PDMA Blog

Within the new product development (NPD) community, the terms ‘Designer’ and ‘Developer’ have a diversity of meanings. Consequently, they have many connotations.

A few of the many types of Designers that may contribute to NPD include:

• Designers from university-level design programs can provide capabilities such such as ‘multidisciplinary innovation’ or ‘multi-disciplinary collaboration.’ Like their business school (B school) counterparts with Master of Business Administration (MBA) programs, design schools (D schools) offer advanced degrees and they may have abridged programs for  executives.
• Designers from programs such as Industrial Design have studied both form and function. They may exhibit both engineering skills and artistic ability.
• Interaction Design (IxD) professionals strive to define “the behavior of an artifact or system in response to its users.”
• Some types of Designers, such as graphic designers, focus on communication and presentation.
• Specialists at product design firms may contribute to NPD by providing discrete services (such as Industrial Design) or they may function in a co-development (which is also known as Collaborative Product Development) arrangement.
• Designers that focus on new business issues.
• Designers that work closely with subject matter experts and lead users to refine product concepts.

Clarifying the potential role of each Designer

In many situations, the team’s effectiveness can be improved by clarifying the roles of each type of Designer that may contribute to the NPD effort. This includes clarifying what each type of Designer could contribute and determining when those contributions are likely to have the most impact.

When selecting individuals for projects, consider questions such as:

• Will this type of Designer make contributions at the front end of the process or are will they be more effective in preparation for launch?
• If a Designer has been successful in a communications role, what new skills might they need to contribute effectively in an NPD environment?
• Who on the project team is best equipped to determine what type of design contribution is needed and when it is needed?

Levels of Mastery – Shuhari

Some Designers operate at the Ri-level of mastery. Team members expect them to be capable of inventing and blending design techniques based on contextual clues. Unfortunately, not all Designers can provide such adaptive solutions. A Shu-level Designer may be restricted to using templates gleaned from commonly available sources within their discipline.

A Designer’s level of mastery may be used to predict how they will interact with other team members.

Developers

In some NPD environments, individuals may be segmented using the generalized labels of Designer and Developer. This can be problematic because Designer and Developer are polysemous terms.

In some environments, Developers include those that are considered to have more technical expertise such as engineers, scientists, and programers.

Some Developers operate at a Ri-level of mastery and they are more likely to collaborate effectively with Designers to evolve product concepts. Often, Developers that operate at a Shu-level of mastery may be restricted to implementing approved designs.

Potential tension between Designers and Developers

In some NPD environments, there may be tension between Designers and Developers.

I have been surprised by misunderstandings caused by the vague use of Designer and Developer labels within NPD. A few of the pejorative characterizations that I have heard recently include:

• ‘Designers’ assume that ‘Developers’ are ‘artless geeks’
• ‘Designers’ assume that ‘Developers’ are Code Monkeys
• ‘Developers’ assume that ‘Designers’ do not have rigorous methods to validate the inputs used in their designs.
• ‘Developers’ blame ‘Designers’ for finishing the product design too late.
• ‘Designers’ criticize ‘Developers’ for starting coding tasks too early.

Besides clarifying role of Designers and Developers, how do you minimize the detrimental connotations of these labels? How do you maximize synergy? This will be the focus of Part 10 in this series

Other posts in this 10-part Detrimental Connotations in NPD series

Quick Fix, 1/10
Product Requirements, 2/10
Subject Matter Experts, 3/10
Design, 4/10
Marketing, 6/10
Launch, 7/10
Best Practice, 8/10
I know it when I see it, 9/10
Collaboration, 10/10