Hi, I'm Phnam.
Hi, I'm Mardis.
And we're the hosts of Future Future, where two designers talk about the future of everything.
We're in the business of turning science fiction into reality for a better future.
And today we're going to talk about, "who are we actually designing for?"
That's a great question. Is it going to be the consumer who buys the product?
Is it going to be the brand that we design for?
Yes to all of the above, and many other stakeholders.
Yeah, believe it or not, when we talk about stakeholders and who we are really designing for,
it's a myriad of different people.
It's not only the brand itself or the consumer, sometimes it's the retail outlet.
They have a little bit of say, especially if they're a bigger retail outlet that actually drives the sales.
And sometimes it's people who live around the end user, right?
The person purchasing the product.
For example, when you go to a toy store, the end user is the child,
but the person purchasing the product is the parent or the caregiver.
You have to have these people in mind as you're designing your product,
because you need to seduce them with good design.
And I think that brings up an even bigger story of stakeholders in medical devices.
So, for instance, medical devices. It's not just those that we've already mentioned,
but then you have insurance companies, you have the physician,
you have the regulatory bodies that all govern these bigger decisions
of what a product should be at the very end.
And that has implications on how the product is designed.
Is it a simple, one function product?
Is it something that needs to be regulated in a very specific way?
All of this can be controlled through the interactions, through the physicality of the product.
It is our responsibility as designers to be aware of it, and to integrate all of these facts into the product.
And one of the things we always do is that we're very collaborative.
We're talking to all these different stakeholders and we're negotiating, if you will,
what is the best approach.
And another thing about design is that we also have the responsibility to make everything make sense.
If we're talking to twenty stakeholders, they will have twenty different points of view.
And making them make sense in one product that is not overcomplicated is very difficult.
The person in charge of making the sense is the CEO of the company and/or the designer.
We can go very deep into the details.
We can also step back and say, "well, this is nice and all, but this is too complex.
Nobody is going to care about this."
So, we need to simplify the process so the product is actually a product that people are willing to buy.
One of the methodologies that we practice here at Nonfiction is throwing research right out the window.
In the beginning!
In the beginning.
And what I mean by that is we as designers, we get our team together:
designers, strategists, everyone who has not done the research on a particular category or focus,
and we really dive in on a personal level to interact with the object, the experience,
the interactions, whatever that may be that we're researching.
We experience it completely unbiased of all these different entities out there,
whether it be a research paper, comments by PhDs, a doctorate,
someone who has done deep research.
Being unbiased as you're designing is an exceptionally liberating
feeling that allows inspiration to pop up where it hasn't been seen ever before.
If you really look at the research, really rarely does it surprise you.
A lot of things sound pretty logical.
They're just justified by people who know how to.
As designers, our intuition is actually powerful enough to kickstart a project early
and get design done early.
Because the minute design is done, the minute prototypes can be fabricated
and then you can user test and get answers much faster.
The speed at which you're getting answers is primordial to the success of a new product.
So, in this way, we do our intuitive exploration of ideas on one side,
and we run a parallel track of research and strategy
and defining what the problem and potential solutions are.
On the other track, we try not to have them overlap
because we don't want to bias or taint the story as we're developing it.
And then at some point, we'll meet up, exchange ideas,
make sure we're on track, and really develop it.
And with this methodology, we start to develop things that the world has never seen before.
We look at answers and interactions and products that are completely new, unique, and exceptional.
So, one thing that working with CEOs directly has brought us in terms of experience is that
a lot of them are very good at business - background in finance, all those things.
They know how to run a company.
But a lot of them are not visionary.
I'm sorry, it's just a fact.
A few of them are people who can look farther than the bottom line, can look into the future of a certain technology or an industry.
These are the people we like to work in tandem with.
But it is our job as designers to inspire the CEOs and everybody who works around them
to really think beyond what the industry is already showing you is working.
It is risk, but it is exciting risk.
And who doesn't like to work on something that hasn't existed before?
Who doesn't like to combine industries that haven't talked to each other ever and come up with something that is revolutionary?
So we're talking about evolution versus revolution.
Evolving a product is putting another skin on it and making the same old thing with a slightly different look
is not what we're about.
We're about designing revolutionary products that go out and change -
they're a paradigm shift in how people interact and engage with the world
and the technology around them.
And this gets back to not putting another piece of technology or something into a landfill.
Because we know, after all, the biggest stakeholder around is Mother Earth.
As designers we already feel guilty about the nature of our career,
which is designing things that eventually end up in a landfill.
So, how can we do this responsibly?
How can we create systems of development of products that actually change peoples' lives,
but also care in some way about where it ends up?
So, reach out to us.
We've done a lot of work in this area.
We have a proven methodology: how to innovate, how to revolutionize industries.
We'd love to hear from you.
We'd love to interact with you and collaborate on many projects.
And with that, we thank you for joining us on this creative journey today,
and we'd love to see you again sometime.
Thank you.
Bye!