Go to where the lion is hunting, not the zoo

The Creating section of the July 30, 2011 issue of The Wall Street Journal has a profile of industrial designer, Gianfranco Zaccal (The Engineer of Everyday Objects).  Zaccal is the president of Continuum, a 200-person design firm with offices in West Newton, Mass. and Los Angeles, Milan, Seoul and Shanghai. 

Key points in the article include:

• Zaccal spends most days trying to come up with the next big idea.
• "We try to empathize."
• The staff includes MBAs, designers, engineers, artists - - from a former circus performer to a neurologist who studied mouse brains.
• Rule #1 - - no trashing others' ideas.
• Observation is critical - - "Go to where the lion is hunting, not the zoo."
• High points of a design are illustrated on "journey maps."
• Pattern spotting is a key skill attribute.
• "The biggest mistake people make is to collect all the data and try to make sense as if all had the same importance.  You try to stand back and see what the high points are."
• Zaccal uses his iPhone to snap pictures all day long.  His best thinking comes with his staff.
• Signs like "Don't Stop Believin" are over the work rooms - - "Coming up with an idea is no problem.  It's having the confidence that you can be a strong advocate of it, feeling it come from actual evidence and it's not half-baked."
• Researchers have to get creative to gain access to customers,clients and end users.
• Visual arts and crude models are the key to driving home an idea.  Meetings are often interrupted with video interviews or animated clips.
• "Seeing old habits with new ideas."