Acumen: Insight into the Design Process - Spring 2013

Acumenvol. 4, no. 1 Spring 2013 > Insight into the Design Process

Acumen

4 Acumen: Insight into the Design Process || Spring 2013

5student name and title goes here

Acumen >Insight into the Design Process

Edited by Steve Jones

a publication of the maia Graduate Program

Department of Design and Industry || College of Liberal and Creative Arts

San Francisco State University

Spring 2013

Copyright ©2013 Department of Design and Industry

San Francisco State University / 1600 Holloway Avenue / San Francisco, CA 94132

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means

electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval

system, without the prior written permission of the Department of Design and Industry, San Francisco State

University, excepting brief quotes used in connection with reviews, written specifically for inclusion in a

journal, magazine or newspaper.

Inquiries can made to:

Steve Jones, Graduate Program Coordinator

Department of Design and Industry

College of Liberal and Creative Arts

San Francisco State University

[email protected]

http://design.sfsu.edu

Designed and Edited by Steve Jones, Department of Design and Industry

Acumen: Insight into the Design Process was typeset in PMN Caecilia 8.5/12

Printing: www.Lulu.com

Printed and bound in the United States of America

Contents

Welcome || Mission Statement

Advisory Board

Creating Your Value: An Interview with Nancy Perkinsby Christina Gotuaco

Jared Kole: Product Development, Technology, and Educationby Karen Chin

Allan Young: Giving Others a Possibility to Developby Ani Abgaryan

Culture Shock: A Conversation with Haoyu Fengby Chi Zhang

Balancing Beauty and Function: A Graduate Student’s Search for the Secret to Designing a Delightful User Experience for Mobile Devices and Her Journey in Finding Inspiration in all the Right Places and Peopleby Boriana Angelova Viljoen

About the Authors

Acknowledgments

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Welcome to the inaugural issue of Acumen: Insight into the Design Process. Acumen is a student publi-cation created by the Department of Design and Industry at San Francisco State University. Through the critical examination of design related topics, these selected works, written by graduate students concentrating in Product Design and Visual Communications, aim to promote the exchange of communication and knowledge between students, educators, practicing professionals and experts in all creative disciplines. By establishing an open forum for analysis and discussion, it challenges the design community to examine their relationships with people, objects and environments to better under-stand the role of design in society.

— Ani Abgaryan, Karen Chin, Christina Gotuaco, Steve Jones, Boriana Angelova Viljoen and Chi Zhang

Welcome to the inaugural issue of Acumen: Insight into the Design Process. Acumen is a student publi-cation created by the Department of Design and Industry at San Francisco State University. Through the critical examination of design related topics, these selected works, written by graduate students concentrating in Product Design and Visual Communications, aim to promote the exchange of communication and knowledge between students, educators, practicing professionals and experts in all creative disciplines. By establishing an open forum for analysis and discussion, it challenges the design community to examine their relationships with people, objects and environments to better under-stand the role of design in society.

— Ani Abgaryan, Karen Chin, Christina Gotuaco, Steve Jones, Boriana Angelova Viljoen and Chi Zhang


Acumen Advisory Board

David Hisaya AsariPrincipal, Asari Design, San Francisco, CAPresident, aiga, San Francisco ChapterAdjunct Professor, California College of the Arts

Valerie FletcherExecutive Director, Institute for Human Centered DesignBoston, MA

Eric HeimanPrincipal, Volume, Inc., San Francisco, CAAssociate Professor, California College of the Arts

CeCe Iandoli, EdDUniversity of California, DavisProfessor Emerita, Department of Design and IndustrySan Francisco State University

Garland KirkpatrickAssociate Professor, Graphic DesignDepartment of ArtCollege of Communication and Fine ArtsLoyola Marymount University

Sonia BasSheva Mañon, PhDVice President Institutional PartnershipsChief Diversity OfficerVisiting Associate Professor, TheatreWesleyan University

11Acumen Advisory Board

Victor Margolin, PhDProfessor Emeritus of Design HistoryUniversity of Illinois, ChicagoDepartment of Art History

Noel Mayo, dfaPresident and Owner of Noel Mayo and Associates, Philadelphia, PAProfessor + Ohio Eminent Scholar, Department of DesignThe Ohio State University

Michele WashingtonAdjunct Lecturer, fit Graduate Exhibit DesignStrategist, Designer and WriterEditor, www.CulturalBoundaries.com

Mabel Wilson, PhDArchitect, Designer, Scholar, and Visual Cultural AnalystDirector, Advanced Architectural Research and the hbcu Leadership ProjectAssociate Professor, ArchitectureColumbia University gsapp

12

Creating Your Value:An Interview with Nancy Perkins

by Christina Gotuaco

Creating Your Value: An Interview with Nancy Perkins 13

Acumen: Insight into the Design Process || Spring 201314

Nancy J. Perkins, fidsa, serves as President and ceo of the Dallas Lighthouse for the Blind (dlb), a job training and product manufacturing center in north Texas. She was an industrial designer for several decades, both as a consultant and as an employee at several companies including Jarden Consumer Solutions and Sears Roebuck.

Being a Female Industrial DesignerI recently read an online article on female designers in the industrial design field, or the lack thereof (“Women in Industrial Design: Where My Ladies At?” by Alissa Walker), and I was enthusiastic to interview Nancy Perkins, one of the women quoted in the article.

Throughout my conversation with Nancy I was anticipating a tale of female empowerment, a facing off against adversity, and an overcoming of gender-based struggles and challenges followed by an ultimate ascendency to the ceo position of an organization employing over 200 people. Why exactly I was expecting this movie-ready drama, I’m not sure—it may have been a combi-nation of conditioning, and multiple additional factors including the way I had initially heard of Ms. Perkins (which was through the web article on the good.is website about females in industrial design), or subsequently the information I researched about her online before speaking with her, including the description of an exhibit about her great-aunt that she developed for the Association of Women Industrial Designers (awid). Though Nancy and her great-aunt never crossed paths, the story of her great-aunt was handed down to her, and began inspiring her at an early age to the potential for women to be strong and successful in formerly unconventional fields. Her Great-Aunt Anna Keichline, an inventor and the first woman registered as an architect in the state of Pennsylvania, was an early role model for Nancy and ulti-mately owned several patents.

Ms. Keichline worked as an architect and designed a number of buildings in central Pennsylvania, having graduated with a degree in architecture from Cornell in 1911. On the awid website, one of the main tabs is a link to the resource created by Nancy which provides biographical information and a series on her great-aunt.

But as our conversation progressed, there was never any romanticized story about the trials of being a female industrial designer navigating what might appear to be a male-dominated industry, even as I attempted to steer the conversation that direction a few times with some of my questions. Nancy remained very diplomatic, making mention only of the initial difficulty of trying to be accepted early on when there weren’t many women in the field and “you were usually the only woman in the office,” but even in those circumstances she noted it largely depended on the people involved and

15Creating Your Value: An Interview with Nancy Perkins




what attitude they carried. Instead of sounding oppressed, she spoke as a confident and well-versed professional, providing universal advice on how to be effective in the design field, and citing the support of her family during her formative years as a strong influence in her success. Nancy’s father was an electrical engineer, and her mother was a nurse who also did fine art and painting. Her parents raised her and her brother on a level playing field, never favoring one over the other, and encouraging them both to pursue their interests. Ultimately, her brother became a software engineer while Nancy headed the design route.

Finding the ProfessionLike a familiar story to some of us, Nancy initially discovered the field of industrial design by accident—having planned to major in Interior Design at the University of Illinois, but ending up with a bfa in Industrial Design instead. Before, she had always been hands-on with crafts, refinishing furniture her-self and sewing, two hobbies which ultimately lent themselves to the idea of interior design. But upon initial exploration into the more industrial side of design, she discovered that it was an even better fit, not having to rely solely on what others created and enjoying the freedom of designing her own products instead. Nancy’s background reminded me a little of myself—I sewed as a child, served on the yearbook staff in junior high, and did ceramics for a few years in high school.

When housing became a strong interest of mine, I headed in the direction of urban planning and was only reintroduced to my past hobbies through a combination of undergraduate graphic design and architecture courses, and manufacturing issues that came up while I was working after graduation. Through two unique but overlapping paths, we both fell into the field of industrial design.

Though design in general as a profession is gaining visibility in main-stream culture, it is still a small audience that is truly aware of it, and at young ages most children are never exposed to it except in the notion that they may become an “artist” or “photographer” one day. It is very rare to hear of graphic or industrial design as an occupation that children aspire to. A quick survey of my young cousins produced particularly animal-oriented careers such as zoologist and lepidopterist (butterfly and moth scientist), as well as businessman and psychologist. Even some adults are not fully aware of what industrial design is or what it entails as an occupational field.

Many problems we witness in society that would fall under the realm of industrial design are often classified under other professions instead, limiting the range of the field’s visibility. In high school and at the beginning of college, I had never heard the term “industrial design” in everyday conversation


enough to associate it with the profession it describes. Instead, commercials showcasing products were advertisements for careers in sales and marketing, rather than product design; and books and websites were taken solely for their content with hardly a second glance at the structure of the information, the layout of the elements on the page, or the notion that it was someone’s job to facilitate that experience. Career day at my high school had the typical common jobs represented: doctor, police officer, teacher, and financial adviser, with interior decorator being the closest reference to the design/creative fields. It may be that the work we do in industrial design is often still classified as “inventor” by children’s books and historical references, making it harder for children to relate the role models of industrial design today to the actual terminology of the field, but the connection can be made: Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Edison, for example—two historical inventors that may come to mind—were arguably two of the greatest industrial designers of their generations, still known to us today and taught to us in our early education.

Design ThinkingAs the Industrial Arts program at San Francisco State University can attest, industrial design embodies an integrated approach to problem solving— design thinking at a complex level—and a combination of a variety of forms of design to achieve effective and lasting solutions. Thus it is not uncommon for designers to cross fields or to discover other interests in design throughout the course of their careers, and to be more successful in their work given the strengths of their interdisciplinary experiences. For me, as a transit employee working in map editing, the Industrial Design program has added more capa-bilities to my problem-solving methods, expanded my working knowledge, and improved my comfort in interacting with and collaborating with designers and professionals from different fields. Nancy found this to be true throughout her career, particularly in holding the ceo post—that in more instances than one, it was design thinking that could bring new ideas to the table whether or not the problems were defined as design problems. Being able to see things from multiple perspectives and to address the different elements of a problem is invaluable to the head of a company and to any design professional trying to successfully address an issue. As society advances and our inputs and processes begin to have more wide-reaching effects—or similarly, as we as individuals move upward in our professional careers to higher levels of responsibility—issues become more complex and multifaceted and require the execution of a more thoughtful approach, design thinking at its best.

One of the things that initially drew Nancy to her position was the inspiring nature of the idea of domestic manufacturing. Instead of being produced abroad, products are being produced in Texas, for use by state and federal

governmental agencies. The Dallas Lighthouse for the Blind produces a number of military supplies including an entrenching tool pouch, a low cost container, and the Army’s chin strap. The dlb also manufactures office supplies such as award binders and injection-molded highlighters and markers. While her current role is not in industrial design, Nancy noted that her design experience has been applicable in various ways, particularly as the company moves towards expanding into more commercial product areas, and unique branded products.

“I really think that those with a design education have an advantage in business. People can get boxed into a corner,” she commented, “those who can apply design process methods are better able to create growth for their companies.”

Recently the organization has been rebranded with a registered trademark, new messaging, and goals for an expanded scope of opportunity for its employees. There is an internal aim to increase upward mobility for employees in various jobs—whether in the sewing center, the manufacturing area, the warehouse, or in business services. Along the front desk at the Dallas Light-house for the Blind are pamphlets and brochures discussing resources for individuals who are visually impaired. The company’s business card has its phone number embossed in Braille along the top. There are also a few infor-mational pieces for other visitors, including a card with punched-out trans-parent sections depicting a range of visual impairments as represented by blackened areas, to give seeing visitors an idea of the different types of vision conditions.


I really think that those with a design education have an advantage in business. People can get boxed into a corner—those who can apply design process methods are better able to create growth for their companies.”


I really think that those with a design education have an advantage in business. People can get boxed into a corner—those who can apply design process methods are better able to create growth for their companies.”

22

Lessons for DesignersInstead of a feminist story or even a story of any difficulties in serving largely as an employer for a disadvantaged population, Nancy shared practical experi-ences and knowledge with me about the regular tasks of running a manu-facturing company as well as her own experiences in design. I came to realize that this is exactly what I would have expected of any ceo/designer I had requested this interview with, female or male, president or not. Ultimately, what is vital is the ability and confidence of the designer, in order to be effective in the field.

Throughout the conversation, Nancy shared several tips that would be useful to designers at any stage in their careers:

Selling your value. In consulting, constant selling is required. A strong portfolio that has designs that have benefitted clients—that have a sales history—creates credibility. Making something safer, more enjoyable, and/or more efficient to manufacture, for example, gives a client assurance that your opinion is something that will have return on the investment.

Understanding aesthetics.What’s important is being able to recognize why a particular design is effec-tive and to have a strong aesthetic sense. The study of art history teaches, among other things, how the eye moves through a work of art’s dominant, subdominant, and subordinate elements. Beyond color, mass, and attention-getting form, the designer has to figure out how to get everything into pro-duction as envisioned and at a reasonable cost.

Today’s tools. When the computer was first used in industrial design, form development was not as seamless as it is today. Designers now have extraordinary creative tools available. Mastering them allows superior design and communication between all product development groups.

Conducting research. Research is only as good as the questions that are being asked, and unfor-tunately, sometimes the right questions aren’t asked. It is vital to observe someone using a product and to carefully listen to what is and is not being said. Understanding the marketing context and the user’s experience thoroughly, and analyzing competitive products, is basic to solving the design problem.



Designers always have to sell their ideas, and that can be a daunting thing for anyone…

The selling of ideas is constant during design school critiques and presen-tations, but I think the idea of selling your value is somewhat understated in the educational environment, where more emphasis is placed on the cre-ative process and the supplemental tools and methods of use to designers. It may be something learned in time through firsthand experience in design employment, as I am sure its practical application is very near to all freelance, junior, and senior designers on a per project, if not daily, basis. As a design school student, my focus has been on gaining mastery of the research methods and computer programs available as tools for designers to successfully com-municate and create better products and environments for the real world. There is always a constant mindfulness that develops with this, of how to seam-lessly interweave functionality, legibility, and aesthetics into an emotionally appealing visual outcome. The additional focus on teamwork, open discussion, and presentation skills that comes from a graduate program also enhances the foundational technical and artistic skills and ties in well with the common expression that above all else, effective communication is key.


Final Thoughts Nancy commented briefly on her opinion of the current state of women in industrial design: “Today, I don’t think it’s as unusual or particularly unique to be a woman in the field. There are several women who lead corporate design departments. Designers always have to sell their ideas, and that can be a daunting thing for anyone, but that challenge is what I enjoy about the pro-fession.” Asked where she was able to develop this attitude, she responded, “from my family. It really gets back to the family and what they expect from you and what you then expect from yourself. I also had my great-aunt as a role model to inspire me.”

I can see parallels in this for myself as well, having been lucky to have encouragement from a large family, most of whom are not in the design field but never fail to give me the advice I need, always taking an interest in what I am involved with no matter what background they are coming from—finance, business, or education. It has been a valuable network through many long semesters.

As designers we all face similar challenges of stress, deadlines, glitches, failure, and reiteration, and it is the constant force of these common struggles that bonds us into our own family as well, shaping us into a community of tirelessly enthusiastic perfectionists, searching for the ideal solutions to every-one’s everyday problems. We all have high expectations for each other, praising and supporting each other when we are successful, lauding good designs that we wish were our own, and providing constructive criticism when necessary. I think this is what brings a unique character to the field and connects us in spite of anything we might consider to divide us, whether specialties, political or geographic boundaries, mediums, gender, level, or status. From students to professionals, design—along with its challenges and rewards—is a common language we speak and a universal experience that unites us all as we work towards our various unique and lofty goals. And it wouldn’t be proper any other way.

Images: Courtesy of Nancy Perkins and the Dallas Lighthouse for the Blind

Additional Resources:

www.awidweb.com

www.good.is/posts/women-in-industrial-design-where-my-ladies-at/

www.dallaslighthouse.org


The Dallas Lighthouse for the Blind has contracts to supply products to the federal government through the AbilityOne program, and is therefore required to maintain a 75% direct blind labor ratio. In doing so, the organization maintains dual goals both in production and in the employment of people who are blind. The sewing center provides special fixtures so that sewing operations, a very tactile task, can be performed with quality repeatable results. The dlb also has an onsite computer lab staffed with three instructors who are available to provide extra computer skills training to employees. As a design student with an undergraduate minor in economics, I was particularly intrigued by Nancy’s company because I am a strong proponent of job training for the opportunity it offers to uncover and develop individuals’ underutilized capabilities towards a greater purpose.

—CG

Workers at the DLB sewing center.


Jared Kole:Product Development, Technology, and Education

by Karen Chin

Jared Kole:Product Development, Technology, and Education

by Karen Chin

Jared Kole: Product Development, Technology, and Education 27


29Jared Kole: Product Development, Technology, and Education

“I absolutely love my job” says Jared Kole, a product development engineer at Apple. As cliché as it sounds, Kole loves taking the Apple shuttle that begins his 12-hour workdays, delving into new projects, and building upon the idea of perfection. Working at a company that exercises toward growth through attention to distinct detail and innovation at the customers’ fingertips, Kole works with design thinking on a daily basis to draw inspiration from colleagues specialized in interdisciplinary fields, re-iterating designs and failing early to learn from the mistakes, conceptualizing products before competitors, and focusing on user experience. Interviewing Kole on how design has evolved through technology and the impact of technology on creativity in design, I received a background on how technology has shaped society’s way of life from the perspective of the product developer of the iPhone 5.

Technology has drastically shaped culture today, especially in the realm of education. Today’s generations of students have been introduced to tech-nology at a young age, whether it be for education or recreation. Interactive technology, such as the Apple iPad, can be utilized as a tool to benefit learning and educational experiences by correlating a student’s mindset, self-discipline, and motivation toward increasing involvement in school. For example, the One Laptop per Child organization in October of 2012 dropped off pre-loaded tablets to a remote village in Ethiopia. As the group of 5-year old students taught themselves basic reading and writing with further exploration of the camera and personalization, the experiment proved the amazing ability of computers to educate in an area that lacked access to proper schooling. So-ciety’s new generation of students rely on technology as a source of enter-tainment as well as a means of communication. Technology can be harnessed in the educational environment as a primary foundation for a system of learning that incorporates interactivity and technological applications. Examples of technology in the classroom include interactive curriculums, software appli-cations, display equipment for better communication, and personal computers that benefit a student’s role in the learning environment. Technology aids in productivity, communication, problem-solving, decision-making, and research. A powerful tool that can further a student’s outlook on school, technology can be applied toward investigation and furthering of a student’s depth in terms of knowledge.

Product Development CareerWith a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from San Jose State University, Kole applied his background of physics, materials, and design studies toward learning new skill sets at Apple. Kole first started working as a contracted employee with SurfaceInk, a small engineering firm based out of San Jose. Consulting for a variety of large product design companies in


the Bay Area including Apple, Lab126, Palm, and Seagate, Kole worked with SurfaceInk for a year before the company had a change in partnership. Before the release of the highly successful iPad, SurfaceInk began developing a tablet that was considered to be in competition with Apple’s tablet. Considered a con-flict of interest, the tablet caused Apple to abruptly discontinue working together. Along with several other employees, Kole was dismissed from Apple partner-ship without an invitation back. Fortunately after a week of uncertainty, Apple invited Kole back to work for the company as a product development engineer.

Working around the schedules of engineers, designers, and marketing associates from different parts of the world, including from the headquarters in Cupertino to London and manufacturing in Shanghai, Kole divides his time between cross-functional meetings and focusing on various projects while utilizing UGNX to design schematics. The day-to-day involvement allows for perfection of the design process to create a balanced product.

While balancing several projects at once, Kole states that the company has a huge amount of growth as he pushes the envelope of design on the daily. His mechanical engineering background provides a basis for electronic design with circuit boards for the iPhone. When asked about whether the past work in his undergraduate life correlates with the product knowledge he encompasses now, Kole states that after his first couple of months with the company, he continued to learn new skill sets that added to his previous knowledge. “You use your educational school projects more than you think.” As he delved deeper into his projects, his mechanical engineering background and familiarity of materials and physics sealed the foundation of the funda-mental base that is applied toward product development. The Project Lead matches associates and projects based on their strengths. Growing from small teams of five to up to fifteen people, teams work with each other’s specialties to overcome challenges in the design process.

Apple is synonymous with clean and simple design that utilizes aesthetics, form, and function to appeal to the consumer. The sharp lines and graceful curves of Apple’s products have become the chosen choice for many when it comes to answering their electronic needs. With many internal divisions such as the product development team, industrial design group, marketing, and user experience, Apple relies on cross-collaboration between the teams to carry out a vision of perfection for consumer products.

While Kole works with the inside components and circuitry of the iPhone, the industrial design group works with the design and appearance. While the industrial design group says what they want to design, Kole and his product development team find out how to make the product. Working with function, the product development team works hand in hand in the collaborative design process that composes Apple’s products.


INNOVATION

What ispossible withtechnology?

What is viablein the

marketplace?

What is desirableto users?


Working in the product development iPhone division, Kole collaborates in conjunction with the industrial design team on various projects. A company driven by the appeal to aesthetics of the outside appearance of the product, Apple’s industrial design team leads the design process. The team of product development engineers then work to match the requirements of the industrial design and perfect the inside components of the product. Taking fundamental pieces of the phone, Kole’s job is to conform to the industrial designs and continue reworking the product until it is complete. With the iPhone, Kole worked with the industrial design group to examine the fundamental pieces of the phone and configure how the product’s architecture can match the requirements of aesthetics. Looking at the phone from a higher-level archi-tecture phase, Kole and his team examine the iPhone from the inside to meet the maximum and minimum requirements for a visually appealing product. How can we take out the circuit board to make the iPhone thinner? How can the buttons be hooked up with the new design? Questions like these are what Kole deals with on a daily basis to refine the product.

Working both individually and within a team, Kole states that working alone is just as important as working collaboratively with the other compo-nents of the phone. Everyone owns their own parts, and cross-collaboration is essential to guaranteeing that the parts work together as a whole. The balance between individual work and teamwork proves the obsession of detail that is carefully crafted to create products that appeal visually and functionally.

Consumers approach Apple products looking from the outside in. After working with colleagues who have been previously employed at competing companies, Kole states how all have stated the importance of design is to Apple than any other company. Though the exterior has been touted as extremely important, what’s interesting is that Apple has increased design involvement with the interior appearance of the products as well. Instead of blue and green wiring, the inside of the iPhone5 has been sealed with black casing that dictates functionality over design. Quoting the great Steve Jobs from his biography, Kole launches into a story of Steve Jobs’ dad. Growing up with a carpenter dad, Jobs learned that even the part of the wood that faces against the wall must have an equally well-finished façade as the front. Kole says, “We spend more time, probably than most companies, on the look of the inside of the product—the part you’ll never see.” Proving that though Apple spends a great deal of effort perfecting the aesthetics of a product in com-parison to the inside components, Kole demonstrates the design philosophy that is also translated for the inside of the product.

Though Apple’s products seem to sell themselves, Kole states that “Apple’s marketing team takes a lot of cues from the product development team.” The marketing team values and listens to the product development team’s input

while looking at the whole series of product from a holistic point of view. “Marketing is more driven by industrial design.” Kole explains that at other companies, the marketing team dictates design and the industrial design group follows their instruction. However at Apple, the marketing team is driven more by form and looking at the product rather than simply a list of features.

Benefits of Technology and EducationThrough my thesis research, I plan to ask if the design of interactive tech-nology applications on various platforms increase a junior public high school student’s involvement in the classroom at school, increase parent-teacher involvement, and better a student’s overall achievement in the classroom based on technology’s correlation with the psychological anatomy of the creative brain. This research will bridge the gap between technology and psychology and answer why students are motivated in class through the interactivity and creativity of technology. Since technology is constantly changing, a fresh outlook on the latest interactive technological advances and its connection to the psychology of the creative mind can provide meaningful and compelling research that can demonstrate reasoning behind a student’s motivation and passion to excel. Technology in the classroom is becoming an increasingly popular option for enriching the curriculum, but I want to prove how the technology can better stimulate the creative mind which will in turn lead to increased involvement in the classroom and outside with the student’s parents.

Technology is an irreplaceable factor embraced in businesses, corporations, and firms today. For example, many start-ups utilize social media and cloud computing to provide learning solutions and an online database storage system. Used as a tool to harness a student’s creativity and interactivity, tech-nology can be more incorporated into the classroom environment for edu-cational purposes. Kole states that because Apple products such as the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch are synonymous with simple design and interactivity, students have creativity at their fingertips. He is a firm believer in “giving students the power to create.” Designed for multi-purpose use in the class-room, workplace, and beyond, the products Kole works with at Apple as well as design thinking can promote resiliency and aptitude in the classroom.

Passionate about his job, Kole says the favorite part of his job is seeing people using his products on the street and commenting on the usability on social media outlets. “I love seeing people with their iPhones and enriching their lives.” Technology in the classroom is a form of development that can increase student involvement between the teacher as well as other members of the classroom. Technology is an important factor in today’s society, as can be seen through the life-changing products on the market today as well as its benefits correlated with education in the classroom.



Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow-Today is a program Apple has initiated to help high school students receive the learning environment that today’s generation of students needs, wants, and expects to succeed in school in terms of decreasing dropout rates. Stating that the program is a relevant benefit to education and technology in today’s society, Kole states that the initiative is divided into three major steps of “essential design principles of the 21st century high school, essential design principles to life through online resources and research, and application of design principles to a curriculum called 200 Days of Lifetime of Success that is designed to prepare students for success in life and work in the 21st century.” Coming from a background in mechanical engineering, Kole worked with technology in the classroom, laboratory, and home. “Technology in the classroom prepared me for the real world, and the roles of traditional classroom equipment are evolving through design for the better.”

With his Apple iPad, Kole displays the various applications that have the ability to create a more interactive school curriculum that he states is “more engaging than his own.” Using his own design-thinking methods from work, he explains how textbooks, school teachers, and lectures can evolve toward utilizing technology to increase collaboration and contribution of ideas. In addition to education in the classroom, Kole utilizes his products as learning tools toward the future. Acting as both the designer and product user, Kole harnesses his own data toward future products in terms of interface, appli-cations, and usability.

Working in a design-thinking environment through cross-collaboration with various teams of people, Kole utilizes technology for programming, communication, and contribution of ideas across the web. Technology promotes higher level thinking in the classroom through multimedia, and has the potential to evolve the traditional school curriculum through design.

Psychology and EducationBy connecting interactive technology with the psychological factors of their brain, students can increase their appetite for learning that leads to future successes in life. In a study done by the University of Auckland in New Zealand, researchers conducted a study on experiences of classrooms that used the iPod Touch as a Student Response System that enhanced learning methods and understanding. The majority of students had better attention spans in the classrooms with results including increased student-teacher interaction, feedback on the learning process, and in-class discussion sequences. Techno-logical applications allow students to use interactive technology to benefit rather than hinder learning experiences. Using psychological factors, the anatomy of the creative mind, as well as design thinking, the interactivity of


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technology can make the learning process more engaging to increase a stu-dent’s involvement in school. Students with a “growth mindset” are more likely to seek and overcome challenges, while individuals with a “fixed mindset” believe that success and failure is correspondent to a certain level of ability, which is unlikely to change. In terms of self-discipline, students who are disciplined to ignore distraction can focus on academic success. Through intrinsic motivation, students spent more time on a school subject through development of knowledge. Consequently, students look forward to success in the long-term scheme. By studying a student’s psychological consciousness of learning, research can prove how technology promotes resiliency and aptitude in the classroom.

uncertainty, patterns, insights

research

Design Thinking

concept, prototype design

clarity, focus


Design Thinking As a designer, thinking is done outside of the box. With the right tools, educators have the power to design a better curriculum and teaching system. However no formula exists for a linear solution to the problem. Strategies applied in design thinking can enhance the student experience and allow educators to redirect learning in a more interactive way. Used for a variety of different objectives, design thinking is a mindset that is applied toward everyday activities at Kole’s desk at Apple. Human-centered design draws upon the needs and motivations of culture and society. In addition, design thinking is a collaborative between interdisciplinary teams that work together with multiple perspectives that bolster each other’s creativity. When asked what he loves most about his job, Kole responds that he “gets to work with crazy, smart, motivated people while learning new things from each other every single day.” Design thinking is also experimental and encourages failing early in order to learn from one’s mistakes. “You can use design thinking to approach any challenge,” Kohl states. Re-working and re-thinking are everyday tasks that Kole has the pleasure of dealing with to create a perfect product that has a variety of uses in different environments. The same principles of design thinking that are applied in Kole’s field of product design can be applied toward an optimistic educational experience in the classroom.

Education is arguably the most valuable entity in life. Kole states that “technology and education are both fundamental to getting him to where he is in life today.” Through the research conducted on interactive technology and its impact on the educational environment in the classroom and the sub-categories of the psychological creative mind, a curriculum guide can be devised for technology through correlating the brain with what factors motivate middle school students and interactive technology. Providing an explanation for what makes interactive technology so compelling, the program allows for assessment of the usage of technology in areas outside of school and harnessing the energy and motivation into increased involvement in school creating an educational program that can provide institutions with a reference on how to implement technology into the classroom.

References:

http://www.marcstoiber.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/process-explained.gif

http://doctorpreneurs.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/design.jpg

design

Allan Young:Giving Others a Possibility to Develop

by Ani Abgaryan


Allan Young:Giving Others a Possibility to Develop

by Ani Abgaryan

39Allan Young: Giving Others a Possibility to Develop


1

Some people have extraordinary energy to multitask in very broad spheres and different professional directions. Allan Young is one of those people. He has succeeded in industrial design, web design, technology, entrepreneur-ship, law, and venture capital. A few months ago Allan launched a large, new startup incubator called Runway, located in the up-and-coming mid-Market neighborhood of San Francisco. Runway is a place where lots of startups can work, share their ideas, participate in events, create their own events, and find peers. I spoke with Allan during one of their first events, and it led to various questions and topics that I was interested to speak with him about more. We met again at Runway where I had the opportunity to interview him. The space had an enthralling atmosphere that inspired us to get deep into some questions, which was important for me. It has an interesting aura that makes you feel comfortable both to work and relax. You can feel the energy of the companies starting to take off, and energy from the people who participated in the development of Runway, led by Allan. The ease of co-working, of exchanging ideas and stories, is motivation to come and partici-pate in the life of this space.

Our conversation started with an overview of Allan’s plans to develop ideas and his vision of the aspects of people’s perception of web products, cultural factors in design, and his creative process. These topics intersected with Allan’s strategies to go forward to reach goals, and advice to overcome difficulties and failure that one experiences during that process.

The process of developing a design or idea.I think that the best way to create something is to solve a problem for your-self. Something in your life that you want, or you need that isn’t working. If your current solution or option isn’t working, and you have a lot of displea-sure with it, or it takes too much time, or it makes you angry, or makes you confused—that makes you creative.

As far as process, I’ve done industrial design, software design, technology product design. That’s primarily what I was involved in. It’s all very similar. You try to guess as little as possible. You have to make a guess, but you try to make as little a guess as possible. You try to make one guess at the time, and not a series of guesses. And then you try to test that guess. And you solve for that, based on testing in real life. If you solve your own problem then you would say, “Yes, it’s worked for me.”Or if you’re solving someone else’s problem, then it’s worked for them. Then you go to the next guess, and keep going. That’s probably the simplest description.

41

I think that the best way

to create something

is to solve a problem for

yourself.


I thin

k you learn

m

ore by win

nin

g th

an losin

g, so w

hat you

wan

t to do is try to create en

ough

small goals

that you

get used to

win

nin

g, and th

en

you create bigger

and bigger goals.

Allan Young: Giving Others a Possibility to Develop 43

I thin

k you learn

m

ore by win

nin

g th

an losin

g, so w

hat you

wan

t to do is try to create en

ough

small goals

that you

get used to

win

nin

g, and th

en

you create bigger

and bigger goals.


3

4

2When the project is done.A project can be done when you run out of money, or run out of time. Money is a real constraint, and if you run out of money, then you’re forced to ship it, or scrap it, and you give up. Time is, sometimes, an artificial constraint. You can go through life feeling as if you have a lot of time. That’s a trickier constraint. A lot of creative people and entrepreneurs will conduct them-selves as if they have a lot of time—that’s a less reliable constraint to help you ship. I try to get a habit of setting an artificial time constraint. So the product is done when you either run out of time or run out of money, or both at the same time. And then you have to make a decision to quit or ship. And you should always ship.

Experience and design as competitive advantages.I think that design is one of the final competitive advantages. Technology is not a good competitive advantage. People can always copy your technology, they can design around your technology. They can emulate your technology so that it’s very close, and of course, design can be emulated too. But experience is hard to emulate, because there are cultural aspects to experience, there are human, anthropological aspects to experience. It’s one of the most fertile avenues to find a competitive advantage. No one will argue that experience is very important. The hard part now is that good design is just the beginning, just the basic minimum requirement. Everybody is keen on design, everybody knows it’s important, the question is not “How important is design,” it’s “Where has design not permeated, where has design not been applied?” Where have we not applied design yet? Where it has been applied is pretty obvious, you can see it, you can touch it, you can feel it, you can read about it, the news is going to write about it. That’s not as important a question as, “What hasn’t design touched?” That’s where you’ll find a lot of opportunities.

User’s perception of web-product.I think if it’s a web product, a lot of times people don’t start at your product, they don’t start at your homepage. What’s really amazing about the web is that’s it’s just a big series of links. So they arrive at your product from some-where else. And a lot of times that somewhere else is not something you can control. And what influences them is how they got there. Users of a product who really end up liking the product will link to it and say, “Hey, try out this new photo app, like Instagram—it’s great,” and then you click on it. But you were influenced, you were sold on how great the experience is going to be already because of your friend telling you. A lot of the time it’s a tech-nology blog telling you about a product, or a product blog that gives a link to your website, and you’re not selling a technology product, you’re selling a new

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6

Allan Young: Giving Others a Possibility to Develop

handbag that you handcrafted, and it’s your own design. A lot of experience happened before they got there based on what that other site was saying about your product. As a designer, you should think about how your audience got there in the first place. It goes beyond what you can control. A really good opportunity to push design to the next level is to understand where people are coming from and design their process of discovering you. Obviously, you can’t control what other people say or how they link to you, but you should be aware of it, and when people land on your website or on your product, their experience has taken that into account.

Avoiding unnecessary complexity.Generally complexity happens because of two things: 1) It’s a necessary evil. The problem you solve requires you to create a complex solution. But I think that those are very rare. 2) The other reason why products become complex is that the designer doesn’t know her priorities, doesn’t know her audience and has made up her mind which problems to solve, so she tries to solve too many problems. I think that those are the two main ways that you end up with the complexity. The other way is that you listen to users too much. They give you suggestions, then you end up with something called “feature creep.” They say, “Oh, can you add this because it’s nice to have…” But then it’s something that is not a ‘must-have.’ You should only cater, at least in the beginning, to ‘must have.’ Most people, most designers are not confident enough of themselves to just design for ‘must have.’ They allow themselves to be swayed by customers, who give them very casual recommendations. The customer may not have studied it for a long time, the customer may not have really analyzed the real need. Customers now think nothing of giving you a suggestion. And it can cost a designer everything if she only listens to that.

The balance between cultural aspects and usability.You should go and find some Chinese websites, and they will look ugly to our eyes. They will be too crowded, too flashy, too much bling, too many flashing lights, too much text, no white space, no margins—and it works for their culture. You can’t design for that culture until you’ve lived in that culture for a while and even then I think it’s very hard. We only speak our own language, we only feel our own culture, we only know how to dance and breathe in a certain way. I don’t know if that’s solvable. That’s why you don’t see any American entrepreneurs, designing a product for China. Even if they did, it probably wouldn’t work. But that would be an interesting avenue to explore—to create something that helps others design for a different culture more quickly and more accurately. Globalization is not a globalization of culture, it’s a globalization of manufacturing. It’s finding a cheaper way to make stuff,


7

8

but that doesn’t mean that we’ve started to consume design made by other people—it’s still design made by ourselves. There is no cultural globalization. Not yet. Power Rangers is an example. But it was designed in Japan. And of course the luxury market; we have Ferraris, designed in Italy, and we buy them. But that’s a tiny proportion of the entire consumer market, so for the most part we’re still consuming products, designed by us, for us—just in the middle it was made by someone else.

Overcoming challenges and failures.Too many to count. You just have to pretend that they don’t hurt, you have to pretend to forget them. I think that there is a myth that we learn more from our mistakes. It’s true a lot of times, but I think that we don’t give enough credit to learning from your successes too. I think you learn more by winning than losing, so what you want to do is try to create enough small goals that you get used to winning, and then you create bigger and bigger goals. You should live life with enough urgency, so that you can fail a lot and succeed a lot. You want to have as many roles in dice as possible. The best way to learn is to move really fast. If you go slow, at some point you have less rolls at the dice than someone else, than most other people. So if you just take your time trying to roll a winning number then you need to have a lot of rolls. And to squeeze a lot of rolls in life, you have to move really fast. And at some point you get a winning streak, and that’s when you get to say, “Okay, I found my niche and I can focus on it.” But a lot of times you can’t find your niche. And to find your niche you have to explore more. And it doesn’t mean sitting and researching, it means shipping and launching, and forgetting. And doing that in a rapid pace.

Searching for inspiration and motivation.Everything is interesting. If you start with that attitude, then you find inspi-ration everywhere. I probably had an existential crisis, but I try to forget it. Because if you have an existential crisis, if you feel like you’re failing, somehow you’ve created a gap or a void in your life. Or maybe you didn’t create it, but a gap or a void in your life exists, and you feel empty, and that may be causing a feeling of failure. Move fast enough, so you forget about your failures. You can have a temporary negative attitude and still move fast, and then at some point because of the constant motion you create something that allows you to become more positive or confident again, or more optimistic about the future you can impact, or the future you can control, the future you can create value in.

Images: Courtesy of Allan Young / http://allantyoung.com

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Inside Runway Start-up Incubator.


:Culture Shocka conversation with Haoyu Feng

Culture Shock: A Conversation with Haoyu Feng

:Culture Shockby Chi Zhang

49


As an international student from China, one of the biggest differences I notice between the local students and myself is that I see things from two different perspectives—two different ways of thinking as it relates to my design study and research. It’s not always easy—the language, the lifestyle, the culture shock. But through these difficulties, some interesting things come out; per-spective and thinking which are very unique and valuable. Because of these valuable opinions, I hope that can make something beneficial for international students who are studying abroad just like me. I hope this essay will become a little bridge between designers from the U.S. and China.

Haoyu Feng, an American designer (born in Guangzhou, China), was educated in both America and China. Feng is a senior designer at Speck Design (Palo Alto, CA). Because of these dual nationalities, and because of he is a very good designer, is why I chose him to interview.

Haoyu Feng studied at the Academy of Art University (San Francisco, CA) and San Francisco State University. After receiving his master degree, he spent time doing internships at many different companies; it was a very busy and hard period. He not only needed to complete his own work, but was also busy taking classes, learning new things. His hard work paid off, and he was hired by Speck Design.

After the pleasantries, I enquired about Mr. Feng’s recent design work. He said this year, as the United States speeds up its economic recovery, the design industry is getting better and better. Feng said this may increase the demand for design talents over the next one to two years, which for students who are studying design, is very good news. Mr. Feng notes, recounting his experience looking for work in industrial design, that having real world experience was very important. Even though one may be very talented and have great technique, having no internship experience—it makes it more difficult in finding a job.

In terms of industrial design internships in China, compared to the United States, designers are treated slightly better. In the United States most intern-ships are unpaid, causing a certain economic hardship for international stu-dents. Feng also mentions the importance of building good relations with the other people—stressing that as a designer, you need to pay close attention on getting along well with others. Additionally, good communication with your clients, your co-workers, or your boss, will make work much easier. Even as a design student, one should also learn how to communicate with their teachers and other students.

51Culture Shock: A Conversation with Haoyu Feng

Nica Bluetooth headset.

I asked Mr. Feng a question I was curious about: What is it really like being an industrial designer in the United States? He answers, the demands of the design industry in America are very different than in China. In China companies don’t hire a “designer,” they’re more like an artist or engineer with good technical and implementation capabilities—but the designer has to obey the wishes of the boss and customer fully; whereas in the United States, due to the outsourcing of production, most design work focus on the designer’s ideas, but not so much on the designer’s skill, such as drafting/drawings or software capability—they pay more attention on a designer’s comprehensive ability. However, in the U.S. and China, most design companies treat design work very carefully and meticulously.

As we continued to talk about the specific differences in product design between China and the United States, Mr. Feng’s main point was this: Learn from each other, understand each other.

As a Chinese designer who now works in the United States, Feng feels that during the past 5–10 years Chinese design developed very fast, Chinese designers improved, and there’s been better design thinking. But, Feng is also concerned that in recent years popular designed Chinese brands and design studios have become desired in the United States. Feng cites a couple of examples: in the United States almost no one knew the MIUI cell-phone (which was a really huge sensation in China). He also mentions laptops from Lenovo, which are now quite popular in the United States. These are success stories that were designed in China. Mr. Feng believes that China and United States have unique market environments for themselves. The needs of the markets, design of concept and thought, even specific design are all very different in the two countries. It can’t be said a product designed in the United States is better than the one from China—in Feng’s opinion, both environments have their own benefits, it is better to have a mutual complementation between them—both China and the U.S. can learn from each other.

Mr. Feng observes that while most Americans are using products that are made in China, most do not trust the made in China products, and do not think highly of the product design in China. He says that thinking is old and obsolete, and feels that this approach will hinder the development of the United States’ own design. Haoyu notes that if America really wants to put an end to shoddy products, it is better to change the U.S. marketing system, because in the pursuit of profit, a crucial part of the industrial design ecological chain, businesses will always want to buy the cheapest products and sell them at an inflated price.



…both China and the U.S. can learnfrom each other.


Mr. Feng discusses a common topic of interest for both the United States and China: environmentally-friendly product design. Eco-design has become very popular in recent years—environmental friendliness (more focused on people and the environment), recycling of energy and materials. Mr. Feng referred to new types of environment-friendly materials Speck Design is testing, and plan to use in their design works. He feels that if we truly want to promote environmentally friendly product design, because such a thing is a short-term “zero return,” we must move it forward from the market, from the government’s policies; there must be economic and political impetus.

I discussed my design thesis (elements for perfect design) with Mr. Feng. He offered good observations and suggestions, and thought-provoking examples. For instance, he said that from a practical point of view, consider the appear-ance and function of the product—between these two points, what cannot be seen is that which can be focused on in all cases. With small design companies, they often do not produce their own designs, they will focus more on the appearance—but as designers, we need to design to make both work together with balance, the work of the designer is to coordinate these factors as a whole. So there’s still a need to consider design in a whole not partial way. If you are a designer, you will find a way to make them work together.

I ask a (rhethorical) question to Mr. Feng: How does one define good design in United States? Mr. Feng answers that, in fact, design is different for different occasions. Sometimes the difference is very large, it depends on balancing the customer’s needs, and the designer’s own style. He said each designer has their own style, their own unique outlook. Customers look for different styles from different designers or companies, to select what they want. In Feng’s opinion, designers can make and design suitable products that satisfy the needs of the customer and the designer.

Throughout the interview, Mr. Feng made me aware of information about industrial design that I never knew before. As a student of design, Mr. Feng left me with thoughts about the education of design and the design internship experience, these insights were very helpful for an international student like me. Mr. Feng also reiterated that the difference between the United States and China; the United States relies too much on production outsourcing, which creates a disconnect between designer and production. The U.S. needs to move product production back to United States; and Chinese designers need to focus more on creative design. Mr. Feng gave very high praise for Chinese industrial design in recent years, but also by implication, he pointed out that if China wants to become a powerful nation of design, there is a lot of work that still needs to be done.



Mr. Feng says designers are not only creative producers, but also people who combine and coordinate various elements in their design work; designers not only need to design the interaction between product and user, but also to design a product associated with and very well coordinated to the natural environment. Mr. Feng’s points are very inspiring to me. In the end, designers need to show their strengths—as a designer when you reflect your strengths, people will appreciate your works, so this is the good design that we are looking for.

As a student, in my opinion, you want to know what you want to learn, this establishes the purposes for your studying in the United States—to understand what you’re learning. For international students, we must first understand what it is we can’t learn from where we’re from, but only can be found in other places. The United States is one of the best countries for design. Design companies in the United States focus on solution design—solutions from product, to all the things associated with the product. This range of issues surrounds the whole of the design, which goes beyond the rang of mere product design. Another difficulty for international students is learning how to apply the design method/s we learn. In the United States, learning design is not only about getting a degree from design school, for this industry, working experience is sometimes more important than what one learned in school; in other words, if you have no internship experience, it very hard to find a design job in the United States. So if international students want to continue design work in the United States, the best place to utilize the knowledge of what they’ve learned, is with working at an American design company. Having a degree in design for international students who are studying in the United States, but without internship/work experience, is a very unfortunate thing. Whether they want to return home or prefer to stay in the United States, (international) design students must have some internship first.

The interview with Mr. Feng was a very memorable experience for me. The interview gave me many new ideas, and made me see lots of new things from a different point-of-view—from a designer with multiple identities. Mr. Feng’s careful answers, gave me a lot to think about, many of his insights are very helpful to my study and design work. I want to thank Mr. Haoyu Feng for his patience and his great advice.

Images: Courtesy of Speck Design / www.speckdesign.com


Design

ers not on

ly need to design

the

interaction

between

product an

d user,

but also to design

a product associated

with

and very w

ell coordinated to th

e n

atural environ

men

t.


Balan

cing B

eauty

and

Fun

ction:

by Boriana Angelova Viljoen

a graduate stu

dent’s search for the secret to designing a delightful u

ser experience for

mobile devices and her jou

rney in finding inspiration in all the right places and people

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As an undergraduate student, I had a dream to work as a designer for Google. Their dominance over the digital world, cafeterias with organic freshly cooked food, and free massages on site made Google seem like a magical place to work at. I daydreamed that, one day, I would be the Creative Director of the Mobile Advertising department at Google.

Dreams are a wonderful thing, because they help guide our goals in life. While doing research on the esteemed designers that have worked at Google, I came upon Douglas Bowman. Bowman made a big impact at Google by being the first in-house designer. He introduced the Visual Design discipline and built the in-house design team from scratch. In 2009, he left the company and wrote a now famous “Goodbye, Google” blog post that established Bowman not just as a talented design thinker, but as a visual design philosopher. In that short, captivating blog post Bowman supports the argument that while constant research and user testing data help us understand users’ behavior and preferences, there is a risk that data will “eventually [become] a crutch for every decision, paralyzing the company and preventing it from making any daring design decisions.”

I read and re-read that blog post so many times, and it awoke a question in my mind, which I could not quite answer—and I don’t think that any one person could. The answer lies on the border between data and human, science and art. The answer to the question that many ask and try to answer: What is good design?

Bowman started out in print design studying Graphic Design at the Uni-versity of San Diego. There was only one computer in the department that all students fought over. He recalls his professor saying, “Don’t worry about keeping up with technology, it will always change. You need to be well versed in design regardless of the medium.”

Douglas Bowman is now the Creative Director at Twitter, undoubtedly one of the leaders in today’s digital world of social media1. I felt honored to have the opportunity to interview Bowman and talk about his design principles when working on mobile apps, and creating the Twitter brand we know today. As a visual designer myself, I wanted to reveal his secrets for creating visual displays of quantitative information for mobile device application.

I asked about the “Goodbye, Google” blog post he wrote four years ago. Bowman clarified that when you get to the size and scale of Google, you have to use data to inform your decisions. But he believes data cannot be used to drive the decisions more than trusting the designers who were hired to come up with solutions. It is unnecessary to use data when looking at micro decisions, whether something needs to be one pixel or two pixels or a certain shade of blue. For Bowman, “There are more exciting design problems in this world to tackle.”

Balancing Beauty and Function 61

62

Beauty is fan

tastic as long

as it allows th

e design to

recede in th

e distance.

63Balancing Beauty and Function

Vine + TwitterThe week before my meeting with Bowman, Twitter announced the launching of Vine, a six second video sharing service2. Animated gifs that tell a short “blip” of a story without being a full pledges video. Six seconds, not seven or eight, is the ideal amount of time to tell a story without going too long. Bowman tells me how, just like the constraint of 140 characters for a Twitter post, the 6-seconds-time limit does something for people’s creativity and pushes them to use restraint and get the message out in much more concise way. I am not sure what the significance of the six seconds video is, but the folks at Twitter are convinced this will be the next big thing. Douglas believes this brevity helps people absorb information, “You get through things much faster.”

Saul Bass said, “I want to make beautiful things even if nobody cares,” and I questioned Doug how that statement differs from his perspective and experience. He explained that beauty is only one component of what we do as designers. User Experience is so much more, whether it’s about flow of information, utility, usefulness or structure. Design has to makes sense, and the user has to recognize it right away. Beauty is fantastic as long as it allows the design to recede in the distance. If the design is getting in the way and is over-decorative, then it distracts from the function. Bowman would not want his work to be known just as beautiful; he wants it to be known for the useful-ness and utility of it: “We are not out there to just make beautiful objects.”

Form vs. FunctionBowman’s secret of balancing form vs function is by starting with function, utility, usability, structure and flow, and then jumping in with aesthetics and visuals. There is always a way to layer on visuals and aesthetics, that can dress something up and make it more appealing and pleasing. His design process starts with sketches, wireframes, gray boxes, and thinking through the entire flow of the application. Designing for the current age is not about just a single view, but more about the continuity of the entire experience. Designing for the digital interactive world is just like telling stories. When doing conceptual piecing together of things, one thinks of the story they’re trying to tell. Bowman thinks of what the person is trying to accomplish, what are they looking for, what would delight them midway through the process—then he and his team look at each view and ascribe qualities and aesthetics to each piece of the puzzle.

Twitter logo changeIn 2012, Twitter changed its logo by removing the bubble text “Twitter” and revisioning the blue bird, which had been established as the recognizable symbol for the brand3. As a Creative Director, Douglas Bowman was involved


in the reworking of the logo. He believes that this logo takes the company forward from a small start-up that hadn’t established themselves, to the global brand that Twitter has become. The logo reworking was a long process that went through multiple iterations. The new logo needed to have the weight and gravity of a global brand, while retaining the beautiful optimistic upturned essence and nature of the original.

I personally found the old logo “cute,” while the new one, in my opinion, is more elegant and “grown up.” I believe it accomplishes, hands-down, Bowman’s objective when redesigning the logo. The original logo, I felt, was cartoony, playful and spirited, but as they grew larger and larger, Twitter needed something more iconic. The original bird was very recognizable, and the new one still retains the essence and spirit of the original bird.

According to Bowman, the new logo was something that took a little while to get used to, because fans had affinity for, and were attached to the previous bird and its character. It took time (about a month) for some people to get used to it, but now they see it and think of it as a beautiful symbol that doesn’t need the “Twitter” type to specify it—there is no going back. For Twitter’s Creative Director, the difference between old and new is like night and day.

Bowman, as Creative Director, spends 50% of his time leading marketing design and brand messaging, and 50% on product design. Douglas has to change his mindset when switching from working on complex diagrams on the mobile app to looking at a onesheet to be used to promote a new feature. Keeping a foot in both informs design on each front—product designers work on things that have dynamic complex flows, and the marketing folks can riff off that. At the same time the marketing side, albeit being static compared to product, can come up with something that plays back into the product side. There has been a dramatic shift in the focus of the design team at Twitter over the last two years. The designers used to work on mostly web with very little mobile, but in the last year and a half the focus has shifted to mobile and tablet. Web has become just an expanded screen version of the app.

Bowman’s team consists of 40 designers, including prototypers, researchers and marketing designers. The makeup of his team allows for things to move more quickly and try a few different proof of concepts before pushing forward with building a new feature into the product. The team has the opportunity to play with many ideas, not just focus on one.

Twitter mark/symbol before and after.



Stamen: Data visualizationStamen Design used data sourced from MTV’s Twitter feed to visualize the MTV video awards. I had the pleasure of speaking with Stamen’s Design Director, Shawn Allen, about his principles when designing beautiful experiences for consumption of complex data. He tells me the secret to Stamen’s success is the mixture of talents—of the artists and engineers working there. For example, one of their visual designers is a very talented fine arts painter, and she created custom water color swatches on real paper with real watercolors, to create the Watercolor map (http://maps.stamen.com/watercolor).

When creating new work, Shawn looks for the balance between the narrative and the data visualization. One is simplified and artistic, the other is complex and dry. An avid cyclist, Allen uses the minimal form of the bicycle with the rich experiences it allows for, as an inspiration when designing—helping to fuel his creativity with new ideas and different ways to “show everything” without overwhelming the user.

Allen praised the Twitter mobile app for being refined and responsive and helping users orient themselves even if they rarely use the application. Other mobile apps that stood out to him as well made were Flickr and Nest, while the iPhone Music App was an example of an app gone awry with unnecessary shadowing and clunky wooden rails. A self proclaimed “generalist,” Shawn Allen uses technology to arrive at a design solution, and tries to find the perfect blend of low-fidelity and hi-fidelity expression of data. At Stamen it takes a couple months to build and refine a new data visualization product.

San Francisco Bay CurrentsAs a graduate student doing research on what constitutes effective “good design” for mobile device applications. I’m specifically interested in complex information display, like the problems the guys at Stamen tackle, and the tumultuous San Francisco Bay currents that entangle the daily lives of many sailors, windsurfers, swimmers, kite-surfers and many more. I want to apply my education to improving the way ocean currents are displayed. Personally, I will focus on nature and my engineer friends at the SF Bay Current’s project hosted by the Tiburon Marine Laboratory. Jim Pettigrew and Toby Garfield have been working to create an iPhone mobile app for displaying and predicting the San Francisco Bay currents for the past three years. Their app could educate, delight and impact the safety of thousands of Bay water users and observers.

—BAV

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How democratic is the process when deciding on a new idea? Small changes are easy to implement without involving many people. Substantial new product features involve the Vice President of Product, Vice President of Design, and the vice president of Engineering. The design team does not just design a new system and then toss it over the wall to engineering—engi-neering and design are involved early on in the process of product ideation.

At Twitter, new ideas come from everywhere. They have “hack weeks” on a quarterly basis, where engineering and design take a week off and focus on developing either a new product or feature within that week. Then they work on what could be added to or subtracted from the user experience. They explore what platforms will it be built on: Android, iOS or web.

The Growth Team at Twitter does experiments on new features with A, B, C tests. Designers work directly with the Growth Team on the sign-up process, user flow after signing-up, ushering and shepherding new users onto Twitter. Researchers on the team do remote testing and bring people into the office. They don’t use a one-way mirror, but they do record all sessions, and in this way they can go back and take notes of certain things and play the recordings back for members of engineering who could not attend the real-time session. Research drives the early part of design—how users are using competitive products, how current features are performing, how well or confusing a new prototype or a certain feature is doing. Bowman designs and sketches all the time and finds inspiration everywhere, particularly from his team—a lot of the designers that he works with are wildly creative.

Aversion to changeAt the time Bowman was working at Google, the problem was that their tests were run for short periods of time and did not measure fatigue or change adoption. As Douglas reminded me, if you move the cheese from the mouse, she has to re-learn where it is.

As soon as a change is released on Twitter, feedback can be sent imme-diately. There is no specific grace period about people reacting to change—often the noise is mixed and both positive and negative reactions come through. It’s been said that good design drives strong reactions from people whether they are positive or negative. Bowman and his team constantly evaluate the feedback and reaction to changes, but one cannot listen to all the feedback because it pulls in many different directions.

Nevertheless, the design department at Twitter pays heavy attention to what users are asking and how they are using the product. For example in the past “@username” was used to reply to others, now conversations are linked, which makes it easier to follow a chat between two users. “Retweet” is no longer something that needs to be typed out as “RT,” but is now a simple button that makes the user experience faster, easier and simpler.

Balancing Beauty and Function


An innovative new feature is the “Profile Dialogue” which differentiates the user experience on the mobile versus the web Twitter application. When clicking on a user’s name on the mobile app, it goes straight to that user’s timeline, but on the web the user gets a light box pop-up with a little bit of a information to give an idea about the user and their bio so the user can make a decision whether they want to learn more without being redirected to a new place in the app.

The color blue is heavily associated with Twitter’s brand. The Twitter chrome (the visual design of the application) should not compete with the content that people are actually looking for. The identity of a user on Twitter is just as important as what they say—this is why the avatar and username go first before every tweet. A quote changes meaning depending on who it is coming from.

It was interesting listening to Bowman talk about what users “tap” on. Due to my past experience designing-for-web, I would think about what users would “click on,” but I quickly learned the new user interaction term is “tap” when it comes to mobile interface interaction.

When to use icons or words?Icons are for navigation or wayfinding, or for when the tweet includes content beyond 140 characters, such as video, photo, Vine video or story. Symbols are appropriate for conveying actions such as: reply, favorite or retweet without having to translate in multiple languages. Icons are universal, which makes internationalization of digital products easy.

The core experience of Twitter is the home timeline. This is what users expect to see as soon as they open the app (unless they left off some other place). The process of organizing the information architecture involved: engineering, product and design. Several conversations before launching the app focused on how to group and organize the information. When determining the product interface Twitter engineering and design teams looked at different views and parts of the product which would be most useful. In addition, historic patterns of usage were considered.

The current app consists of four core buckets: home (the people you follow), connect (everyone interacting and connecting with you), discover (broader set of people, events and stories), and profile (the place, to which you return to see everything that is personal to you: direct messages, your own tweets, etc.).

A good mobile app, according to Bowman, breaks information down to digestible chunks that are easy to scan and consume. When designing a digital product for mobile devices, one needs to evolve the language of their brand and make it fit with the platform they are building the app for. Having an app that seamlessly spans multiple platforms takes a lot of work. Unfortunately


for me, there is not one formula for app design because there is so much diversity of how people use their phones. Bowman prefers apps like Flibboard and Circa that handle information display well. Arguably, the Google Maps experience is possibly better on iPhone than on Google’s own Android system.

Respect conventions of each deviceOn the iOS platform, the navigation is expected to be on the bottom of the screen, and it remains there even when the user moves around in the app, while Android navigation usually is on top, and it goes away when the user clicks/taps on something. The application infrastructure needs to remain intuitive to the specific platform, so device owners can use the application the way they expect it to work. The challenge is to establish a strong uniquely branded product that still functions in a familiar way to the way your device works. The benefit of coming in at Twitter so early was that Bowman was able to establish the design team and its aesthetic early on. He uses a subtle design aesthetic, one that has utility of function, simplicity, delightful experience, and needs to be human, familiar and approachable.

Personal challenge throughout his careerBowman describes himself as a shy person. This was a challenge in his career, as design is heavily dependent on communicating with people or asking for things you need from them. Doug considers the hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter when he tweets. One has to think before tweeting about respecting his peers and others. The Twitter design department has been built on collaboration and interaction throughout the different departments. Bowman had to go outside his comfort zone when it came to approaching and working with people he did not know. Interviewing Douglas Bowman, I would have never thought of him as shy. Meeting for the first time, he was friendly, welcoming and relaxed.

What I took away from speaking to both Shawn Allen and Douglas Bowman on their thoughts to using data to create beautiful design, was collaboration. Allen said he surrounds himself with talented artists, and brilliant engineers, and both he and Bowman look for inspiration everywhere around them.

Footnotes / Images:

1. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/twitter/index.html

2. http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/01/24/170167624/swinging-from-

140-characters-to-six-second-videos-twitter-launches-vine)

3. http://gawker.com/5916390


About the authors

Ani Abgaryan was born in Yerevan, Armenia. At the age of four, her family moved to Moscow, Russia. Living there for 18 years, she changed schools four times and attended even more art schools. She attended the Moscow Architectural Institute and earned a Bachelor’s degree of Architecture. After graduating from the Moscow Architectural Institute, she returned to Armenia, where she worked on the Tumo Center for Creative Technologies, one of the biggest centers of IT and design education for teenagers in the Europe. While working on this project she developed a great interest in Interaction Design and the development of technology products. Currently, she is an maia candidate in the Design and Industry Department at San Francisco State University, where her research emphasis is neuropsychology, behavior and habits to create intuitive user experiences.

Karen Chin grew up in the hub of technology of Silicon Valley. Interested in design, urban space, and technology, Karen attended the University of California, Davis and received her Bachelor’s of Science in Landscape Architecture with a minor in Com-munication. Graduating in 2012, Karen returned to the Bay Area to pursue her Masters of Industrial Arts at San Francisco State University. Besides spending her time with school, Karen enjoys painting, exploring the city, and spending time with her family.

Christina Gotuaco is originally from the Bay Area. She is an maia candidate at San Francisco State University. She received her undergraduate degree in Public Policy, Management, and Planning from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and currently works part-time in Oakland, editing transit maps as part of Metropli-tan Transit Committee’s (MTC) Hub Signage Program. She is also involved with job training programs. Her interests in design span a wide range of topics, from industrial design and data visualization to graphic, web, architectural, and residential design.

71About the Authors

Steve Jones is an Assistant Professor and the Graduate Program Coordinator in the Department of Design and Industry. He received his bfa from the California College of the Arts, and his mfa in Graphic Design from the Rhode Island School of Design. He is the founder of the Negro Emancipation Association (nea) and the Principal/Creative Director of plantain, an Oakland-based design studio.

Boriana Angelova Viljoen is a visual designer at Castlight Health by day, and a graduate student at San Francisco State University by night. She is interested in complex data visualization on touchscreen devices and delightful functional design. In her free time, she likes to race kiteboards under the Golden Gate bridge and spend as much time as possible on the beach with her husband, and at home with their two cats in Mill Valley, CA.

Chi Zhang is currently an maia candidate studying Product Design at San Francisco State University. He received his undergraduate degree from South East University. Mr. Zhang hopes to have his own design studio one day.


Acknowledgments

Ani Abgaryan I am very grateful to Allan Young for devoting time from his busy schedule for the interview. He created a light atmosphere for an interesting and deep conversation and brought important insights about some of the most essential topics in techno-logical development today.

Karen ChinFirst and foremost, I would like to thank Jared Kole for answering my interview questions with insight and ease. I would also like to thank my DAI 755 professor, Steve Jones, for assisting with direction and formatting.

Christina GotuacoI would like to thank Nancy J. Perkins for contributing her story to our collective design community dialogue, and for providing images and responses throughout the devel-opment of my essay. I’d also like to thank my family and friends for all their support and encouragement over the years.

Steve JonesI want to thank an incredible group of students! It’s been great working with you, and seeing you all develop over the course of the semester. You guys rock! I also want to thank our librarian Darlene Tong, our Department Chair Jane Veeder and Professor Ricardo Gomes for all their guidance, advice and support.

Boriana Angelova ViljoenI would like to thank Douglas Bowman for taking the time to patiently explain to me his design process in the beautiful Twitter corporate cafeteria. I couldn’t have been any more inspired by and thankful to Shawn Allen, Design Director and Partner at Stamen for revealing to me the secrets to a successful data visualization team. I would also like to thank Jim Pettigrew, one of the masterminds behind the Bay Currents app, at the Romberg Tiburon Center San Francisco State University, for introducing me to their groundbreaking application—and the challenges he and Toby Garfield face when it comes to funding and further developing the Bay Currents application.

Chi ZhangThank-you to Mr. Haoyu Feng, and thank-you for Professor Steve Jones, this essay improved me a lot, and gave me the chance to dialogue with a real designer—and also made me know what I need to do next. I hope readers can have benefits for my essay, thank you.

73Acknowledgments

Documents

Acumen: Insight into the Design Process - Spring 2013