DMI student essay winner 2021
Being a product designer for two years, I have designed user experiences through applications, websites, and physical products that have the potential to inspire, improvise and impact people’s lives. In other words, it has been about designing a change. As a design manager, the practice is not only limited to products and experiences but also extends to the process of innovation and transforming practices. Studying design management has changed my perspective from being user-centered to being system-centered- thinking of ecology as a whole. Multidisciplinary in nature, design management education would help facilitate, coordinate and orchestrate compelling ideas and agendas to serve greater value than the status quo in the “real world”.
The purpose of design management is to identify and deliver value to the business through design. Like every patient is unique to a doctor, every design problem is unique to design managers. Constant iteration on processes, skills and mindsets help consistently deliver high-impact solutions. It is common for clients to assume problems and solutions. So, the most fascinating process is to discover latent needs by conducting a re-stakeholder study on receiving a project brief. For example- corporations believe that a portal will help their employees be innovative, but what they truly want is for their employees to find better ways to do things that they already do. When designing or managing change as a student, there is more chaos than calm. In corporeality, chaos and calm should be approached in appropriate contexts- chaos when ideating from white to dark horses, and calm when implementing them. As facilitators, smooth communication between designers and stakeholders and also within stakeholders needs to be ensured. This keeps everyone in accordance with the vision to ameliorate design decisions. As researchers, it is essential to measure the impact of the project in metrics and build evidence of the impact of the solution on customers and value in business.
Chaos and calm should be approached in appropriate contexts– chaos when ideating from white to dark horses, and calm when implementing them.
Leadership skills play a crucial role in understanding the geography of thought, navigating through them and converging into an outcome. It requires emphasis on team building, culture and strategies to work and win as a team. Additionally, being savvy at design judgement to sense what matters the most; integrative thinking to understand multi-functional perspective of the problem and solution and storytelling to humanize the product is essential. In this ever-changing world, companies are arduous to sustain. Corporations, being the biggest influencers in society, find it difficult to balance sales with the profit margins when they provide customers with unconventional but sustainable products or services. Design managers should be able to bridge this gap by not only contributing to the success of companies but also promoting the general welfare of humanity. For eg: How can Coca-Cola stop selling plastic bottles and still be profitable? How can cafes be sustainable without jeopardizing customer experience? Such “almost wicked problems” are where I feel unprepared.
Organizations like DMI can expand collaboration to design colleges to generate sustainable business solutions for companies. This could be a win-win situation for both students and companies and could also get people to be a part of DMI, making it a larger organization than it already is.
תגובות