I read "How to Plan Design: Cultivate the Execution Power of Design Innovation!" 》: Think from others’ perspective and achieve innovation
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“How to plan design: Cultivate the execution ability of design innovation!” ” is a Korean university professor who is also active in the field of design. He once served as the CEO of the International Design Trend Center (IDTC). He is a rare person with both industry and academia. Although this book was published over five years ago, I think it is still worth reading.
The reason why it is related to “How to plan design: Cultivate the execution ability of design innovation!” ” I got acquainted with him because of the recommendation of Chen Junming, an EMBA teacher from the Department of Cultural and Creative Industries of the National Taipei University of Education. When I first came across this book from the teacher’s book list, the interesting title immediately aroused my curiosity, so I quickly opened the Google search engine to search. As a result, I found out that the author is [Dr. Ken Nah], a professor at the Department of Design Management at the International Institute of Design (IDAS), Hongik University, South Korea.
However, when I received the books I ordered from the online bookstore, I realized that my original guess was completely wrong! “How to plan design: Cultivate the execution ability of design innovation!” 》Not only is it not boring at all, it also invites many Korean designers and artists who are engaged in design work to participate in writing. Through the designers’ personal experiences, many wonderful success stories are shared, and at the same time, some failure experiences are also discussed, allowing readers to understand the relationship between design and planning from multiple perspectives.
What’s even better is that this book is supplemented by a large number of visual diagrams, so that people can quickly understand what the author is trying to explain and make use of this knowledge. As the saying goes, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” I really like this way of organizing books with both pictures and text.
To put it simply, this book explores what planning is from the designer’s point of view? And why do designers need to understand planning, or even plan in advance? This is a very interesting topic. I have encountered similar incidents in the workplace, so I read it with special emotion.
In the past, when I served in the industry, I led design teams many times. Some designers are very serious and know how to seize the opportunity to learn; but some designers are only obsessed with their own world and are repelled from absorbing other new knowledge, let alone learning professional skills such as planning or project management.
However, with the rapid evolution of the times, the logic of art design and business operations has gradually become inseparable. Contemporary designers must not only possess humanities, aesthetics, and art, but also possess a certain degree of management and coordination capabilities. From learning how to write business plans, communicating with customers, coordinating multi-person collaborations, and even having the concepts of cost and benefit and mastering time allocation, only then can they understand management skills like a project manager.
To be honest, transforming from a designer to a “design manager” is not an easy task, and maybe not everyone can do it! But now it is not enough to just be able to design, or be able to skillfully use drawing tools such as Photoshop and Illustrator. We must also know how to “think from the perspective of others” - that is, plan and manage from different business perspectives such as bosses and project managers. Only in this way can we be at home.
The author believes that when design meets planning, it is the key to making innovation possible. The so-called “design planning”, according to the interpretation of co-author Jin Kwun Jun, is a process (Process) based on a stable system and structured to ensure a standardized approach to the works created by the designer.
This passage in the book is not easy to understand, but you can understand it after chewing it a few times. In other words, if you want to do a good job in design planning, you must not only have keen observation, good creative thinking and accurate judgment, but also be able to quickly grasp the direction of market trends, so as to take into account both design and planning.
After reading this, I was deeply touched. I know many excellent art designers, but they are self-limited and lock themselves in a small design world, but are unwilling to step out and see the true face of the wider world. It is really a pity. Not only should we look at design from a macro, broad, and high-sighted perspective, but we should also use the same standards and mentality to treat disciplines such as planning and management.
In the 21st century, the importance of design is increasing day by day. Compared with the past era, today’s designers are required to possess a variety of abilities, including the ability to design perceptually, the ability to use language in the era of globalization, the ability to lead a team, and even the ability to persuade customers…
I have heard designers complain to me: “As a designer, don’t we only need to be able to draw? Why do we need to understand planning? Or do we need to communicate with engineers and understand their terminology?” My long-term experience in the workplace tells me that having only one expertise is no longer enough, and I will probably be eliminated by this world. Young friends should strive to make themselves T-shaped talents.
The so-called “T-shaped talents” refer to a new type of talents distinguished according to their knowledge structure. Use the letter “T” to represent the characteristics of their knowledge structure. Seen with ”—”, it means having extensive knowledge; looking with ”|”, it means having depth of knowledge. The combination of the two means deep professional knowledge and broad knowledge. This type of talent that combines depth and breadth is also the most popular in the workplace.
For example, ASUS Computer Chairman Shi Chongtang encourages young people to become cross-field [T-shaped talents] (https://www.chinatimes.com/realtimenews/20140309001560-260410). A few days ago, Chairman Shih Chong-tang was invited to deliver a speech at the graduation ceremony of National Taiwan University. He encouraged graduates to cultivate themselves to become “T-shaped people” with both deep and broad abilities, spanning technology, management and art.
Shi Chongtang also mentioned that there are two doors in life, “the difficult door” and the “easy door”. If you want to realize your dreams and ambitions, you must constantly challenge the “difficult door” and choose the difficult path. Because an easy road will eventually become a difficult road due to too many smart people, especially in a highly competitive shopping mall. You should also regard every moment of your life as practice and sublimate your life.
The principles of “difficult door” and “easy door” are also applicable in the field of design. According to the statistics of the author of this book, South Korea educates more than 36,000 design students every year. There are also many design students in Taiwan. Every year, you can see some shining stars at the “New Generation Design Exhibition”.
But despite this, there are also voices in the industry saying that there is a lack of talent. “There are design students all over the street, but companies can’t find a few available talents!” I think that if the majority of designers have other expertise, or even excellent planning capabilities, they will definitely have stronger competitiveness.
Then focus on “How to plan design: Cultivate the execution ability of design innovation!” ” Regarding this book, I feel that although this book is not written by a local author, it does not read inconsistently. It may also be because of the large number of charts interspersed, so it is very different from other rigid planning textbooks.
Rather than saying that this book teaches us how to plan, it is better to say that the planner [Dr. Ken Nah] (https://www.facebook.com/ken.nah.12) uses the perspective of several outstanding design workers to share their rich practical experience in the design field through storytelling, and carefully examines the elements that are easily overlooked by people, and then gradually outlines the gist of planning execution.
What’s even better is that this book comes with many practical tables, which can be said to be the essence of many authors. We only need to extract the essence of these tables and then apply them to actual workplaces step by step.
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