INTERVIEW

Tim Brown, IDEO

Biography

Tim Brown is the CEO and president of IDEO. An industrial designer by training, his own work has earned him numerous design awards and has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Axis Gallery in Tokyo, and the Design Museum in London. Tim has a special interest in the convergence of technology and the arts, as well as the ways in which design can be used to promote the well-being of people living in emerging economies. Tim writes extensively, with articles in the likes of Harvard Business Review and a book, Change by Design, on how design thinking can transform organizations.

Interview

What has changed in product design since you graduated?

Everything has changed in the broader perception we have as product designers of what it is we are doing. No matter how simple a product is, it’s part of a system; we’re designing the system and not the product, whether we like it or not.

What advice would you give to today’s graduates?

I would say figure out how to be collaborative and interdisciplinary, but not in a bland, compromising way. Actively collaborate with other disciplines, whether it is business or engineering or social sciences or whatever it might be. You have to take an active interest in those disciplines. It’s not about figuring out where to compromise; it’s figuring out where to contribute. I think it’s hard to get many experiences of that at college because colleges are not set up that way. It’s one of the great things about work placements—they are a great opportunity to do it. Figure out how to get those collaborative experiences as early as possible. As designers we can help bring collaborations together because of the tools we have. The way we visualize things, the way we describe things, the way we tell stories—we can be catalysts for collaboration. Learning that skill as a product design student, I think, is incredibly precious.

What does it take to be a successful product designer?

I think these days it takes a willingness to think about systems and a willingness to look at a problem in a multifaceted way. You need to ask questions not only about form and function in a traditional sense, but about the overall system the product is part of and how that can be optimized or improved. You might need to consider closed-loop supply chains or the impact on society or the impact on the business that you’re designing for. For me the other important characteristic of a product designer these days is the ability to ask the question, not simply answer it.

How do you define “success”?

I suppose you could think of it in two ways: the first definition of success is impact and then the definition of impact is good impact, whatever that is. When I think about our goals for IDEO, it’s to have an impact in the world through what we do, but preferably to have a beneficial impact. That goes back to this notion of asking the right questions. I think it’s relatively easy as a product designer to have an impact, but relatively hard to have a beneficial impact, particularly when you take a broader systems view. The other thing that’s difficult about the idea of impact is that it occurs over time, so you don’t know whether you’ve done a good job as a product designer when you’ve finished your product...So there’s a level of patience and a certain sort of long view that I think you need to have as a product designer.

Positivo, 2009. This low-cost PC caters to emerging markets in Brazil and beyond.

My Passport, 2008, is an ultra-portable USB-powered hard drive that appeals to the mobile user. Being 100% recyclable, with no added environmental contaminants, the drive elegantly expresses client Western Digital’s principles of “simplicity and clarity” and reached beyond the typical “techie” market to a broader audience.

i2i, 2008, designed with Steelcase. This chair supports a variety of postures, including sideways, reclining, perching and leaning, enabling users to maintain eye contact and stay engaged with each other at work while changing postures.