The Design Imperative

The Art and Science of Design Management

Steven Chen

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9783319785677
• eBook ISBN:
  9783319785684
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Management
• Index: Business

Offers readers a manual on how to develop a "culture of innovation" in organizations, how to create breakthrough product and services, and how to optimize design processes.

Written accessibly, with theoretical and practical bases

Challenges commonly-held theories on environments in which innovation happens

Uses anecdotes from several industries, including automotive, corporate, and consumer products

© The Author(s) 2019

Steven ChenThe Design Imperativehttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78568-4_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction: The Design Imperative

Steven Chen¹

(1)

Department of Marketing Mihaylo College of Business and Economics, California State University, Fullerton, CA, USA

Fifteen years ago, companies competed on price. Today it’s quality. Tomorrow it’s design. – Robert Hayes, Harvard University (Dumaine 1991 )

End Abstract

Coors Light: A Design Story

Cool, hip brands with phenomenal product designs litter the marketplace. Apple has its iPhone. Porsche’s vehicles are immediately recognizable by the car mark’s distinct design language. Coca-Cola’s contour bottle has been a mainstay on retail shelves for over a century. And Herman Miller’s mesh-based Aeron chair is a ubiquitous choice for modern offices. These examples are products with “iconic” designs, and they emerge from organizations that have heavily invested in a culture of design.

But let us not use cool, hip brands. It is too easy. Instead, let us use an example of a mundane product, because it is through the lens of the mundane that the power of design really shines through. The mundane product is American light beer, and the brand is Coors Light. American light beer is somewhat of a joke to beer aficionados and consumers who come from cultures where beer consumption is a hallowed pastime. To these consumers, American light beer has no taste. It is for lightweights. It is a little better than dirty water. These sentiments are felt even in the United States, where domestic beer has lost market share as consumers have turned to wines, spirits, and craft beers.

In this light, the recent resurgence of Coors Light, a “watered down beer,” is remarkable. Since 2006, Coors Light is the only top-10 beer to record consistent sales growth. What is the secret to Coors Light’s success? The answer is simple, but genius. In the mid-2000s, Coors’ Chief Marketing Officer Andrew England steered marketing efforts on “cold” as opposed to taste (Kusentz 2012). And the cold factor was enhanced by…? You guessed it! Design.

In 2006, England launched Coors Light’s cold campaign by naming the liner that already existed within their containers. The “Frost Brew Liner” gave consumers the feeling that Coors Light cans did something special for them. One year later, Coors Light introduced its cold-activated bottle, which has a thermo-chromatic label that turned blue when the beer was cold. In 2008, the same label technology was migrated to Coors Light’s aluminum cans. Around 2010, England introduced the cold-activated window, where packages of Coors Light were given a cutout so that consumers could see whether their Coors Light turned blue. Finally, in 2011, Coors Light implemented a two-stage cold activation label, which is differentiated by cold (blue) and supercold (dark blue). These design modifications continue to the current day.

Coors Light’s cold campaign was driven by design. Yes, it was a packaging design gimmick; MillerCoors did not reformulate Coors Light. But what the redesign did do was communicate information in a clever way that resonated with consumers. The packaging redesign contributed to an increase in Coors Light’s market share. In 2012, Coors Light debunked Budweiser to become the #2 beer brand in the United States (after Bud Light).

According to former Sony CEO, Norio Ogha, “all products of our competitors have basically the same technology, price, performance and features. Design is the only thing that differentiates one product from another in the marketplace.” This is certainly the case in the light beer category, which MillerCoors CMO Andrew England admits is a “relatively non-differentiated segment.”

Why Design Is Important in Business

The Coors Light story illustrates how design is significant from managerial and consumer standpoints. For the firm, design is a means of differentiation and visual recognition and can result in competitive advantages (Jindal et al. 2016). For some firms, like Alessi, design lies at the heart of their branding (Verganti 2008). For other firms, like Bang and Olufsen, design is a means to signal quality and innovation (Austin and Beyersdorfer 2007).

Consumers are more likely to purchase products that have form factors that they find aesthetically pleasing (Bloch 1995; Creusen and Schoormans 2005; Landwehr et al. 2011a, b). Marketing scholars have established product design’s influence on consumer preference (Landwehr et al. 2013), choice behavior (Landwehr et al. 2011a, b), and willingness to pay (Bloch et al. 2003). Additionally, scholars have shown how design elements, such as the packaging (Orth and Malkewicz 2008) and brand logos (Henderson and Cote 1998), influence consumer preference. Therefore, the management of the firm’s product design strategy is a means to achieve firm’s success (Jindal et al. 2016; Liu et al. 2017).

Design means more than just producing aesthetically pleasing products. Being design centered can also refer to an organization culture which cultivates innovation. Having a design-oriented culture may help the firm recruit top talent who value such a culture. According to business author Ron Friedman (2014), an extraordinary workplace will encourage experimentation, have physical environments that stimulate creativity and engagement, and allow for the integration of work and personal life. Many firms that provide such workplaces are design-oriented organizations such as IDEO, Porsche, Stanford University, Google, and Apple. Creative types thrive under these working conditions, and top talents seek out environments that allow them the maximum likelihood of success.

To summarize, design is important because it helps companies hit the triple bottom line: product and brand differentiation, maximization of consumer appeal, and talent acquisition.

A Brief History of the Design Discipline/What Is “Good” Design?

The word “design” has many meanings. Design can refer to “a process (the act of designing); or to the result of that process (a design, sketch, plan, or model); or to the products manufactured with the aid of a design (design goods); or to the look or overall pattern of a product (‘I like the design of that dress’)” (Walker 1989, p. 23).

As a discipline, design is an amalgamation of different fields. It is a discipline that does not have a “natural” set of rules, practices, and boundaries, such as those found in mathematics, physics, economics, or the natural sciences. Instead, design emerged independently across different disciplines including the arts, industrial design, information sciences, and engineering. According to Guy Julier (2008), design is “bound up in an historical process of the professionalization of its practice.” In other words, the design practice emerged out of designers’ attempt to legitimize a set of knowledge and skills, safeguard that practice to differentiate themselves from other profession and educations, and secure professional status for designers. Educational and professional institutions legitimized the design practice and ensured its continued existence into future generations.

Despite the multidisciplinary nature of design, many contemporary design thinkers suggest that problem-solving is the essence of design (Papanek 1985). Problem-solving has become a powerful language of design in the world today (Bayazit 2004). The tenets of this paradigm can be summarized as follows: in everyday life, people face problems that range from simple to complex. The work of the designer is to identify these problems and generate innovative solutions that significantly improve social and human conditions.

The problem-solving approach sets up a clear, rational set of standards by which designs can be evaluated. “Good” designs are not merely equivalent to beautiful product aesthetics. Rather, good designs provide user-centered, original, and simple solutions to people’s everyday pr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction: The Design Imperative
• 2. Harvesting a Culture of Design: A Review of Organizational Design Research
• 3. Product Design Research: A Review
• 4. The Design Studio Approach
• 5. To Develop a Design Language (or Not)
• 6. Design Teams Versus the Lone Designer
• 7. The Open Office: Google and the Modern Penitentiary
• 8. Design Thinking Approaches
• 9. The Product Life Cycle and Product Design
• 10. Designing Extraordinary Service Experiences
• 11. Design and Global Culture
• 12. Product Design Analytics
• 13. Conclusion: The Keys to Successful Design
• Back Matter