Today I got back from Helsinki, had a nice few days enjoying the perfect weather and the company of some relatives and friends. Since I noticed that there had been over 2000 views on the iron-man project, I decided to put up another fast sketch to celebrate!
researching the architecture of a powertool -inspired steam iron
Today´s post is about job interviews. Tomorrow I will be taking part in one and have now been looking for different tips to get ready for an interview. here is something I found:
1. be on the spot well in advance. Even I wouldn´t easily hire someone that comes late to the interview.
2. Be yourself. The company wants to hear about you. An interview is about finding out your character.
3. Dress up nicely. Hmm.. well, I wouldn´t kick out a perfect candidate just because of the clothes.
4. Prepare yourself for the interview, get your diplomas and references ready, look at some internet sites for "normal" questions that tend to come in every interview. make up some questions of your own to ask from the interviewer.
5. Be honest. no one wants to hire a liar.
6. be a good guy! positive people are more supposedly getting hired.
But however, interview is about you interacting with the company for the first time, so make the best of it! even if the job slips through your fingers, don´t be depressed, others will come for sure! The experience from the interview will be in your pocket, nevertheless.
would you hire this guy? a superb image manipulation by kim :D
Recently I have been working for my sister´s strategic design consultancy Kaltio for the first time, just to give some insight and create nice designs on her project. The phase I took part in was concept development, I sketched on platform concepts. I started thinking that how these platforms should be done and realized that if a concept is too well guided, the outcome might not begin to fly. One should always leave enough doors open for the concept development to take place. The best possible cannot really operate if the concept is too restricted. In strategic design one should take all possible time to explore the possibilities and look at the project from different perspectives.
Riikka had made really nice work on the concepts, so really my work just put the cherry on top. Hopefully the pieces will gain nice attention. they will come public in some time, so more images then.
Recently there has been very nice discussion and open source ideation for the Iron-Man concept I have been developing. Many comments have stated that a male design language could be led from powertools, the last barricade of "purely male" products. Therefore I decided to do some sketching on the issue and noticed, that there are some things that are attractive for the muscular sex. However, the other design language on weapon and armory industry is also quite attractive. See for yourself, Powertool iron ideation:
The need for a change and a path to express thoughts. That is basicly it. Up here, all things you do are like whispers in the dark, no possibility to make visible statements or show the innovative and aesthetic character of one´s products. Blogging on design gives one a chance to review design phenomena, discuss even the tough spots and just shout out loud! In my opinion, enough incentive there.
It has been nice to notice so many readers to visit and even link to this blog, so perhaps something has been done well enough. In the future I want to start researching the difference between ethnographic and geographic influence in design and the effect on design language. I am somehow quite certain that the design language comes from the very soul of the people and landscape you live in. However, these days the effect of magazines, "TV design" and web starts to flatten the design expressivity, and the trends soon follow each other. Therefore I assume living up here to be a gain instead of boundary. One has always the "real" people and the nature present, which are a great source of inspiration for me. Travelling then gives me an insight on other cultures and landscapes for design expression. It was funny to notice, how a visit to Singapore made me once again to see colours..
If only one had the chance to work from Lapland and have a nice variety of projects from different product fields. I must admit that Helsinki still beats Rovaniemi businesswise, but design... One should give another a chance ;)
I spoke recently with my friend Kim Haataja, and we looked at one of his projects. The new wrist computer concept is really nice and has many nice details in it! In my opinion, the design is better than some other, related projects I have seen. Since I know the project quite well, I must admit that this is somewhat the future of wrist computers.
Last week I learned that Sony Ericsson had taken in to usage the last nice feature I made to my bachelors thesis to Polar Electro, the combination of bluetooth and cellphone with a wrist computer, useful on extreme hobbies and extreme weather conditions. The concept was about Reading SMS and taking the information from a caller from the Mobile phone to one´s wrist computer. Also other features, as gps for performance monitoring, and gps with google earth have been now introduced by other companies. However, the experience to collaborate with Polar was really nice and truly gave answers to a hungry young designer.
BMW - the joy of driving (screenshot)
Lue ensin alempi teksti... (kiitos blogger!)
Olen pohdiskellut strategiseen tuotemuotoiluun keskittymistä, mutta mielestäni suomalaisten yritysten lyhytnäköisyys ei vielä saata muotoilua globaalisti luovalle tasolle, muuta kuin poikkeusten osalta. En vielä valitettavasti pysty kuvittelemaan, että suomalainen muotoilutoimisto voisi kannattavasti tarjota muuta kuin monipuolisesti raapaisten teollisen muotoilun palveluita, koska meillä ei ole hyvää historiaa muotoilulähtöisten tuotteiden suunnittelusta ja erikoistumisesta brandi ja käyttäjälähtöiseen konseptisuunnitteluun. Muotoilulähtöisillä tuotekokemuksilla tarkoitan nimenomaan hyvien strategisen suunnittelun prosessien seurauksena syntyneitä tuotekokonaisuuksia, en kuorten tekemistä valmiisiin tuotekonsepteihin. Asiakasyritysten luotto muotoiluun ei ole riittävän suuri, jotta osattaisiin/haluttaisiin käyttää strategista suunnittelua yrityksen tuoteportfolion hiomiseen. Tutkimus ja muu analysointi koetaan tarpeettomaksi ja kalliiksi.
Olisiko aika hajauttaa projekteja ja hakea mielipiteitä ja konsepteja useammasta lähteestä, jolloin saataisiin monipuolisempi kattaus jatkojalostukseen. Muotoilutoimistot erikoistuisivat eri tuotekehitysvaiheiden muotoiluun, jolloin erikoisosaaminen tukisi myös tuotteen kehittymistä. Brändi- ja käyttäjälähtöiseen konseptisuunnitteluun keskittyneet yritykset hoitaisivat alkuvaiheen tuotekonseptoinnin, jota sitten tuotteistamiseen erikoistuneet yksiköt jatkaisivat.
Kuitenkin maailmalta löytyy hurjasti yrityksiä, jotka osaavat käyttää muotoilupalveluita ilman, että itse tuotteen täytyy olla valmis kauppoihin, Etsitään tulevaisuutta ja suuntaa yritykselle. Heitän täten ilmaan ajatuksen; suomalainen muotoilu ei nouse lyhytnäköisyydestä, vaan globaaleja menestystuotteita saadaan aikaan ainoastaan tekemällä alkuvaiheen muotoilu oikeilla prosesseilla ja erikoistuneita osaajia käyttäen.
saa kommentoida!
teollinen muotoilija on yrityksessä luova voimavara ja auttaa yrityksen tuotteiden terävöittämisessä. Tutkimuksen kautta muotoilija etsii tuotemahdollisuuksia ja ongelmia, tutkii tuotteiden käytettävyyttä, hyväksyntää ja paikallistaa täten aukkopaikkoja tuoteavaruudessa. Omat nettisivuni olenkin ajatellut suunnata nimenomaisesti alkuvaiheen muotoiluun ja sen problematiikkaan ja täten erikoistua nimenomaisesti alkuvaiheen tuoteohjaukseen, koska siellä voidaan tehdä minun mielestäni kaikkein suurimmat virheet, mutta toisaalta saavuttaa eniten.
Voimakas erikoisosaaminen tuotemahdollisuuksien määrittämisessä kuuluu mielestäni teollisen muotoilijan erikoisosaamisalueisiin. Se vaatii perehtymistä, eikä aukea pelkästään hyvällä ajattelulla. Vaaditaan vakiintuneita prosesseja, sekä käytäntöjä + palveluita, jotta myös palvelun laatu pysyy hyvänä. Konseptisuunnitteluosaaminen ei mielestäni riitä, vaan vaaditaan myös tietoa ja osaamista tuotemääritysvaiheessa, ja nämä kaksi yhdistämällä puhutaan jo hyvästä kokonaispaketista. Kun palettiin lisätään vielä brandikytkennät, niin kokonaisuus alkaa olla valmis. (jatkuu..)
I recently took a course on New Product development. There we had to do the basic assignments, such as brand segmentation and analyze "our new product" with tools like quality function deployment and KANO model. Thank to the team members for a nice teamwork!
Our team created a portable cooker and I had the privilege to design the thing. I created just a concept sketch around the features and other details, leaving the styling for a later time. However, the side product, an illustration assistant was the hand-stick... a hand that one could perform all hazardous things with.. :D (the hand originally from Mikael´s illustration)
Recently I have been looking at the development of traditional "industrial design" and I find myself often amazed about the variety people can find in their specialization. Others seek to concentrate on services, others on interaction, even they are formally trained as industrial designers. Others, however wish to concentrate on traditional branches, such as furniture and product design. Even at the university of Lapland, one can have different masters programs, to truly differentiate himself on certain branch. Industrial design seems to almost explode.
Is an industrial designer the next to god? Seems that nothing is enough and designers seek for new ways of working and soon, I would say, start to play with molecule biology, just to create new ingenious materials... Creativity is taking over everywhere. Should they remain in the pit and create products, or should creativity boost the economies with even stronger touch on all fields?
interesting discussion takes place in core77.boards
I got a nice tip from a visiting lecturer, Simo Rontti, concerning strategic design related books. Blue Ocean Strategy is about systematicly finding spaces in the strategical map, to create products and services that make competition irrelevant. A good example could be igglo that changed the way of seeing real estate business. Another one that hits my mind, was Samsung, creating the Ultra Edition.. finding a 6.9mm space in the mobile phone business is not easy.
However, some info on BOS. Some in finnish, too
I got carried away with some of the nicest touchscreen user interfaces.. One of the nicest performances I saw over the net, couple guys had different ways of giving orders to the screens with different touch combinations, a kind of a Human-Machine language..
Since touch is surely soon a part of mobile gadgets (Nokia aeon, iphone) , I started to ideate a finger operated touch screen user interface for digital cameras. In my opinion, a truly well sighted development, who hits first?
Finally I have finished my new website layout, even though I still have to translate the pages in english. Somehow this html starts to come to me, and I begin to understand the rules behind.. Selftaught design is this way somehow. However the bright and light composition is something I like at the moment.
Check them Out
I have a long time wanted to do this post on Singapore. Before I ever went there, I had the image of a city with strict rules and order. I had thought the city was full of huge buildings, and the traffic would be overwhelming. However, I was wrong.
Singapore offers a nice, warm (hot!) and clean place to live and even the nightlife is lively with many huge nichtclubs and smaller pubs to spend an evening. Restaurants can be found on any cuisine available, even though my favorites were the local, chinese and indian. Everything (not alcohol) is considerably cheap, compared to Finland. For Shopping, Singapore offers huge amount of different boutiques and shops.
For a young designer like me the city has quite many possibilities. I would think that a student exchange, if possible, would be nice thing to consider. Also the amount of internships available will for sure be growing, since the design boom that is taking place there. Design is very valued and appraised. Things Like the red dot design museum really put Sg to the design map. During my visit the office had numerous interviews for magazines and National TV. Also some v.i.p´s visited the office. Places besides DW , interships can be found in numerous companies, HP and Philips design, to mention a few.
All in all, the reason to really consider Singapore for the exchange/internship, is the climate. My eyes still sometimes dwell to the the beaches of Malaysia, which are actually just a bus ride away. In addition, cheap living expenses, good service and also very international population make Singapore a place worth checking out.
illustration by Mikael
a sketch I made on the concept
I was again going through the products map and stumbled upon apparels design. How could strategic design processes give value for an apparels company? Started to figure out the design processes used and realized that the design is quite often purely focusing on the usability/usable details and not so much perhaps on design language itself, at least on heavy duty backpacks etc.
How could a design language become the driving force for apparels design? Of course, in heavy duty goods, the design language seconds the usability and durability, but perhaps one could go through this sort of language that actually supports the features. Using certain forms on openings and vents and also using som semanthic forms to guide the user through the inevitable complexity. Some sort of layered design language could perhaps be the best option. Topped with some great concepts, a good product for a design company to offer!
However, I made some sketches, too.. just fast with ballpoint and markers..
Ideation sketching
If one is into (strategic) conceptual design, the tool that you use the most is a pen. Accompanied with some markers, the pen and a sharpener, you make a terrific team together. As an industrial designer is a professional in visually explaining the creativity and it´s outcomes, The designs need to have a fast and reliable means to be presented in the team and to the clients. Therefore one has to know how to master the basic sketching techniques. It is not quite enough just to be able to draw beautiful pictures but there has to be rules in making the sketch so that everyone understands the meaning of the sketch, without the designer explaining what is going on. The works should present themselves.
In my educational oven at the university of Lapland, sketching was not appraised enough and the workshops did not require sketching. Everyone was going for the 3D and no sketches required for the completion of courses. I assume that it is one thing that separates us from the top schools. During Last spring, when I was applying to DesignworksUSA, I realized that the sketches are the essence of design profession, at least in consultancy world. Also car design includes heavy sketching and rendering. Somehow I think that during my studies, the sketching was just something expected, not looked after. If there had been more workshops on basic sketching and rendering, perhaps it would have been easier to get internships etc.
However, there seems to be a gap also in the presentation of sketches and the real world. No one shows the crappy doodles even though they are the ones mostly done and looked into when working. I didn´t want to show my first sketches because they were not flashy or beautiful enough. However, the sketches are there to tell something, so show them!
I made just a sketch on the elven design language. Perhaps it could have been even more exaggerated.. Really into looking at this kind of surface complexity management now. Making mixture of different surface speaking the same language.
Design processes are important as tools for making design systematic and easier to follow by clients and manage by participants in process. The process descriptions (processes?) are, however, on certain level the same and in this sense perhaps useless in marketing purposes.
I have heard that usually a process should be available to be seen by prospecting client, but I still assume other things, like consultancy reputation and previous clientelé (project outcomes) actually do the trick in consultancy selection. Therefore one could think that "the same - process" could work.. Processes as spines are also important for the actual designing and scheduling, but in some discussions I have learned that the actual process can actually dramaticly differ from the one presented in marketing material. What is the reason? Another tricky thing is actually the support from government that is in some cases given to creating the "tools", but later resulting in not using them.
I have created this kind of a design process draft that would present questions to be answered, instead of going into scheduling the design process. It then should be set with the client regarding to the need of different process particles. If the time spent on a certain section is the same, things that you do are the same and the tools used are the same, but only processes are different, is the process genuine then??
simple, non organized draft
Again doing some studies on cars, just a styling exercise, some photoshop on freehand ballpoint sketch. However, here I was looking at an opening top side of the car.. mechanism perhaps rooting to the saab aero-x.
By the way.. the Saab site is perhaps one of the nicest sites on product exhibiting digitally.
One can also notice the Elven's nice rear light/wind spoilers.. Snow is something not so nice on rear window.
Just went through the Bleu nature website and remembered this nice piece we made with Mikael on our annual adventure trip through Lapland wilderness. Actually it was only the hole of a woodpecker, but in this case acted really nicely as the platform for cooking rod...
picture by Mikael
funky piece of "a could be lightning" on the second image! actually it is a artificial bonzai... Semanthic reminded me however, a table lamp.
Atelier A+D - Modern Architecture and Design: Ciao Milano!
..and also a nice blog about architecture. Wall mounts definitely worth looking into!
droog makes people drool with these hits!
I have lately been doing concept creation on a steam iron and also discussed it also over the net at core 77. One important thing that came up, was the gender of the product. How does it show? Since I had taken my group of interest these young guys moving out of their home for the first time and buying their first iron, what would be the design language and feature combination they liked the most.
where does the fine line between a female product and male design go? My answer was on this one to go with the usability, add some nice features and create some "gadget-feel" to the iron, make it perhaps more interesting to the technology-oriented guy to operate. Also the styling should go with the flow of normal male products, from razors to premium cars and in this case take some from powertools. Perhaps these metal finishes and some rugged details could do the trick. If you wish to see more of the on-going design process, click here.
However, I think that creating a clearly gender oriented product is hard and supposedly in most cases the product would be accepted by both genders. The design acceptance is, after all, related to time and the overall aesthetic family that is depicted from many front end product families.
I ran into this discussion group on the net at core77 discussion board and started to think about it. They talked about design research and how it should be used. One of the posts was concerned about the misuse of design research and one sentence stated that design research is in its infancy.
In my opinion, strategic design would not be even closely as effective, if it didn´t include research. As a strategic concept is a place holder and is quite often formed by researching the overall development, placing the dots where the development is taking you. This is of course the result of research, to be able to depict the development, and also gain the knowledge over the entire field you are working on.
Somehow it is sad that people do the same research phases all over again, like ethnographic research and market analysis, even if they are working on the same task as some worked just a month earlier. Some sort of updateable database should be created that every designer had the chance to go deep to the subject and this way find better solutions by having better tools at hand. The competition seems to be in front of efficient development here.
Other thing that competition is killing, is the possibility to do positive cultural exchange. Designers mostly learn by the side of other designer and should try to travel and work in different work environments for creativity boost and getting the best out of others. Hereby I state that creative designers should go and make a "work exchange", get an insight from the newcomer and by them selves learn something at the new office. If only there wasn´t competition.
Recently I have also been struggling with the development of my sketching and visualization technique. I am planning to finish the design concept by september, because it is to be shown "partially or in whole" at habitare 07. Perhaps this one is not clearly a strategic design process due to the heavy concentration on the exterior design, but some of the details are quite well thought out and concentrate on the semanthics of a racing car on a traditional coupe.
Today I also got to know that I have the possibility to take part in this years Michelin challenge design "Strategic concepting it is, then..."
My first article going down, or under. I recognize strategic design as one whole composition mixing in touches from different ways of implementing design, a mixture from various techniques taking place in the very beginning of design process.
I see that strategic conceptual design in finland is highly undervalued in small and mid-sized companies and therefore should get more visibility in order to raise the global recognition of finnish design as a whole. Creating processes to manage the "fuzzy front end" and create means to rise the importance of specialized designers concentrating on product compositions that do not exist is vital if finnish design wishes to rise itself to the required competitiveness on global design markets. Perhaps creating new institutions to support new ways to define products or to apply new means for the usage of design with public support would be the answer.
However, the system that does not support new designer´s breakthrough and will not enhance competition on design consultancy market, will not have a chance to exist in the pressure coming from the developing countries,not to mention the push from existing international competition. In my opinion the finnish design association, together with finnish government should support young ambitious designers with more possibilities to bring up the talent and will to succeed globally. Also the importancy of strategic approach and also concentration on certain design proficiency should be highly appreciated and enhanced, in order to create new possibilities to strenghten the design field in Finland.
All in all, some heavy words.. but as a final hit think about it, should finnish design remain in the era of pressure and dull daily struggle with production requirements, or should one start truly creating and leave the world AS WE KNOW behind and seek for new starts?
Ok, time to start. This blog will hopefully grow and find some people that will share with me the future of design and we can start building it up together. Following posts will present some interesting things I find from the digital or real world, present some of my ideas and hopefully find an audience to discuss them with.
industrial design