design value

Photo by Tim Gouw on Unsplash Persuading others (to do what you want). In a world of co-creating and collaborating, the ability to persuade others to your view point is a really valuable skill. Would you be surprised if I told you that forcefully arguing your point of view is the least effective way of [...]

Photo by Adam Birkett on Unsplash Too black for Snapchat. It’s easy to think that bias is embedded in ‘others’ – people like Donald Trump, Pauline Hanson and Today Tonight producers. Truth is we all have unconscious bias and we all unknowingly embed our bias into design. Think you don’t? That could be worse – [...]

Photography by Image Workshop You can't charge for a plan, but you can charge for a strategy. Here I am, just twelve weeks into my ‘new career’ of design researcher (rather than design practitioner), and one topic of confusion seems to be following me: the difference between a strategy and a plan. It was a [...]

The design business leadership gap The Australian design scene has matured rapidly in the last five years. We are seeing design agencies become a central part of start ups, buy-outs by large corporates and amalgamations but we have a design business leadership gap. In our work we've come to realise professional development has not kept [...]

Staying relevant: designers need business skills Clients expect that you’ll deliver all the elements of the designer’s craft; brand consistency, slick on-brief design, coding, style guides, prototyping, testing  etc. If that’s all you offer you have about 12,000 competitors in Australia. Gaining business skills could reduce this to about 500 competitors. These skills can move [...]

I know what clients really want... Many clients brief designers having already decided what the problem is and the type of work that needs to be done to solve it. They come to the designer because they think they need a website or an app or a small campaign. Here-in lies the problem. Most clients [...]

You can't measure design That's what some people tell me but I think that design leaders should be championing design effectiveness. In my work with design studio owners I often get push back when I talk about measuring design effectiveness. I think in part this push back is due to a misunderstanding of ‘design effectiveness’.  [...]