One of the most interesting aspects of this conference was its format. The goal was to increase the interaction among the attendees, and to facilitate discussions with the speakers. After making it through the grueling Saturday schedule, I have to say it went off brilliantly.

The conference was keyed on the concept of a day long design charrette. We were all assigned to groups of 60 people, each named for Memphis rooted musical talents. (I was a member of "Tina Turner" and no, there was no "Team Ike.") Each large group was broken into smaller teams of 8-10 attendees; a mix of students and professionals.

The topic that the charrette was centered around dealt with the international sending and receiving of packages: a topic that is both very vague, and very open ended...

As you can imagine, with a general theme such as this, the possiblities were endless. Each group rotated through 6, 50-minute breakout workshops focused on things like materials and processes, trends, research, and creativity. Each workshop was led by a specialist in their respective field.

It was a great experience working with students and professionals from across the country. And without sounding too cliche I'll say that it broke out of the stagnant paradigm that tends to be the normal operative structure of these conferences. Taking a more active role in the weekend's events was a welcome change.

Summarizing a designers' conference is a little like describing political leanings in Ohio: for every generalization you make, there's a counter-example or a diametrically opposed opinion. This is what makes the panel discussions such good fun. You get well formulated opinions, followed by dissent, followed by some genuine hashing out of the issue.

So when a group of designers agree on something, it's noteworthy; when several speakers independently bring up the same idea several times, it's downright archival. Here are a few of the notably consistent conclusions that arose from the past three days.

The All-Outsourced Design + Manufacturing Package
A dozen countries eager to move the whole product development process to their home field are cranking out really smart kids who can sketch, render, style and model as well as the most brilliant guy in your studio. In a few more years, lending that extra bit of aesthetic shine to an existing commodity product will be the least profitable game in American design.

De-Commodification
Everyone seems to agree that this is the only way forward. People still buy German cars and Italian clothes at a premium because they are distinguishable. If you design something that doesn't stand out from the crowd, you won't for long.

The Experience, Not The Product
If it's just a product, they'll buy the cheapest one. If it's a product that creates meaning, they might not.

The Multi-Functional Team
With good product relying ever more heavily on integrating a wide range of technologies, good product design relies on a wide range of expertise. Learning how to communicate with everyone in the team and know their limitations and capabilities is one of the most important, least emphasized skills a designer can have.

More Women, Thank God
Several speakers pointed out the foolishness in trying to design for a group about which you know very little. A couple specifically mentioned that women in most countries typically make the majority of purchasing decisions, and the fact that design continues to be a male-dominated field is a liability. So it's encouraging to note that 8 of the 11 student representatives vying for the Merit Award this year were female.

In the early afternoon we all pile into the auditorium for a Karim webcast via the Midwest Conference in Urbana-Champaign. This is already blogged by Ko, but since it is Mr. Rashid speaking I can't help but add in my 2 cents in here...

In attempting to succinctly convey the subject matter of Karim's talk, the thing that comes to mind is that I have no idea what the hell he was talking about. Although, the one thing that is apparent is that I do know he was not talking about enduring design.

In trying to structure a blog on this talk and make some sense of his story, I take notes. But just as he says he is going to talk about/explain one thing he jumps to a completely tangential topic. He seemed to begin many thoughts, and then not finish them. His talk was scattered, to say the least. And nothing he said was in any way insightful or novel.

He begun with a failed attempt to define design, went on to discuss consumption (unsuccessfully), said he would come back to consumption, and never did as far as I could tell.

Here's some stuff i took from the talk:

inspiration.
what inspires him in terms of the world in which we live?
- "materials"
- "digital tools that allow new forms of decoration"
- "the way we produce goods"

design of the time.
If he were to live in the future he would want to know what 2005 was really like? "What denotes the time in which we live?" "Not Plaid" - he says. It was clear that he does NOT think plaid defines our time - I think he is right about this one.

globalization is happening.
He thinks that our world is shrinking... "What will differentiate what gets produced in one country from another?"

we need differentiation.
"How will we differentiate ourselves?" within the global marketplace.

the casual age.
He thinks we are living in "the casual age". (perhaps he is living in the casual age, as he makes $10,000 for an hour long talk that sucks. I think if this were true for me, I'd be living in the casual age too). "It is important to me (him). It is now here. What is it? A world that is more relaxed and seemless. A world where you have more time to think and participate in culture." (I am skeptical that he knows what culture means.)

customization is happening.
"Mass production and non-serialization - the digital craft"
Instead of creating the same object - how can we create 'craft' (one-offs) with mass production techniques? "We can begin to create very, very diverse things."

some other good quotes:
"designocracy movement."
"the one language we have globally is the binary language ...a language of 0's and 1's."
"I would like to live in a life with less and less obstacles."
"... the technology is very seamless... this is what I desire."
"He believes that design is about shaping the contemporary world that we live in."

In commenting on his relevance to enduring design... Eames had a good quote last night that stated Charles Eames philosophy on design: "The degree to which one has a style, is the degree to which one has NOT solved the design problem." I would enjoy hearing Karim's response to this comment.

I think Karim should stick to his blobjects, and leave philosophical blather to better-read, more-articulate members of the design community.

[Editor: Watch the streamed webcast here.]

The afternoon begins with a panel debate on the driving influences of design with respect to practice vs academia --- Who is leading the design profession?

The postitions are as follows:
Representing Practice
(Matthew Woodruff, Adrian Van Wijk, Tony Gellion)
... takes the position that practice drives the changes in methodologies and processes and that educational institutions merely respond to the demand from the profession.

Representing Education
(Tim Antoniuk, Roger Griffiths, Ron Kemnitzer)
... contends that the institutions spark the debate and provide the climate where these innovative ideas get tested and that it is the graduates going out into practice that help create the necessary changes in the practice.

Some of the various arguments from the panelists:
"Industry is reactive." - Roger
"Academics can think more broadly and innovatively. Social and ecological concerns can take precedent." - Tim
"There is no doubt that the driving force behind change is profit." - Roger
"Designers need to think within the constraints of industry." - Matt
"Can a recent design graduate come in and do the work that needs to get done?" - Tony
"Change needs to be affected from within (the practice)." - Tony
"Education prepares students for their career, and for their future." - Ron
"When do designers ever stop being students?" - Ron

I find it interesting that we are sitting here debating about who is leading the profession, and positioning one in opposition to the other. It is obvious to me that both education and practice bring valuable skills and thinking to the table - each brings valuable, necessary, and differing insights/perspectives. To me, it seems like a more productive discussion would be "what are the strengths of each and how can we leverage this in order to advance the profession?" A more productive discussion to have, I believe -- this does come up in the many questions from the field... and Ron does end with a good quote regarding the overlap of the two "we need to find common ground."

Comments anyone ... on how we can all get along?

The first presentation of the day is by Stuart Walker, Professor and Associate Dean at the University of Calgary’s Faculty of Environmental Design. While his research looks at sustainable product design, his talk looks more specifically at enduring objects, their characteristics, and what we can learn/use from them. He presents objects that have existed for thousands of years -- objects such as pottery, tools, jewelry, statues – spanning diverse cultures and crossing the boundaries of time, culture, language and religion. His thesis is that such objects are non-trivial (comparatively to many of the trivial objects made today), and therefore enduring (!).

He (interestingly) divided his talk into the following framework:

inspirational / spiritual objects
objects such as: religious items, fine arts, sculpture
ideas such as: Symbolism, allusion, representation, sacred, profound

social / positional objects
objects such as: jewelry, make-up, identity items
related concepts: symbolism, status and social standing, decoration, taste, fashions, identity

functional objects (fulfills a human need.)
objects such as: tools, weapons, pottery,
related concepts: utility, usefulness, comprehension, safety, technology

CONCLUDING...
Sustainable product design is a function of:
- surpassing social/positional transience
- imbuing objects with inspirational /spiritual qualities
to create a meaningful material culture.

The morning panel of celebrity design objects was a huge success.
Eclectic. Comfy. But when do I get to try them out?
Thanks Knoll!

A frank panel on using your portfolio to get a foot in the door, featuring an HR expert, a recruiter (or more accurately "THE recruiter" in ID), and three potential bosses. Some disagreement around the details, but the central message was the same across the board.

THE SHORT VERSION: If you're Shaq O'Neill, you don't need to know how to hit your free throws. But if you aren't a Shaq, you'd better master the basics.

THE HARD TRUTH: Desirable employers get 100 portfolios a month. More often than not they are looking for a reason to screen you out, not in. So don't make any easy mistakes.

STANDING OUT IN A DIGITAL WORLD: Use physical mail—a thank you card, a paper portfolio rather than email or cd.

OTHER POINTS THAT CAN"T BE STRESSED ENOUGH:
* Research the corporate culture of the company you are sending a resume/portfolio to. Ask about dress code, office size, etc. before you interview.
* Put your name on every page (digital or physical)
* Process, Process, Process. Sketching is the day-to-day lifeblood of ID, not flashy rendering.
* Persistence pays off.
* Energy, enthusiasm and passion should come through in your presentation. This is fun, folks!

Finally, a surprise (for me): Reviewers often like to sit back and let the student walk through the portfolio orally while they look at the images. Be prepared, concise and enthusiastic, then let the reviewer ask you follow-up questions.

left to right: Patrick Rae (Moderator), Chair of IDSA Philadelphia; Mario Turchi, Co-founder, Ion Design; Kevin Young, Principal, Continuum; RitaSue Siegel, President RitaSue Siegel Resources; Janet Villano, Industrial Designer, Rockwell Group; Sharon LaBella, Human Resources Manager, ChaseDesign

(Update 4/12- corrected order of names in photo. Thanks for the tip Arjun Joseph)

Five start-up design firms out of Pratt Institute met in a panel discussion on taking the independent path to a design career.

My pics of the event were weak so here are some pictures of their work (except Dan and Kiel—where the $#%@ is your webpage?)

upper row, left to right: The Design Can (Jeanie Choe & Steve Tomlinson), Dan Alexander & Kiel Mead, Eenamaria (Sarah Morgan)
lower row, left to right: 54dean (Todd Seidman & Paul Galli), [Make] (Scott Lundberg)

Everyone stressed the supportive community of fellow designers that serves as a sounding board and provides advice and inspiration, which sounds like a great and possibly unique feature of the industrial design world.

Lessons learned (and shared) included being open to happy mistakes and flexible enough to work within a transitional business model, developing a collaborative approach that works for you (whether with partners or employees) to make more powerful concepts, and learning to be very social as a means to build contacts.

In the first session, moderator Peter Barna, Provost of Pratt Institute, and audience members commented on the focus on craft and home items, noting the absence of digital products and large-scale manufacture. One of the reasons is the scale of a start-up doesn't lend itself to mass production, even when such is the ultimate goal. Several participants discussed the joys of working in products they feel passionate about, even as they kept day jobs in order to fund their businesses.

The workshop on sensory experience in environment design turned into jovial mayhem as Tim Kelly of Blue Sky Exhibits demonstrated the power of sight, sound and touch to develop a mood and create emotions. The overall atmosphere of whimsy created by soap bubbles and noisemakers resonated well with the mostly student audience and created a nice counterpoint to the deadly seriousness of portfolio review and jobhunting.

The key point of the session was to watch out for mixed messages among the sensory factors in a design. Tim defined the differing approaches to environment design and product design by saying that "the user touches a product but an environment touches the user." Personally, I think that employing this environmental approach in product design, thinking about how a product touches the user rather than vice versa, would serve to enhance the emotional impact of product design as well.

Rather than the expected museum exhibit or theme park examples, Tim used samples of his trade show exhibits to demonstrate how to apply sensory experience to a marketing environment.

Tim Kelly, Blue Sky Exhibits

Lauren Schwartz and Monica Granfield have both done an awful lot of interface design, for some companies you might have heard of. Mostly Microsoft. And they like designers...they really do. Enough so that they were willing to come and chat with a roomfull of them just before lunch today, about some strengths and some "opportunities" (read - things that annoy them) they see with designers in technical industries.

Now, they did give a list of PowerPoint bullets, identifying some skills they wish more designers had, but I'm not going to list that here. They're words like "Leadership" and "Diversity" and other terms that could be construed a hundred ways.

The upshot of the whole thing is that the more a designer knows about the process they're designing for, and the more they understand what the other team members are doing, the more effective they'll be. Pretty level-headed stuff, backed up by plenty of examples.

The phrase that sticks out for me is "This is my vision" -- something I've heard from plenty of designers' mouths, and something that, for some reason, irritates non-designers. In fact, this is the crux of the cross-functional team's biggest problem. While product development is increasingly done with such multi-skilled groups, very little is taught in design schools about communicating and negotiating with non-designers, and yet it's something that happens every day in the real world.

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.

Check back beginning April 1 to see ongoing coverage from the five IDSA District Conferences.