Student days

Working with young people is a good thing.

And, I’ve noticed that our profession is generally full of younger types. Be they young spirited or just plain young.

In fact, when I was a student myself, doing endless rounds of job hunting and portfolio reviews post college, I remember remarking to Bill Moggridge once that he was the most mature person I had met in a design consultancy and asking him naively where designers go when they grow old.

Our teams’ recent visit to The University of Washington took me right back to my college days.

I love working with young designers and be in the learning environment. The special atmosphere of design school, of safe exploration, philosophical challenge, encouraged experimentation and commercial freedom still inspires me, even having worked for 20 years in the ‘real’ industry.

Our task was to constructively critique student presentations, effectively completing stage one of a four-staged process.

Their task: to humanize air travel. The deliverables: meaningful solutions that improve the experience of passengers and crew through addressing security, cabin adaptability, intimacy and connectivity and any other area that a student may have a passionate point of view.

My overall observation at the conclusion of phase one, Research & Strategy: there was an abundance of data collected without a very clear view as to what to do with it.

The wise words of my first Creative Director echoed in my mind. “Data is crude oil.  Useless until it’s refined.”

Our collective feedback to the student teams, albeit with different slants depending on individual team content delivered, was to make the creative leap and offer a point of view of how to interpret research and thus apply a meaningful strategy for its translation into conceptual intent.

I call this ‘the insight’ phase. The insight being a unique, inspired, informed and memorable view on a particular situation or dynamic that then informs and enriches the design realization phases that follow.

In my view, research leads to analysis, but insight leads to action. There is a big difference.

Great designers are natural strategists and great strategists are natural creatives. I feel passionately about this. I did in fact have a very heated argument on this very topic with my pervious boss and good friend Eduardo Braniff (Grandson to the Braniff Air family) who profoundly disagreed with my opinion.

So, our students will be now applying the heart as well as their head to interpreting the data collected during the course of stage one.

An aging population, decentralization, deregulation, deflation, brand proliferation, rising passenger expectations, volatile fuel prices, polarization of the travel experience, increasing delays, congestion, cancellations have been statically proven and documented.

Now, what they will do with this knowledge is what we are eagerly be waiting to see at the next stage . . .