{"id":152,"date":"2008-12-03T14:02:27","date_gmt":"2008-12-03T21:02:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ghostinthepixel.com\/?p=152"},"modified":"2008-12-04T19:09:27","modified_gmt":"2008-12-05T02:09:27","slug":"good-book-do-you-matter-how-great-design","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghostinthepixel.com\/?p=152","title":{"rendered":"Good book: Do you matter?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Do You Matter? How Great Design Will Make People Love Your Company<\/a> by Robert Brunner, Stewart Emery, Russ Hall<\/cite><\/p>\n

\nI’ve been reading this book co-written by Robert Brunner<\/a>, former director of Apple’s Industrial Design Group and principal at Pentagram<\/a>, the globally renowned design firm. (and according to Valley Wag<\/a>, helped design the Amazon Kindle<\/a>)<\/em> Designed by Pentagram, the book offers a nicely digestible account of design’s value to business success, particularly for business folks (execs, directors, managers, etc.) who may still<\/em> be unconvinced of “pursuing good design” as a fundamental business mission\/prerogative. <\/p>\n

For designers like myself, I feel there’s really not much earth-shatteringly novel or mind-blowing–we’ve all heard these points before of course. Yet they bear repeating with refreshed examples, from Geico to Samsung to P&G and others, as Brunner, et al does in the text. <\/p>\n

The vital takeaway is the point about designing for the “emotional connection”–ensuring that your product and\/or service is conceived as a portal to a total, integrated, cohesive “customer experience supply chain” that is memorable and rewarding. While I wholeheartedly agree, personally I find that particular phrasing (“customer experience supply chain”) a bit awkward and Dilbert-esque. Yet I must admit that it strongly parallels what I’ve been advocating lately, for an “integrative aesthetic experience”<\/a> where the core elements (like Dan Saffer’s touchpoints and service moments) resonate into a coherent whole–a true experience in the Deweyan sense. <\/p>\n

Ultimately, it’s about delivering an experience that propels a customer’s sense of being alive<\/em>, as the authors state in the concluding chapter. This of course is a deeply emotional, personal, and HUMAN aspect that number-crunching CEO’s often don’t grok well, but designers do! Personally it’s great to see someone talking about this in a design book aimed at business suits, directly reflecting the language of Joseph Campbell, which address profound social\/humanistic issues beyond profits and sales…but influence such economic success metrics. <\/p>\n

Below are some of the most memorable and noteworthy quotes from the text that I will certainly keep referring back to:<\/p>\n

\n