designers: different types, different functions, one purpose

From time to time people ask me what I do, and with absolute confidence I say ... Design. I say it with confidence because I have been a Designer for over 17 years of my life. The single most puzzling part of it all to me however; is though design is all around us, many of us do not know the differences between a graphic designer and an experience designer, an industrial designer and a interior designer. When I say... "Designer", the instant idea, that comes to mind, is "graphic designer" or "interior designer" and this brings me to a set of ideas of my own...

1. Though design is all around us, innovation - through design; is crippled by our lack of understanding as it pertains to the different facets of the field

2. Many designers are mis-placed because many mid-level (even high-level) leaders lack the ability to identify the unique abilities of the different "types" of creatives they have at their disposal

3. The overall design thinking of an organization becomes stagnated because designers are looked at as solely "pretty thing makers" and NOT "process innovators", or "organization transformers" ...

These ideas are surface at best, and I want to keep this post simple for the sake of us gaining a different perspective of the designers within our organizations and among us in our everyday lives. Let's first find out what a designer is and NOT assume that we "know"...

Designer: A person who designs or CREATES something. OR as psychologist Herbert Simon would say... "Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones".

SO based on this lens, we can easily say that we are ALL designers at one level or another, and THIS is indeed good news. I am privileged to know all kinds of designers ... Interior designers, system designers, experience designers, graphic designers, user experience designers... I could go on and on, however; the idea here is that just about everything you see, touch, smell or even experience comes from the hand or mind of a designer.

With this revelation we can quickly conclude that designers are an very important part of our every day lives... We can also conclude that there are, in-fact different types of designers, AND designers have different functions however; if we look deeper we will find they all really have the same purpose, arguably - creating courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones. We "prefer" to have elegantly designed cars versus "ugly" ones, we would "prefer" to have a "well oiled system" at the hospital versus a "cumbersome" one. Fact is however, the answer rest in design and design thinking.

Organizations can tap into new levels of innovation if they can somehow sift through all of the "stuff" and get down to the ethos of each of their employees BUT primarily the creatives - the ones with a proven record of design thinking capabilities, and re-leverage them for optimal results.

As for me... IF I had to be classified as any "type" of designer, I would have to be classed as a "experience designer", however primarily I am a "design thinker".  I look at the totality of the problem to be solved and I am able to intuitively and systematically devise or "design" solutions to accomplish a desired result. With 17 years of creative/design thinking under my belt - I am able to lead creative teams into the innovation of new products, services and brands. So when I say I am a designer, my view of what design is and what it does is broad and wide ranging. From the design of a website to the design of a customer experience - I leverage design thinking to get results. Creative - innovation driven results.

I am only one type of designer however; and within organizations there are generally many. The true power of innovation is tapped when organization leaders at every level have an understanding of the "types" of designers they are leading. They tap into greater levels of innovation when they know the "functions" that each of their designers serve, and the single goal, the common purpose of progressive/disruptive innovation becomes the driving force behind the organization.

satori ethos: becoming aware of inner genius

For the past week I have been wrestling with God over two words. One being Satori, a Japanese Buddhist term meaning "enlightenment" or "understanding". The second word, Ethos, a Greek word originally meaning "accustomed place". Ethos forms the root "Ethikos" meaning "the state of being" - the inner source, soul, mind. According to the Oxford Dictionary it is defined as "the characteristic spirit, prevalent tone of sentiment, of a people or community; the genius of an institution or system"...

Satori Ethos, becoming aware of inner genius ...

Today I was in Church listening to my Mentor, Life Coach and Spiritual Father Dr. Victor L. Powell and it's like all of the dots started connecting together in my mind. I was first introduced to the word Satori about 4 years ago. And since then I have tossed it around loosely in various ways. It was not until the last 7-9 months once I received the word Ethos that Satori started to have meaning beyond it's surface structure. Satori alone is a very powerful idea however; when coupled with the word Ethos - we start to see a deeper idea, Satori + Ethos or "becoming aware of the inner genius of an organization". Dr. Victor L. Powell talked today about Leadership. He talked about how as Leaders we have to know the gifting(s) of the people around us to leverage the gifts properly for the purpose of creative project manifestation. Something that was striking to me, something that he said that absolutely blew me away was the idea that the problem, many times, is not the recognition of the gifts, the problem is the individual understanding his or her own gifts, in other words - knowing what THEY are designed to do...


So what if, just what if we could all understand what we were designed to do? What if we were all grounded in our purpose? What if we knew, without a shadow of a doubt what our roles are in the earth? Dr. Powell asked the question .. "Do you know what you were designed to do..." I thought about this for a second... I know what my gifting is, I have been blessed with a early understanding that I am a Designer. I think creatively without effort, I can look at just about any problem through the lens of design and manifest creative solutions. I am indeed a Designer. However; me knowing what I am designed to to has very little impact on the collective whole if the people around me do not know what they are designed to do. For example...

Say I have an idea for a new way to execute church services and my desire is to design this idea, manifest it into the earth. If I need administrators, that can execute the ideas that I develop I need the people who have the "inner genius" or "gifting" for administration to be rooted in what THEY are designed to do. If there is a graphic design element to the idea, I need the Graphic Designers to be grounded in their "inner genius" or "gifting" ... IF all of the parts are not working together, there is a great chance that my design will fail.


Designing or even leading from the strengths of many has a huge upside; however this upside has no effect if the "many" are clueless to their "inner genius" ... This is where Satori Ethos comes into play... I really feel that if a Life Development Coach type would dig deeper into this single idea, the idea could open new doors to collective innovation at many different levels...

-----

[+] Open Ideation - Satori Ethos for the organization - Discovering the inner genius of an organization 

[+] Open Ideation - Satori Ethos for the individual - Discovering the inner genius of an individual

internal innovation: what if what you are designed to do has not been designed yet?

From time to time I find myself acting in the role of an Innovation Coach - if such a thing even exists. Colleagues, potential colleagues, workshop attendees alike seem to battle with the idea of what I like to call "internal innovation". In other words, they have a hard time grasping their destiny, what they are to do in or contribute to theworld, because there are no working models of what they are to become in the earth, while I argue that what they are to become is locked  on the inside of them ... 

"We are too addicted to what we can see and not driven enough by what we can not see... " - V.A. Hunt

The idea is simple... EVERYTHING that we see in the earth was once the thoughts and the words of a human being, excluding all of the foundational things that God put in the earth such as nature (trees, grass, water, animals...) and any other "raw material" He graced us with. He divinely gave us everything that we needed to do the one thing that makes us so dynamic vs any other living thing - the ability to create.  WITH this as the base or "root" of everything, that we were first born, Creators, we must understand that many of us are locked out of understanding our destiny, because the role that we are to play in this thing called "life" may not be dwelling in the earth already. We can not SEE what we are to become so we wrestle with being things that we can see - thus leaving us unfulfilled and frustrated. 

Internal Innovation 

Be what you are passionate about FIRST. The creation of the Airplane was the direct result of someone creating something that they could NOT SEE. The Wright Bros. decided to go against the grain, and instead of just re-engineering the forms of transportation that they could SEE in the earth, they bought along new innovations and new ideas that ultimately resulted into creating something that we had n ever seen before. This journey started internally, NOT EXTERNALLY. Yes they were answering an external "call" BUT the model they chose to build was internal, and un-seen. 

SO what if what YOU are designed to do and be has not been birthed into the earth yet? WHAT if there is no model? 

Innovate internally, find the things that matter to YOU within and get them out...  We are waiting on you. 


------

Vincent Hunt 

"Errare humanun est, perdonare divinum."

Stop looking at the competition and start focusing on possibilities

For a long time I have battled with the idea of "building a better mousetrap". Fact is, I really feel like we have enough mousetraps. When I walk into the average electronics store - I can clearly see the problem with "build a better mousetrap" mentality. Shelves FULL of mousetraps, or in other words - the same "old stuff" with shiny new packaging. Building a better mousetrap mentality generally stems from the idea of "competition" and not "possibility" ...

Stop looking at the competition and start focusing on possibilities

Always trying to "out do" or "be better than" your competition will lead to incremental innovation, looking at the possibilities gives you new territories to explore, new questions to ask, and new products, services and brands to create... Maybe THIS should be the saying that we use...

"Stop building mousetraps and start breeding new mice...'

Create new markets, find new customers, carve new niche opportunities.

Where most businesses stay when it comes to innovation

Tightrope-walker

With each business leader that I talk to about innovating and being creative within their organizations, this is where I find most of them (see the above picture)...

On a tightrope.

Most business leaders focus so much energy into the incremental increases found through "better mousetrap mentality" that they seldom ever reap the true reward found through authentic innovation. This is not only a disservice to the legacy of the business, BUT it is indeed a organizational creativity killer. We have to find a perfect balance between innovation and number chasing.

Truly innovative companies do not spend much time considering competition instead the spend time considering "possibilities". Apple spent time wondering about the possibilities of a device that would replace not only the cell phone, but the Mp3 player and the laptop in one clean sweep and they just about did it with the iPhone... The iPhone started as a possibility.

It's the possibilities that separate incredible design from good design. It's the possibilities that make tomorrow a better place.

Design Idea: Design towards possibilities and not the competition. Find that perfect balance between number crunching and authentic innovation... As fast as you can.

Seth Godin [+] Designing Better Books?

I am a HUGE fan of Seth Godin. He is doing in marketing what I am aspiring to do in design. He is indeed a Marketers Marketer, and in this video (http://tr.im/desigingbooks) he talks about a situation that I have thought about a lot. A WHOLE LOT. The book industry. The question I have always had is... "Will the book industry dissolve into the noise...?" OR will we find innovative new ways to design books (not simply from an aesthetics standpoint) BUT from a marketing and distribution standpoint? Why does this concern me? As a Designer? Because it's about design thinking. It's about thinking from a designers perspective - "creatively".

As Designers, what is our role in saving the book industry? IF IT NEEDS SAVING... This has not been validated yet... BUT IF IT DOES, what is our role?

I think we need to start designing new ways that books are not only created aesthetically, BUT we need to start thinking about new ways to distribute books... Enough of my rambling, Seth Godin shares a video that I feel should not only inspire you to rethink how you are marketing and creating books, BUT he is also giving you a glimpse into the future of book marketing...

Enjoy.

How to create bestselling books...
http://tr.im/designingbooks

Tagged Rocket Ships

Remixing Soul Camp 2010: Soulful Intervention

A few days ago I posted a update to my Facebook page that went something like this...

Rethink. Redefine. Reinvent.

This is something that I have always believed in and something that I have always "preached" to people I am coaching and or mentoring. TODAY however; I had to quickly preach it to myself. After a day of pondering ideas for a workshop that I am designing - geared towards helping organization leaders re-connect with the soul of their project[s] - I called it "Soul Camp 2010: Soulful Intervention" and this was an idea that I pulled from a recent creative/strategy session that I had with a non-profit group that is about to do something TOTALLY amazing... More info on that coming later... ANYHOO! This session was like no other I had ever experienced. At the end of it - I was so connected to the project, that I knew that the format and structure of the session had great value. Throughout the course of the session the idea "Soul Camp" was like a vapor filling the atmosphere - AND ultimately we started calling what we were experiencing "Soul Camp".

Here is where it get's tricky....

Today I sat and reflected on that experience and I wanted to give the idea some legs, some legacy, and I named my up-coming workshop - Soul Camp 2010: Soulful Intervention... WELL shortly after building intro graphics and starting my collaborative efforts I received a tweet from a team member, that the term "Soul Camp" was the brainchild of one of the earlier session participants... NOT only was I thrown back, BUT I was dismayed because I would never steal an idea... NEVER!! And if you know me... I have far too many of my own!!

Long story short... I had to take my advice... Rethink. Redefine. Reinvent.

Sorry @Kindness girl (http://twitter.com/kindnessgirl) for steppin on your toes!! You rock, and I am sure you will rock "Soul Camp".. Let's go!

Soul Camp 2010: Soulful Intervention

Thinking about Soul Camp 2010: Soulful Intervention - Reconnecting leaders to the soul of their project [s] for the purpose of innovating and designing new products and services... Looking for collaborators and thinkers...

------

Rethinking the branding on this idea... Stay tuned!! 

 

Ideation: Blogging with passion - Soulful Excellence

This morning, as I do from time to time, I asked the question (on Twitter)... "What should I blog about?" As normal I got a few chimes that came my way with interesting ideas. Now, the people who follow me on a regular basis kinda know my "vibe", so they offer up really great ideas - BUT you always have the random ideas, that even if I wanted to blog about them, I couldn't because I have no love for them, no "passion" - SO this leads me to the idea that I want to spread...

Ideation, the process of generating ideas: passionate blog post

I am a firm believer in ideas, but I am an even bigger believer in passionate, soulful ideas, and though I am going to talk about the ideation process as it pertains to generating blog post that are passionate and relevant, I want to make it part of public record that this process should apply to EVERY IDEA that you generate... It will indeed matter...

Ideate in your field of passion. Period.

I can feel blog post... So can your readers, so when you write a blog post MAKE DARN sure that it's something that you are passionate about. Do not blog, just for the sake of blogging... That sucks. Blog about things that really matter to you, blog about things that are compelling to you. IF you take just this one bit of advice, your blog post will be stickier, and your ideas will spread. Your content will be sustainable - revisiting the content FOR YOU will be a delight, and you can build on the knowledge share of your content with grace. So on to the Ideation process, or at least MY ideation process...

1. Crowd Source - Find out what your audience has concerns about. Your readers want to be talked to, not talked at.
2. Sift - Sift through the noise, capture the ideas that line up with your field of passion
3. Refine - Take what you discover and shape it to an idea that you can get fired up about, for example:

One of my Followers (@LifeofSubstance) tweets... "@VincentHunt blog about ideation... as in how u get ideas about what to blog about"

I took this and asked myself a few questions, internal ones, and I discovered that though I think it's important to talk about the ideation process, I think it's MORE important (to me, and hopefully you) that I dig deeper and talk about the "vein" that the ideas need to come from, THEN support that idea with a process - THUS...

Ideation: Blogging with passion - Soulful Excellence

... becomes the blog post. This idea is something that I can get fired up about, and it allows me to feed my readers content that matters to them, while also giving me the space I need to fully rest in my passion field (no worries... I will be blogging about "passion fields", I have mentioned it quite a bit in this post).

4. Deliver - Deliver the idea with the passion that created it. Write it in YOUR style, and make the words come alive on the screen.

In conclusion..

The Ideation process behind finding topics to blog about should be an organic one. One that supports and nurtures your passion field, delivers relevant and meaningful content to your readers and last but not east, compels your readers to engage your content in a way that is sustainable.

artifact: signage

(download)

 

Tagged Rocket Ships