Anybody else feel like this some days?

Ha, thanks, good catch… fixed it.

Execution is what separates great designers from great concept artists.

Most of us are capable of conceiving amazing products, being able to push as much of that intent through the pipeline requires communication, politics, negotiation and enough craftiness to keep the intent alive and delivering what the customer deserves.

It’s that whole process of understanding the team’s priorities and making tradeoffs in such a way that even if there are huge form/aesthetic changes, the user benefits we’re designing stay intact.

You are describing a good salesperson. I couldn’t agree more. It is an area where I am lacking a good reason for me not to be VP of NPD. At that level, great sales is required and technical knowledge is only desired.

Don’t forget good golf skills. Can’t be a VP without a good swing. :wink: #reasonsI’llnevergetahead

The further I get, the more I think Mike Rowe is right. The best way to do something extraordinary is to find a boss that doesn’t care. Of my top 3 products, one of them I can’t remember getting any feedback beyond, “I guess that’s alright”. Somehow it kept getting approved in spite of me not selling it or building coalitions to move it ahead.

On the other hand, I’ve had projects where I was prepared. I did build excitement. I did build a coalition across the company to support the project. Then the president canned it after a 12 minute presentation. When I think of that, I wonder how presidents think. The presidents reaction, in addition to some other stuff, lead a big portion of the team to leave the company! He ignored the research, analysis and passion of 80% of the development team without even a tepid vision of his own. I think there is an important lesson there for executives that want to engage their team!

Of the other two projects, one just kinda happened. It was a small team and we were already well aligned. The other project I’m proud of was a contract at an established company that just knew what it was doing.

Back to the cartoon though: I think the only change I would make is that I often see the concept sketch is like an M.C. Escher drawing. I realize, ‘oh, we’re gonna need part line there, some screws here, the LCD is going to have to be square instead of a triangle.’ and I make those mental adjustments. The non-designers don’t. All of a sudden we are getting pre-production samples that don’t look anything like the concept sketches and everyone is confused and disappointed!

bumping this one. :slight_smile:

I made this mistake, bit with 3d models, when I started at my most recent position.

I had an quick cad model on screen that was ‘indicitive’ of the idea, while I worked out how to break it up into parts, a picture of which the business manager hastily sent to the customer for feedback.

The next day they ordered it and the manager wanted it manufactured asap.

Note that non-designers don’t always know the difference between a basic 3d model and one that it ready for production.

Re the first image, has anybody just ploughed ahead with what they thought was right and ignored the opposing feedback by higher ups? If so how did it go?

It is risky to plough ahead. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

A few years back I was working on a high end home theater system. The top of the speakers were machined chunks of aluminum with a secondary array of drivers angled to bounce sounds off the ceiling and give a sense of height as well as surround. For example, if a blueray had this codec, helicopter sounds in a movie would actually be coming from above you. It is a niche thing but home theater geeks love it.

To show the tech off, and to highlight the materiality, I wanted to clear anodize the modules (basically the top 5 inches on a 4ft tall speaker). We showed it to the biggest retailers and most of them loved it or accepted it, except one smaller retailer and another exec who wanted it to be black for personal preference.

This ended up in a disagreement. I had the data of the retailers on my side as well as a story to support it based on the material and drawing attention to this new technology. The exec had “I don’t like it and I wouldn’t buy it” even though he wasn’t in to high end audio anyway. After a long debate I was told to make them black or basically it was insinuated I would loose my job. I capitulated and made them black.

Fast forward a few months. The first few sets of speakers were being flown in for a press preview. They were shipped to the labs for testing where they would be turned around in 24 hours and sent to NY for the press event. I went to the labs for the unboxing… and… they were silver finished! There was a miscommunication with the vendor and the silver finish stayed (I say silver because one of the parts in the top had to be steel, so to make it all match we had to go to a silver, we basically matched a MacBook… that is another story). The engineering team came up with a plan to send them to an automotive shop to have them painted black. I reviewed the plan and then told the team I was glad they developed it because they have a good CYA back story. I then approved them as is and sent them to the press preview in the silver finish and told the team I would take the heat.

Long story short, the other executive was not happy, but the press loved the silver. They ended up on the cover of the most important home theater magazine, something the brand had never had. The silver went to production and retail sell in was 500% higher than the sales of the prior flagship model… but the relationship with the executive was never the same (even though he ended up looking great because of it).

So, my point is, be sure you define what success is. Is “a win” getting the product exactly how it should be, or is “a win” building trust and relationships so you can more consistently do the right thing on product?

I had a bar code scanner that I worked on that was purely a high end design story. The president of the company at the time forced it ahead and we fought very hard not to water down or compromise the design. It wound up winning a ton of design awards but ultimately was a total commercial flop. I was excited to see they sold some to a select few high end retailers like Brooks Brothers and it’s even at the check in of the Cooper Hewitt Design museum, but beyond that it was clear that the organization didn’t have a problem with selling products and higher end didn’t work in a commodity driven market place where the value was still perceived as equivalent.

Working in the aircraft industry it is always about space/cost/weight so not a lot of opportunity to explore when designing standard items. We were once asked to do a concept galley, the one you see as you walk into the airplane. The only constraint was that we had to build a working prototype. Anyways, we ended designing a modular galley with a monitor as you walk in. Not very functional for the staff but eye-catchy for everybody else.
Long story short, it is now at the Boeing Supplier Center next to the other suppliers, and according to our client, it is the project/product that motivates airlines to contact them & ultimately lands them production contracts.
We’ve tried implementing the monitor for a few airlines but after everybody’s input and requirements are taken into account, it ends up looking like the “after construction” sketch.

In my last job we used to call the CES innovation award “The Kiss of Death”… it was a pretty good indicator of what would be our flops. One year we won 4 or 5 and all those products bombed. My last year there we won none of them… strongest sales year :slight_smile:

Being an in-house designer, these higher ups would be my boss’ boss (and his boss, etc.), so ignoring could be dangerous. When you get cut off in a presentation by an Exec. VP of Product, you have to be careful how you handle the next few moves. Last year I was stopped in a well thought out concept that used existing tubing that is sourced, but because this pricepoint was very sensitive, I was forced to re-think it use tubing we roll inhouse, changing the look considerably. It then became a capacity issue at plant level and created new challenges and battles.

This is exactly why our salesforce is “banned” from NPD. It isn’t so much they promise something to the customer, it is the fact they look the fool when they cannot deliver on their promise. They then wanted to blame NPD for their foolishness. Our VP put the kibosh on that practice years ago, and it has stuck since.

Nobody has raised the inherent problem of “pushing through” the first image. It is the very definition of a pet project, whether it be the designer or the boss. Pet projects advance on the salesmanship of the person pushing the pet project. I consider that a toxic work environment. But as yo pointed out, if that “pet project” is customer driven and not designer/boss driven, I’m good. When the designer/boss starts talking about their opinion, I always follow up with the question, “How many are you going to buy?”

It is so awesome that your organization has been able to eliminate this through process. I’ve never worked at a company that has done that. I have been in a position where someone in sales overcommits and says “You have to do this or we look like idiots”… which my response is “no, we don’t look like idiots, you personally do, and you need to make it clear to the customer that this was your personal mistake and not the failing of the company to deliver”



I say the same. Or sometimes I’ll point out the persona. A few years back we were designing a product for 14 year olds, predominantly girls. The 60+ year old white male CEO looked at the prototypes and said “I just like it better this way”… my reply was “are you a girl in middle school? No? Then we won’t be making what you or I like, we will be making what she likes and finds useful because she is going to buy the product, not us.”

It is a little easier when you (or the execs) are clearly not the target user. It can become difficult when the execs think of themselves as the end user. I’ve experienced that a few times and have never found a way to effectively deal with it outside of focus groups (which have their own problems).

Awesome to hear that some companies have this in place. Was it a hard transition? I imagine that sales put up a fight.

I’ve also seen the “can’t deliver” scenario, and it’s just a crap situation for everyone. The customer gets a worse off product and, in my experience, the company makes less or loses money to rush it through to meet the deadline.

Not really. NPD VP said to CEO, “Salespeople look like idiots, you should stop that.” CEO, not being an idiot, did.

Not to say that downstream doesn’t have a say in project selection. We divide NPD projects into 3 categories - Core, Adjacent and Game Changer. Cores just fill the product line. Adjacent expand the product line to a new market. Game changers are a new product line.

Typically we allocate 50% of the projects to core, 25% to adjacent, 25% to game changer. Downstream has say on those core projects and can prioritize them, but get no additional NPD resources. The largest hurdle with core is new leadership will have new priorities and create new “pet” projects. We try to keep that to a minimum and good leadership understands only to do it with customer support, not sales support.

Adjacent and game changer are visible to downstream leadership, but they get no say. Salespeople haven’t a single clue about customer’s problems, they only want to close.

Thank you guys for that one.

I actually did a presentation on the hurdles in our NPD process this summer using a simular cartoon. (Not the Swings.)
This lead to a profound discussion and unearthing of unbelievable flaws in the process, that a well paid „lean“ specialist team had just implemented.

Ongoing fight with unhappy bosses.

Pondering to leave and start something completely new.

mo-i

(Nearly no wifi on this location in Spain, today. (Cadaqués))

iab: what kind of industry are you in at the moment?

Also: Has any one of you ever had the responsibility to educate fellow executives (like VP Level) on design criteria to find a better understanding of esthetic decisions than “I like black better.”?

Surely there must be established books and practices on that, which I should look into before writing something based on my own but sole experience.

mo-i