Lessons Learned at BDK

After two years as an Industrial Designer at Black & Decker, my last day has arrived. As a way of closing up shop, I thought I might write a few lessons I’ve learned during my time here.

Be Wary of the ‘Send’ button.

Email is not an effective means of communication for complex issues, particularly if they involve politics or emotional content of any sort. If an email is longer than a paragraph or two, I delete it and pick up the phone. It’s easier for everyone, you’re more likely to be heard and understood, and much less likely to offend people by accident.

Left-handed Humility

In The Effective Executive, Peter Drucker says that the most effective way to get ahead in an organization is to make one’s boss look good. If I want something from someone, the best way to get it is to make them look the better for having conceded. If I’m trying to persuade someone to my way of thinking, the most effective way to do it is to lead them to my conclusions, but try to let them think that the ideas are their own. This is often incompatible with taking all the credit for myself… even if I feel I’m owed it! It’s not necessarily “false” humility, however. It’s a true recognition that the world does not revolve around me and my ideas, no matter how strongly held.

Design is a Team Effort.

There are many competing interests in the product development process, and Industrial Design isn’t the only entity with a “right” point of view. It can be very difficult to take negative feedback from people I’ve deemed unqualified to comment on product design, but more than once I’ve discovered that I was wrong, and the nebulous “they” were right.

Brute Force Loses Arguments

If debate is a fencing match, I’m the guerrilla with the Louisville Slugger. I’m learning (albeit slowly) that influencing people is a much more refined art than simply forcing my opinions on people (and I have many opinions). I’m not learning to be less opinionated, but rather to simply express my opinions less forcefully, and in a way that instead tries to learn from and influence others.

“Get their tasters set.”

When beginning a new project, I try to be very clear and concise about your goals for the program. I get consensus from the team involved (ID, marketing, and engineering), and make sure everyone is on-board. Develop and effective timetable and sequence of events, and begin by getting people excited about my way of thinking. The more excitement I can generate around my products using the tools at my disposal (mainly great images and explanations), the more likely people will be to give me what I want in a project.

The end game is what really counts.

I’ve found that I have a tendency to use up all of my excitement on the front-end of a project, and sluff off the final details. This obviously has serious negative consequences. Remaining diligent in a project all the way to the end is difficult for me, but critical to achieving my goals as a designer.

Unhappy at home, unhappy at work.

My first year I was living alone, and consequently lonely and bored. As a result, I was bored at work, and had difficulty doing my job effectively. Now that I’m happily married (and loving it!), the job seems much more do-able. I never want to live alone again, and if I could do it all again, I’d have lived with a room mate for my first year. I would have been much happier.

Sketches = Cartoons

An engineer here often draws the ire of the design department by calling design drawings “cartoons.” As you get to know him, however, you quickly discover that he calls complex engineering and CAD drawings cartoons as well. His philosophy is that it’s all fake until there’s a working unit in your hands. That’s when it’s real, and that’s the final product. And I agree. It’s easy to think of your beautiful renderings as the “product” of your labor, but really they’re nothing on their own. An idea is not an accomplishment. Starry-eyed “concept designs” are a dime-a-dozen. The real test of a designer is his ability to bring ideas to fruition.

If you can’t make it, it’s worthless.

A solid knowledge of manufacturing techniques is absolutely critical to designing solid, cost-effective products. A designer can’t just be an “idea guy,” he has to know how to make his ideas happen in the real world… in China.

Design = Communication

Industrial Design is the art of effective inter, intra, and extra corporate communication. Designers are tasked with communicating complex ideas quickly and effectively to a wide variety of audiences all over the world. A designer who is a poor communicator is not a designer, he’s a pair of hands. That said, I’ve learned to write more effective emails, conduct better meetings, illustrate concepts to make them easy for a broad audience to grasp, and that communicating details is a difficult task, requiring a special skill with organization and diligence. (Which I have far from mastered!)

Pretty Pictures Lie

As an illustrator, my tendency is to want to skip all the “ugly” up-front thought organization and exploration, and jump straight into pretty pictures and flashy presentations. When I do this I sell myself short, and ruin opportunities for discovery and innovation. I am learning to enjoy the early stages of a design, long before the first pretty-pictures come into existence!

I’m sure there are so many more! Maybe later.