Thanks to graduationg senior Eric Whewell, we got ourselves a tour of the CIA Industrial Design Studios. The studios are large, open, and have tons of pinup space for displaying all the superb work.

One of the biggest winners of the conference was Apple. You wouldn't believe the amount of coverage they had. I decided to keep a running total of the times Apple, or one of its products came up in lectures and discussions. There were 12 speakers total, and 9 of them worked at least one Apple reference into their presentations. I wish I had the final tally for you, but I honestly lost track somewhere around #24. And if I were to include the images present in the Merit Award presentations, that number would have been higher. I don't doubt the company's influence, but the constant references are becoming rather cliche. It was kind of a letdown that a community full of idea generators and free thinkers coundn't come up with more original reference material.

I'm hoping this spurs some discussion on the comment section. You've got a few days to weigh in before the wave of IDSA conferences begins at the end of the week.

What do think of this Apple-a-day world we're living in?

Matt Miller (the guy wearing the tiara) picks up some bling downtown at a Cleveland hotspot. I'm sure his coworkers will be loving this.

And moving on to represent the Mideast Region at the IDSA National Conference: CIA's Michel Alvarez! Mich's winnings include a 1-year membership in the IDSA, roundtrip travel and accommodations to the National Conference in Washington D.C. August 24-27, and a lifetime supply of...guys with letters on their chests!

Introducing the newest crop of top notch talent primed to turn the design world on edge. From left to right, this year's Mideast Regional School Merit Award Winners:

Bill Bernstein - Carnegie Mellon
Sugandh Goel - Columbus College of Art & Design
Mark Spoelhof - Kendall College of Art & Design
Kirsten Climer - University of Michigan
Sun-Jan Huang - The Ohio State Univerity
Tony Trentacosti - College for Creative Studies
Ben Purrenhage - Western Michigan University
Brandon Lynne - University of Cincinnati
Michel Alvarez - Cleveland Institute of Art

NOTE - I haven't recieved the contact info from of all the Merit Award Winners yet, I'll update them as they come in...

Kudos to Paul Magee for his great job MCing and organizing the conference.

This is for the Car Lovers out there. Aaron started of by talking about the concept car and its place in car production, giving the audience a much better understanding of what a concept car is, and what it is for. Things got cool when he presented the Jeep Hurricane concept car.

This thing was designed to be the Ultimate Jeep.
Its got:

1. twin Hemi power plants
   
2. zero spin steering (all the wheels can rotate inward 45° to allow the Hurricane to spin around its center
   
3. crab steering (all the wheels can rotate in unison, allowing the Hurricane to move sideways or any other direction
   
4. 700 HP
   
5. A very light frame constructed out of space age materials

This is the Ultimate Jeep. There was one sticky concern, which, thankfully was vocalized during the question and answer period: What's the gas Mileage? Why isn't Jeep pursuing concept cars that are Green?

To their credit, Aaron did show a concept Jeep called the Treo from a few years back that ran on fuel cells. He also admitted that Jeep has no choice but to pursue Green technologies in the future.

Two words can sum up the lunch experience today: tiramisu cake.

Based on the evidence gathered here at the Mideast Conference, I've come to the conclusion that the historically male dominated field of ID is in for some overdue changes in the coming years. How do I know this? There is a line out the door for the women's restroom. I don't think I need to say any more. Much thanks to Lindsay from OSU for the insider info...I swear I'm not eerily keeping watch over these kinds of things. Honest.

Robert hasn't given another lecture, but I'm weighing in with a little more info and my take on things as bonus coverage to what Yanni posted earlier...

Brunner says that going with the flow is not failure, it's just reality. That's not to say things can't, and won't change, it's just that change takes time. Design means something different to each company's culture. He says that in order to find out how to move forward, you have to ask yourself, and your clients these questions:

Where did the company come from?
How did it start?
What are the core competencies?
Whay and how has it been successful?
What is valued most?
How is design perceived?
What is considered blasphemy or failure?
Who's opinions really count?
What are people rewarded for?

If you can ask yourself these questions regarding your clients, you will be able to address their needs. He makes comparisons to Dell and Apple, showing how these corporations operate in totally differnt markets, and are trying to reach totally different consumer mindsets. To put it simply, what works for an Apple product, will not meet the needs of a Dell product.

Bruce is an inspiration.
He covered so much ground that I may miss a number of his points. To start, he makes it very clear that there are huge opportunities for designers. The state of the world economy right now requires risk, innovation and good design.

The points that really stuck.
1) The global design market is leading to a homogeneity of design. Do not try to compete in this market; diversity is key. It brings depth to life. Conclusion: design for a regional audience. Understand them, and make things solely for a specific location.

2) Do not fear Globalization. It will change how we do business, and it generates huge opportunities. These opportunities create room for designers, because designers innovate and take risk.

3) In the future, corporations will have a Chief Design Officer.

4) We should support China and help them succeed. (The trick is to make sure everyone in the world can be successful.) As China succeeds and attains more wealth, they will consume more, and open opportunities as a new large market.

There was a lot more, but leaving his talk it was clear that the future needs good designers who are willing to innovate, think globally and locally, and take risks.

The future for designers is bright.

Dan went from being a Director of Design to Chair of the Industrial Design Department at the Cleveland Institute of Art.

Why did he make this change? Because he loves design and was tired of the poor quality of design students coming out of American ID programs.

His focus:
Develop Knowledge supported by skills.

Prepare students to work at the highest level within their field of choice.

Have students engage in the community and take leadership roles.

Design is about creativity and innovation, which is teachable.

I am most impressed by the idea that design (and art) is a knowledge based endeavor. Training of Industrial Designers should focus on their ability to think and what they know. Granted, these have to be coupled to skills, but skill is there to express thought.

He has already started to implement this thinking at CIA's Industrial Design program. The success he and his students have already had are a strong indication that his thinking and message is dead on.

How do you know you are at a design conference?

The audience is full of people who listen AND sketch new ideas in their sketch books.

Chris Rockwell gave an insightful talk on how to successfully use Design Research.

I like his point that Design research is replacing Market research, and that Designers need to have closer access to the consumer and the end user of his products.

He also answered questions on ethics like a pro.

All in all, he was very insightful about a successful Design research process, and how to work within existing corporate culture.

Oh, and he understands the use of good video clips. His COPS knock off to demonstrate a design research results was a crowd favorite.

Anne is the Access Technology Director for the National Federation for the Blind.

Pure and simple, I was very impressed by Anne.

So far, she has had the best presentation. Here is a small blind woman, who through the power of her voice, her passion, and her sense of humor kept the audience engaged.

Anne talked about the Moral Responsibility of Technology Developers

Her main points:
1) the current state of technology should support better accessibility for the blind.
2) Inventions specifically for the blind have already changed the world.
a) the Typewriter
b) Optical Character Recognition
c) flatbed scanners
d) text-to-speech
e) First PDA is in brail
3) It is an economically viable thing to do. As our population ages, there will be more and more people with visual impairments.
4) If you are going to design with the blind in mind, involve blind people as early as possible.

Anne is clearly someone who cares about helping people, and she inspired the audience with her passion. (And with facts that logically support her passion.)

Automblox is the invention of Patrick Callelo.
http://www.automoblox.com

Damn these things look cool. I'm glad there are people like Patrick out there who are making cool things for kids. I'm also glad that people like Patrick are willing to give their time and share the lessons they have learned from their experiences.

In the end, he boiled it all down to the following lessons: (Given to him by someone else)

the 3 rules of success

1. be smart
   
2. be motivated
   
3. bring things to COMPLETION
   

Robert spoke about crossing the cultural gap. It wasn't what I expected: when people speak of culture, generally they discuss other countries and other habits. But Robert spoke about having to work with corporations and crossing over into other cultures.

His main points:
- If you are going to be successful in working with a client, learn to understand their culture; work through that understanding
- Going with the flow=failure
- Changing culture requires working with a lot of people (if you want to make the change fast)
- Inevitably though, changing culture is a very, very slow process
- Changing culture is always painful

He then when into a long breakdown of the difference between Apple and Dell cultures; you can imagine the rest.

The question I'm left with: Am interested in being someone who changes and affects culture, or do I want to be someone who goes with the flow?

continued...

Some post-conference unwinding took place at the nearby...well, the name escapes me. As soon as someone emails me with the info, I'll fix this post. Needless to say, good times were had. Students from the Kendall College of Art & Design and The Ohio State University were on tap to duke it out across 8 foot tables covered in green felt. Notice I made sure to include the "The" in that last sentence. I know those OSU people get all touchy about that. I'm kidding, of course. Not. Seriously though, everyone I talked to was way cooler than I remember being when I was in college. I know I talked with some University of Michigan kids earlier in the day, but they were MIA, as were the local CIA students. Saturday night is already shaping up to be something special though. For now, these debauchery-free shots will have to do...

UPDATE - The bar was called The House of Cues

Dale Murray, Professor of Industrial Design from the University of Cincinnati, led a breakout discussion session focusing on Sustainable Product Design and Development. Because of the 30 minute time constraints general concepts were discussed rather than specific problems, but the topic seemed to pique the interest of the group. One of the issues that was touched upon was that Americans don't take green design seriously. Because we have vast amounts of land that can be set aside for waste disposal, we don't have to deal with the refuse we generate every day. Until it directly affects our lives, we may not see a change in policy, not only at the governmental level, but on the individual's level as well. "Out of sight, out of mind" never seemed more appropriate.

Um, my computer crashed as I was saving my last post, leaving me with nothing to salvage. Minor hiccup to the day's events...I'm running out of hours to get some rest...it's an early start tomorrow with student portfolio reviews at 7am. With that said the next few posts will be brief...

With the conference's focus on Design Business, it was appropriate that the first speaker of the day was Bill Taylor, a great businessman himself, and President of the full service design consultancy, Kaleidoscope. It was refreshing to listen to a "non-designer" talk about the design biz. He makes a believer out of you when he speaks. He treats his clients as partners, and expects the same relationship out of them in return. He also looks at the much talked about Chinese ODM's as an great opportunity, not as the imminent threat that so many designers believe them to be. Perhaps the aspect that I enjoyed the most though, was that he wasn't up there selling himself, or Kaleidoscope, or a new book...he was just sharing his experiences and the choices he and Kaleidoscope have made in order to get to where they are today.

Apologies for the lack of a picture of Bill, the lighting in these conference rooms is terrible...

On on unrelated note, I find the lack of people sitting in the front row to be an kind of amusing. It doesn't matter how old people get, no one wants to be called on by the teacher...or in this case, the speaker.

While my blogging partner in crime, Yanni, may be biased, I am not. I normally hate anyone under the age of 25 who attends art school in Cleveland. But thanks to their efforts the sign-in table was a silky smooth experienc; Matt, with his name finding know-how, Eric and his calm, cool delivery of the schedule, and Kim, she had 3 colors of markers with which I could write my name. You read that right...3 colors! Brilliant.

After taking a cab out to the Cleveland Institute of Art this morning, I decided that I had missed out on a city's greatest experience: its mass transit system. With some time to kill before lunch and the conference kickoff I found the nearest bus stop to see if I could navigate my way back downtown to the hotel, roughly 6 miles away. Lucky for me the 9X bus driven by Ed (RTA employee for 13 years) was headed straight for it. What luck! With the burden of navigation and bus-hopping out of the way I decided to snap some photos of the trip Westward down picturesque Euclid Avenue.

After the Claxton talk this morning I headed off across the CIA campus to meet up with another blogger covering the conference. The directions I was given were as follows:

"Take a right at the McGehry building, left on Euclid, go past McDonald's, and the building you're looking for is the McCullough."

I didn't realize that there was such a strong Scottish heritage here in Cleveland. I'm pretty sure that the "McGehry" was really a Frank Gehry project though, so maybe it's just a weird coincidence. I can't seem to recall ever seeing Frank Gehry in a kilt...

My first session. Thomas Mulready discusses his creation, Cool Cleveland

Truth is, Thomas is one of the Coolest people in Cleveland. Why? because he really cares about Cleveland. This is a guy, who is really trying to make a positive change in Cleveland. His strategy? Use the web and e-mail, focus on informing people about the positive things going on in Cleveland.

Thomas is not a designer, so, you might ask, why he is talking here. Honestly, I'm not sure why he was chosen, but I'm glad he was.

1. He is not afraid to embrace information technology
   
2. He is really thinking through how to use it.
   
3. He is interested in real information, not flash, bells and whistles.
   
4. He really wants to do something truly good.
   

Just got the conference. Alas, I had to teach so I missed most of the day.

The Cleveland Institute of Art students were most helpful in getting me going. (Note: I am a CIA professor, so I might be biased.)

If you would like to show your gratitude to the helpful students, Go see their Spring Show on April 19, you can view it all day, starting at 9:30am. There is a recption at 7:30 in the evening.

Bruce Claxton, Senior Director of Design Integration at Motorola, spoke to a room full of excited attendees this morning at the Cleveland Institute of Art. It was the first in a series of lectures at the CIA entitled Making Art Work. His presentation centered on creating a model for innovation within companies in order to create "WOW" products. One of the more compelling concepts touched on referred to the "joy" of using a product. Too often we hear of designing for the consumer's "ease of use" in today's design world, but that is a requirement all designs should address. The "joy of use" factor is a powerful differentiator. It's something that can really make a product stand out from the crowd...

If you're in Cleveland, and it's after midnight, and you're jonesing for some good eats, I MUST recommend you put in an order to Rascal House Pizza. Granted, I don't think there were too many options at that hour, but the Pizza ala Greco hit the spot. Much thanks to Shirley from Marriot's At Your Service for the hookup.

Hi all, I'm Yianni. I'm the second person covering the Cleveland conference. Unlike Nate, I live in Cleveland, so it is just a matter of finishing work, jumping in my car and heading to the conference.

Weather in Cleveland has been great the past few days, and it looks nice today. (Granted, it's supposed to get cold tonight and possibly snow tomorrow.)

Like Nate, I will gladly field questions directly. yianni@yessios.com

Okay, so I'm here in Cleveland. After a 3 hour flight to Newark from Fort Lauderdale, and another 1 hour jump from Newark, I have arrived. And it's just a tiny bit windy. And that's a tiny bit of sarcasm. I thought I'd stroll around the downtown area, get the lay of the land, see what I could see, but I decided after about 5 minutes that maybe I'd just snap a photo of the hotel and retreat inside...so here you go. More later.

I'm Nate. I'll be covering the Mideast Conference. If there's anything you readers want to know, drop me a line. My goal is to make this as interactive as possible. Questions can be addressed to me, to a headlining speaker, to your design colleagues who made the trip and left you to do their share of the work on top of what you were already doing...

Send your query, along with your name and location. I've got answers: nate@thenate.com

Cleveland, OH - April 1-3, 2005

Awards are great, but it's not about awards. It's about doing what's best for the bottom line. Good design is about accountability. What is design worth to your company or clients? Are you just making it pretty, or are you solving problems? Design cannot survive without credibility. Design Business is all about giving you something to take back to your desk.