Good Design Gets You in the Game...

...great design is the game winner.

Welcome to the world where design is king.

In the old days, designers were an afterthought, the people at the end of the production process. Engineers would hand over something that was functionally effective and have the designers make it look good. Those days are over.

Today, design is about experiences as well as products. It's about services as much as it is hard goods.

Design is now differentiation.

Alan Webber, founder of Fast Company magazine and author of "Rules of Thumb," puts it this way: Today companies use design to:

• create distinctive products and services that capture their customers' imaginations
• restructure their corporate operations
• unveil new logos and uniforms that express a fresh corporate identity
• develop new communications tools that connect with customers and shareholders
• build corporate offices that encourage and enable collaboration
• collect and share information across a global platform

Design is a way to solve deep-seated social problems. And design is a money saver, a way to simplify products and make them easier and less expensive to manufacture and sell. Across the board designers have defines a way of seeing that adds to the delight of customers and the profitability of companies.

Application to ChurchWorld

You probably already understand this on some level. You understand that the design of your website says more about you and provides a quick glimpse of your "brand". You know that the little - and not so little - things like the design of your logo and your letterhead, the print pieces you use, the "flow" of your worship experience all communicate instantly what your church is all about.

But if you are still a design novice, and want to learn more, here are Webber's three ways to begin to crack the design code:

• Reading - you may be a word person and you want to try to learn about seeing. Dan Pink's "A Whole New Mind," Tim Brown's "Design Thinking," Tom Kelley's "The Art of Innovation" and "The Ten Faces of Innovation," and Don Norman's "The Design of Everyday Things" are required reading. Get one of them today; read it tonight, and put it into action tomorrow.
• Viewing - You need to practice seeing. Go to an art museum; browse a furniture showroom gallery; check out the latest model cars. The more you look at objects like these, the more you appreciate great design. You're not buying, so don't worry about price. Look carefully at the lines, interior detailing and design, and the small things that make a big difference. "Seeing" is a critical skill for aspiring diagnosticians - like you.
• Shopping - Go out and find an assortment of small objects that go in your home or office. Look at OXO products; visit an IKEA store. When you pick up one of these objects, you will immediately understand what "consumer-centered design" means. Go to an office supply store and sit in an Aeron chair. Look at the latest products from Apple: iPhone, iPad, the latest MacBook Air. Go to an antique store and see what great design looked like in the past. Take a virtual shopping trip to your heart's content. When you have collected these objects (or examined them enough), what do these products have in common? Are they as good to look at as they are fun to use? Is there an emotional content to their design?

You don't have to buy anything to get the idea. But you do have to buy into the idea:

Design is everywhere, and increasingly, design is everything.

The Experience Blueprint

I'm wrapping up this week-long series of posts on "design" by returning to Tim Brown's book "Change by Design". Brown, the CEO of the innovation and design firm IDEO, has challenged my thinking about design in a number of ways: it's not just for creative industries or people designing products. Design thinking is most powerful when applied to abstract, multifaceted problems that address a wide range of issues and concerns. Problems that the typical church encounters every day!


Here's a great example from one chapter on the design of experience:


Design has the power to enrich our lives by engaging our emotions through image, form, texture, color, sound and smell. The intrinsically human-centered nature of design thinking points to the next step: we can use our empathy and understanding of people to design experiences that create opportunities for active engagement and participation.


Wow-that's a lot to think about! In the world of serving the church where I work and live, the concepts of designing for experience are so important, yet so often totally overlooked. Brown goes on to talk about 3 "themes" of the design of experiences:

1. The experience economy - people have shifted from passive consumption to active participation


2. Best experiences are not scripted at corporate headquarters but decided on the spot by service professionals who create an authentic, genuine, and compelling experience


3. Implementation is everything-an experience must be as finely crafted and precision-engineered as any other product

Just as a product begins with an engineering blueprint and a building with an architectural blueprint, an experience blueprint provides the framework for working out the details of a human interaction, including emotive elements, from beginning to end. It captures how people travel through an experience in time. Rather than trying to choreograph that journey, its function is to identify the most meaningful points and turn them into opportunities to positively impact the individual. What might be a source of discomfort or pain is now an opportunity for an experience that is distinctive, emotionally gratifying, and memorable.

The experience blueprint is at one and the same time a high-level strategy document and a fine-grained analysis of the details that matter.

I'm headed back to the drawing boards - what about you and your church?

Design Thinking

If this doesn't make you curious about the concept of Design Thinking, I'm not sure anything will! The image comes from the inside cover of the book "Change by Design" by Tim Brown, CEO of the celebrated innovation and design firm IDEO.

In the book, Brown introduces the concept of "design thinking". Design is not just about creating elegant objects or beautifying the world around us. The best designers match:

• Necessity to utility


• Constraint to possibility


• Need to demand

Design thinkers rely on rigorous observations of how we use spaces and the objects and services that occupy them. They discover patterns where others see complexity and confusion. They synthesize new ideas from seemingly disparate fragments. And my personal favorite: They convert problems into opportunities.

"Change by Design" is a blueprint for creative leaders seeking to infuse design thinking - an approach for creative problem solving - into all facets of their organizations, products, or services to discover new alternatives for business and society as a whole.

Design Thinking is for anyone confronting the challenges of today in order to create the opportunities of tomorrow.