conditions demand a new way of thinking. The thinking demands new forms of expression. The expression generates new conditions.- Think with your mind.
Forget technology. Creativity is not device-dependent.- Organization = Liberty.
Real innovation in design, or any other field, happens in context. That context is usually some form of cooperatively managed enterprise. Frank Gehry, for instance, is only able to realize Bilbao because his studio can deliver it on budget. The myth of a split between “creatives” and “suits” is what Leonard Cohen calls a ‘charming artifact of the past.’- Don’t borrow money.
Once again, Frank Gehry’s advice. By maintaining financial control, we maintain creative control. It’s not exactly rocket science, but it’s surprising how hard it is to maintain this discipline, and how many have failed.- Listen carefully.
Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with him or her a world more strange and complex than any we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires, or ambitions, we fold their world onto our own. Neither party will ever be the same.- Take field trips.
The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the Internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object-oriented, real-time, computer graphic–simulated environment.- Make mistakes faster.
This isn’t my idea — I borrowed it. I think it belongs to Andy Grove.- Imitate.
Don’t be shy about it. Try to get as close as you can. You’ll never get all the way, and the separation might be truly remarkable. We have only to look to Richard Hamilton and his version of Marcel Duchamp’s large glass to see how rich, discredited, and underused imitation is as a technique.- Scat.
When you forget the words, do what Ella did: make up something else … but not words.- Break it, stretch it, bend it, crush it, crack it, fold it.
- Explore the other edge.
Great liberty exists when we avoid trying to run with the technological pack. We can’t find the leading edge because it’s trampled underfoot. Try using old-tech equipment made obsolete by an economic cycle but still rich with potential.- Coffee breaks, cab rides, green rooms.
Real growth often happens outside of where we intend it to, in the interstitial spaces — what Dr. Seuss calls “the waiting place.” Hans Ulrich Obrist once organized a science and art conference with all of the infrastructure of a conference — the parties, chats, lunches, airport arrivals — but with no actual conference. Apparently it was hugely successful and spawned many ongoing collaborations.- Avoid fields.
Jump fences. Disciplinary boundaries and regulatory regimes are attempts to control the wilding of creative life. They are often understandable efforts to order what are manifold, complex, evolutionary processes. Our job is to jump the fences and cross the fields.- Laugh.
People visiting the studio often comment on how much we laugh. Since I’ve become aware of this, I use it as a barometer of how comfortably we are expressing ourselves.- Remember.
Growth is only possible as a product of history. Without memory, innovation is merely novelty. History gives growth a direction. But a memory is never perfect. Every memory is a degraded or composite image of a previous moment or event. That’s what makes us aware of its quality as a past and not a present. It means that every memory is new, a partial construct different from its source, and, as such, a potential for growth itself.- Power to the people.
Play can only happen when people feel they have control over their lives. We can’t be free agents if we’re not free.
I share it, because I do care 4.
Federico
The Main Failing Of Design School: Kids Can’t Think For Themselves | Co.Design: business + innovation + design
The Main Failing Of Design School: Kids Can’t Think For Themselves
As Pentagram’s Michael Bierut argues, designers are too often trained to think simply about the design itself, and not what it means or what it’s hoping to accomplish.
The following was Michael Bierut’s first published essay, from 1988, and appears in Seventy-Nine Short Essays on Design.
Graphic designers are lucky. As the people who structure much of the world’s communications, we get to vicariously partake of as many fields of interest as we have clients. In a single day, a designer can talk about real estate with one client, cancer cures with another, and forklift trucks with a third. Imagine how tedious it must be for a dentist who has nothing to do all day but worry about teeth.
The men and women who invented graphic design in America were largely self-taught; they didn’t have the opportunity to go to fully developed specialized design schools, because none existed. Yet somehow these people managed to prosper without four years of Typography, Visual Problem Solving, and Advanced Aesthetics. What they lacked in formal training they made up for with insatiable curiosity not only about art and design, but culture, science, politics, and history.
How can a designer plan an annual report without some knowledge of economics?
Today, most professionals will admit to alarm about the huge and ever-growing number of programs in graphic design. Each year, more and more high school seniors decide that they have a bright future in “graphics,” often without much of an idea of what graphics is. This swelling tide of 18-year-old, would-be designers is swallowed up thirstily by more and more programs in graphic design at art schools, community colleges, and universities. A few years later, out they come, ready to take their places as professional designers, working for what everybody cheerfully hopes will be an infinitely expanding pool of clients.
There are many ways to teach graphic design, and almost any curriculum will defy neat cubbyholing. Nevertheless, American programs seem to fall into two broad categories: process schools and portfolio schools. Or, if you prefer, “Swiss” schools and “slick” schools.
Some of Bierut’s work for Saks Fifth AvenueProcess schools favor a form-driven problem-solving approach. The first assignments are simple exercises: drawing letterforms, “translating” three-dimensional objects into idealized high-contrast images, and basic still-life photography. In the intermediate stages, the formal exercises are combined in different ways: Relate the drawing of a flute to the hand-drawn letter N; combine the letter N with a photograph of a ballet slipper. In the final stage, these combinations are turned into “real” graphic design: Letter N plus flute drawing plus ballet slipper photo plus 42-point Univers equals, voilà, a poster for Rudolf Nureyev. Of course, if the advanced student gets an assignment to design a poster for, say, an exhibition on Thomas Edison, he or she is tempted to (literally) revert to form: Combine the letter E, drawing of a movie camera, photo of a light bulb, etc. One way or another, the process schools trace their lineage back to the advanced program of the Kunstgewerbeschule in Basel, Switzerland. Sometimes the instructors experienced the program only second or third hand, having themselves studied with someone who studied with someone in Basel.
The Swiss-style process schools seem to have thrived largely as a reaction against the perceived “slickness” of the portfolio schools. While the former have been around in force for only the past 15 years or so, the latter are homegrown institutions with roots in the 1950s.
While the unspoken goal of the process school is to duplicate the idealized black-and-white boot camp regimen of far-off Switzerland, the portfolio school has a completely different, admittedly more mercenary, aim: to provide students with polished “books” that will get them good jobs upon graduation. The problem-solving mode is conceptual, with a bias for appealing, memorable, populist imagery. The product, not process, is king. Now, portfolio schools will rebut this by pointing to the copious tissue layouts that often supplement the awesomely slick work in their graduates’ portfolios. Nonetheless, at the end of the line of tissues is always a beautifully propped photograph of an immaculate mock-up of a perfume bottle. Seldom will portfolio schools encourage students to spend six months on a 20-part structural analysis of, say, the semiotics of a Campbell’s soup label as an end in itself. Unlike the full-time teachers of process schools, the portfolio schools are staffed largely by working professionals who teach part time, who are impatient with idle exercises that don’t relate to the “real world.”
However politely the two camps behave in discussions on design education, the fact is, they hate each other. To the portfolio schools, the “Swiss” method is hermetic, arcane, and meaningless to the general public. To the process schools, the “slick” method is distastefully commercial, shallow, and derivative.
A masterpiece of analytic thinking, Massimo Vignelli’s Subway Map from 1972Oddly, though, the best-trained graduates of either camp are equally sought after by employers. East Coast corporate identity firms love the process school graduates; anyone who’s spent six months combining a letterform and a ballet shoe won’t mind being mired in a fat standards manual for three years. On the other hand, package design firms are happy to get the portfolio school graduates; not only do they have a real passion for tighter-than-tight comps, but they can generate hundreds of stylistically diverse alternatives to show indecisive clients.
What, then, is wrong with graphic design education? If there’s a smorgasbord of pedagogical approaches, and employers who can find use for different kinds of training, who suffers? The answer is not in how schools are different, but how they’re the same.
Both process schools and portfolio schools have something in common: Whether the project is the esoteric Nureyev poster or the Bloomingdale’s-ready perfume bottle comp, what’s valued is the way graphic design looks, not what it means. Programs will pay lip service to meaning in design with references to “semiotics” (Swiss) or “conceptual problem solving” (slick), but these nuances are applied in a cultural vacuum. In many programs, if not most, it’s possible to study graphic design for four years without any meaningful exposure to the fine arts, literature, science, history, politics, or any of the other disciplines that unite us in a common culture.
Well, so what? What does a graphic designer need with this other stuff? Employers want trained designers, not writers and economists.
Perhaps the deficiencies in the typical design education aren’t handicaps at first. The new graduate doesn’t need to know economics any more than a plumber does; like a tradesman, he or she needs skills that are, for the most part, technical.
But five or 10 years down the road, how can a designer plan an annual report without some knowledge of economics? Layout a book without an interest in, if not a passion for, literature? Design a logo for a high-tech company without some familiarity with science?
Obviously, they can and do. Some designers fill in their educational gaps as they go along; some just fake it. But most of the mediocre design today comes from designers who are faithfully doing as they were taught in school: they worship at the altar of the visual.
The pioneering design work of the 1940s and 1950s continues to interest and excite us while work from the intervening years looks more and more dated and irrelevant. Without the benefit of intensive specialized programs, the pioneers of our profession, by necessity, became well-rounded intellectually. Their work draws its power from deep in the culture of their times.
Bruce Mau Design’s logo for Canada’s leading design school, OCAD, required serious thought about the school’s role in students’ lives.Modern design education, on the other hand, is essentially value-free: every problem has a purely visual solution that exists outside any cultural context. Some of the most tragic victims of this attitude hail not from the world of high culture, but from the low. Witness the case of a soft-drink manufacturer that pays a respected design firm a lot of money to “update” a classic logo. The product of American design education responds: “Clean up an old logo? You bet,” and goes right to it. In a vacuum that excludes popular as well as high culture, the meaning of the mark in its culture is disregarded. Why not just say no? The option isn’t considered.
Our clients usually are not other designers; they sell real estate, cure cancer, make forklift trucks. Nor are there many designers in the audiences our work eventually finds. They must be touched with communication that is genuinely resonant, not self-referential. To find the language for that, one must look beyond Manfred Maier’s Principles of Design or the last Communication Arts Design Annual.
Nowadays, the passion of design educators seems to be technology; they fear that computer illiteracy will handicap their graduates. But it’s the broader kind of illiteracy that’s more profoundly troubling. Until educators find a way to expose their students to a meaningful range of culture, graduates will continue to speak in languages that only their classmates understand. And designers, more and more, will end up talking to themselves.
This essay was excerpted from Seventy-Nine Short Essays on Design (Princeton Architectural Press) now out in paperback. Buy a copy for $16 on Amazon.
[Top image: Christopher Meder/Shutterstock]
Michael Bierut
Michael Bierut is a partner in the New York office of the design consultancy Pentagram and is president emeritus of the American Institute of Graphic Arts. … Continued
An expression of my thoughts about design
By Federico Hernandez-Ruiz
Federico Hernández Ruiz 
