IDEO on 60 Minutes

Great article buddy, You’ve given me inspiration for the week!

burnsie :open_mouth:

Welcome, Portal Master!

cool video. though i was hoping for a little more than a passing reference on why he thought the PD program at stanford was ‘heaven’. CBS probably edited it out for steve jobs fodder.

Just watched this. I enjoyed seeing the personal side of Kelley, his urge to tinker, take apart, and explore things—I can totally relate to that!

So, was it the first “occupied lavatory” sign ever introduced? Or was it just sarcasm?

Classic passive aggressive Steve, “I though you were good, you let me down”. Must remember that one…

A buddy of mine hired IDEO years ago when he joined a start-up, he’s been telling me ever since how useless they were and they ended up doing much of the work in-house. In the 60 Minutes piece David Kelley actually holds the product and claims credit for it.

I thought the whole piece was too much, “this guy knew Steve Jobs.” A little too fluff, but always good to see ID in the news.

Fully agree. It was a little too much:
Steve Jobs
Marketing BS
PR Spin
Design Thinking

but…

always good to see ID in the news…although it is no longer ID…it is Design Thinking…

^Should one be worried about this distinction, do you think its any cause for concern for a guess what would been seen a “pure designer”?

They’re going to take over the world… Keep your wits about you!

burnsie :open_mouth:

I think we would have to define “pure designer”, which itself is a crazy slippery slope. I think our profession contains a pretty broad spectrum of practitioners, abilities, and passions. At the end of the day, as much as people love to talk about design thinking, if it only has value when it results in some serious design doing. I think a good goal for myself is to always think big and execute small.

Also, next time somebody is rambling on and on try unexpectedly pulling out a prototype and watch the room go, “What was that guy saying? Who cares… gimme’ that thing and lemme’ check it out.”

nice video. but i’m more interested in design DOING! with all the fame, i can’t recall a good product ideo has designed in the past 5 years… can anyone?

Absolutely, heck even a 1/2 decent mockup wins in that confrontation.

That’s a bit naive way of thinking about it.

If you look at their recent work the answer would be they’re above the point where you’d know them for product.

Big name consultancies now realized the amount of money in building and styling a gadget in general is pretty low. Smart, IDEO, Frog, and the other “Tier 1” design consultants are much more involved in design strategy, brand rethinks, and design challenges that are above a singular product. Which is good, because for what they charge you want to be re-inventing your brand with that kind of money.

Remember that they’re design consultancies, not a product company. Them doing a good job isn’t about you using one of their products. It’s about their clients (giant corporations) being happy.

The architectural systems they did for wounded and recovering war veterans was memorable. They are so BIG now that probably don’t take or don’t rely on traditional ID. They want a hand in the strategy, the systems, the service, and then finally maybe a reference product design. By then, the client probably can take all that “thinking” and scope out smaller ID projects for the next tier of firms to work on… for much cheaper.

Agreed its show then tell!

I’ve been in two companies that used IDEO, one project never saw light of day and the other was a collosal flop in the market. I was only on the perifery, and can’t say either wasn’t a case of “garbage in - garbage out” but they were asked to create disruptors in the market - tough gig for anyone.They cost tons of money and lost any future contracts.

This talk of Tier 1 firms or pure design is off base. People and firms have experience and talent and that’s all. Nobody is great at Everything. A Freelancer or small no-name firm that kills in a small market or narrow product category may never win any awards or get on TV but in my mind defines excellence or “Tier 1” status.

+1

When I used the term Tier 1, I did so in terms of their “perceived” status, their typical types of projects and scope, and while not stating it directly their “minimum price to do anything for you”. It had nothing to do with me implying “These are the best designers in the US”

For one, many of those companies aren’t doing work with internal ID departments, they’re being hired by marketing teams or other large organizations. Reason being your exact point, when designers need someone to design, they know there are killer consultants out there who know the problem, know their internal process, and charge 1/20th the amount. Some of those large companies literally won’t sign an invoice for less than 6 digits.

Either way, if you throw out a bunch of names on a table, those are the type of consultancies that come up often, and they’ve done a very good job of sculpting their business in a different way then the typical “I design gadgets” product design house.

It goes back to my last sentence - it’s about the client being happy. If the client gives you a crap product brief to reinvent their company “Hey, I work for cooper tire, what brand expansion can we do?” and they come back and say “For $500k we’ll tell you that you should start making BBQ’s because it resonates with your middle American focus groups” and that guy is thrilled, then they’ve done a good job. Even if that means the resulting project nearly bankrupts the company. Just take a look at all these posts we’ve had about the graphic rebranding failures on Tropicana and other big brands. The corporation loses, the company walks away with a ton of money. It obviously doesn’t tarnish their reputation enough to put them out of business.

I’ve worked at a place that both collaborated with IDEO at certain points, and did “clean up” on their work for our clients later, to get into production. This was ten years ago. Our firm was a reputable resource for product development. Weak on ID, strategy non existent. We were not ‘Tier 1’. It’s a general term for typically old school firms that have expanded and usually define the furthest reach of the ID world into the business world, at that time. Continuum is another.