{"id":339719,"date":"2017-05-01T09:32:33","date_gmt":"2017-05-01T01:32:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techcrunch.com\/?p=1483549"},"modified":"2017-05-01T09:32:33","modified_gmt":"2017-05-01T01:32:33","slug":"the-past-present-and-future-of-design-in-silicon-valley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/the-past-present-and-future-of-design-in-silicon-valley\/","title":{"rendered":"The past, present, and future of design in Silicon Valley"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

The following is an excerpt from The Way to Design<\/a>, a guide to becoming a designer founder and to building design-centric businesses. Adapted and reprinted with the author\u2019s permission.<\/em><\/p>\n

Until very recently, success in Silicon Valley required focusing almost single-mindedly on an organization\u2019s technical prowess. It meant having an unimpeachable technical founder, 10X engineers, a relentless devotion to computing dominance. Expending valuable time on anything else \u2014 particularly design \u2014 was evidence of distraction from the real work of the company.<\/p>\n

But things have changed dramatically in just a few short years, and increasingly, design has become as indispensable as technology. Three things are responsible for this remarkable shift. First, whether you\u2019re working on hardware or hosted software, the underlying technology to prototype, produce, and launch products has only become better, cheaper, and faster over the last 25 years. Free and easy-to-use CAD software, 3D printing, and crowdfunding have made it easier and faster than ever to design, sell, and ship.<\/p>\n

Where once engineers used to rely on raw programming languages to create software; today, they build from open-source libraries and preexisting technology platforms. In the consumer internet world in particular, the marginal cost of software is zero\u2014and design is now the differentiator.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe expectation for a new company is so much higher now,\u201d Airbnb\u2019s Joe Gebbia<\/a> said to me when I interviewed him, \u201cbecause what they did in six months [10 years ago] someone could do now in a week.\u201d And therefore, \u201cPeople have to come with more value.\u201d<\/p>\n

The second reason that design has moved center stage is that consumer expectations have evolved. Businesses, even in the very recent past, weren\u2019t doomed to certain failure because of a weak emphasis on design. The bottoms of drawers across the free world are littered with poorly designed products that sold well because of brilliant sales and marketing. But the public has come to expect more.<\/p>\n

Thanks to the work of visionaries like Bill Moggridge<\/a>, David Kelley<\/a>, and Steve Jobs<\/a>, people want user-devoted, frictionless experiences in their interactions with technology. Jobs\u2019 influence is especially pronounced. Perhaps no single product has reshaped what people expect of designed technology more than the iPhone. Ever since its release a decade ago, consumer demand for useful, beautiful product experiences have grown more insistent.<\/p>\n

In contrast, you can follow the trail of Palm\u2019s death crawl all the way back to its chief marketing officer saying, \u201cDesign is a commodity.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Seek And You Shall Design<\/strong><\/p>\n

The final reason that design has become essential is that its scope and meaning have changed. When most laypeople hear the term \u201cdesign,\u201d what comes to mind are things like a Dieter Rams stereo receiver, a Noguchi coffee table, one of the homes featured in Dwell, a Giugiaro concept car, maybe a well-turned brand logo.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m a craftsman at heart and I honor this form of design. But \u201cdesign\u201d has come to mean much more than craft. John Arnold, perhaps the originator of the design movement at Stanford<\/a>, taught a course called \u201cHow to Ask a Question.\u201d His belief was that \u201cEach of man\u2019s advances was started by a question\u2026.Knowing what questions to ask and how to ask them is sometimes more important than the eventual answers.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what design is at the most profound level, and what I\u2019m talking about when I talk about design in this book. It\u2019s not aesthetics. It\u2019s knowing what questions to ask and how to ask them, be it about a small product or a planetary system.<\/p>\n

I met the designer-founder of Pocket<\/a>, Nate Weiner, at a design event at Stanford and later invested in his startup. When I interviewed him for my project on designer founders, Weiner told me that at his company, Pocket, the automatic retort to any questions regarding feasibility is, \u201cAnything is a possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCan we do this is? is the wrong question to ask. It\u2019s Why should we do this? How should we do this?\u2026It doesn\u2019t matter what ideas you have, it\u2019s all about Does this solve the problem?\u201d Weiner says. \u00a0In a world in which you can build anything, the onus for entrepreneurs has shifted from figuring out if you can build something to understanding whether it\u2019s worth building it in the first place. And that\u2019s why design is now more than window dressing.<\/p>\n

\"Programmer<\/p>\n

Design is The What<\/strong><\/p>\n

What should you be building? What\u2019s the right opportunity to go after? What\u2019s the right problem to solve? Asking the right question is half the answer. Design is not about the drapes or the drop shadows. Design is a messy, holistic, human-centric process for solving problems\u2014not just stylistic problems, but problems of all manner and level of importance.<\/p>\n

Ask Diego Rodriguez, Global Managing Director at IDEO<\/a>, which airline he thinks is the best design-led and in his opinion it\u2019s not Virgin America, despite the care that that airline puts into things like lighting and pilot\u2019s jackets. \u201cCool, but that\u2019s all veneer,\u201d he says. Instead, Diego thinks the real design genius in the industry is Southwest Airlines\u2019 co-founder and former CEO Herb Kelleher, who \u201ccompletely rethought the paradigm of how you get on an airplane.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kelleher solved an efficiency problem and, in doing so, turned Southwest into one of the safest and only consistently profitable airline in the country. These kinds of solutions aren\u2019t necessarily pretty, but they\u2019re innovative and effective.<\/p>\n

This notion of design lines up with the most recent scholarship on creativity, which Scott Klemmer, cofounder and director of the Design Lab at UC San Diego, summed up as, \u201cYou need to know the things that you need to know to solve the problem. And you need to not believe things that will get in the way of solving the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

Viewed from this perspective, design is about searching out a product\u2019s or an organization\u2019s purpose\u2014the problem it solves\u2014and then painstakingly making sure every facet of the solution supports this purpose.<\/p>\n

Design is a way of thinking.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Was Lost But Now I\u2019m A Founder<\/strong><\/p>\n

Where do we go from here? It\u2019s my conviction that the 21st century will be the designer\u2019s century, because I believe that design is the greatest lever for building the greatest companies to come. The most interesting innovation is happening at the top of the stack\u2014at the interface with end users\u2014 where technology development intersects with design and where a swipe right or a hold might decide the next breakout business.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, despite how indispensable design is today, a stark gap persists: Not many people running top companies come from design backgrounds. According to the most recent data I could find, only 15 percent of the members of FounderDating claim design as their primary skillset. And, as its former CEO said, once you correct \u201cfor people who are more design-appreciators than designers, it\u2019s probably closer to 6 percent.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yes, there are notable exceptions. But there should be more. And there will be\u2014if designers start seeing themselves more often as entrepreneurs. As the builders not just of products, but of companies. Leaders not just of design but of people. Designers must embrace the entrepreneurial spirit.<\/p>\n

When I left Stanford and began my career in product development at IDEO, I was set up with a $15,000 workstation and a $20,000 CAD package sold by expensive sales reps and accompanied by a one-week training course in Boston. My prototypes cost $50,000 and were made in machine shops on equipment that ran upwards of half a million dollars. When we were ready to release for mass manufacture, we sent drawings and, in some cases, 3D files to toolmakers who spent 12 weeks hogging out hardened steel tools that cost no less than $100,000 per part.<\/p>\n

Slowly, my product would wind its way through the labyrinth of distribution, ultimately landing in retail stores which required their own care and feeding \u2014 point of purchase displays, end caps, promotional materials, in some cases, training. And for all of this hard work, you might earn 40 points of gross margin, less than the end retailer that served as a shelf and not much more.<\/p>\n

Today, 20 years later, you can design a product with the freeware version of SketchUp<\/a>, make your first rapid prototype on your own desktop MakerBot<\/a>, raise $100,000 in crowd-funding on Kickstarter<\/a>, purchase $5,000 soft tools from PCH, set up virtual distribution with Shipwire<\/a> or Amazon<\/a> or both, and market and sell directly to your customers off your own website.<\/p>\n

The tools really are in your hands now. But the cardinal question that every aspiring designer founder needs to answer before embarking on their entrepreneurial odyssey has changed. It is no longer: Can you build the product? The starting point is now: Why are you building it at all?<\/p>\n