field where designers are migratory, ideas travel fast, and methods of production are
global,” contends Ideo’s Tim Brown, a transplanted Brit who now calls Palo Alto home.
Still, America is different. The U.S. design community has a distinctive mind-set
and perspective. Its design is pragmatic, with an emphasis on marketplace appeal;
streamlined, in a way that focuses on ease of use; and democratic, which fuels the
integration of new ideas, new processes, and new business models.
Breakthrough innovation has long been America’s economic trump card. And if
you study American history, you see that when innovation has been married to good
design, it has yielded unprecedented economic growth. From the design of Levi’s to
the creation of the Coke bottle, the Model T to the Brownie camera, Frank Lloyd
Wright’s prairie houses to Air Jordans and iPads, Americans tend to deliver great designs
in innovative ways that elevate products beyond being simply beautiful artifacts.
Hardworking design is part of an American heritage, points out Davin Stowell
at SmartDesign, a firm famous for its user-friendly tools for Oxo. Early settlers and
pioneers needed good ax handles and efficient scythes to tame the vast expanse of
land, long-barrel rifles for the country’s big game, and Conestoga wagons to carry
their possessions across hostile countryside. Small wonder, then, that 235 years
later, the country is still better known for John Deere tractors and 3M Post-it Notes
than elegant china or precious chairs.
America has also excelled at process and systems design: There’s Frederick
Winslow Taylor’s scientific management, Isaac Singer and his partner’s epiphany
that women would buy more sewing machines on an installment plan, Coca-Cola’s
franchise system, and eBay’s reinvention of retailing. Consider Disney World. Of
course there’s Cinderella’s castle and Mickey’s ears, but there’s also masterful line
management and a comprehensive transportation system. Or Starbucks’s faux
Italian coffeehouse, with free Wi-Fi, customized drinks, and a rewards program for
frequent abusers. Or Amazon’s one-click ordering. Or FedEx’s speedy delivery and
online tracking. All have comprehensive designs that go well beyond a single tangible product. “These are complex interactions of products with spaces, with identity and enabling technologies, with a huge emphasis on making that experience
easy to use and compelling,” says Clive Roux, CEO of the Industrial Designers Society of America, or IDSA.
American design does have its downsides. Its practitioners can be impatient,
unsubtle, and so committed to market share that they lose sight of the attractive
and intuitive. Northwestern University’s Walter Herbst posits that American design-
ers have a bad case of shpilkes—Yiddish for “nervous energy,” or “ants in your pants.”
It’s hard to imagine Americans taking 40 years to design the Porsche 911, me-
thodically refining it again and again. It’s equally hard to imagine the exquisite
minimalism of Japan’s Muji design movement emerging from the raucous energy
of the 50 states. “America is the world’s laboratory,” says Genesis partner Graham
Button. “We’re brilliant at prototyping, but there is always the rush to get to market
to make money, leaving the market to complete the design process. Market forces
don’t design well: Stupid things get bolted on; important things get shaved off.”
The very American focus on return on investment is a challenge to designers,
who are repeatedly pressed to tease out how much of a product’s or service’s revenue
can be attributed to design. Go to any conference where design managers gather, and
a session on the value of design is sure to be on the agenda, along with the plaintive
question: How do we get a seat at the table in the C-suite?
throuGh desiGn for
america, colleGe
students apply their
skills to real-World
problems
wi Th
s Tars
in Their
eyes
“It was all about the squishy
bell peppers,” laughs Tara
Jasinski, a recent Cornell Uni-
versity grad who now works in
Princeton, New Jersey, as an
interior designer at architec-
ture firm HDR. She’s recalling
the inspiration for the Design
for America project she
worked on this past spring at
her alma mater. “That was all
you could get. The grocery
stores with good fresh food
were just too far away.”
So Jasinski, along with
Ada Ng, Mariel Strauch, and
other students led by Alix
Berger, set out to design a
solution that would get more
fresh food to students and the
Ithaca community as a whole.
They followed a process estab-
lished by Design for America,
a grassroots initiative started
in 2009 at Northwestern
University, that encourages
problem-solving design
students to apply their
skills to real-world issues.
As Ng and Strauch explain,
the DFA approach is to
define, discover, reframe,
ideate, prototype, and imple-
ment. Ng calls this kind of
problem solving—as opposed
to drawing, or envisioning
beautiful interior spaces or
products—the essential
wonder of design: “to have an
idea and make it happen.”
DFA’s can-do approach
is catching on. Seven more
universities plan to launch
their own DFA studios this
fall. The Cornell branch will
try to make the most of a new
farmers’ market that will be
open each Thursday at the
university’s Ho Plaza, courtesy
of the group Cornell to Farm.
Strauch thinks the DFA crew
she will lead with Ng can help
get that fresh food into
students’ mouths. “Maybe
we can work with vendors to
package the vegetables in
boxes with labels like ‘stir-
fry,’ with recipes inside,” she
says. “We’d give demos at the
farmers’ market, let them see
that this tastes good—and
that it doesn’t take much
work.” After all, says Strauch,
“I want people to be able
to use what we design.”
