Commenting Rules: I love reading your comments as it allows me to interact and learn from you. Being critical is fine, giving constructive criticism, even better. However if you are rude, I will delete your comment. Repeat, and I will blacklist you. The world is full of negativity, so I don’t need anymore on my blog, which I consider my online home. Would you encourage Neanderthal behavior in your home? Neither would I.

Finally please use your personal name or initials and not your business name. By doing the latter, it comes off like spam, and that’s an auto delete. Thank you and I hope you enjoy being part of the conversation!

How true it is. If you consider your blog/website as precious as your home, deciding to delete or spam certain comments gets really easy. I practice a zero tolerance rule against spammers and flamers, but fear not, I often dig through my spam box and fish out the legitimate comments.

Here’s to the never-ending improvement of your experience at Design Sojourn. Thank you!

This was inspired by Tim Ferriss who was in turn inspired by Brian Oberkirch.

If you don’t have the time to watch the 19 minute video, check out Michael’s 5 secrets which I have reproduced below.

1) Listen first, then design

2) Don’t avoid the obvious

3) The problem contains the solution

4) Indulge your obsessions

5) Love is the answer

What I also found particularly interesting was how Michael started his talk by claiming that he is not creative at all. (Shock, horror!) He then goes on to describe himself more like a “doctor” waiting for “patients” to come to him with design problems to solve. This echos my believe that design or creativity cannot exist in a vacuum.

Via: Behance’s 99% Conference

Check out this visualization of the Design Process taught at the Stanford D-School . The photo was taken by Nina, a senior at Stanford majoring in product design.

The visual is familiar, logical and strangely alluring. The design process made sexy? Just follow the curves!

Via: Young and Brilliant.

2) More importantly is the concept of Slow Design. This is not about taking your time to create things. This is a fully considered approach that asks if and how a product should exists. More importantly the designer is encouraging a sustainable behavior within consumers. The focus here is to create a product that people don’t throw away in 6 months for the next big fad. Personally, I liken this to the killing of endangered species for parts. Catching the hunters will not help if we do not stop the demand.

Completely opposite to our highly rushed product development cycle, Singgih Kartono took 13 years to produce his designer collection of Magno wooden radios. It started out as a university project in 1992 where the main stumbling block was ironically his inability to source for small volume of radio electronics. Similar to effort I took in my Un-p3 project, the struggle was likely rationalizing a low production process with a traditionally high volume product.

Inspired by his native Indonesian art and culture, each radio is made from Pinewood, Mahogany and Albasia trees that are indigenous to Indonesia. Singgih believes that:

“…wood is a soulful material. Wood tells us about life, balance and limits. When I combine electronic products with wood material, it seems like a soul embodied, it makes a closer relation to us. “

Logically, he ensures that he has a sustainable process by replanting each tree he uses and extends this social entrepreneurship endeavor by providing jobs for 30 craftsmen in his hometown.

However, what tickled my curiosity was his approach to Design, or more accurately Slow Design.

“I will make developments. But my design is slow design. I do not want to make things fast because I am not driven by the market, or driven by the money.”

If only all of us had a similar opportunity to forget about our stomachs!

His 30 craftsmen makes about 200 sets a month which sells for $200-$300, and true to his philosophy he is not going to increase production nor expand his range despite a global demand. As such he intends to keep his designs as simple as possible and hopes that it can eventually become a collectible timeless classic.

I just hope that entrepreneurial designer stores don’t end up jacking up the price due to its limited availability! Ah don’t you just love capitalism?

Via: Channel News Asia.

In the interview, Tim shares that (design) leadership is not about having all the answers but asking the right questions. There is no point in creating a great design that answers the wrong question. Unfortunately, this is something that many designers are guilty of. Here’s a juicy snippet:

Q. What other important leadership lessons have you learned?

A. As a design consultant, I get to work with all kinds of interesting people who are leaders of their own businesses. So I constantly learn from watching some of the great leaders do what they do.

A. G. Lafley is a great example. I’ve spent a lot of time with him over the last seven or eight years, until he retired. I’m a member of his design board at Procter & Gamble, and we would get together every four months, and the various divisions would come and show their work.

He was willing to get involved really early on in new ideas — not in a way where his opinion was overly influencing what was happening, but where his support would really push an idea along quickly. I learned a lot from him in terms of style of leadership, which was involved without being dictatorial. He seems to see his role as constantly reminding teams of what they should be focusing on, rather than telling them whether they’ve got the right idea or not.

Somebody else I worked with a lot is Jim Hackett, the C.E.O. of Steelcase. He’s somebody who, no matter how compelling and short-term an issue might be, is always forcing the conversation up to being strategic. How are we thinking about this long term?

As a designer, I’m always looking for solutions to the problems I see in front of me. And the big trick to being a successful designer is always making sure you’re asking the right questions and focusing on the right problems.

It’s very easy in business to get sucked into being reactive to the problems and questions that are right in front of you. And it doesn’t matter how creative you are as a leader, it doesn’t matter how good the answers you come up with. If you’re focusing on the wrong questions, you’re not really providing the leadership you should.

Q. Can you talk more about that?

A. I do think that’s something that we forget — as leaders, probably the most important role we can play is asking the right questions. But the bit we forget is that it is in itself a creative process. Those right questions aren’t just kind of lying around on the ground to be picked up and asked.

When I go back and look at the great leaders — Roosevelt, Churchill — one of the things that occurs to me is they somehow had the ability to frame the question in a way that nobody else would have thought about.

In design, that’s everything, right? If you don’t ask the right questions, , then you’re never going get to the right solution. I spent too much of my career feeling like I’d done a really good job answering the wrong question.

And that was because I was letting other people give me the question. One of the things that I’ve tried to do more and more — and I obviously have the opportunity to do as a leader — is to take ownership of the question. And so I’m much more interested these days in having debates about what the questions should be than I necessarily am about the solutions.

Enjoy the rest of the interview here as it is a pretty good read.