Davy Rennie’s Unfiltered SXSW Diary – Day 1

Davy Rennie (left), experience design director, The White Agency is covering SXSW exclusively for Campaign Brief.

Welcome to ‘Unfiltered SXSW: Day One’.

Today, I look at the future of design and disruption, fueled by the famously shit American coffee and the incredibly epic combo of breakfast and Mexican.

Designing for the future of our industry

The first event, first queue, first conversation. And it’s all about the challenges design leaders face in the market when looking for talent and there is a global cloud following the industry. The Instant Designer.

I’d heard that some of the best insights you gain at SXSW occur within the conversations you have in the queues to events. And straight off the bat, that was spot on. My new American friend says ‘hello’ and we are off and running, straight into an Adobe session.

Soon enough, our table erupts with a discussion about the current state of play in Experience Design. The sentiment in more or less unanimous: today’s design industry is a cluster of jargon and convoluted professional acronyms that sound cool, but often hold no true value or meaning. UX, UI, CX, XD… the list seemingly grows by the day. Sadly, however, the quality does not.

I’ve met people from around the world and all walks of life that share my belief that the instant designers that are currently being churned out of instant design schools are killing the industry, and our reputations. We need to return to the basic principle: good designers- be they print, graphic, or digital- make great experience design professionals. It’s really that simple.

Instant design schools are, problematically, creating an expensive talent ‘bubble’ that is heaving under the immense strain of those in search of real talent. Truly talented designers have become such a rare commodity in today’s design industry, in fact, that people within the industry are beginning to refer to these elusive creatures as none other than ‘unicorns’ (and you know exactly how I feel about those guys).

Day one could stop now, and I would sleep that little bit better knowing that I’m not the only angry design professional, with a particular irk towards these instant design schools.

Ultimately, joining the Adobe XD workshop has been a fascinating experience. An unbelievable two finger salute to the likes of Sketch and inVision, using a blend of familiarity and innovation with an epic dose of customer-centric design.

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Humans, Machines and the Future of Industrial Design

Industrial design is an enigma in the corporate world. What it is, and what it can do to assist businesses in the private sector, largely remains a mystery (to myself included).

I want to know what fundamental principles are being programmed into machines to make them become more creative and illogical, so I can adopt these principles and transmit them to my team.

First things first: Humans are complex beasts of emotion.

We are:

*   Bloodyminded and hard-headed;

*   Simultaneously logical and illogical;

*   Driven by emotion;

*   Empathetic.

Machines are tools; unemotional and logical in design and execution. So are humans (some more than others *raises own hand*), but the emotional nuances and illogical features inherent in our design arguably make us better, or at least more creative. Innovation, it would seem, is difficult (if not impossible) to manufacture without this human element.

When it comes to the design of devices that are exclusively tasked with interacting with humans on a day-to-day (if not minute-to-minute) basis there appears to have been a distinct shift towards humanising the machine within the last few years.

We can see this with contemporary devices like Siri, Cortona and Alexa, all of which are designed to connect with people, not only with the artifice of a human voice but an endearing touch of emotive illogic.

Engineering a human touch is one thing, but is it possible to transform machines into creative entities? Looking at the fundamental features that incredible designers hold may be at least part of the answer:

Designers:

*   Trust their gut and rarely question their creative instinct;

*   Simplify complex challenges and ideas;

*   Always consider context; the right product in the wrong room isn’t the right product

*   Focus on one detail, making it the hero;

*   Cut the fat; they intuitively discern when something doesn’t add value to the product;

*   Embrace serendipity:

Evidently, these features are a mixture of both logic and emotion. When it comes to machines, we need to insert a glitch; something that encourages illogical thought. However, codifying this is difficult, and may continue to be the difference between us and machines for the foreseeable future.

When someone loves something, they want to connect, touch, feel, and experience that something on a human level. Great designers use their emotion to capture and deliver  this sense of humanity through a product and/or service.

What I do know and hear on repeat in Austin is that empathy rules the world and human communication will always trump artificial intelligence, at least until machines can react emphatically. The presenters concede that whilst computers are capable of learning, they cannot (yet) learn to feel. They can only mimic feeling, and that’s as far as it goes at the moment. So designers, hold onto your humanity and you’ll be ok.

For now.

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Working with Giants

We often talk change, disruption and agility, but we know from experience that big businesses frequently fall back on the old, worn processes that they know and trust; a knee-jerk safety mechanism which harms, and inevitably destroys, companies in the long run.

The panel is a mixture of federal, start-up and big businesses. Despite the diversity, however, we all agree that there are only a handful of businesses globally that have managed to successfully embrace tomorrow today, whilst the others compete over their crumbs.

So, how might we make it easier to remain innovative as a big business today?

Partnering with a startup to tackle particularly challenging obstacles may be one step in the right direction.

Traditionally-speaking, big businesses generally do one of two things to start ups:

    • They invest, wait for a speedy return, and then cut and run when that doesn’t happen.

    • They actually put some skin in the game. They try to teach big business acumen so startups become more viable and secure, reaping the rewards of startup innovation with the financial know how of big business.

If you haven’t guessed, the companies who adopt the latter approach generally succeed with startups, and see real results.

Whilst I might work for a typical agency that acts as a vendor to big business, I see real opportunity in engaging with startups as “partners.” Here’s why:

They change you for the better

They enable you to get out of your own way

They help your business and your people get out of their comfort zones and their own way.

Every company inevitably drinks their own Kool-aid, and rightly so, but they often struggle as a result to acknowledge and address the challenges that continue to stand in their way.

Since startups primarily focus on challenges, rather than solutions, they generally breathe new life into big businesses by shifting the internal needle away from formulaic paradigms and solutions, to unconstrained thought and innovative problem-solving.

They have the best talent

Startups are undeniably cool. There is usually an office pet, a ping-pong table, free food and beanbags. Understandably, they are attracting some the best talent in the world.

If you are a big business, you are probably great at compliance, safety and financial security. You focus on that, and let your startup partner help solve the challenges.

Easier to scale

The talent war is real. There simply aren’t that many great professionals in the market, despite what the instant designer might say.

If someone quits at a startup, they have another one ready to roll, someone fit for purpose. If someone quits big business, there is a deep, dark process to backfilling that role putting your programs at risk.

Do it right and it will work

When it comes to selecting a partner, judicious judgment must be exercised. Picking the newest or flashiest startup may seem appealing, but if it’s specialities are incongruent with the demands of your business, the partnership is likely to fail.

Alternatively, if you base your selection upon what you think will complement your team and your company, the partnership will likely succeed.

Challenges, not solutions

Challenges are your key to success, not solutions. Solve challenges. Make money. Be nice. These are the simple rules of healthy partnerships.

If you use all of this to engage with your partners, startups or otherwise you are really pointing yourself in the direction of success.