Ad firm touts ‘design thinking’; Involving designers right from the start can make a project soar, proponents say
The Globe and Mail, Report on Business
Oct. 18, 2006
By Richard Blackwell
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One of the hottest catchphrases in today’s management-speak is “design thinking.”
The theory says businesses and their managers must apply the innovative and creative processes used by designers if their ventures are to be successful.

That means being extremely open-minded at the start of a project, figuring out exactly how a client or user “experiences” your company’s product or service, and trying out multiple prototypes before you choose a solution.

If you can work this way, the proposition goes, your business can replicate the success of Apple Computer Inc.’s brilliantly designed iPod or the ubiquitous Starbucks Corp. coffee shops.
Great in theory, but how do you put design thinking into practice?

One small Toronto company that is trying to make it work is John St. Advertising, a mid-sized agency run by ad industry veteran Arthur Fleischmann.

John St. has just acquired small design firm Amoeba Corp., an eight-person shop that will be moving into the agency’s offices in the coming weeks.

The Amoeba principals — Mikey Richardson, Mike Kelar and Ryan Smolkin — will be involved in most John St. projects, providing broad and creative thinking to clients long before any specific advertising campaign is developed.

Established almost 10 years ago, Amoeba has worked on a huge range of projects, from designing the user interface and sounds for Virgin Mobile cell phones, to conceiving the look of Nike’s retail outlets, to designing the souvenir tickets for the last hockey game at Toronto’s Maple Leaf Gardens.

The creative, intuitive approach of the Amoeba principals is what appealed to Mr. Fleischmann. While he has used Amoeba for individual projects in the past, having the group on staff will get them much more directly involved, he said. “We want to bring the designers in at the thinking end, and they will be there through the execution [phase],” Mr. Fleischmann said. “They come at [issues] from a different way. You put them at the table at the beginning, solving the problem, and the answer you’ll get, I guarantee, will be different.”

An ad agency pitching to a client that runs a string of coffee shops may traditionally propose a billboard campaign, Mr. Fleischmann said. Having designers in on the meeting would expand discussion to what the furniture looks like in the coffee shop, what it smells like, and what music is played, he said.

Many ad agencies — and other businesses — get designers involved only at the end of a project, but that’s a mistake, he insists. “You’re selling designers short if you bring them in only at the 11th hour and say ‘Make my idea look pretty.’ “

Mr. Fleischmann acknowledges that he’s not necessarily breaking new ground by acquiring the Amoeba team — other agencies like Toronto’s Taxi Advertising and Design already successfully integrate designers with their advertising work.

But he hopes the move will take his firm to a new level. “We liked to think we were doing [design thinking] already,” he said, “but then why is our portfolio still 90-per-cent 30-second television ads?”

His decision to buy Amoeba stemmed from a management gathering this year, when he asked design-thinking guru Heather Fraser to talk about the issue.

Ms. Fraser, director of business design at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, specializes in turning the theory into practice.

She praised Mr. Fleischmann’s effort to bring in designers at the earliest stage, when the agency is working to develop a complete understanding of a client’s needs. The same principles can work for any business, she said. “Having a diverse set of perspectives around the table at the developmental stages is really important.”

Ms. Fraser calls the first stage of the design process “deep user understanding,” which comes from watching human behaviour and experiencing how a product or service is used. Next comes a kind of brainstorming, where any idea can be considered, then tested through prototyping.
Conventional product research can contribute to the process, but design thinking proponents say companies can no longer count on traditional financial or engineering calculations as the only means to get answers to their problems.

The design process can also be applied to services, or even corporate policies or strategies, its proponents say.