In continuation of our project to design the next design firm, we were attempting to articulate our personal visions for the future of what design might be when we stumbled upon three perspectives for trying to understand why we design. We separated these into design to advance the discipline of design, design to benefit organizations, and design to benefit individuals. These are interrelated, but have distinctions, I believe. We realized that a debate about these perspectives might last a few days, so we cut it short and moved on. However, I’d like to note the beginning of the discussion and throw out some further thoughts.

Design to advance the discipline is interested in establishing design as a more widely recognized approach to solving certain (wicked) problems. While it was noted in our meeting that this view has the potential for getting up its own ass and is largely academic, given the characteristic humility of design, perhaps not. A byproduct of advancing a discipline that is concerned with moving from the current state to the preferred state by human-centered means is that individuals and organizations would inherently benefit.

We didn’t really talk about what the perspective of designing for organizations and individuals might be. But I’ll take a stab at it. Designing for organizations focuses on the success of the organization as a whole and is concerned with the survival of said organization. Design is an approach to accomplish this end, but again the focus is the organization. Individuals may benefit from this endeavor, though they are not the focus. The discipline of design may benefit, but it is not the focus. Designing for individuals concerns itself with the individual first. The goal is to help people and design is a means to do this. Organizations may benefit, but that is not the goal. Again, the discipline may benefit, but that is not the purpose.

The distinction I see between the three is in the end purpose. There are other ways to help organizations and individuals other than design. If the focus of ones designing is to benefit those two, I view that as different from endeavoring to promote the discipline of design because it will inherently benefit those two. Perhaps this is too subtle a distinction, or completely silly to debate. Or maybe there’s something interesting there.

As our efforts to consider how current design firms might transition to new areas for design, our team talked about designing design teams as a possible strategy to advance the influence and understanding of design. The idea is that as a design consulting firm, we would create design teams within organizations that could sustain themselves and then create other design teams within the organization if or as needed.

But obviously, it would be difficult for a current design firm to make this transition. We discussed initially inviting people to work with us during a design engagement, to be part of a design team for a real project to gain design experience and learn methods and tools. These people would then go back to their organizations with their new appreciation of design as advocates for design and for our firm. With word-of-mouth marketing, we would seek to shift the business from taking individuals into our firm to embedding ourselves into client organizations while we help build internal design teams. This is similar to what IDEO did for SAP a few years ago when they created the Design Services Team.

Just a few days ago, Henning Fischer of Adaptive Path interviewed Peter Coughlan, Partner and Transformation Practice Lead at IDEO. The following snippet of conversation addresses a potential problem are nascent plan would face.

Fischer: The challenge we are most often faced with happens when the engagement ends and the client team struggles. How do we avoid situations like that?

Coughlan: Well, the obvious answer to that is to anticipate the client team struggles, and design the program in anticipation of that. We started down this path by offering clients some “telephone consulting” or follow-up visits to hold their feet to the fire — that’s evolved into a more formal process in which we help them prototype the infrastructure they’ll need to implement while we’re still actively engaged. We’re also exploring new models including “externships” (where an IDEO person goes to live with a client to keep things moving along), as well IDEO alumni who can embed themselves in our client organizations after we’ve completed our programs.

I view this as design mentoring. Naturally, client teams or even new design teams, as my team is considering, will not have the expertise and experience of design firms whose mission is to be leaders in the field. But as Coughlan points out in the interview, solutions are more likely to be implemented if developed by the client and not the design firm. The role of the design firm thus becomes to show clients the way rather than to do the work.

Coughlan: I would say that the most important shift in the design profession will be for designers to get comfortable with the notion that it’s more important for a client to have a great idea than for the designer to have the idea. If the client organization has played a role in coming up with the idea, it’s way more likely to see the light of day.

Designing design teams could be an extension to this shift.

As an unexpected twist to the end of the semester, for my Design, Management, and Organizational Change class with Richard Buchanan, we were asked to design our ideal design consulting company. The class was split into three groups that are to approach the question from three different perspectives: people, products and services (forms), and brand, vision, and values. I’m in the people group.

We were asked if there is a new role for design that we could tap into. Are there new forms or places for design? And although not explicitly stated, where are there opportunities for what Buchanan calls fourth order design, or systemic integration? What problems would we want to address? Would we focus on the internal or external issues of organizations? What kinds of clients would be like? How does the vision affect the firm? What might the implementation of the vision be?

To this end we mapped the competitive landscape of design and business consulting firms. We detailed the problems design companies face moving into newer territory. And we debated endlessly on what it is we would like to do and the problems we would like to solve with design. Albeit, much of our discussions remain somewhat vague. And we are having a difficult time coming to consensus, or barring that, direction.

As it stands, we have not come up with anything too radical. Our ideas are already in the minds of many designers and consulting firms. So our dilemma and deliverable may be to articulate a means to position a design firm in a new space and the value of design in that area.

Will we be able to do that better than an existing firm looking to do the same thing? Or will this will merely turn out to be an academic exercise? In five weeks, I’ll let you know.