el silencio del diseño - design council

8/9/2019 El silencio del diseo - Design Council

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Silence6 April 2006

of design

the

A personal presentation for the Intersection 07 conference at the Baltic Arts Centre,

Newcastle, October 26, 2007.

Clive Grinyer, Director of Product Design, Orange France Telecom

!Talk by Clive Grinyer, Director of Product Design, FT/Orange, London

!This talk was given to the Intersections conference at the Baltic Arts Centre, Newcastle, as part of the DOTT 07

event. Go to this site to see and hear the main speeches http://northumbria.ac.uk/sd/academic/scd/news/647225

!The notes here are a full transcript of the speech as found on the Design council www designcouncil.org.uk site.


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meet some friends

!I could have called my talk to you today, Heroes and Villains, and People Ive Met, but I decided to call it TheSilence of Design, which puzzled me for a bit as well but I want to talk to you about people, Im going to try and

keep off talking about things, because lets remind ourselves,people are actually, I think, what were really here for.

Sometimes we feel like were the top of the pile of a large number of people behind us, and were trying to make things

work for them. So I wanted to do something a little bit different to what I normally do, which is look at the people


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hithere

!and of course, Im a designer, so I start with myself. But I think its important that you know about me, becauseyouve got to judge. Because then you know whether Im talking bollocks or not, and what my perspective is, and why

I may make sense, or why I may not, so Ive justified introducing myself to you, I hope!


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hiagain

!Yes, its true, I started off as a product designer, made physical stuff, sometimes for really big brands that made crapstuff, like Samsung at the time. Sometimes for fantastic brands, like McLaren, really, really exciting, that only made

either stuff that cost $1 million, or baseball caps and t-shirts. So trying to find a middle ground where you could buy-in

to a brand like McLaren was really, really exciting. You had to make people believe that if they sliced through that

thing, then engine oil would bleed out, that was a lovely design brief. But it was all about things


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hisome more

!But now Im at Orange, and thats a tricky place to be, because its not so much about things, but there are, of course,those things mobile phones, and I love them because everyones got them, theyre much more interesting to me than

computers, or any other electronic equipment that Ive ever designed before. And this was the first phone I had when I

joined Orange about nearly five years ago now. The thing about this phone was; (a) it was really ugly, (b) it had more

technology in it than the entire Apollo moon missions all put together, in that phone, in my pocket, so this was a big

deal. And this was the first time Orange, which of course is a mobile operator, a fantastic brand, but they put up masts

and send you bills most of the time. This was about having a technology platform, having a phone. So yes, it was

really ugly, it took me two weeks to find out how the phonebook worked, it took me two weeks to ring anybody

basically, and I said, thanks guys, you know, I dont think I want to join you anymore, Ill give it back. Then I thought,no, no, it can only get better, because this is such a piece of crap. And I have to, of course, point out that the current

Orange SPV phones are really delightful and wonderful, and Microsoft is a fantastic company who sorted all the

problems out for us.


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hiagain

!So what did I do? Because the problem was, okay, we have Microsoft, but you know, the name on the top of thatphone are the people that actually do it. Its Nokia, its Motorola, its Samsung, its LG, its a load of unheard of

Chinese manufacturers now. But I believed we could do something, we could do something on the user interface. So

now we work with those companies, I create things like that user interface, so that nearly every Orange phone you get,

has a kind of consistent brake on the left, accelerator on the right, you can get to portals, you can get to services, and

then you go into the wonderful richness of Nokia and everybody else. But its a very convoluted industry, its a very

strange industry, so Im not doing the product anymore, Im doing the user interface, but its all the same kind of

thinking.


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nearlythere

!And then Orange went and changed on me, they stopped being a mobile company, they went from mobile intobroadband, they went from being, well lets face it, the UKs favourite mobile company, to the UKs least favourite

broadband supplier, which was a bit of a shock, but thats what happens when brands get lost, and Ill be honest,

Orange gets lost occasionally. But now Im an internet designer, Im telling people how, helping people buy phones,

sort their problems out, all the stuff I learned from product, from user interface, Im now working on, on the internet.


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lastbut one

!And then I go full circle, because finally Orange realise, hey, those things in your hand, they do say something, dontthey, it is important that people can easily get access to the stuff we give them, it is important that they love, and their

personality is expressed by those things, so Im back to being a product designer again, and were going to be launching

a range of Orange mobiles next year, which I think is hugely exciting.


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lastone

!Now our boss is Didier Lombard, now hes French of course, and the programme notes said I live in Paris, I dontanymore, I just came back. Didier is a very political guy, he knows how to run this big France telecom thing, hes good

at keeping people happy. Does he care about design at all? No, not in the slightest bit. Its all about technology, its

about convergence, we still talk about it, were still trying to create it and make it work.

!I work in an organisation that doesnt understand anything I do, if it does understand it, it thinks its about putting the

logo on at the end, and that its something you do right at the end of the process, when all the really important decisions

have all been made, and people come in and say: Hey, weve got two weeks left, would you please do the user

interface thing? Make it Orange, make it the right font, you know, and then well go. I said, you know, you mean a

year and two weeks or do you really mean two weeks? And of course, if its late, its my fault, and the whole thing

goes wrong. I give a big talk called Lipstick on a Pig, which is how I feel about that approach to design.


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myDad

!So now you know me, I want to talk to you about some other people that I know. This is my dad, drinking beerobviously. So my dads a normal guy, regular bloke, in his 70s, okay, he was an engineer. He doesnt really understand

what I do either, hes much closer to Didier Lombard than me.


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myDad

! But now hes old, he goes around the world quite a lot with my mum, and theyve got more money than his parentshad, they can go and travel, but he doesnt like airports, in fact, he really hates airports. And unlike most people of his

generation, he finds them noisy and dangerous places, and he cant hear whats going on. So again, like most people of

his age, he goes to the toilet a lot when he goes to the airport, but he doesnt go to the toilet to go to the toilet, he goes

so he can hear the announcements in the toilet when hes trying to find his way round, and trying to find what plane to

catch.


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myDad

!So hes fascinated by the mobile phone as well, and he realises he needs one. He loves the fact that he can text hisgrandchildren and his children, and communicate with them through this mobile phone. Its a huge technology enabling

him, one of the biggest revolutions in his life, and he was even more delighted when designers, nice people, and

Vodafone, another lovely company, as lovely as Orange, decided to create a phone for him, for people like him,

because they realised that lots of people have mobile phones, they werent using them enough, we werent making

enough money from them. So how can we design a phone, or how can the industry design a phone, that older people

can use? So Vodafone spent a lot of effort, and they worked with a very famous design company, who you will

probably know, Ideo, and its a shame Tims not here actually, but hes not is he? And Im going to do something

really, really bad now that designers really are not very good at doing, and do very rarely, and I almost feel guilty aboutdoing it. But I have to admit to you that this phone is not very simple, it doesnt actually work very well. We poured

all, I say we, the design industry, right minded thinking, they persuaded a phone company to make a phone for older

people. They did a lot of user testing, they used their creativity, and do you know what, it wasnt very good. Nowwhat do we, what happens when we do something, we tell everybody that were good, that were going to solve all

these problems, and this phone wasnt simple, it had the buttons in the wrong place. It had simple terminology,

brilliant, like your battery is full, and youve got a good signal, thats fantastic, but as soon as you got into the phone, it

all fell apart. We wanted to do something well, we dont always do it.


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myDad

And that made him a bit worried about technology, so now hes got to have a digital TV, and he thinks thats greatbecause theres lots of channels, you know, obviously more is better isnt it? And now he goes through hundreds of

channels trying to find stuff. But he has this EPG now, it used to be so easy when he just went up and down, I guess he

can still do that, somehow the remote control is a bit more complicated. He cant really read that anymore, he cant

really see whats on next Wednesday anymore, the newspapers have two pages of stuff he cant read. Hes worried

about digital TV.


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myDad

!And yet hes a clever man. Hes a very, hes an engineer, he could take this car apart, his car, and put it backtogether, and it would work better afterwards. Id have a pile of nuts on the floor at the end of that.


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myDad

!And hes brilliant, you know, hes a clever man, but he cant set up his wi-fi. He lost a weekend of his life on a callto a very nice Indian lady who helped him, wanted to help him so badly, but he wants that weekend back. I had to go,

and I lost two days of my life setting the bloody thing up. But this is his reality, this is what he sees of what, design?


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mywife

!Heres my wife, Janis,


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mywife

!she knows design isnt about him anymore,

!(LLB is a UK TV presenter who created the TV make over show, where people go away for a few days whilst he re-

decorates their houses in Rococo, Minimalist, Sun King, whatever style he decrees. They return after three days, cry in

terror at what he has done and ask for it to be put back as it was.)


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mywife

! she much prefers him, which is, I guess, a step in the right direction

!(KM is the presenter and creator of TV show Grand Designs which documents the usually torid experiences of

people trying to design and build their own, usually modern and usually innovative, homes.)


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mywife

!Design. She teaches, she works, of course, we all work, she teaches at a school. And design at her school was mostlyabout trying to find one of the many designer mums at the school who would be able to scan all the drawings in that the

kids did for the Christmas tea towel. That was the biggest design challenge they had, so they manage to do that every

year.


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mywife

!

But now theyve had the designers in, and they co-created, and they worked out how kids play, and they did nicethings with old tyres and things like that.


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mywife

!

So she understands design now, coming into her life. And shes just had the loos made over, because they had a lotof problems with the loos, they had kids who werent going to the loo all day, and were losing concentration. And that

was because they smelled bad, they didnt want to go there. And they smelled bad because people didnt respect them,

they werent keeping them clean, it wasnt a nice place. So they made them a nice place, design made it a nice place,

design and toilets is a strong theme through all my presentations, but I think its a very effective vehicle for design.


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mywife

!

And then she, as a teacher, she was invited on a day about six months ago, to use this fantastic new internet tool,Teacher Net, which is really sensational. Now all the teachers can come together, and they can compare, they can do

all their, they take a day off, they can have a huge kind of coming together of analysing the schools progress, its a

wonderful thing.


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mywife

!

And they all sat down at 9.00 in the morning, the whole of London schools at least, I think it may even have beenwider than that, and the password didnt work, and they were stuck. So I dont know how many countless teachers

were sitting there looking at this fabulous piece of technology, that was beautifully designed with a really nice green

apple logo, you get that teacher/apple thing going on there. It didnt work, it did not work.


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mywife

!

She was frustrated by that. She reads a lot, she buys books, she uses the internet for buying loads of things, but shedoes buy a lot of books.


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mywife

!

And the books come in nice, big packages, like this.


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mywife

!

However, there is a bit of a problem, because unfortunately we have a front door with a Victoria letterbox, as mostpeople do, that was designed for the module of post that has been used for the last 200 years, which is very slim and

like that, and she does not read The Daily Mail, Im sorry. But you know, her box of Amazon doesnt go through that,

so every Saturday morning, we go off to the Fed Ex, the TNT, the DHL, the Post Office, to get all these wonderful

things weve bought through the great power of the internet, and technology thats allowed to do that. Thats a bit

frustrating too actually.


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mywife

!

And we have lots of remote controls in our house, and she thinks this is my fault, because Im a designer. She said,why dont you just stop designing these things, you know. Isnt it you, you just keep designing plastic stuff dont you?

I try to explain its nothing to do with me, you know, its the companies, those people up there. And she said: Well you

work for them dont you, I mean dont you tell them? No, I dont, they just say, you know, we need to do another

remote control, we need to do another mobile phone, so we have all these things lying around our house now, and that

frustrates you a bit as well.


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mywife

!

And its great, this weekend, the clocks go back, you know, because heh, the thing about technology is you can put aclock in almost everything now, and thats got to be good hasnt it? Great, everywhere you go round the house. So now

the clocks go back, so we get an hour back, which is back, weve just had a week in New York, so a bit tired, and we

get an extra hours sleep. Except when we get up, well then spend that hour weve just gained changing the central

heating clock, the video, the car, all our watches, and weve lost all the instruction books to all our watches, so that

takes a bit longer than that. And then well drive to her mothers, because her mother wont be able to do it, so well

then lose a couple of hours again changing all her clocks. My PC is great, it automatically changes, the technical guys

have sorted it out, but not actually in our lives.


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jean- paul

!

Now heres Jean Paul, now Jean Paul is an engineer, a technical guy from France Telecom, and hes become a goodfriend of mine. I contacted him, and we have a big discussion, because when I worked in Paris, we worked in a big

telephone exchange, and it was converted, and new energy saving stuff came in.


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jean-paul

!

And they put in these fabulous little infra red sensors in all the toilets, so that you dont leave your lights on. Sowhen theres no one around, the lights go off, its great. The trouble is, when you go to the toilet, I told you I like

toilets, you sit there fairly still, fairly still, usually, maybe a little effort, so after a couple of minutes, the light goes out.

Youre then waving. Its somewhere, I think it was there, no, and if youre lucky, you know, you havent made a mess

and the light comes back on.


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jean-paul

!

And I could see why Jean Pierre and his like thought that was a great idea, you know, were saving, technology isdoing something great here, were saving energy, were making it good. But they had no understanding of what that

experience was going to be like on the loo. And Jean Pierre has an English cousin called Bob or somebody, who was

responsible for the thankfully old ticket machine of London Transport, where he felt, and again, he really wanted this

thing to be simple, he knew he had to make things that was, how can you make buying a ticket as simple as possible?

And he knew, and it was obviously a he, that the simplest solution was to have one button for every station. That

surely, engineering mind, thats the simplest thing, isnt it? So we got 450 bloody buttons on that thing, this poor guy

hasnt got a hope of finding West Ham, is that a W or an H? And people with good intentions, often men, but not

always, try to be simple.

!But they miss something, theyre missing the process of course, of course theyre missing the process. But without

that process, this thing we call design, it takes eight years. You know, it takes eight minutes when they install it, and

they realise its crap. It then takes eight years to find investment to get rid of that with a nice new ticket machine, which

are brilliant, because theyve got really nice angled faces now, and its all user interface, and then you go and put your

card in. Oh, except your cards like that, so now you have to do that, so most Londoners appear to be deformed now

around Waterloo, where they have to bend over because theres two different things going on. And nobody thought of

getting a bit of foam, and putting the position on, and trying it out. God, that would have been amazing


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arnaud

!

Jean Pierres son is Arnot, and Arnot is a French designer, and hes the guy we all want, hes the guy Richard wantsright now, I know, because he emailed me last week. He does Flash, he can model, he can produce concepts, hes

really creative and broad minded.


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arnaud

!

Even better, hes not English, hes French, therefore he really understands emotion.


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arnaud

!

Were all with our bloody Jasper Morrison door knobs, the French go crazy, they know about design in emotion, theydont want these bloody apple things with no emotion in them. So that makes him really interesting and valuable, but

of course, he actually does work for Johnny, my mate, Johnny.


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jony

!

I had a design business with Johnny once, and we were poor, we were young, it was great, and now hes richer andfamous, and thats fine.


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jony

!So Johnny needs people like Arnaud, and we all need these little foot soldiers of design, you know, thats our job, we

need those people, we dont care whether necessarily, whether they can go and sort out the problems in school, we

really need people who are very creative, who can go in a studio and create some beautiful shapes. The craftsman side

of design, thats all Johnnys really worried about. He only needs between 10 and 20, thats all he needs, but he finds it

really tough to find them.


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jony

!So thats a problem for him, we know what he does, we know he makes beautiful, beautiful objects, that just delight

and stun us, and create bedlam in Orange when this turns up, and executives running around like headless chickens.

But hang on a minute, just remember that off that image were seeing there, Johnny designed about, what, the rim and

the bit across the bottom, about 7% maybe of that visual image were seeing. Of course, it feels beautiful, but actually

thats a user interface going on there, we all know that, and thats actually what the amazing thing is. But Johnnys

possibly getting a bit worried that all his play things are disappearing to the back of the screen.


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jony

!And of course, hes got an unbelievable boss, a boss who, was it Ideo described him as having a reality suspension

force field around him or something? Where he can make things happen, he can make people do things.


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jony

!But Johnny needs teams of brilliant people, but as I say, not a huge team, but he does need people who are really

going to give him the craftsmanship that he wants to make beautiful things.


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tim

!Now Tim, we know, because you saw him, and I didnt see him, but I can imagine I know what he said. Tim lives in

San Francisco as well, just down the way, I dont think they talk much, Johnny and Tim, but hes been here, and he

realises that, hey, we just cant keep doing that physical design thing, we cant. Design has to be about something else

than just making things look nice, its got to be that, and thats why were here today isnt it?


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tim

!So Tims smart, Tims done the lets make nice things stuff. I think this is a lovely thing he gave the Queen, the

Commonwealth Games baton, I mean. And its beautiful, I mean you hold it, it takes the pulse of the runner, all the

runners, so its like an Olympic flame without being an Olympic flame, but its only a baton with a message from the

Queen. They turned it into something astonishing, so yes, Ideo, they can do that supremely well. And the Queen was

very interested in it, except when she got hold of it, her pulse, it nearly stopped, it was like her pulse was so low, it was

like how healthy can you be? Shes well oiled.


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tim

observation,insight,brainstorming,bodystorming,creativity,modeling,

experience prototyping,emotional engineering,interaction, multidisc-iplinary,multi expert, innovation, service design

!So he knows, you know, theres all this underlying process, this stuff going on with design, that is really interesting,

and you can apply it to lots of other things. So Tim has done that with innovation, theyve trade marked innovation

virtually, and theyve created these processes, and theyve pushed us on this way, away from things to be honest. Its

the opposite of Jonathon, and his gorgeous little seven per cent of the thing that gives you the user interface. Its about

processes, its about a different activity.


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tim

!And hes putting it into a business context, of course, just as much as Johnny is, but hes really selling that process of

design, and hes really doing it.


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tim

!Now before we get too carried away with who put design on the front of Business Week, lets just remember that

cover from a few years earlier when I was leading the Samsung design team.


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tim

!But Tim, he has to do even more than that now, because hell go to Japan, and hell see this recycling centre in

Japan, where theyre ripping apart TVs of even 20 years ago. Oh god, you know, this is a new thing for us, what do we

do, what does Tim do, what do any of us do about sustainability? We can talk about it at conferences, but what

designer is really doing something about eco design? Ive really struggled to see it. It isnt actually Tim at the moment,

Tims company is part of a few good things, they promise to ask their clients whether they really need the shit theyre

designing, another remote control. But Tims got to step up to that mark pretty soon, as indeed do we all.


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bill

!But he pushed that on, he created a whole discipline around ergonomics. It moved into human factors, because he

was doing stuff with the technology, because he was visualising what you could do, you could have those thin little

keyboards that are easy to use, you could use that stuff called double memory and small battery packs that are all lying

round a table, and you have to configure it, and he creates that completely new object.


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bill

!I know theres a bit of argument about whether he did, I believe he did, I think that that is an object that didnt exist

before Bill put that stuff together. He invented new, they used new materials, thats Magnesium die casting, 20 years

before anyone else did it. That could survive a nuclear bomb, probably why Nasa and the military had a bit of money in

that start up. But it was a real, real step change, except there was one bit that was awful on it, and that was the user

interface. The user interface was terrible. They had to design their own user interface, there wasnt a Microsoft, there

wasnt an Apple, just to go and buy off the shelf. Then he realised, oh my god, thats what were doing wrong, now we

need to go there.


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bill

!So again and again, Bill found new things, he didnt wait for permission, he saw what had to be done, and developed

entirely new disciplines to go and answer that. So with interaction, it became about how do we understand that stuff on

the screen, whats the flow through that experience, how do we communicate that, whether thats graphically, through

words, through a whole time sense. And for that, I think, for all those things he did, I think he stands out to me as a

total hero of design. He didnt wait for permission, he didnt wait to be asked, he went in and said: This is what we

need, this is where my skills tell me to go. And I think hearing Richards inspirational speech just now, reminds me of

Bill, and exactly those renaissance people, Bill was always called a renaissance person.


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raymond

!And another interesting guy who I love dearly, but did do something different to Bill, is Raymond Turner. Theres a

whole conference called Raymond in Holland. I dont think he even knows about it, hes not here is he? I ought to

have checked that none of these people were going to be here before I did this. But Raymond is, he did the other thing,

he did the really difficult thing that virtually none of you do. Which he actually went into the company, hes not just a

consultant. And he went into unpromising brands, like Euro Tunnel. Its a tunnel, you know, wheres design there?

Well he put design there, into that whole experience. Where is design in the British airports? Well obviously there

should be a lot, but then you see something like the Heathrow Express, and you understand what a great experience can

be, and its not just about wearing nice purple coats. But I like him as well, because he says things, he challenges us, he

challenges architects. On terminal five, the architects wanted to control the lighting, and he said, no, youll spend yourwhole time lighting the building, a designer will spend the whole time lighting the people. We want the people to be lit,

not the building, and hes right.


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raymond

design is too important to be left to designers

And he said something else, he said design is too important to be left to designers, and what did he mean by that? But I

think hes onto something there, it means that we as designers think that we have to be the people in charge, but it is

much, much more important than that. If its schools, its hospitals, its airlines, its toilets, thats actually something

we all have to be responsible for, and we only have the tools to make it better.


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dick and richard

!Now the lovely Dick and Richard, of course Richard is here, another of my heroes, of course, I have to say that. And

I like Dick because he used to say things like, gang up against the bastards. And I thought, yes, that is what designers

should do.


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dick and richard

!But are they doing that? Well Dick and Richard ganged up against Unilever, but what I love about what they do, is

they understand that, what Richard called emotional ergonomics years ago, maybe still does, how can you make two

bottles of shampoo be so different because of what you know about people? So theres a science there, and theres a

science of emotion, that ability to create emotional icons that really work, and I think theyre at the top of their tree in

terms of that type of design.


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terry

!And Conran, Im amazed how few Conrans there are. Im amazed how many other brands didnt really copy what he

did. But there he is with a very design related business into food and all those other things, and Habitat.


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james

!And then somebody went even further than that, I mean you might argue hes not even a designer, but hes got that

round his neck somewhere, that design innovation thing, and hes certainly gone very large in terms of design. But is hethe only one? He might be the only one, which is a shocking thing.


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norman

!Now this is somebody completely different, this is Norman Lewis, who was the head of research at Wannado and

Orange, and Norman thinks that a lot of what we stand for is a load of rubbish.


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norman

!He loves this thing Web 2.0. He is a champion of emerging behaviour, if you like, the way that technology is being

thrown at society, but in a friendly way. Web 2.0 is different to Web 1. Where Web 1 was, Im not going to do thewhole Tim OReilly definition of Web 2.0, but its a much more human focused bunch of activities. It s much more

about lets put something out there, and watch it change, let people change it. So what is happening is that design is

being done by the very audiences that receive it. Norman really loves that. Hes got loads of guys there who are out,

like radar, sapping up technology, sapping up emerging behaviour, because they feel thats where the futures going to

come from. So these kind of weird looking people are co-creating and deciding what its going to be. Theres no

designer there, you know, Norman is design free.


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norman

!and web 2.0 has generated a lot of interset in companies who see a way to connect to people in a newer, fresher

way. The techniques of co-creation, a core part of Web 2.0, is increasingly used as a source, even a replacement fordesign. After all, what could be better than getting your customer to design what they want, surely they cant be wrong?


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norman

!And he hates Steve Jobs, because Steves made a closed garden, its a walled garden. Him and his cronies have to

work hard to hack into the Apples. I hope they can, because Ive got an iPhone I need to put the Orange sim into it, butonce theyve done that, they should go no further. But he really thinks Steves wrong and that the world will gang up

against Steve, because hes not playing by open source rules. Because what Norman wants, and dont get me wrong

hes a nice guy, and he might be right, you know, Normans got teams of these guys who are influencing our world in a

way that actually really frightens me.


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bob the web dude

!They call it democratic, right, but these guys are setting the news agenda. Theyre out there on every Beta test,

feeding back, everything Orange launches we get a lot of response, you get a tidal wave, almost a Tsunami, from theseguys, not from real people, not from my dad who I started with, or my wife who actually has to use the phone, but these

guys come at us. They dont even believe we have the right to do any user interface, because were an operator, and we

shouldnt be doing products. Well maybe theyre right, but I dont think thats democratic at all, Im actually quite

worried about that.


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bob the web dude

$0

!And theres something even more worrying for design. Theyre absolutely free, you know, you get a huge amount of

development from an active technologically biased, very bright, Christ knows where they get the time to do all thatblogging and feedback on all those forms and all the Beta tests, I never even get time to look at the web at all. But

these guys do. They invest a huge amount of effort, and they are now designing our world, right, not you at all. Were

using some little techniques we picked up from design to try and do that, but the reality is 99 per cent of the world is

not designed at all by us, its designed by people like this, or will increasingly be designed by this. If its designed by

them, not designed by them, its designed by people like Diddier Lombard, who make a whole load of decisions that we

have nothing to do with.


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rest of the world

!So we come back to people, the normal rest of the world, whats going on there, so we look at the business world.


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business world

!For the business world, design is of interest


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business world

!Business, theyre kind of happy that design isnt so, whats the word Im looking for, eclectic or up there, its less

Philippe Stark now, its less about magicians with the magic dust. Its more about professional, process, Tim Brown,Ideo, really fantastic tools to find the next thing. So theyre happy with that, I think, by and large.


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real

Slide 0Business 2.0

!They want Business 2.0. They want Business 2.0 thats going to completely make them look cool and fresh and

mean something to all their clients, be differentiated, be competitive.


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real

Slide 0Design by collaboration

with customers

!So then design collaboration with customers, yes, thats a great thing, thats really important to them, because that

surely, you know, that gets over that kind of asking people in Croydon, or asking people do they want a red one or ablack one, they always say red and then they go and take the black one later, so they somehow feel they can trust that

data more.


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real

Slide 0Design is

hygene

!So design becomes almost a hygiene factor with these guys, they know that design has to be up there at a relevant

level, but does it really have to be brilliant anymore?


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real

Slide 0a commodity,

like everything else

!Its a commodity like everything else. How do we buy design? Hey, dont we get all our products manufactured in

China now, and our software done in India, so why cant we just out source the design part as well, thats a realchallenge for us.


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public serviceworld

!In the public service world, youve been talking about that a lot.


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gordon

!And for someone like Gordon, who I dont know, I did meet him once, hes jumping on this band wagon, for sure he

is. Because he wants to connect, hes desperate for politics for mean something, hes frightened of Bob the blogger, hewants people to understand and believe what he does, as does good old Dave.


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dave

!I mean Daves no different. Would Dave understand? would Dave do exactly the same things with designers to bring

them into public services, to try and make them innovative, interesting, better places? Of course he would, of course hewould do exactly the same thing. I dont think these things are political, they might be desperate. At the same time,

designers are being put into places where theyve got to really stand up to the mark.


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realworld

!But back in that real world, with my dad and Janice, driving to their deliveries, not using their digital, they dont see

the world working at all, stuff just doesnt work.


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real

Slide 0Stuff doesnt work

world

!Lots of stuff looks lovely, and the world is lovelier. We did chuck out the chintz, we did go to a better place, cars

look lovely, but its not just about that skin anymore. Its about the password not working, its about the process ofhaving to drive to the Post Office. Design hasnt even got into that real experiential level yet, because it cant, its not

invited in there. So these people, they want to shape their world, they want to be part of that now, and thats really

challenging for us.


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real

Slide 0Design looks lovely,

world

!Lots of stuff looks lovely, and the world is lovelier. We did chuck out the chintz, we did go to a better place, cars

look lovely, but its not just about that skin anymore.


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real

Slide 0I want to shape my world

world

!So these people, they want to shape their world, they want to be part of that now, and thats really challenging for

us.


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designworld

!But here in the lovely Prada shoe wearing design world,


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designworld

!well its a cottage industry guys. None of you are big, not really big, Im delighted for the Seymour Powells, Im

delighted for all the little design companies out there, Im delighted for Ideo and everyone else. But nobody knowswho we are, very, very few people ever actually see anything we really design, and Im really worried about that.


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designworld

!We live in lovely little studios, we have a delightful life, wear nice relaxed clothes, we dont have to wear ties, we

dont have to deal with difficult people, apart from the clients.


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design

Slide 0thinking about whatthings will be like, first

world

!So I think we have to come right back to what are we here for, and what are we doing, and what can we do with that

stuff? Now Im not going to go right back to first base about what design does, but theres a few things I think really,really for me it just seems like how do you explain it to everybody?

!Design is thinking about what things will be like first, and thats what never happens. People say, how are we going

to build it, how are we going to afford it, how are we going to do all that other stuff? But ultimately designers say,

whats it going to be like first?


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design

Slide 0involves the peoplewho you want to use it

world

!Yes, of course it involves the people who want to use it, of course youve got to do that, its absolutely ridiculous not

to do that, but it doesnt mean you resign authorship of everything.


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Slide 0synthesis of all theavailable options

world

!Design of course is about the synthesis of all available options. Now these are things that accountants cant do, these

are things that managing directors and politicians cant do, so what were saying here is, theres a bunch of peoplecalled designers, have a bunch of tools that we can take out to the world.


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design

Slide 0foresight

world

!We dont have to ask for permission, we dont have to say, oh are we in mission creep here? No, these are things that

other people just dont think about in the same way, so its very simple to talk about, lets think about the future andhave foresight.


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design

Slide 0expensive

world

!But unfortunately, were a bit expensive,


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Slide 0invited

world

!we have to be invited all the time, we have to wait until someone asks us permission.


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design

Slide 0cosy

world

!Were very cosy in our world,


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Slide 0self reverential

world

!were very self reverential, were all here loving each other today.


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design

Slide 0immature

world

!Were very immature as a discipline, as an industry, we havent yet really been strong enough, been brave to criticise

each other, for example.


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Slide 0silent

world

!We are, in fact, very silent in the world of my dad, my mum, the people who are in the real world, I think we are way

too silent.


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Slide 0loud

world

!Now what we see here today is a pointer to how we could be much louder, because we do have to be loud.


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Slide 0proactive

world

!We can be proactive, weve got to be proactive, we must not sit down anymore and wait for clients.


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Slide 0visionary

world

!Weve got stop just being designers, we have to be visionary and take it out to the future,


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Slide 0

free

world

!and maybe design has to be free, like Web 2.0, maybe we need a totally new business model, and then well be able

to go out and actually my mum and everyone else know we exist.


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Slide 0The future should be bright

world

!Because the future should be bright.


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thankswww.clivegrinyer.com

!.thanks

el silencio del diseño - design council

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