A meeting is arranged at the design offices in London. Our company have never done this
before and are a little apprehensive, they don’t want this project to run out of control and
therefore it is agreed that the consultancy will only produce some sketch concepts which can
be taken back to Portugal for consideration in six weeks time. They will present the sketch
concepts at the next meeting.
The marketing director returns from this meeting with the concepts. Now he is a little
apprehensive, the concepts seem to run beyond what he had in mind – they have even
included a table lamp made entirely from porcelain!
The team uses the design sequence framework because, if at all possible they do not want to
shelve the project and so they are hoping to gain some insights to help them proceed.
A design brief is a request for an idea or a proposition in a tangible form. It is therefore quite
simply located in the second output point - New ideas and Propositions. The resultant
concepts from the design brief are a consequence of the assimilation of new knowledge and
information. The Marketing Director used the knowledge he had gained in output point -
Knowledge and Information to formulate his brief. To do this he had made an assimilation of
the knowledge. However, he had not been able to include the consultants. The consultants,
therefore had used an alternative knowledge base from which to produce their concepts. Of
course the purpose of using external consultants is to gain fresh thinking, but their
contribution will be more effective if it is grounded in the realities of the company.
They may still challenge the company for adopting an overly conservative approach to new
product, but they will be better informed and the resulting discussion will have more meaning.
The discussion group identifies the flaw in the second process track. They discuss how to
include the consultants in the company knowledge assimilation process. They decide to invite
one of the consultants to make a three day visit to see the factory and to meet the technical
and process design team and to go through all the market research data.
In addition, they agree that if the consultancy wins the contract, one of their industrial
designers will be required to spend up to three days a week with the company during
development work to the point where there is an agreed set of specifications. This will prevent
a similar mismatch occurring at the next stage. The financial implications of this are also
discussed and agreed.
They look at the concept sketches again, they do seem to look nice and they are sophisticated
but just too extreme, too much of a big leap in technical terms. .But they are confidant that
when the consultancy make their visit their will be plenty of opportunity for technical and
aesthetic discussions. The group through their analysis of what stage had been insufficiently
managed have gained some confidence and they now have a more robust process.
Used in this way the design sequence framework can be used as a way to learn from on-going
situations. This has the benefit of not taking time away from the real task of any company
which is to continually improve and to create new products that delight customers and open
up new market opportunities.
11. Benefits to Learning How Your Company Uses Industrial Design