Tomorrow, Tuesday Sept. 27th, Core77 welcomes Oved Valadez, David Thorpe and Tom Lakovic of INDUSTRY for our bi-weekly creative speaker series: The Hand-Eye Supply Curiosity Club hosted at the Hand-Eye Supply store in Portland, OR. INDUSTRY is a collective of creators, designers, thinkers and makers in Portland, Oregon that have joined together to form a new design and innovation company. Their talk is entitled "A Change In Trade: Why the Linear and Prescriptive Innovation Process is No Longer Relevant in a Digital World."
In anticipation of tomorrow night's presentation, we came up with a few queries for our speakers to get an insight in to their work.
Hand-Eye Supply: In your talk you will be discussing a "Change In Trade"—shifting strategies in the design process to adapt. What are the major catalysts behind these changes? Are they specific to design or does it impact across all trades?
INDUSTRY: During the Industrial Revolution, the way things were designed and made went through a radical shift. It defined a new meaning for the word "industry." We believe that the world is experiencing another one of those major shifts, from the Industrial Age to the Digital Age and beyond. We have never been this globally connected. There has never been this much transparency. The pace of change has never been this rapid.
These larger cultural and technological trends have brought about an idea revolution. We are in a time that as a brand (new or old) you need to innovate or break. The new competition are kids creating "apps" in their basements. New, free experiences are being created for consumers instead of Super Bowl ads. Companies are launching products and then quickly add or remove features based on consumer feedback.The field of design needs to embrace this rapid and continuous creation of true value for the consumer, rather than a focus on inward-facing, self-serving innovation processes. This is requiring designers to rethink the way they invent, design, manufacture and launch innovations. It is requiring a change in trade.
Can you speak about the evolution of your processes as designers mentioning specific milestones (past and forthcoming)?
From working at big agencies and with large corporate brands across a broad range of design challenges, we realized that there is no blueprint for great design and innovation. The reality is that no one knows for sure. The best you can do is to be able to understand the complexity of the design challenge you are presented with and then be as adaptive and agile as you can to launch an innovation into the market.
We are on the tail-end of the era of "design thinking"—an era of budget and schedule-busting innovation, research and strategy processes. These cookie-cutter methods only clutter our world with conventional, incremental ideas. Unfortunately, most organizations have tried to mimic this linear process that feels safe, understandable and quantifiable, but the result is a struggle to break market conventions.
We were at a time in our careers where wanted to step out of the traditional world of design and structure a firm that could work in a different way to try and achieve an exceptional result more often; to try and rapidly deliver real, tangible value for brands and the consumers they serve.
Are there any specific tools that you consistently use in your work? Are there any rare, unique or otherwise specialized tools that you find indispensable?
There are three things that are core to our approach:
First is having the right people around you that know how to work together. This means having a diverse skill set with an appreciation of how to work as an integrated team and to avoid being placed in the traditional silos of design. This is the new collaboration.
Second is having the right space. People underestimate the role of the studio space in the creative process. Space becomes even more important to solve complex problems when you collaborate across design disciplines.
Third is prototyping. It is at the foundation of everything we do. If we argue about something for more than 5 minutes, then we prototype both to make a decision, instead of arguing about it for the rest of the hour. Prototype the crap out of everything at every level.
Please share with us five things you never leave home without and why. 1. A conviction and passion to make: Always having the designer lens on to see opportunities and inspiration to make change where ever you go. 2. Klein tool bag (wink, wink): Carries our daily tools. 3. TDK ST700 headphones: The soul needs music to create. 4. Moleskin sketchbook: Still the best way to capture any nugget of an idea. 5. Feltbags case: A we love our smartphone case/wallet made of felt.
Are there any resources or links you'd like to share?
Stop by tomorrow Tuesday, Sept. 27th at the Hand-Eye Supply store in Portland at 6PM PST or watch it online at our UStream channel.
Create a Core77 Account
Already have an account? Sign In
By creating a Core77 account you confirm that you accept the Terms of Use
Please enter your email and we will send an email to reset your password.