Design time is an interesting subject, especially when working for a large multinational company.
‘Time is money’, ‘cash is king’, ‘finish this one and move onto the next’, I assume everyone has heard these requests at some point in their career. I certainly have! Now this is not a behaviour is not solely driven by companies trying to maximize profit, it is also a result of clients driving down fees and ‘crunching’ project programs.
How much are we missing out on….. due to time and money constraints?
Given our desire to avoid this self-fulfilling prophecy moving forward, we are trying to set up a number of process within our office to make sure we are focusing on ‘the big picture’. Ultimately this starts with talking to our Clients, discussing and agreeing a mutually acceptable delivery strategy. It also includes a number of less exciting and very common process, such as frequent review of our standard design and documentation templates, 3rd party design reviews and internal critiques. We are striving to challenge ourselves, challenge our designs and ultimately improve our output and hopefully create, stimulate or at least support innovation. Importantly within our office, we allocate time to encourage team members to peruse and focus on things they are passionate about, outside the Studio. For some people this means using company hardware for personal design or art projects, for others it’s finishing early two days a week to play in a band, for me it’s about training for triathlons and time with my kids. I’m a massive advocate for these kind of actives as they give you time to think, put things in perspectives, challenge and question decisions made and those still to be made. A company supporting these personal growth activities, I also believes puts people in the right mind set to not want to escape work, but embrace it! None the less, this process is a huge part of my own desire to start my own Studio. Is the ‘grass always greener’, will budgets, deadlines and financial performance affect how our team operate? Sure to some extent, however I think by keeping our goals in mind and education our Client on the same, we can strike a happy medium. Only time will tell………
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AuthorLUKE MAIDEN Archives
September 2015
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