Many designers, including myself, have often blamed clients for not “understanding design” or not getting “us designers”. The question should not be why don’t they get us, but rather why don’t we get them.
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2 Responses to “Bridging The Designer/Client Relationship. It’s Not Them. It’s Us.”
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Hi Richard – I watched Roger Martin’s video that you sent me. I loved it. Thanks so much for sharing. This in an excerpt from his presentation that I would like to share with my readers:
“Companies on the basis of that first advantage, grow to some size, and then adopt a pattern of thinking that is inconsistent with advancing knowledge. From there, they developed a way of thinking that’s about honing and refining within your existing stage; taking a heuristic and making the heuristic work a little bit better, taking the existing algorithm and making it work better…And giving the opportunity from companies that start in garages with no money, no people and no anything, other than the willingness to think differently, give them a chance to blow them out.
Though then, by the very process of doing that, they then stop thinking in a way that got them there, and they get blown out, successively.” – Roger Martin.
For those of you wondering what design thinking is, watch this 75 minute presentation by Roger Martin.
http://www.sambasta.com/post/504714842/survival-tips-for-healthcare-designers-the
Mel :)
Mel,
Thanks for your article. I couldn’t agree more that the challenges of understanding the design/business divide needs to be more widely discussed and your tips are welcome.
As a creative start-up in service design, (not an easy discipline to explain) I have been networking in business environments and find myself trying to talk in a business ‘dialect’ so that I can avoid the common pitfalls of assuming the business person I am speaking to is familiar with design language and jargon.
As ‘design thinking’ becomes more widely discussed in the business press as a source of competitive advantage, the onus is on designers to understand the differences between business and design. We should endeavour to adopt a communication style that helps business easily translate how design thinking is distinct and of genuine use in helping them meet their business goals in continuously changing contexts.