Wednesday, June 6

Why hire designers? #1


The American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) published a booklet entitled Why Design? The booklet outlines the role of design in business strategy. It seeks a common framework for why design adds value to clients’ interests. It defines the power of Designing, a larger concept that includes strategy as well as artifacts across a variety of disciplines. In the interest of disseminating this invaluable knowledge and also as a personal learning goal, I have decided to publish excerpts from the booklet. Namely, the pattern that successful organizations and individuals tend to adhere to when confronted with a problem and how design fits into this framework.

The pattern is broken up in three categories- Defining the problem, Innovation, and Generating value- of 4 steps each. For the next twelve days I invite to you to follow along with me in learning this pattern of success step by step.






DEFINING THE PROBLEM -Successful teams first define the problem they are trying to solve- they articulate it and give it boundaries (what's part of our problem. What's beyond our control). They call upon designers to help cull, visualize, express that problem in human terms- looking at it from many different views.

2 comments:

Shayla said...

That's a logical, but I imagine often overlooked first step. The only two reasons people buy is to fix a problem or for pleasure.

Juggling Jason said...

You are absolutely right, it is often overlooked. This is why AIGA put out the booklet. In fact many businesses eschew the idea of a definite strategy. Entrepreneurs have many things to 'juggle' and this is where the designer comes in. To aid in these vital steps.