Subscriptions

Newsletter Advertising

Submit News

Home > DMI Publications > DMI News > Past eBulletins > June 2009

June 2009 eBulletin

The Re-Thinking ... Design conference is almost here, but there's still time to register! Join more than 130 professionals, consultants, and educators from around the world. Despite the economy, this year's conference has attracted more registrants than last year's successful event.

	Live Blog During the conference, follow the live twitter feed with Jeff De Cagna of Principled Innovation and others. Use hashtag #rethinkdesign.

Re-Thinking … Design is designed around the idea of having “strategic conversations.” Conversations that inform, inspire, and answer difficult questions. You’ll hear not just contemporary theory, but practical examples of top design and business leaders demonstrating how they are changing the economy, healthcare, technology, and culture.

A sample of who's joining the conversation:

Tim Brown, CEO, IDEO
Robert Brunner, Founder & Partner, Ammunition LLC; Chief Designer, Fuego North America
Scott Cook, Founder and Chairman of the Executive Committee, Intuit, Inc.
Kurt Heikkila, President, Wild River Consulting; President and CEO, Tundra Composites, LLC
Claudia Kotchka, Former Vice President of Design, Innovation & Strategy, Procter & Gamble
Jeanne Liedtka, Professor of Business Administration, University of Virginia - Darden Business School
Roger Martin, Dean, Rotman School of Management (Conference co-designer)
Darrel Rhea, CEO, Cheskin Added Value (Conference co-designer)

Expect an exchange of ideas with thought leaders. Expect different points of view to challenging questions. Expect to learn. Rather than one-way presentations, expect to engage in two-way conversations. And expect to participate in the dialogue and take home an entirely fresh perspective!

Learn more...
Register now...

Sponsorship Information

Design, Complexity, and Change
DMI Design/Management Annual 34 Conference

October 18-20, 2009
Marriott Cambridge
Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

Organized by DMI, with the Collaborative Initiatives at MIT

Conference Co-Chairs:
Kenneth Kaplan, Associate Director, Collaborative Initiatives at MIT
Dev Patnaik, Founder & Principal, Jump Associates
Robyn Waters, Founder & President, RW Trend LLC

In the midst of widespread turmoil, there are thought leaders and practitioners - in industry, government and academia - who are demonstrating the way forward. They're using design to solve the new challenges of profitability, sustainability and well-being. This conference is about the people and practices who are designing at the edge of change. This conference will highlight their stories, and draw out lessons for how design can help us to reframe, rethink and reinvent our future.

With times of change, design managers need to think, work and execute beyond the normal - to drive business and industry in new directions and be better equipped as change agents. We need to help solve complex problems, rebuild systems, find new meanings, tell new stories, and drive organizational change. No longer is yesterday's "normal" the standard to achieving success. Leading in the future requires a deeper involvement to tackle the daily issues and the big picture issues.

To help us navigate, we're assembling a series of thoughtful and provocative sessions that address three key areas:

• Indicators (explaining what is going on)
• Projectors (how to interpret and project current changes into the future)
• Leaders (how to help us adapt and solve greater problems)

Design, Complexity, and Change is about the people and practices at this edge of change - and expanding our sphere of business and social influence for improved efficiency, profitability, societal wellness, and sustainability. With best of class cases and new scenarios with narrative, this conference aims to highlight the work, stories, and lessons for how design can help us to reframe, rethink and reinvent our future. Be a part of this change!

About the conference
DMI's Annual 34 will be a different conference for different times. Short and succinct. Focused and intense. In the city. Easy to get to, yet hard to forget. We're mindful of your time and your budget. Located at the Marriott Cambridge and MIT campus, with immediate access to downtown Boston, Design, Complexity, and Change is keeping one eye on the big picture, and the other on practical tactics for today's business challenges. New venue, new content, and a continuation of global thought leaders and lively discussions. Join us at DMI's Annual conference, because it will never be "business as usual" again!
Look for information about speakers in the coming weeks.

Register by August 3 and save!

Service Design: Key Methods and Strategies
A New DMI Seminar
September 16-17, London

	Oliver King

Oliver King, Founder & Director, Engine (UK)

Over the last few decades, the economy has shifted dramatically from products to services. More-informed, demanding, and time-scarce consumers are looking for companies that can help make their lives easier, more productive, and more enjoyable. The decisions we make, the brands we are loyal to, the way we spend our time and money are mostly based on the services we receive. As a result, even traditional product-based companies are now offering a broad spectrum of value-added services.

This seminar will focus on practical methods and strategies that professionals can use to deliver great service experiences. Through case studies and interactive sessions, the seminar will also show how to employ customer-centric approaches to innovate services, from empathic techniques to uncover what customers want, through to co-creation and creative methods to develop new service propositions. Participants will not only learn how to develop customer-facing propositions, but also understand what needs to happen behind the scenes to ensure a good service performance.

What you will learn

• How to audit and spot key elements that affect service performance
• Tools and techniques to conduct user-centered research
• How to map the customer's journey
• How to engage with users to enable a co-creation approach to service innovation
• How to communicate initial ideas and concepts to get internal buy-in
• How to prototype service concepts and user experiences to validate concepts and reduce risks
• How to improve and develop new service propositions

Who should attend
Anybody who is involved in managing, designing and delivering one or multiple aspects of a service system can benefit from this seminar. Design managers, marketing executives, and internal teams responsible for customer insight and customer experience will find this workshop particularly interesting.

More information

Featured DMI Member:
Rob Wallace, Managing Partner, Wallace Church

	Rob Wallace

"I have been a proud member of DMI for almost 20 years, ever since the annual conference was held in its original location at Martha's Vineyard's Harbor House. With the exception of perhaps one or two years, I have attended every annual conference since. To me the value of DMI is not only in the information provided but the interaction encouraged. I get as much out of the talks and the Review as I do from the informal conversations among members.

In these days of social networking, there is no single better network in the design management world. To me DMI is all about ROI!"

Find out more about DMI membership

Design Leadership Series Webinars
Sponsored by Microsoft

Best Practices in Ethnography
Wednesday, August 5, 1pm EDT
Rob Tannen, PhD, Director of Research, Bresslergroup

	Rob Tannen

While many organizations are now conducting field research as an integral part of their product definition process, teams continue to struggle with efficiently planning, gathering & analyzing qualitative research data, and turning it into actionable result. However, now that user research is an integral activity for successful product teams, it has the potential to become invasive - causing interruptions and administrative overhead and generating too much non-actionable data - if not managed appropriately.

Fortunately, there are new tools that can improve the speed and benefits of user research while reducing invasiveness to all involved. The goal here is to increase awareness of the growing field of user-research technologies, rather than endorse particular products. The presentation will cover common questions, and recommend best practices on topics including:

• Creating a field research team and defining roles
• How to document qualitative observations
• Appropriate types of questions for field interviews
• Methods for observing ergonomic issues and problems
• State of the art tools for gathering and analyzing data

Learn more

Purchase past webinar recordings

Upcoming DMI Seminars

The 2009 Seminar on Creating Meaningful Brand Experiences and Producing Customer Happiness
Dave Norton, PhD, Principal, Lead Strategist, Stone Mantel
June 11-12, Minneapolis, USA
"Dave's workshops helped us to more clearly articulate out company culture and therefore arrive at a concise definition of our brand, our services, and the kind of experience our clients can look forward to in working with us."
—Erin Heath, Information Resource Manager, Tsoi/ Kobus & Associates
Complete information

Strategies that Transform Brands
Scott Lerman, Founding Partner, Lucid Brands
July 16-17, Seattle, USA
"I came to renew, learn and gain insights - and I certainly got that and more. Scott provided a great framework with real life examples to illustrate the complexity of changing brands."
—Jill Roussy, Partner, Spark Ideas
Complete information

Creating the Perfect Design Brief
Peter Phillips, Strategy Consultant, and author of Creating the Perfect Design Brief
July 23, Chicago, USA
"Bring your creative and project team to this seminar! Helps create a solid foundation to deliver a precise result."
—Noemi Tello-Botdorf, Marketing Communications, Intelsat
Complete information

Save 25-50% with the DMI seminar loyalty program!

DMI is rewarding seminar attendees with special loyalty discounts! Attend one seminar and receive an additional 25% discount off your next seminar. Attend two seminars and receive an additional 50% discount off your third seminar. Look for more information on the registration page of any DMI seminar.

(Eligibility for the loyalty discount starts with any seminar taken since January 1, 2008. Discount can be applied to any seminar registration placed in 2009. Discounts are in addition to any applicable member discounts.)

DMI Review Download of the Month
The Future of Search: A Different Perspective
By Stephen Anderson, Vice President, Product Strategy & Design, Viewzi
From the Design Management Review, Vol. 20, No. 1, 2009

Google and Yahoo have spent billions on search engines to bring us the information we need. But consider that there's more than one way to present that information—it all depends on what kind of search you're mounting and, perhaps, on how visually oriented you are. Viewzi is a new kind of search company that focuses on how people experience information.

Read the complete article

DMI maintains an online calendar at www.dmi.org with even more events.