Teach Less, Integrate More by Paul Backett

Posted by core jr | 22 Aug 2011  |  Comments (7)

This is the first post in a 6-part series from Ziba's Industrial Design Director, Paul Backett, on rethinking design education.

A lot of recent discussion about design education argues for expanding the design student's skill set. Many of today's Industrial Design programs ask their students to be social scientists, technologists, business analysts and brand strategists—just about everything. The reality is, most of these skills are best learned through experience on the job, and the traditional ID skill set still makes for the best foundation: framing the problem, exploring ideas, making prototypes and storytelling.

What's far more important, and more neglected, is that students learn to properly integrate the skills that they do learn. It's not enough to know how to sketch, model or do user research; these skills must connect to each other, in every project the student undertakes. Used correctly, they enable us to find the solutions and tell the stories that ensure their success. But by expanding the list of "capabilities" students have, many schools are sacrificing the most important capability of all: to approach a design problem with tools that work together seamlessly.

And this has had serious negative consequences. In the 11 years I have worked as a designer, I have seen a deterioration of the core skills of design—the essential craft of what we do. When I left school in 2000, CAD and digital rendering were simply tools at our disposal. Since then they have become so powerful and so easy that they tempt students to skip over the fundamentals of the design process. It's far easier today to jump into CAD and deliver a glossy rendering that disguises lazy design work. This simply wasn't possible in the past.

So what should design schools teach? Or, more important, what should design students make sure they learn? Trends in the design field shift and evolve with incredible speed, and while schools have an obligation to stay current, they do their students a disservice when they completely overhaul their program to reflect the current vogue. The best prepared students still have a few basic skills, but use them with familiarity and fluency:

1. Research - Great designers are great empathizers. Design schools need to teach the difficult skill of taking on the perspective of someone completely unfamiliar, and incorporating that perspective into a design. Instead, we're content to let students design with themselves as the target user.

2. Sketching - The ability to rapidly express ideas using sketching is essential; it's also the indispensable exploration and development tool. But most schools are teaching pure visual expression. They aren't teaching students to think while they sketch, or to infuse their sketching with research-driven insight. As it stands, design students are mostly sketching without purpose.

3. Prototyping - Comfort with 3D representation as a sketching tool as well as a way of understanding form and construction. If you can build it, you're halfway to knowing how it's manufactured. But over-reliance on increasingly accessible digital modeling means we're having students jump to 3D before they understand form and construction.

4. Collaboration - Students are graded individually and therefore have to travel the design process on their own. This never happens in the professional world. Learning the skills of teamwork is essential, but under-emphasized in most design programs. We're letting students become lone wolves.

5. Presentation - A good design that's poorly presented is dead. Students should graduate with dozens or hundreds of presentations under their belts, both designer- and client-oriented. Both internally and externally, we're not demanding good enough stories.

More than just helping students through their academic careers, these skills remain the basis of what we do everyday in the professional world. Design is a constantly changing field, with new practices constantly appearing and evolving. Students need to understand how these changes will affect them, but I firmly believe that the best way to really learn them is in practice, in the real world, from real experts.

A solid, integrated approach to the design process is the least we should be providing our students by the time they graduate. Over the next five posts I'll try to outline those basics and explain how they can be taught in a way that's not just useful in professional practice, but integrated with each other, to give students the flexibility to adjust to an uncertain future.

Rethinking Design Education Series» Research: Learning Extreme Empathy» Sketching: Approaching the Paper with Purpose» Prototyping: Learning to Think and Make with Your Hands» Collaboration: No Rockstars Please» Presentation: The Three Stories Every Designer Must Tell

About Paul Backett

Paul leads industrial design teams at Ziba on a variety of strategic and tactical design programs ranging from medical devices to consumer electronics, apparel and footwear. He is responsible for

the design intent for all industrial design products, and a mentor to the Ziba ID team. His diverse experience, coupled with the desire to immerse himself fully in the target consumers' world, has helped Paul deliver innovative brand building solutions for clients such as Nike, P&G, Respironics and Dell. Paul enjoys uncovering solutions to problems of all sizes and particularly finds the prototyping process to be an inherently rewarding part of the design process.

Prior to joining Ziba, Paul was a designer at Seymour Powell in London, where he was involved in programs for Nokia, Unilever, and Mission

Speakers. Paul is a native of Edinburgh, Scotland; and holds a First Class Honors degree in Product Design from the Glasgow School of Art.

Research: Learning Extreme Empathy by Paul Backett

Posted by core jr | 29 Aug 2011  |  Comments (2)

This is the second post in a 6-part series from Ziba's Industrial Design Director, Paul Backett, on rethinking design education. Read the Introduction to the series, Teach Less, Integrate More here.

Great designers are great empathizers. It's what separates a design that has soul from one that's simply well-realized. In my experience as a design director and as a teacher, it's become painfully clear that the ability to connect with users is something design students must learn, as crucially as they need sketching and CAD.

Unfortunately, the most common student design project has students designing with themselves as the target user. Research becomes a box to be ticked, and certainly never integrated into the design process. The real world, though, is full of unfamiliar design targets, and schools have a responsibility

to teach the difficult skill of taking on their perspectives. What students need to learn is not just empathy, but extreme empathy—the flexibility to inhabit the mind of someone dramatically unlike themselves.

In student projects as well as professional practice, we observe several users fitting a target profile, then build a character that summarizes and exaggerates their functional and emotional needs. But students too often make the more comfortable choice by picking a friend as their target. That's not good enough. Because this is someone they're already familiar with, they're blinded to the details. More important, it lets them off the hook of doing real research. A real strategic target is like a character in a movie: aspirational to others and inspirational to the designer.

It also bypasses another needed skill: learning to love someone unfamiliar. I recently put my students at the University of Oregon through a character-building exercise. During the first critique, one group summed up their presentation by describing their character Michael as 'a bit of a douche.' While he may have had qualities they didn't appreciate, they were going to be spending the next 12 weeks with this guy, so I let them know they'd better find something they liked!

They went back to the drawing board, and eventually seized on Michael's car, a classic Porsche, as a starting point. When they dove into its details, finishes and materials they started to see Michael as someone who cared about quality, honesty and integrity—attributes that led them to other brands with similar values, and served as a point of inspiration for their work. This was hugely beneficial as the term progressed, giving them a target for concept generation that they could personally inhabit.

University of Oregon Industrial

Design students Andrew Lindley, Keenan Keeley and Dean Van 'go large' while building a character board for Michael, their target user

At Ziba, as at many studios, we have a flexible process for taking insights from ethnographic research and turning them into a set of tools to generate, evaluate and refine our designs. The terms are specific to our studio, but the approaches are universally valuable and necessary to developing the empathy that's often absent from modern design education.

First, I have my students do a Live the Life exercise. Once they've identified a target user (that's not based on a friend), I have each student plan out a day in his or her life. Where does she get coffee? Does she drive to work or take the train? Where does she do her shopping, do her workout, get beers after work?

Once they've planned out these steps, they go do them. Literally. Students are expected to experience the world of their imaginary character for a day, immersing themselves in its daily activities while observing and documenting the details—the people they meet, the architecture, the landscape, the products, the materials and surfaces. Everyone comes to the next class with a stack of pictures, a notebook full of notes and a few souvenirs they bought along the way.

These artifacts are then used to build their extreme characters. Consumer profiles are hugely important, but often the ones students produce are haphazard and flat: a sad piece of stock photography, some clichéd product shots, all thoroughly uninspiring. Successful profiles dive deeply into the target's needs, both functional and emotional. I have my students start by going 'large,' buying magazines their targets would buy and visiting websites they'd visit, to cull images for creating a collage of their life.

Building on the results of their live the life exercise, they fill a 4x8character board with images and notes, then sort them using "gravity filtering," a process of moving the best images up and the weak ones down until they "fall" off the board. This edited collage is annotated with descriptions, which eventually become the project's design attributes. This process encourages students to question every image and every word, making sure it's believable and true. It's especially effective when done in teams, so classmates can review and ask tough questions about each others' characters.But it's not enough to simply define the character; extreme empathy means making her life as familiar as your own. This is where the crucial next step comes in, of building a consumer journey or 360 model—essentially a visual map of a day in the life of the user. It starts with her getting up in the morning, and then goes through a typical day, cataloging not just the functional aspects of daily life but also the emotional journey. The coffee she drinks in the morning: is it instant, espresso or French press? Why? Does it make her feel energized? Calm? Sophisticated?

The 360 model is the time-based counterpart to the character board. Instead of a visual snapshot of the user, it's a timeline, running from the moment she wakes up to the time she falls asleep, highlighting every moment in the day that sets her apart. It's a clear summary of the Live the Life exercise that begins the research process.

Once built, a 360 can be used in several ways. A specific product might be used at certain times of the day or week, and the 360 provides detail about that moment. A 360 can identify unique opportunity spaces for the user, expose pain points and suggest how a product could serve them in multiple scenarios. Students can also build a mini 360 around a specific task, to draw out more detail and look for opportunities directly preceding or following it.

U of O students Sean Kelly, Ruby

Sprengle and Michael Dowty presenting a 360 model for Malene, a single mother of two. The red line represents her movement from inside

to outside her home, as she goes through the week working as an event planner.

Finally, it's time to formalize the tools. Now that students have gone large, they're asked to go small, distilling their character board and 360 model into tight, compelling deliverables that tell the character story with little or no external presentation. These should also embody the attitude of the character in their tone and visual style.

U of O students Robin Hubbard, Audrey Craig, Nathan Blair and Dan Munger with a "micro" 360 board for Tanatip, an international music

producer.

Building these tools is also an opportunity for students to learn the non-linear nature of the general design process. They should continually jump backwards and forwards between these three exercises, to find fresh inspiration throughout the class, and keep each tool living and active. As

teachers, our job is to ensure that the characters are not lazy caricatures, but believable people with emotional and functional depth.

In the next few posts I will describe how these tools are integrated into the design process. Properly used, they inspire exploration, help with refining details and ultimately become a vehicle for communicating a product's true story.

Sketching: Approaching the Paper with Purpose, by Paul Backett

Posted by core jr |  5 Sep 2011  |  Comments (5)

This sketch exploration by Ziba

designer Sam Amis shows a broad, rapid exploration of gestures for a snowboard-carrying backpack.

This is the third post in a 6-part series from Ziba's Industrial Design Director, Paul Backett, on rethinking design education. Read the Introduction to the series, Teach Less, Integrate More here.

Every design school teaches the mechanics of sketching: line, volume, perspective, shading and so on. But when it comes to project work, most fail to teach students to sketch with purpose. This makes all the other exercise pointless. All too often I see sketches that look fine, but when I ask, "Why did you choose that form?" I get a shrug. As with research, students often see sketching as a step to complete, rather than a tool to be used throughout the design process.

Design has never been a linear series of tasks to be checked off. Experienced designers know that it's more like a loop. It begins with research and problem framing, then falls rapidly into an iterative loop of exploration and refinement exercises, where ideas come to life and grow, gradually solidifying until they're ready for the more linear finalization phase. As designers, we have to ride this

loop repeatedly to find the right solution, and sketching is there at every turn. From an early thumbnail sketch at a brainstorm to refined detail sketches to final presentation renderings, it's our best friend throughout the ride.

One of the things I ask my students to do before sketching is to build adesign theme: a set of carefully curated products, attributes, materials and details that tell a clear story. It explains, for example, whether the product should be engaging and approachable or refined and technical; bold and powerful or so subtle it blends with the environment. Properly constructed, it becomes a designer's 'go to' when sketching, setting up a brainstorm session, exploring form and refining details. From early on, design students should be in the habit of having one or more of these themes in front of them while they sketch, to reinforce the idea that sketching is only useful when it's helping to realize an idea.

Four design themes, aimed at

different target consumers, from a single recent project.

In professional practice, we often think of how we interact with the products we're designing on 3 different levels: attract, engage andextend. Sketching, with its varied levels of detail ranging from doodle to final rendering, should be approached the same way.

At the attract level we try to think of the gesture of the product—the 10 ft read, the form and silhouette of the product

At the engage level we consider the details—how they compliment or contrast with the gesture, how the product feels in the users hand.

At the extend level consider how the product changes over time—how the materials age, how the product can be disassembled at the end of its life.

It helps to think of these layers separately at the start of a project—layers of sketching that will begin to merge as the design develops.

All of the research tools from the previous post are useful here, in particular character boards and 360 models. They can be used as generative tools to push ideas forward while students sketch, and to focus their efforts. Character boards are a great way to introduce a brainstorm, and can be used to evaluate concepts. As they're sketched out, I have students compare them with the character board, asking how well they connect with the target's functional and emotional needs.

As with research efforts, it's important for students to start by "going large" in their sketch exploration. That means filling the wall in their studio, working fast, banging out as many ideas as possible. Only when the wall is full should they take a step back and start sorting. The design themes, character boards and 360 models serve as filters here, for organizing the sketches into groups, and helping to identify the most promising ones.

Now it's time to dive a level deeper, merging ideas and considering finer details. Invariably, students hit a point when they insist there are no more ideas and the exploration is running dry—we call this the 'shit zone' in my class, and the only way out of it is more sketching. I have them go back and re-sketch previous concepts, combine existing ones, or re-work the details on an established gesture. Despite the complaints and frustration, their best concepts almost always appear after they've gotten through this part. This difficult phase is one of the most productive and realistic parts of the class, and something we face regularly in the professional world.

The next steps are familiar to any experienced designer. The best concepts get refined, details and color are added, materials are rendered in Photoshop. This is where the highest, most finished level of sketching is realized, and necessary. The further a student can take the sketch, the easier the next step of the design process will be.

One tool I have championed in my classes and at work is the lost art of orthographic sketching. It's kind of old school, but there's still no replacement for it as an exploration tool. Quick orthographic views using Rhino or Illustrator allow rapid iteration of crucial details like radius values and parting lines. Illustrator allows you to quickly apply materials and finishes to see how it affects the look and feel of the product. It's also important to move rapidly from digital to physical. Often something that looks great zoomed in doesn't work at all at full scale, so I have students print their orthos at 1:1 scale and sketch over them to refine. This is the point where a quick sketch model can help solidify

the details, and orthographic views are essential in planning the model before sculpting or moving into CAD.

Of course, the most effective way to make sure students sketch throughout the design process to have them sketch throughout their lives. Every design student should keep a sketch book or two, of course, and push themselves to continually work at several different levels and styles. They should draw big, draw small, make quick cartoons and obsessive studies, take life drawing classes and technical drafting. The point here is not to develop a dozen different visual styles—one good one is enough—but to build an understanding that sketching is a universal tool for expression. Students, like working designers, should reach for a pen and paper as soon as an idea occurs. Expressing thoughts and ideas quickly and clearly is the hallmark of an effective designer, and well-integrated sketching is the fastest way to do it.

A rigorous, research-informed sketching process provides the answers when designers are asked why they chose a form, a material or a detail. It makes telling the story of the product easier and more sensible. A great sketching process leads to a great product, and a great product tells its own story.

Prototyping: Learning to Think and Make With Your Hands, by Paul Backett

Posted by core jr | 12 Sep 2011  |  Comments (5)

This is the fourth post in a 6-part series from Ziba's Industrial Design Director, Paul Backett, on rethinking design education. Read the Introduction to the series, Teach Less, Integrate More  here .

Despite the rise of digital tools and rapid prototyping, it has never been more important for designers to make things with their hands. Comfort with three dimensions as a sketch and development tool enhances a designer's sensitivity to form tremendously, and helps them understand how products are made in the real world. If you can build it, you're halfway to knowing how it could be manufactured. Instead, schools often allow students to jump into 3D CAD before they have a solid understanding of form and construction.

Over the past decade I've reviewed hundreds of portfolios, more often than not full of glossy 3D renderings based on weak underlying designs. Rendering technology has gotten so good and so easy to use that students quickly become reliant on it. Iterative exploration and refinement using your hands is essential, and in fact makes CAD modeling more effective and efficient in the long run.

More than that, building models by hand is fundamental to Industrial Design—it's what makes our profession a craft. Spending time with CAD makes you a better modeler, but spending time with a physical model makes you a better designer. It allows you to see your design in the real world, in a way that simply superimposing a rendering into an environment cannot replicate (and please, if you're going to do that, make sure to get the perspective is right).

During my first week as a professional designer at Seymourpowell in London, UK, I was handed an orthographic drawing of a handle for a roll-on suitcase, and sent down to the model shop. My task was to build the handle by hand using foam. Thankfully, a large part of my time in design school was spent in the shop, being commanded by our tutors to refine and refine physical models to the point that it felt tedious. The very task I was asked to complete in my first week made me realize why they had been so insistent. I'm not sure many courses push their students this way anymore.

This lapse is having some very real consequences. A couple of years ago, a student I was interviewing showed me a design for a handheld device. But when I asked how many models he had made during the exploration phase, the answer was none! I couldn't believe it—how could anyone design something to be handheld without holding it in their hands! Some of the worst offenders in student portfolios are simply unmanufacturable. Simple questions like where to locate the parting lines leave students dumbfounded. In the real world, it's simply not possible to shortcut the design process like this.

Technology alone isn't to blame, but it offers ways to shortcut the design process that weren't there before. Rapid prototyping, for example, is an amazing tool with an important role to play in design, but increasingly students use it as an excuse—why make a model by hand when they can just get it printed? Equally amazing and terrifying is that RP allows you to make impossible objects, with no grounding in how things are actually made. That's dangerous. The sad thing for me as a professional is that this trend is also moving into the professional design industry; fewer and fewer firms see the need for a model shop when they can buy an RP machine to do the work for them. I fear that we're losing one of the most important elements of craft in our profession.

At Ziba we often do what we call 'form storms.' Like brainstorms, these bring a group of designers together (and occasionally clients), and start with a tight design brief, often based on the previously developedCharacter Board   and  360 Model . Instead of a pile of blank paper though, we create model blanks—foam cut to the rough dimensions and proportions of the product being designed. Then we sketch in 3D, using rasps, craft knives and sandpaper. This exercise is especially useful for handheld products, offering immediate tactile feedback. The key to sketch modeling is iteration, just as with 2D. Don't be precious, try things out, build on previous versions to explore and refine. At worst you start again fresh; at best, you watch the form evolve in your hands.

In the course I'm teaching now, many students lack access to full shop facilities, or the kinds of modeling foams we use professionally. But I still demand they do 3D exploration in any way they can, using cardboard, foam core, plywood and bondo, or whatever else they can get their hands on.

3D exploration isn't just about form, it's also about function. We use sketch models to build and test functional 'works-like' prototypes. These quick and dirty models need not be pretty, but they must be rugged enough to prove out a mechanism or moving part design before they break.

Such prototypes have been hugely important in our Oregon Manifestproject, especially recently, as we worked out a bicycle sidecar concept. We spent an exciting Saturday afternoon a few months back quickly attaching wheels to a wooden board, with a plastic tube as the axle, and a bucket built up with white foam on top. We realized it wouldn't work before even leaving the shop. So we added a second stabilizer arm using duct tape...better! Riding around it became apparent that it was just too large and cumbersome, but a quick trip to the bandsaw improved the feel significantly. It may be one of the ugliest models I have ever seen, but to us it was beautiful—the seed of an idea that we could build from.

The final element of prototyping worth mentioning is the finished 'looks like' model. At this point in the process, the design is locked and the next task becomes storytelling. There is nothing more compelling than having something to hold in your hands that's as close as possible to the real thing. This is where RP can be a great shortcut, but it's important to remember that even the best RP requires substantial finishing, and final models can still be built by hand. The real benefit is that no mental leap is required of the audience. A model is real. You can touch it, hold it and maybe even use it. This is especially useful when designing for a real user, who can take the model and test it, talk about it, learn from it. You can photograph or film it in context, and use this to great effect in your final presentation.

Making final models may seem tedious, but there's no better way to learn about surfaces. We don't quite work to this level in professional practice—it would cost too much—but every hour I spent sanding finish models in school has made me a better designer. When I look through portfolios, I want to understand how you arrived at your solution, and model-making must be a part of that process. Building models helps develop a sensitivity to form, surface and proportion that you will never achieve in 3D CAD. Quite simply it makes you a better designer.

Collaboration: No Rockstars, Please by Paul Backett

Posted by core jr | 19 Sep 2011  |  Comments (6)

Oregon Manifest Brainstorm

This is the fifth post in a 6-part series from Ziba's Industrial Design Director, Paul Backett, on rethinking design education. Read the Introduction to the series, Teach Less, Integrate More here.

Designers in the real world almost never work alone, but students frequently do. One of the great failings of modern design schools is how rarely they expect students to work in groups or with external partners, and how little attention they give to the mechanics of teamwork. Just as much as sketching and modelmaking, design students must learn to share their own ideas and build on the ideas of others; to produce and receive constructive criticism from their peers.

The most successful projects I have worked on professionally came from a collective rather than individual vision. Realizing that vision isn't always fun and games though. Great ideas come from passion and tension, sometimes even arguments. Students need to be objective, to put their personal feelings aside, to not take criticism personally and work for the greater good of the team. These skills can be learned in school, but it's far more common for students to work independently, under a culture of competition or even coddling.

Students need a sense of

humbleness and openness to outside ideas, and there's still no better way to develop it than tough, exacting critique. Leela Morimoto of

University of Oregon's ID program gives a mid-term presentation.

My professors were tough. They took no crap off their students and called us out when we hadn't put in full effort—sometimes dramatically. Based on my interaction with students from dozens of design programs over the past decade, I'm not sure this happens enough these days. An element of cockiness is natural for designers, but it's up to professors to hand every student enough humbling experiences that they develop respect for the ideas and work of others. It's the same in the professional world: we have to be open and honest in our evaluation of ideas. The more exposure students get to this type of discussion, the better.

In the early stages of a project I often see students struggling to come up with new concepts, unaware that group brainstorming is ideal for kickstarting the process. I don't believe students are being taught the techniques to make this important early step effective. Brainstorming is our bread and butter at Ziba. We have many projects going on at once—often every member of the ID team is on a separate program—but anyone has the option to call a group brainstorm if they need to build, refine or problem-solve on any given project.

There are a few elements that reliably make for a productive brainstorm, and no student should graduate from a design program without being well-versed in them.

First, a clear objective - What are you asking the team to solve in the next 30 minutes? Is it a quick, broad exploration or focused idea generation? Your objective should be stated clearly and concisely at the outset.

Set the context - A character board introduces your user and their perspective on the world. A 360 model paints a picture of the product's physical surroundings and how it fits into the user's life. The design theme provides the team with stylistic direction. Brainstorms, in fact, are ideal for testing out design themes, as long as someone is paying attention to the team's responses.

Provide inspiration! - Designers tend to be very visual and tactile, so an empty room will produce a great deal of nothing. This is your opportunity to pull out all those orphaned but interesting materials and samples you've been hoarding for the past year.

One idea per page - This simple rule is one of the most helpful; as important in its own way as the requirement for students to keep a sketchbook. One idea per page allows ideas to be posted on the communal wall live, and this encourages collaboration. When you're stuck, simply look at the wall and build on what you see.

Communicate! - Brainstorms are never silent affairs. Many students are naturally precious or protective, and it's the teacher's or facilitator's job to get them sharing and explaining. This means actively encouraging participants to build on existing ideas, and to submit at least one new idea every few minutes. A good name for the brainstorm can do wonders to break the ice and get the team going—some of my favorites over the past few years include 'Ring of Fire' for a frozen curry

project and 'Show Me the Glove' for a hair coloring program. Brainstorms should feel playful; good ideas rarely come out of a slog.

Inspiration for a brainstorm can

take many forms, from magazine images to material and product samples.

When all these elements are present, ideas come thick and fast. A packaging project, for example, begins with a user introduction: in a recent case, a woman looks for a natural experience to transport her away from everyday routines. The team surrounds itself with packaging and product samples that she—not they—would love. The brainstorm begins with a discussion about these products, the reasons she loves them, and the roles they play in her life. It quickly reveals that this is a woman with a busy, cluttered life, and she wants as little additional complexity as possible. The desired attributes of the packaging become clear: pure, simple, manageable and easy to understand, in contrast with the fussy styles that currently dominate the market. With such a clear aim, ideas begin to flow rapidly, kickstarted by well-planned preparation and prompting.

Another great way to harness the power of the team is with group critiques. I encourage my students to share and discuss ideas regularly throughout their design process. Presenting a clear train of thought is essential. If students can develop these verbal skills in school, it sets them up for presenting to clients later on. As with brainstorms, presentations need a clear goal and concise explanations, and rely heavily on research tools. Integrating all these abilities is a great skill for students to master. I insist on having them write down whatever feedback they receive, and encourage their peers to actively find faults and ask for ideas on how to resolve them.

Industrial designers frequently find

themselves collaborating with experts from other fields, like these two bike builders at Signal, in Portland.

Effective collaboration means more than just working well with other industrial designers though. Designers in the real world must share, exchange and negotiate with broad multidisciplinary teams, including social scientists, engineers, marketers and a host of other creative professionals. And while ID students don't need to become expert at these other disciplines, schools must get better at exposing students to them. It's vital that they find ways to connect these departments within their educational establishments, for the benefit of everyone involved—ID isn't the only field that needs to play well with others.

In the end, we're talking about a shift in design school culture, away from a rockstar mentality, and toward one where idea-sharing is expected and teamwork is celebrated. Individuals can then be graded on how they identified the right idea and took that idea forward, developed it, and made it real.

When I hire designers, I'm not looking for the solitary inventor. The technical skill must be there, but if it's attached to so much ego that it interferes with team interaction, that's a deal-breaker. Students who can show how they harnessed the power of their team in the early stages of a project are far more likely to succeed. Ideas are cheap, after all; in the real world, it's how you take them forward and craft them that matters most. They may not be as obvious as top-notch sketching skills, but humility, teamwork and a desire to learn from peers are essential traits for any designer.

Presentation: The Three Stories Every Designer Must Tell, by Paul Backett

Posted by core jr | 26 Sep 2011  |  Comments (1)

Setting up for a presentation in the

Ziba auditorium

This is the final post in a 6-part series from Ziba's Industrial Design Director, Paul Backett, on rethinking design education. Read the Introduction to the series, Teach Less, Integrate More  here

Design school is not a theoretical exercise. It's a professional program; a set of courses that prepares students for a complex creative job upon graduation. Much of this complexity comes from the fact that designers don't just define and develop solutions, we must also present them. Good designers are able to tell three different types of stories, and if students want to hit the ground running, they need to know all three intimately.

1) The process review - telling the story so far to an internal team.2) The final presentation - telling the big picture story to a client or professor.3) The portfolio - telling a capability story to a prospective employer or client.

We hear a lot about the value of storytelling in design, and with good reason: the objects and experiences we design have to fit into the user's story if they're to succeed. Moreover, telling the right stories to collaborators often makes the difference between a skeptic and an advocate. Here's a brief overview of the three, and how students could be better prepared to tell them.

The Process Review

The process review is the least formal of the three stories, but in many ways it's the most important. Think of it like a trailer for your movie: it draws the viewer instantly into the story, summarizes the plot up to a point but doesn't give away the ending just yet. Unlike the other two stories, the process review is just as much about receiving information as giving it, so it's up to the presenter to get the audience up to speed quickly, so they can respond in a helpful way.

In school and in professional practice, it's important to start at the beginning: who is the user, what are the problems being addressed, whyis it relevant. But the students I've observed

overwhelmingly jump straight into their ideas without laying these foundations. Those character boards and 360 models from the research portion of the project serve an essential role here, and I require my students to begin any mid-phase presentation by using them to establish context.

In any project, by the time that designers are giving a process review, they should know their users intimately and be able to talk about the project from their perspective. They should also have a clear goal for the review and use this to channel discussion toward getting the input and feedback they need. It's a presentation best given face to face, with boards and sketches posted on the wall and treated like a working session rather than a formal presentation.

Setting up for a mid-phase process

review at Ziba.

The Final Presentation

If a design project were a film, this would be the final scene. It's not the whole movie or even necessarily the most important part, but it is the most integrative, drawing on everything that came before and communicating the big picture. The final presentation is as important in the real world as it is for a student. Only the audience is different.

The final presentation is the point where the product and user are brought to life. It's important to show how the design solution connects with the user and how it answers her functional and emotional needs. A final model is essential, and works even better when shown in the user's hands, as an in-use image or short movie. Anything that draws the audience into the experience will make the story more powerful.

When I was in school I remember students dressing up to play the part of a user and handing out candies the same color of the mobile phone that they had designed (the theme was Bubblegum Pop)—it worked beautifully. Video can make a presentation more immediate, but it's important to not let it get in the way of the person presenting. The more practice a student gets at talking about their work in school, the better off they'll be in industry.

A finished model, photographed in

context, makes for a powerful final presentation.

The Portfolio

If the final presentation is the film's climax, the portfolio is the 'directors commentary,' giving an intimate look behind the scenes. A great portfolio, like a great movie, varies its pace. Far too many portfolios I've reviewed use exactly the same format for every project: "Here is my research, here are some sketches, here is the final product." After seeing hundreds or even thousands of projects presented this way, a powerful sense of carelessness sets in, as if the student simply put the elements there to prove that the parts of the project were checked off. A portfolio is a personal document. It should feel connected, and showcase who you are as a designer. It should reveal how you think and make.

With this aim in mind, I give my students several pieces of advice on portfolio design, drawn very heavily from what I look for when hiring.

First, each project within a portfolio should showcase a specific skill. One project may dive deep into the student's research process, while another showcases sketch exploration skills.

It also helps to vary the length. Some projects may only need a couple of spreads while others may warrant a whole process book.

We look for passion when hiring, so be passionate. Sell yourself, your ideas and your process. Show what excites you about design and what makes you unique.

And last, remember that it's not just your final idea that matters but how you got there. Sometimes the challenges you overcame can be as compelling as the solution.

Two pages from the student

portfolio of Sam Amis. The first depicts the research and user empathy portion of a snowboarding equipment project, the second

demonstrates craft and detail in a wineglass design. Each shows passion, but in very different ways. We liked Sam's portfolio so much we

hired him.

All three of these story types are essential to design practice, and each must be mastered while at school. As with any other skill set, the only real way to get better is practice, practice, practice. Schools must demand rigorous presentations and push their students through these exercises over and over again.

All of these skills are directly transferable to the real world. At Ziba, we use reviews to draw clients into our process and make them a part of our team, ultimately sharing responsibility for the design solution. When we make final presentations we inspire the core team within the client organization, helping them believe in the product we've created and equipping them with the tools they need to sell it internally.

Building a strong portfolio is something professional designers do too. Consultancies in particular are constantly presenting themselves in pitches and the clients want to know almost exactly the same things employers do: what are your beliefs, how do you work, what are your success stories, what makes you who you are? Great designers, like great students, have the ability to inspire with great stories.