well I’ve had an exciting time in frankfurt this week. in my posting from wednesday I’ve written about my lecture at the HfG Offenbach which has been attented quite well.
my special thanks go to Ulrike Grünewald (Büro für Wissenstransfer at the Hfg Offenbach) and Prof. Peter Eckart (Deputy Dean and Professor Product Design HfG Offenbach) for being the hosts of the evening.–
we’ve had a lively discussion about the value of design management education for the design profession. however what I still find quite stunning is, that in contrast to the actual value the design profession is adding to products, designers very often (or still) see themselves undervalued not to say misunderstood by the public opinion and/or the consumer.
as an ‘advocatus diaboli’ I would hold against that in the end it’s always the consumer who decides which products are successful or not. in return a companys’ ’success’ is mainly tied to financial performance. consequently designers’ challenge is to distinguish and understand what users/consumers want and what they need in order to deliver products that sell.
in fast changing social environments like ours this is quite a challenge. according to my perspective the balanced view on wants and needs paired with an understanding of what is feasible in financial terms is a key characterstic of a design manager. (now you can hold against that this is already what product managers are doing every day; and I have to admit: that’s right, but also ‘product managers’ can be good ‘design managers’!)
therefore if we want to integrate the domain of design management into the curricula of design and management programmes this core challenge described above has to be addressed!
in any case one issue remains and I mean this without any arrogance: (still) for the management profession design is (only) one factor among others in their value chain. consequently designers (unless they’ve become a real big name ;-) shouldn’t expect that management will inevitably see the potential of design. therefore design should rather try to evangelise management by delivering innovative solutions bundled with a concise description of their impact on business performance rather than complaining about their underrated role as an element of the value chain.
the theory of product semantics which has been formulated at the HfG Offenbach certainly is a (design management) tool which enables students to design products that communicate with consumers in an appropriate way.
