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Everyone is familiar with the Double Diamond in Design, but what's up with the Clubs, Hearts and Spades on this platform? The mission and vision of the Design in Focus Platform is to discover and demonstrate the value and impact of Creativity, Innovation and Design (CID) in business and society. While a diamond may seem relevant due to the link to the process, the reasoning behind the card deck symbols may have you wondering. Wonder no more as we're about to share the big idea. First let's look at the keywords of our mission and vision. Value & Impact and Business & Society. How could we measure the success of demonstrating value and impact, and how do we distinguish business and society? Most of society depends on business and most of business depends on society. The value of what we find impactful and the impact of what we value is equally nuanced because there are different economical and societal associations derived from societies dependence on business and business's dependence on society. We could have simplified it and just to just focus on tangible business numbers, but not all designers speak business and not all business speaks to CID professionals. How could we expect CID professionals to support the mission and vision? From starving artists such as Van Gogh, conned inventors such as Nicolas Tesla, and all the losses of clever designers such as Hedy Lamarr. Due to the demand on design and innovation to be effective problem solving agents, often there is a huge call for creativity, and creativity many argue, is the soul or spirit of all of what we as mankind experience and come to call reality. It is the link to this creativity which distinguishes great design and innovation from poor design and innovation. Often business is purely interested in figures and numbers, which does not always speak the same language as CID. So how to combine them all into a singular cohesive voice. We first, we need to find the relevant entry points and from there arrange them into cohesion through information processing. The link between value & impact and business & society from which nothing else can be subtracted is experience, and a persona we could form experience relevant for this platform is professional. Thus we arrived at professional experience at the base. Now we needed direction. To go in any direction we had to chart a map. A compass comprises of four cardinal points, North, East, South, West. Although the mission and vision relies on real world experiences, our compass needed more to be effective relating to the world of the professional and so the directions had to gain personalities of their own, that way they could realistically embody the viewpoint behind the direction. With the world as full of individuals as it is, how many viewpoints exist? A lot, so, we kept the goal of funneling the input into four directions. Now we needed to find recognisable personalities behind each one of the four directions. We came up with the notion that value only impacts humans which makes up society through the business of coexistence. Since we are a platform for CID professionals, the directions needed to be relevant for CID professionals too. It's not only business value and impact we are after, it is also professional humans' value and impact. From this we build the four pillars. Industry talks, the CID club, professional voice (business)+(figures value) represented by clubs The human experience, meet the hearts, personalities voices (society)+(human value) represented by hearts The dream team roundtable, diamonds made under pressure, professional performance (business)+(impact) represented by diamonds The dark side of the force, call a spade a spade, honest CID to CID talk. (society)+(impact) represented by spades By now you can see why we chose these four symbols. The Design in Focus platform has many areas and offers an array of options. To simplify navigation and aid users to better understand or remember the platform, the use of icons is very handy too. This platform is still in the making and we are expanding rapidly. Can you help demonstrate the value and impact of CID in business and society? We'd like to hear from you. Visit the onboarding portal for more details.

Why is Networking Important? In the realm of Creativity, Innovation & Design (CID), talent alone often falls short of guaranteeing success. Networking plays a pivotal role in shaping careers, opening doors, and providing opportunities that might otherwise remain inaccessible. Here are some reasons why creatives need to network: Exposure to New Opportunities: Networking introduces you to potential collaborations, freelance gigs, or even full-time positions that you might not encounter through traditional channels. By connecting with decision-makers and influencers, you increase the likelihood of being recommended or thought of when such opportunities arise. Skill Enhancement: Networking isn’t just about exchanging business cards; it’s also an avenue for professional development. Interacting with people from diverse backgrounds and skill sets provides insights and knowledge that you wouldn’t gain otherwise. Building Your Personal Brand: Networking allows you to showcase your work, share your creative vision, and establish a memorable presence. A strong personal brand can attract opportunities and set you apart in a competitive field. Emotional and Creative Support: A robust network serves as a support system, providing emotional encouragement and constructive criticism. Fellow creatives can offer diverse perspectives, helping you refine your projects. Access to Resources: Networking connects you to resources such as workshops, mentorship programs, and industry events. These resources enhance your skills and keep you informed about industry trends. Collaboration and Partnership: Creative collaboration can lead to results that are impossible to achieve solo. Networking helps you find potential collaborators and partners who complement your skills. Mentorship and Guidance: Experienced professionals in your network can offer valuable advice, guidance, and mentorship. Learning from their experiences can accelerate your growth. Financial Benefits: Networking can lead to paid opportunities, commissions, and clients. Building relationships with potential clients or patrons can directly impact your income. How to start building your Network. Starting your networking journey as a CID professional can be both exciting and rewarding. Here are some practical steps to help you get started: Define Your Goals: Clarify your career objectives. What do you want to achieve through networking? Whether it’s finding job opportunities, collaborating on projects, or simply expanding your creative circle, having clear goals will guide your efforts. Leverage Social Media: Create a professional online presence. Use platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram, or Twitter to showcase your work, connect with other creatives, and engage in relevant conversations. Follow industry leaders and participate in discussions related to your field. Attend Industry Events: Look for local events, workshops, and conferences related to your creative discipline. These gatherings provide excellent networking opportunities. Be open to meeting new people. Strike up conversations, exchange contact details, and follow up afterward. Start Small: Chat with fellow creatives at co-working spaces, studios, or online communities. Share your experiences and learn from theirs. Join after-work sports teams or hobby groups. Networking doesn’t always have to be formal; it can happen while doing something you enjoy. Be Authentic: Be genuine and approachable. People appreciate authenticity. Ask questions about others’ work and interests. Active listening helps build meaningful connections. Business Cards (Digital or Physical): Carry business cards with your contact information. These come in handy during in-person events. If you prefer digital networking, ensure your online profiles are up-to-date and easily accessible. Follow Up: After meeting someone, send a brief follow-up email or message. Express gratitude for the conversation and express interest in staying connected. Remember to nurture relationships over time. Seek and Offer Support: Networking isn’t just about taking; it’s also about giving. Offer help, share resources, and support fellow creatives. Be part of a community that uplifts and encourages one another. Measure Your Efforts: Track your networking activities. Are you attending events? Connecting online? Collaborating? Assess what works best for you. Evaluate the impact of your networking efforts on your career growth. One step closer with Design in Focus. Networks & Community Area Design in Focus is a multimedia channel and professional platform serving CID professionals. On this platform we are listing Creative, Innovation and Design networks and Communities. Visit the Networks & Community list to discover Networks and Communities that are relevant for you. Many of these are external networks and communities. Some are websites and apps, while others take form on social media. Take Charge - Groups One great way to get started is to build your own Network. You can start for free using social media such as LinkedIn and Facebook. Another great way to start for free is by joining this platform and starting your own group from here. We have a few pre existing groups that you can join too, or post about your new group to ask members to join. Join this short Training to get started. The groups feature of this platform gives you a Discussion board where you can start or join conversations or share just about any kind of digital content, a Media tab for sharing content, a Members tab where you can see all members of the group and start discussions with them, as well as the option to publish events. The Design in Focus social media channels also become available to you. You can share your events on our LinkedIn pages as well as our Meetup page. This will ensure that you have an audience for your events. The first few months will be quiet, but with some effort you could create a network of 10 000 or more in one year. Design in Focus Content Creator Success story: In May 2022 Candice Storm started building Design in Focus. At the time she had 89 connections. In October 2022 the Networks & Community portal was launched with the flagship network Randstad UX. From the first event in October 22 to August 2023, Candice's network grew by over 10 000, and she published content and created an event lead by Don Norman, known as the father of UX which was attended by several hundred designers around the globe. Another great way to get started is to join this platform as a content creator. This entails unpaid community work, but together with your imagination can ensure that you expand your network. We publish content in 5 media formats, on 4 pillars, and in 3 topics. The 3 topics are Creativity, Innovation & Design. These three topics can be entered into broadly or you may choose to focus on a specific subject relating to the topics. For example. Creative -> Idea Generation, Innovation -> Creative Problem Solving, Design -> Interior Design. It could be interesting to think about creating content based in your local area or perhaps you would might consider focussing on a movement. For example exploring The Best Innovation in your city or dive into Design Trends. The 4 Pillars contribute four different perspectives to create content from. Industry Talks content is highly professional and industry focussed and requires content in formal tone of voice. The Human Experience is deeply human focused and the content requires empathy and a warm tone of voice. The Dream Team Roundtable is solidarity outcomes focused, and requires the presence of team spirit and collaboration. The Dark Side of the Force is austerely fact based and requires objective and provoking content. You may consider creating content for one of the pillars such as Industry Talks focussing on for example DesignOps, or you could consider exploring a topic like DesignOps from all four perspectives. The best way to build your network is to publish content frequently. This takes commitment but will pay off. On the platform we are also building Collectives. The difference between building Networks and Communities and building Collectives is that networks and communities are tightly linked, while as collectives are linked through a specific initiative, but members are individual personalities that are independently focussed on a topic collectively. #ImpactCollective is a good example. Content published in this area tends to focus on the impact of creativity, innovation and or design. You could consider building a listing page like this where you can find members and publish content with them. Currently we are searching for collaborations and building the following collectives, Creative, Innovation, Design or collective CID; #MammasAndPappasCorner, a portal for professionals who are also parents and create kid friendly events and conferences. #EmpowerHour, a portal listing influential speakers and professionals talking about and enabling creatives, innovators and designers. #TheFlashyAndTheFabulous, a portal dedicated to the pop culture of the now and wow of the industry. #NewToTheCrew, a portal dedicated to emerging professionals where they can find resources and tools to up their professional game. These are just a few examples, but you might ideate and propose a collective of your own. We require at least three productions to publish a collective. Now that you have a topic and a lens, you can decide on what kind of content to create. You may consider creating Audio and Video content such as podcasts or webshows, in which case you may think about weather you want to host or present. For example, if you start your own Audio/Video Podcast, do you want to invite guests to speak with you, or would you perhaps take on more of a reporting role and discuss your topic and lens from? Maybe writing is your way to go, you could consider publishing articles with your perspective, or you could journal about meeting or talking with professionals or industry developments. If visuals is your thing, you could create infographics and memes. Another great way to network is by publishing events. Aside from the events in the groups section, you could also organise and publish events on the main portal. Great networking events include webinars, talk events, and networking events. All events are listed in the events portal under the Professional tab in the menu. The difference between posting events to groups and on the platform is that you do not need to create a group to publish events and in the groups you do not need to create events. Checkout some predefined events here. All events marked with TBD are still being organised. Do you see one or more that you think you could lead? Then Join the event and find the link on the event page to contact us. All these events have one thing in common: The Value & Impact of Creativity, Innovation, and Design in Business and Society. That is also the Mission and Vision of this platform. Using this mission and vision, you can ideate on your own events (as well as any other form of content). You may want to organise talk events exploring the Value of Urban Design in Society, or webinars on The Impact of Industrial Innovation in Business for example. The key is to consider or focus on 1.Value and or 2.Impact, Of an industry topic relative to your field in A. Creativity, B. Innovation and or C. Design, By exploring its effects on either I. Business or II. Society. Why is this THE formula? Considering 1.Value allows you to demonstrate factually why your topic is important, while as if you explore the 2. Impact, you can share success stories. A. Creative, B. Innovation, C. Design can encompass a wide array of topics, but all are unified under one umbrella that is for those who make things and is relative in all industries where something becomes. By exploring the effect in either I. business or II. society, you can make it I. Objective or II. Subjective. Formula Short Form 1 or 2 or 1+2 A, B, or C, or any combination of A. B. C, I or II or I+&II. Now let's look at the idea shared above again : You may want to organise talk events exploring the 1. Value of C. Urban Design in II Society, or webinars on The 2. Impact of B. Industrial Innovation in I Business for example. Aside from formulating types of events and content, this formula also aids you in the type of networking you would like to do. If you would like to network to climb the corporate ladder, focus on the value of your topic in business and showcase your professionality and reliability as well as your knowledge and dedication. On the other hand if you would like your networking to be more social and you want to build lasting connections you may want to focus on the impact of your topic in society. You could of course mix the two up for some interesting new line of thought, but both set different tones you can use to start from. When building a network, you really want to ensure that you communicate the right tone so that your network is engaging. What appeals to the Data Driven Designer may not be as inviting to Human centered Designer. While both have value & impact, value is more expressed in facts and figures while impact often is best expressed in stories and cases. Also when starting to build a network, it's good to have a foundation on which to build on. Reaching out to complete strangers online can be intimidating. When you approach a professional you would like to network with, having clearly defined messaging helps. As a content or event creator on a dedicated platform, with a clear topic and tone, you can find common ground with like minded professionals with a demonstrated Ice Breaker. You will be surprised how humble professionals on all levels, including leaders, can be, and often when you have a mission and a vision when you network with them, they are happy to talk to you or join your event as a speaker. Summary The Three ways to start building your network publically on this platform. Networks & Community Area Find Networks and Communities on this platform. Visit Networks & Communities to discover networks relevant for you. Take Charge - Groups Join or Start a Group on this platform. Become a member and get active on this platform and associated media channels to start or grow your network. Design in Focus Content Creator Create public content to build a network with followers. Choose your topics, pillars, and media types. Start publishing content and engaging with the industry to build your reputation and network. Last But Not Least If you can dedicate 24+ hours a month and would like to seriously build a Creative, Innovation and or Design Network, then joining us a a volunteer can be a promising option. We have open positions for all levels from Intern to Board Member at Design in Focus. Here are two examples of how a volunteer position can help you grow you network. Industry Talks Audio & Video personalities This role is open to intelligent and witty interviewers who can bring out the best in our participants. By becoming a Audio / Video Personality, you gain visibility in the industry. During your publications, you could invite professionals to network with or follow you. Publishing content also gives viewers a reason to start a conversation with you. Board Member Creative This role is open to a candidate who will be the voice for Creatives, and champion for the creative industry and professionals. By working as a Board Member for the Creative Industry, you demonstrate your commitment. You also assume a leading role which potentially could inspire other creatives. Network and Speak to industry leaders and help define what is relevant for creatives on this platform. There are many open roles and if you do not find a role you like, you may propose one for us to consider. Either way, when you join the platform and dedicate your free time, you really get to shine. View all jobs Was this information useful to you? Do you have something to add to the conversation? Any other questions or comments? Please add your responses below.

Design in Focus #CID is a multimedia channel and professional platform demonstrating the value and impact of CID in business and society, through creating multimedia such as podcasts, shows, infographics and articles. CID refers to Creative | Innovation | Design. 1. Multimedia Platform 1.1. Mission & Vision 1.2. Pillars 1.2.1. Industry Talks 1.2.2. The Human Experience 1.2.3. The Dream Team Roundtable 1.2.4. The Dark Side of the Force 1.3. Gallery 1.3.1. Audio 1.3.2. Video 1.3.3. Visio 1.3.4. Editorial 1.3.5. Channels 1.4. Experience Page 1.5. Awards 1.6. Events 1.6.1. #CID Industry Events 1.6.2. Design in Focus & Stakeholders Events 1.7. Resources (TBA) 1.8. Credits (TBA) 2. Professional Platform 2.1. Members Area 2.2. Forum 2.3. Groups 2.3.1. CID 2.3.2. CID Training & Mentorship 2.3.3. CID Networks & Communities 2.3.4. CID DiF Founders and Makers 2.3.1. Founders 2.3.2. Makers 2.3.3. Projects plans 2.3.5. CID Leadership 2.3.6. CID Events * To be added. 3. Foundation 4. Collaboration 5. Sponsors 1. Multimedia Platform Design in Focus Concept in 5 Minutes. (New version coming soon) 1.1 Mission & Vision The mission of Design in Focus is to demonstrate the value and impact of CID in business and society through engaging with those in the field and finding supporting evidence such as statistics and cases and publishing it in audio/video/visio format so that CID professionals may share the digital assets with their stakeholders when they wish to prove their work, or for young CID people to be inspired and learn. The vision of Design in Focus is to have a channel for and by CID people to not only engage within their networks, but also to provide valuable info that can help bring their relative stakeholders along on topics related to CID. Into the future in a time and space where Design in Focus is all it can be. Around the globe CID people are engaging with other CID people. Local chapters exist in major cities around the globe, and in each chapter there are dedicated people working together to publish great content such as interviews and talks, events, linking networks & communities, locally and globally, uniting different people with different strengths to build new collaborative networks, all while demonstrating the value and impact of CID in industry and society. Big dreams require big investments. And all that is big, is made of a million or billions of smaller parts. To solidify this starting point as a small but significant part, it is important to define it. And here it is, the definitive dream of what Design in Focus can be and what we aspire to be. 1.2. Pillars 1.2.1. Industry Talks #IndustryTalks Professional / Expert discussions with creators, innovators, and designers, to investigate the value and impact of CID contribution to business, gain insights and awareness of developments and hot topics and talks about findings and insights within CID industries and programmes. This pillar is industry focussed. 1.2.2. The human experience #theHumanExperience The Human Experience talks to the people who make up CID about disciplines in these fields, what it means to them, how they find value, stay inspired, what they have learned and what they aspire to do. This pillar is people focussed. 1.2.3. The Dream Team Roundtable #thedreamteamroundtable The Dream Team Roundtable is made up of group sessions in which CID pro’s are presented with a challenge and have to set about to solve it by using creative problem solving or design thinking techniques. Can a small group of people solve challenging problems in max 90 minutes? You can always watch them try. This pillar was founded on the popular trend of companies assigning applicants design challenges to prove themselves. Many companies do not compensate designers for their time and efforts and many more use the solutions derived from these challenges without hiring anyone at all. To combat this, The Dream Team Roundtable aims to enable designers and others who have to “prove” themselves to only do it once, and when proof of their capacities are required they can share the link to the session, which should demonstrate fairly clearly their capabilities and methods. This pillar is solution focussed. 1.2.4. The Dark Side of the Force #TheDarkSideOfTheForce Not for the faint of heart - to solve a problem, one must first acknowledge a problem. In the dark side of the force, participants discuss topics less frequently addressed such as dark UX, deceptive design, why creatives are the most harassed and abused pro’s in all industry and more. This pillar is impact focussed. 1.3 Gallery Design in Focus has three main galleries on the platform as well as on other platforms listed below. All content produced by Design in Focus is added to these galleries as well as experience pages if applicable. 1.3.1. Audio Gallery Design in Focus hosts talks and interviews in audio format usually broadcasted as podcasts. Audio Gallery 1.3.2. Video Gallery Design in Focus hosts talks and interviews in video format usually broadcasted as shows and webinars. Video Gallery 1.3.3. Visio Gallery Design in Focus aims to create Visio content including infographics and inspirational quotes which CID representative may share cross platforms to support each other and industry. Visual Gallery 1.3.4. Editorial Gallery Here we will publish editorial content as well as have guest writers and publishers. 1.3.5. Other Media Channels 1.3.4.1 LinkedIn: 1.3.4.1 A Design in Focus HQ publishes only Design in Focus content. https://www.linkedin.com/company/86752242/ 1.3.4.1 B Design in Focus CID – Creative | Innovation | Design is where collective CID content that is valuable or interesting to viewers is posted. Share your coolest CID projects here. https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/85851624/ 1.3.4.1 C Design in Focus Group. This group was created for participants and stakeholders to have a chat or conversation. https://www.linkedin.com/groups/12660097/ 1.3.4.1 D #IndustryTalks. Only Industry Talks content is posted on this page. https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/87103163 1.3.4.1 E #TheHumanExperience. Only the Human Experience content is posted on this page. https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/87114123 1.3.4.1 F #TheDreamTeamRoundtable. Only The Dream Team Roundtable content is posted on this page. https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/87110357 1.3.4.1 G #TheDarkSideoftheForce. Only The Dark Side of the Force content is posted on this page. https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/87116277 1.3.4.2 Soundcloud https://soundcloud.com/design-in-focus 1.3.4.3 Vimeo https://vimeo.com/user181509085 1.3.4.4 YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsXum885VuP0ysfV5bIFhxg 1.3.4.5 Twitter https://twitter.com/DesigninFocus1 1.3.4.6 TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@designinfocus 1.3.4.7 Facebook https://www.facebook.com/groups/1074125196845201 1.3.4.8 Flickr https://www.flickr.com/photos/196371233@N03/ 1.4. Experience Page Participants, members, collaborators and sponsors may have bespoke Experience Pages on which stories are told, journeys are created, and or facts and figures are demonstrated and shared as well as other relevant information. Experience pages can look like this or this or even this. If you can dream it, we will do what we can to realise it. All the content found on experience pages will also be added to the gallery and other channels. 1.5. Awards Design in Focus will host CID Quality Awards and have events 3 times a year to celebrate nominees and award nominees with their certificates. Awards | Design in Focus 1.6.Events Design in Focus offers four ways in which events are published, three on the public platform, and one (see 1.3.6.) on the professional platform. Public platform 1.6.1. CID Events Design in Focus will publish CID events from around the globe on this page in order to give professionals interesting information about local and global events within their industry and amongst peers. Events | Design in Focus 1.6.2. DiF Events DiF events refer to Design in Focus events such as live webinars and shows, group calls and CID Quality Awards. These events may be set up by Design in Focus HQ or by DiF Founders and Makers (see 2.3.4.) DiF Events | Design in Focus 2. Professional Platform Members Area The Design in Focus members area was created for 4 reasons; 1. Certain participants who have public Experience Pages will also have private sessions in the members area in which they elaborate on their topics and offer discussions or thoughts, 2. To enable peers to find and connect with each other for group sessions (participants participate in one and done sessions as well as group sessions), 3. To showcase links and content that are relative to the CID professions, 4. To bypass common internet crawler mechanisms that delivers paid for content first. There is no influence from any financial institutions or organisations and all content and links are generated by CID people for CID people and CID people are able to vote for the best and most relevant channels. Donations are welcome to keep this platform running. (See also 1.2.4.) Design in Focus does not support any affiliation or advertising for the members area to ensure that it remains honourable and relevant and to avoid losing value and worth as an unbiased free platform for CID. No data is used other for tracking site performance and measuring impact. 2.1. Forum The Design in Focus Forum offers a platform for general discussion. 2.2. Groups The Groups portal is probably the most popular and useful. The groups were created to funnel CID pros and content into digestible channels. Each funnel has three groups. Below are the Design in Focus suggested groups, new groups can be created by specific collectives such as UX, Technology, Art, etc. 2.2.1. CID – A space for professional groups to meet, discuss, learn, and connect. Creative Group Innovation Group Design Group 2.2.2. CID Training & Mentorship – A space for the publication, discussion, and information for and over Training & Mentorship. Creative Training & Mentorship Group Innovation Training & Mentorship Group Design Training & Mentorship Group 2.2.3. CID Networks & Communities - A space for the publication, discussion and information for and over Networks and communities. Creative Networks & Communities Group Innovation Networks & Communities Group Design Networks & Communities Group 2.2.4. CID DiF Founders and Makers - A space for the publication, discussion, and information for and over Founders & Makers. Founders refer to individuals who launch local chapters of Design in Focus. Makers refer to individuals who make contributions to Design in Focus such as producing podcasts, writing content, creating graphics or events etc. Creative DiF Founders and Makers Group Innovation DiF Founders and Makers Group Design DiF Founders and Makers Group 2.2.5. CID Leadership - A space for the publication, discussion, and information for and over Leadership. Creative Leadership Group Innovation Leadership Group Design Leadership Group 2.2.6. CID Events - A space for the publication, discussion, and information for and over events. Anyone who posts events here may request to have those events also added to the public facing platform. (see 1.6.) Design in Focus aims to collect events and meetups across borders and disciplines to showcase to enable CID people to get more involved in tangible ways. Creative Events Group Innovation Events Group Design Events Group 2.2.7. CID Scams & Misconduct - A space for the publication, discussion, and information over Industry Scams and Misconduct. This is the place to discuss our industry shortcomings and challenges experienced and seasoned pros to advise and lead newcomers and youth as well as anyone who can fall victim to scams and misconduct. (Even the brightest, smartest and alert of professionals can, do and have fallen for “wolfs in sheep’s clothing”) 3. Foundation Design in Focus is the brainchild of Candice Storm and was founded in May 2022 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. After the first idea was sparked, she conducted a brief market study and contacted several professionals. Having received positive feedback and responses to support potential she developed the concept further until it was completed in June 2022, after which she began to create and produce the MVP, which was originally set to go live in July, but due to summer holidays there was a massive request to postpone until after the summer, which resulted in the go live date moving out to September. Learn more 4. Collaboration Design in Focus collaborates with industry groups, networks, services and events etc. Collaborators appear on the homepage, and some have experience pages, while others link directly to the respective sites. Collaboration was created to build a stronger community and for the visibility of collaborators as valuable industry contributors. Collaborators also have a group created and assigned to them in which they can discuss and inform about themselves. Read more Would you like to collaborate? Learn more 5. Sponsors Other than donations, Design in Focus also relies on sponsorship in order to keep it alive but has several conditions that have to be met before they accept sponsorship. When Sponsored Design in Focus will always indicate clearly on the site who the sponsors are so that those who use the platform have information not only about the sponsor but that the content is sponsored. In a bold move Design in Focus requires that sponsors agree to the fact that sponsorship does not allow for the core mission and vision of Design in Focus to change or be modified and that sponsors must provide tangible value to and for CID professionals and industry. Read More Are you interested in sponsoring? Learn More

The platform Channels Categories Pillars Formats Areas Filters Goals Levels Roles Summary Test Cases Conclusion 1. The platform. By building a dedicated platform we are able to amplify our digital voices and build reputation. One good example is to think of making one podcast and publishing that to YouTube. In a sea of video content spanning any and all topics, one podcast can very easily get lost. On the other hand making one podcast published on this dedicated platform helps relevant stakeholders find your podcast more readily, gives you more credibility and because it is also published on other channels that are linked, improves your general SEO and discoverability. Because we have a unified mission to discover and demonstrate the Value & Impact of CID in Business & Society, we are enabled to showcase our work and skills in demonstrable ways to promote our professional contributions to the industry. 2. Channels To realise the mission & vision the platform can be leveraged in two ways or two channels. The first is the multimedia content channel, and the second is the professional platform. Both intertwine in many ways but they serve different goals. The media channel is relevant for any stakeholder interested in CID. The professional platform is relevant for CID professionals specifically who would like to leverage the platform to their advantage. Example 1. Trine Falbe We created an audio podcast and an experience portal together about ethical design, The Ethical Design Network, and with information about Trine Falbe. Anyone who would like to learn about any one of these three topics can view her content and it's relevant to a range of stakeholders. This was a once and done case featuring Founder Candice Storm and Trine Falbe. Example 2. Ricardo Faria Riarco participated in a web series about KPI's in Design. As with Trine, any stakeholder may find the information relevant online. But Ricardo also used the platform as a professional to publish editorial content and a KPI's in Design introduction course. Ricardo is a regular user and is active also in the community space. Example 3. RANDSTAD UX One of the 6 Areas on Design in Focus is Networks & Communities (N&C). *Read more about the areas below. To showcase how the platform may be used by professionals to start their own N&C's, we've created a flagship network called RANDSTAD UX (RÚX). RÚX organises monthly events for UX designers in the Randstad region. Of course if you already have a network or community and do not want to use this platform to manage it, you can also just add your details to the directory so that relevant professionals can find you. Learn more 3. Categories There are three master categories on the platform. Creative, Innovation, and Design. Everything we do centers around these topics and they are pivotal to all our stakeholders. Learn more If you are a professional interested in any one or any combination of topics under these categories, you are welcome to add to the collective, either as a participant in multimedia content such as podcasts, or using the platform to showcase or produce your own contributions. Aside from using the platform for your professional benefit online, you can also become part of the Design in Focus organisation by contributing your professional skills to the organisation in person. We are building a foundation with Design in Focus so as to adhere to our mission and vision with honor serving the professionals who make up our industry. Success is a massive driving force behind Design in Focus, and we wish all our stakeholders financial gains, but to keep it relevant and avoid the pitfalls of other platforms, it's important to secure a not-for-profit structure. Two things to note here: 1. Opportunities If you join the organisation as Volunteer or Board Member, you are not yet financially rewarded. Once we have a treasurer, we can finalise certain documentation and our sponsors may start sponsoring us, then we will start paying where possible. But, joining as an unpaid professional can still reward you in other ways such as personal growth, gaining skills, and adding to your portfolio. Design in Focus in its current state is an MVP (minimum viable product) and living prototype, therefore there is a lot of opportunities to lend your skill and showcase your capabilities. For example, redesign our hastily created icons, and add that to your portfolio, or create a cool campaign and add it to your resume, whatever skills you have can add a lot of value to the organisation and its gold on your resume & portfolio. 2. Org & Platform The platform initiatives and the platform initiatives are seperate. While the organisation is a foundation, those who use it may still be profit oriented. For example if you are a Professional Design Mentor, you may use the platform to create visibility for your work by creating a podcast or publishing a free intro course on the platform, these are two ways to bring awareness to your professional services, which is of course your bread and butter and therefore profit oriented. But if you are not profit oriented, you may join the organisation as a board member working on crafting that arena in meaningful ways for your industry and its professionals based on what you know about the industry and its needs. There are many existing opportunities and many ways you can create new ones. 4. Pillars There are four pillars that support the multimedia channel. You can participate in our media or create your own under these pillars according to your goals. Industry talks - Showcase your knowledge and skills as an industry contributor The human Experience - Have human conversations showcasing your personality and character. The Dream Team Roundtable - Demonstrate how you fit in and how you help solve business problems. The Dark Side of the Force - Raise awareness and solve challenges in the CID landscape. Learn more 5. Formats We publish content in all of these formats. You may choose any one, combination of, or all media formats to create content in. Make some audio podcasts, write editorial content, film a web show, create some infographics or memes, or create live content in an online talk event. 6. Areas Sketch from the initial brainstorm, the labels have changed a little bit, but most of the focus remains the same. In due time the map will be updated to the current landscape of the Design in Focus platform. Originally the Founders and Makers and Networks & Communities were one, but we decided to split it to make more sense. Also we had one focus area on events, but this needs more development so we support events, but the dedicated events portal is less prominent. What remains are these 6 key areas that you can use to serve your goals. Galleries When you use the platform to publish multimedia content, it all filters through the galleries. As a participant there are 3 starting routes that have been set up based on effort. The route with the least effort is called the leasure route. When we create content, it is only published to the galleries and media channels such as YouTube and Soundcloud. Experience Portals (EP) An Experience portal is a fantastic way to create visibility and give context to your work. On EP's viewers may find more detailed information and additional links and content about the professional or organisation. There are two types of EP's * Standard EP - For content that fits within the predefined framework. Example * Bespoke EP - For pages that have unique requirements. Example We create EPs with Participants, Collaborators, Organisations, Universities & Companies. Typically EPs are part of the second and third routes on the platform, namely, the explorer and adventurer routes. To learn more please visit our Onboarding Portal. We offer various expressions of the EP for our different collectives too. We already have a few collectives build and the Collectives will increase over time as those areas are developed. Currently you can find participant EPs in the main navigation and under the Collectives menu you can see the different types of EPs created for different purposes such as volunteer EPs, and collab EPs. If you use the DiF platform to start your own network or community, you may choose to create EP's for your organisation. For example if you create a network for audio engineers, and you have professionals in that network that give talks or presentations, you can create multimedia together and publish it on personal pages. See the RÚX example for more. Members Area The members area has been built to help achieve some goals for CID professionals and all members are manually approved. As with the public platform, the only data we use is location and number of visitors per day. This is to see how many people come to the site and which pages are popular in which regions so that we can build and improve the website. We do not use any personal information, we do not sell personal information and we do not have affiliations that profit off of your personal information. The members area was created to build a stronger professional platform where members can engage authentically and meaningfully with their industry peers. We offer membership two ways. * Standard Membership gives you access to our forum and groups. Start conversations on the Forum, or, join / create groups dedicated to your focus points. *VIP Membership is almost the same as Standard Membership and should probably be referred to as VIC (very important contributor) Membership as all our members are VIPs. With this membership we assign privileges to the members such as to publish editorial content, events and educational programmes. VIP's / VIC's are typically collaborators who share a goal, but can be participants, volunteers, board members, networks \ communities or founders / makers. Networks & Communities (N&C) Being a member of a network or community is a great way to grow as a professional. Starting your own is a great way to demonstrate your passion. We serve CID professional N&C's in a couple of ways. a. We list them in our directory for other CID stakeholders to find. We will continue building the list out as resources allow, but you can easily add to the list while we build it and after. View Directory b. We create bespoke experience portals for them. External example. Internal Example. c. We provide the ability to create a group on this platform and publish events and content. We support external CID N&C's, those wanting to start their own unique N&C's or wanting to start N&C's under the Design in Focus Umbrella (internal). Training & Mentoring (T&M) If you are a trainer or mentor or offer any educational content, you can publish free introductory or complete courses on this platform. Founders & Makers (F&M) Choosing topics, themes and structures for creating content online can be a challenge. Have you ever thought of making a podcast but didn't know how to structure it? Have you ever wanted to manage your own channel related to a CID topic you are passionate about? There are many advantages to becoming an F&M, but the most obvious is power in numbers. By making stuff happen under one umbrella, we are able to improve discoverability, build credibility and share resources. We also already have a northstar and a couple of processes predefined. Learn more 7. Filters Our three Categories can be filtered into 7 key channels. The three CID categories seem quite basic, but when you filter into it, you discover that there are actually many ways to define content. Creative Innovation Design Creative Innovation or Innovative Creativity Innovative Design or Design innovation Design Creativity or Creative Design Creative + Innovation + Design 8. Goals We've identified eight main goals that this platform can help achieve and you can use your own creativity to imagine more. With all our initiatives we can reach one or more goals Awareness Expression Inspirational Leadership Connectivity Solving Building Demonstrating For example, by participating in a podcast, you can create awareness of a problem you are solving. By starting a network you can demonstrate leadership through building a connected professional collective. Learn more 9. Levels We've created nine levels based on general considerations. There are three main tiers that each have three sub tiers, resulting in 9 total levels of tiers. You're welcome to take things to whole new levels based on your personal situation. Category 1 : Routes Leisure Route - Based on the least effort possible needed to publish content or perform an activity. Explorer Route - A little bit more effort, but not extensive enough to keep you very busy. Adventurer Route - Go on a journey and exert all the effort you like, get active and dedicate working hours to build up in ways that delivers the most potential and reward. Category 2 : Medium Promotion - Efforts geared towards activities that may be interpreted as promotional in nature. E.g. Using the platform to create multimedia about your specialization. Organisation - Efforts geared towards organizational activities with bigger impact. E.g Using the platform to organise activities surrounding your specialisation. Direction - Efforts geared towards directing activities aiming to create movement. E.g leading the way to sustainable outcomes by becoming a Board Member and working on that as director. Category 3 : Time Although you are welcome at all times to partake and collaborate as you please, at any given time we typically exert effort on three levels. One & done - Make one podcast, volunteer on one projects, or support one initiative. Occasionally - Invest your effort in, on or during specific occasions. Regular - Create a web series, work as a volunteer or board member for a committed period of time, or regularly use the platform. Examples : 1+4+7 Creating a single audio podcast that is published in the Galleries and Social Channels to be informative on a topic or area that you are knowledgeable about. 1+5+8 Occasionally assist the organisation with simple projects. 2+4+9 Create an experience portal filled with content surrounding your topic / specialisation such as a regular web show. 3+6+9 Become a (board) member and regularly spend effort to build up specific areas related to your topics or specialization. It can all be very easy with a level 1 initiative, or you can incrementally increase the effort based on your own circumstance. 10. Roles The final pieces of the puzzle is made up out of the roles that you may play as a Design in Focus stakeholder. Stakeholder may find one or more roles interesting, and all the roles serve to solve some specific problems and reach specific goals. Viewer. As a viewer the platform may be interesting to you to find content. Participant. Participants do not really engage beyond the multimedia channel and usually take similar predefined routes. *Outlined above. Networks & Communities. Showcase, grow or start your N&Cs. Collaborator. You do not want to be bound by our organisation, but you are working on mutually interesting things, being a collaborator means that we can work together separately. Sponsor. Becoming a sponsor enables you to demonstrate and support CID professionals and industry. Member. Join the platform and become a member. *Outlined above. Leader. Lead you CID related industry, topics, or professionals. Founders & Makers. Work as a managing director by founding your own regional, topic specific or language based chapter of Design in Focus, or make content specific to the pillars under your own art direction and viewpoint. Mentoring & Training. Use this platform to upskill, update, teach and inform CID professionals. Volunteer. Become a volunteer and make a difference, add to your resume or portfolio, or fill in some empty time. Learn More 11. Summary This platform be leveraged in a myriad of ways ranging from simple to complex, from one and dones, to dedicated performance, and from many perspectives and angles. The best way currently to get started is by visiting the onboarding portal and exploring the avenues that seem most relevant to you. In the coming weeks we will be publishing assisted onboarding which will help you decide by answering a few questions, to make it more easily understandable. Visit Onboarding Portal 12. Test Cases 1. Leisurer X would like to talk about a specific topic in a web show but does not have a lot of time to spare and would like to take the easiest route to publish the web show. Step 1. Visit Onboarding Step 2. Fill in Leisure Onboarding form. Wait for us to contact you ASAP Step 3. Introduction - We arrange an introduction to meet and align on topics, pillars, and categories. We then schedule a recording date. Step 4. Record. After the recording you may decide to reshoot if it did not go well. If you are happy with the recording, you let us know and we start the editing. When we are done we send the final version and release form to you. Step 5. Review the final cut and if you are happy please sign the release form. This form is an agreement that must be signed, please read the formalities on the the onboarding page. Do not sign or return it to us unless you are happy with the final cut. Step 6. We publish the final cut to the galleries and social channels. Done. 2. Explorer X would like to create a video & audio podcast about creative innovation so that she can find new opportunities, and can only afford to spend and hour or two writing her summary for the page, her introduction if she would like one, and adding her links and keywords she would like to be found on. For this route Explorer X must follow the 6 steps outlined in the first example, and after Step 3, we have two additional steps. Next step. Once we've made a plan for the podcast, we can build the experience portal. Generally the page can be created purely by what you have filled in during the onboarding steps. But we can align to make it more relevant and interesting with additional content, a story, a design style etc. Last step. When the portal has been activated, we send you the link for approval. If you are happy with the page we can share it. The more content we collectively create, the more slots will be activated. Each time we create something and upload it to the database, the content is automatically added to the relevant slots and they appear on your portal. Done. 3. Adventurer X would like to build out his professional services and work on his personal development by doing something to give back. He has a fair amount of free time that he wishes to invest in strengthening his professional and digital presence. Here is an invissioned example featuring the index items 1-10. Using our vision To Discover & Demonstrate the Value & Impact of CID in Business & Society, he decides that he will create valuable design content aimed to make a positive impact on a professional. He decides that he will use both the Media Channel and the Professional platform. He selects Design as his main category For the Media side he will create content in all four pillars He chooses to create media in all 5 formats. He is active in all 6 areas on Design in Focus. Adventure routes can include any three or more areas on the platform. a. Galleries *standard b. Experience Portal - Visit his experience Portal *standard c. Members Area - See his Member Profile d. Networks & Communities - He has his own community which he nurtures through the groups portal on Design in Focus, see his group. e. Training & Mentoring - He publishes mentoring content on the platform. f. Founder & Makers - He makes video content for his professional talk show on the Design in Focus platform. He only focuses on Design and Design professionals & industry. He has 6 goals which he can accomplish using this platform. Creating awareness, being Inspirational, growing Leadership, Solving professional insecurities, Building resilient professionals, Demonstrating his passion and dedication to the industry and its people through his efforts as board member Design Mentoring & Training. He operates as a level 9 stakeholder which is the highest level of contribution possible. He decides to take on various roles including participant, member, leader, and writer to maximise his toolbox. Once he has an idea, he follows the same steps as outlined in Leisurer X and Explorer X above. This is an ongoing process and we have as many conversations as needed. Adventurer X needs to learn how to use the CMS to publish events, articles and training programs. He also needs time to act as board member and perform board member activities. Adventurer routes can take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months depending on what level of adventure is within the candidate. On the Onboarding Portal you can read more details and start envisioning your own adventure. Visit Onboarding Portal 11. Conclusion There are many ways that you can use this platform to your professional advantage. You can take it at your own pace, on levels that you are comfortable with and can fit into your schedule, based on what your goals and aspirations are.

Design in Focus (DiF) was started in May '22 when I was asked to create an Identity experience for a person who wanted to create visibility for himself as a professional.

New multimodal, large language, generative AI models, such as those developed by #OpenAI and #Google, are powerful game changers. Their ability to generate novel output by recombing vast sources of data from the web will have profound, as yet unimagined impacts on our economy and society. One of the most profound will be the ways it reshapes the labor market: the jobs that are available (or not) and the skills they require. Because of their ability to produce a variety of graphic, text, audio, and visual outputs, the jobs most likely to be impacted are those in design and other creative professions. Whether these jobs are eliminated or just reshaped will depend on local situations: the demands of a particular set of tasks, for a particular project or job, as they are overlaid on the capabilities of these models. But designers and creatives will be affected. And no doubt, employers will look for opportunities to eliminate jobs when possible, given the way our economy is structured. Whether or not you, as a designer, become redundant depends on how you define, think of, and represent “design”. To avoid being laid off, you must have a deep understanding of both your profession and the capabilities of these AI systems so that you know how to work with them, so that you can emphasize the differences between your capabilities and theirs, and so that you can sharpen your unique capabilities, relative to these systems. Furthermore, you must be able to articulate your unique capabilities to employers and clients. In this article, I will give you a high-level description of the systems most relevant to design: generative multimodal large language AI models. I will help you think about their capabilities and shortfalls. And I will help you think about and maybe rethink the uniquely human, in-the-world capabilities that designers bring to a task and how you can fine-tune these capabilities and emphasize them with your employer and clients. I will help you think about design and our design profession as the uniquely human way to create the world that we want. As Nobel Laureate Herbert Simon puts it, the capability to take us from the current situation to a preferred one, the capability to make the world a better place. What are the Current Capabilities of Multimodal Large Language AI Models? I say “current” here because these models are self-learning and always improving their ability to do their current task set, as they interact with users. In addition, it is very likely that OpenAI, Google, and others, will release subsequent models with additional capabilities, as they compete for market share. These systems are started with certain algorithms, with millions or billions of data points, and with some guardrails. They are then trained on these data sets by humans and/or by self-training. But because they continue to self-learn, based on their interactions, they develop capabilities that the developers don’t fully understand. So, we can only make assessments of their capabilities as we observe their current behaviors. What are these capabilities? Generative First of all, these models are generative. That is, they act by analyzing the words in a prompt, for example, and drawing on their analysis of the data they’ve been trained on to respond with, in the case of #Chat GPT, a unique string of words that constitute syntactically and semantically reasonable sentences and paragraphs that address the prompt request. These are surprisingly sophisticated and human-like responses that would impress any ad copy writer. For example, I prompted #Chat GPT4 with: “List four reasons why a client should hire a designer”. And within seconds, it responded, word after word, line by line, with four numbered reasons: Professional expertise, creative problem solving, branding and identify, and time and efficiency. It ended by saying: "Overall, hiring a designer ensures that the client's design needs are met with professionalism, creativity, and expertise, resulting in visually compelling and impactful designs that support their goals and objectives." Chat constructed a unique response; it did not merely reproduce a passage that it found somewhere on the web. The response directly addressed my request both in substance and form. It made four cogent points and then went on to elaborate on each. Each point was made from the client’s perspective, specifying the advantage that the designer provides to the client’s business. And then it went beyond my prompt, concluding with that summary of the points, even though I didn’t specifically request it. Multimodal But text is not the only mode it works in and this is where AI has significant implications for designers and other creatives. While Chat GPT was built on the vast text resources of the Web, other models use data sets of images, music, chemical structures, etc. Generative programmed transformers (GPTs) work just the same with these symbolic data sets as they do with words. That is, they analyze them looking for interconnections and patterns and then match patterns to those they analyze in prompts, whether the data are words, images, musical notes, computer code, etc. The first of the multimodal models that came to the public’s attention was OpenAI’s #DALL-E, which was introduced in January 2021. DALL-E analyzes patterns among millions of image-text pairs scraped from the Web and is able to generate a unique set of images, given text input. For example, I gave DALL-E 2 the prompt: “A photograph of a smiling housewife using ‘Tide’ laundry detergent.” It returned this group of rather unimpressive images for me to choose from: There are problems with the hands, as well as other artifacts, and with the text within the image (perhaps there is a guardrail prohibiting the use of registered trademarks). But these models are constantly improving. Other similar applications, such as #MidJourney and #Stable Diffusion, have come out since DALL-E’s introduction and they allow the option to use of a reference image (as DALL-E 2 does now) along with text as promotes. They also provide a variety of built-in filters and adjustments to generate sophisticated, high resolution images. The quality of these images is coming to match or exceed the quality of human generated art. Some systems, such as #Runway’s #Gen2, even allow you to generate animations based on text or graphic input. Google’s #MusicLM and OpenAI’s #Jukebox are tuned to generate background music or even original songs. And in software design, applications of generative AI, such as Chat GPT4 with GitHub Copilot, take text input and generate lines of operable code. Future trends These generative models are beginning to be integrated into existing applications and this trend will continue, especially for those applications that deal with multimedia. For example, Adobe is integrating its generative text to image model, #Firefly, into #Photoshop such that users can add, subtract, or replace portions of their photos with pieces of AI generated images by using the selection tool and a text prompt. Future applications will be specifically developed to augment various AI models and stich them together, with application programming interfaces, to make suites of tools that are even more powerful and easier to use than the separate applications. This trend might result in something like this hypothetical example, which pulls together various AI models to create an environment that allows for code generation based on natural language voice commands. Another trend is that large language models are becoming specialized using large data sets specific to particular domains. An example of this trend are models trained on databases of chemical structures, contributing to significant gains in the design of new drugs. As this tend plays out, other models are likely to be trained on specialized data sets in architecture, fashion, engineering, scholarly research, and so on, supporting major breakthroughs in these fields. Yet another trend is the use of AI in the design and production of physical products, such as kitchen appliances, shoes, and cars. These designs can be supercharged by connecting generative AI systems with other applications and devices. For example, multimodal AI models are currently being used to aid in product design during the conceptualization phase. The results of this conceptualization phase are mere images but they can be connected to a CAD package for generating the production specifications of the product and then to a CAM application to actually produce the product. Current Limitations of these AI Systems? Again, the word “current” must be used here, since these systems are ever-evolving and novel applications are constantly being produced. This means that, no doubt, there will be other trends that emerge that we can’t yet imagine. But at least for now, there are significant limitations among AI systems. Designers need to know these limitations because they often correspond to the unique strengths that humans can bring to the process. Here I will not address the myriad issues and problems with AI associated with “the apocalypse”, security hacking, the invasion of privacy, intellectual property, deep fakes, etc. Rather I will address issues in a much narrower sense, those most closely associated with the design process. Lack agency and executive function The biggest limitation is that generative AI models cannot make executive decisions. That is, they don’t know what needs to be designed, they can’t start the design process on their own and they don’t know when it is done. While they have a lot of general knowledge, they don’t understand the local situation and they have no idea of what the preferred situation is, to us Simon’s terms. They don’t know which problem can be addressed by what kind of design: Can the design goal be achieved with a physical artifact, a service, a motivational campaign, or what? Nor do AI systems know which of the many problem situations are top design priorities. All these issues need to have been addressed before AI models are employed and need to be represented in the prompts. Limited by the data they are trained on. Generative models can be very creative in their responses. But this creativity is based on finding patterns in the data they have access to and that they are trained on. They can’t go beyond the data. Chat GPT, for example, has access to vast amounts of data scraped from the Web. At the same time, the data it draws on are very noisy. Consequently, the likelihood of generating many off-target combinations is very high. The noise is also likely to include biases in the results and misinformation. Some of these limitations can be addressed by the careful wording of prompts. Others require careful review and assessment of the output. Accepting the results of a request to generate product ad copy, for example, without careful review would be risky. In addition, the database is often time limited. As far as Chat GPT is concerned, the database was locked as of September 2021. So, it cannot comment on or include in its analyses anything that happened after that. Untrustworthy. A related issue is that the produced results can be inaccurate, not based on reality, or even outright bizarre. Beyond the kind of “hallucination” produced by Kevin Roose’s conversation with Microsoft’s Bing, the more-disconcerting results for designers are those that sound reasonable but are totally made up. For example, a legal brief filed by an attorney using Chat GPT cited legal cases in his argument that, as it turned, did not to exist. Chat GPT and other text models are trained to produce results that sound like reasonable, even authoritative, human speech. And as tempting as it is to cut and paste such reasonable sounding outputs, it is essential to check the accuracy of any factual statements. Unfortunately, this necessity can significantly reduce the productivity gains from Chat GPT, adding to the temptation to skip a review. Lacks local context knowledge. Large language models, such as Chat GPT, have a lot of general knowledge about the world and about language. But they have no context knowledge of the immediate local situation. Yet knowledge of the local situation—knowledge of your client, of those who might use and benefit from your design, of their needs and problems, their physical and social context, etc.—is essential to the design process. All of this relevant information would need to be represented by prompts. But even then, it is not clear that these models would “understand” the complex network of local, interacting factors that affect designs. No emotions or morality. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, these systems have no human emotions or moral grounding. There is significant work being done in which AI systems can at some level “understand” and express emotions. But it is a profoundly limiting factor that AI does not exist in the physical world and cannot directly experience pleasure, pain, desire, etc. that are the basis for human emotions and empathy with the emotions of others. Many psychologists claim emotions are the foundation of moral response among humans. This lack of emotional experience in AI systems limits how they can respond to moral issues and moral situations. The limitation reduces the ability of these systems to understand the affective component of human situations and how they might be able to respond to them. While the outputs of these system often evoke emotions among humans, the systems cannot feel compassion or rage and they do not know what is bad and good. There are built-in guardrails that AI systems follow and their statements may sometimes sound morally authoritative. And researchers are experimenting with AI systems that can reason morally. But these systems operate differently than large language models. They are extremely limited in their capabilities and not nearly able to handle the complex emotional and moral situations in which designers sometimes find themselves. For the foreseeable future, AI systems will be limited in their moral capacity. Finally, related to agency and executive function, these systems don’t have the emotional or moral insight to know what people need, desire, or aspire to nor do they, on their own, have a conception about some ideal or desirable future situation that a design could contribute to achieving. In short, they don’t know what makes a design “good”. What Makes Designers Distinctive (and Your Job Safe) What does this all say about the future of ad copy writers, graphic designers, web designers, app developers, user experience designers, and architects? Functions normally associated with design will continue: ad copy will be written, illustrations generated, websites constructed, apps developed. Products will be produced, buildings designed. But these questions remain: To what extent will these functions be performed by AI systems or by people? And what skills will designers need in the future? At the extreme end, entire sets of functions will be served by AI-controlled systems. For example, one can imagine a fully automated game design process in which given an initial prompt, a generative AI system can come up with a new game concept, implement it in code, distribute it online, continually collect data, and use that to finetune the game. Conceivably, none of this would require human illustrators, programmers, or data collectors or analyzers. At the other end, people will be primarily responsible for these functions, augmented by AI systems. They may even retain their titles: graphic designers, app developers, web designers, etc. But their skill sets will be different; traditional technical skills will be replaced by skills in operating AI systems. However, it isn’t merely by being effective AI tool users that designers will be saved from replacement. It is by emphasizing and fine tuning the distinctions between what AI can currently do, what it can’t do, and the unique contribution people can make. This distinction will establish the worth of designers to employers and clients and, perhaps, even to themselves. Designers are thinking, feeling humans that live in the world and they are great at understanding and acting on complex in-the-world situations. The biggest difference between humans and AI systems is the executive function, the moral compass, and rich local knowledge that humans can bring to the design job. This distinction requires designers and design educators to think very differently about what design is and what it is not, to think quite broadly about design as a process and a profession. Too often design is thought of and taught quite narrowly, as a specialized set of skills and knowledge that address a narrow range of problems defined by disciplines, such as software design, product design, and architecture when the solution may not require the design of software, products, or buildings. Design is not technique. AI systems will dramatically transform creative productions associated with particular artistic techniques. Creatives who spend their education and early career years mastering particular techniques—such as photography, illustration, the mastering of musical instruments, etc.—are the most likely to be replaced by people who do not have these technical skills but have knowledge of AI tools that can be used to generate digital products like those of these creators. This applies less for creatives exercising their craft in the real world, such as live performances in music, dance, and theater. But even here, the employability and income of these creatives will be diminished by the fact that AI-generated music, “actors”, “dancers”, etc. will compete for opportunities in the digital world, opportunities that are currently available to creatives. Furthermore, the creative works of these artists are often used to train generative multimodal models, thus creating a competition between artists and their own works—an intellectual property issue that has yet to be resolved. Even designers who are defined by technical skills that are normally considered safe or even advantaged by technological developments, such as software or app developers and webpage designers, are threatened by AI. Who needs people with sophisticated coding skills in specialized languages if people with high-level programming knowledge but few coding skills are sufficient to produce advanced software products? Art and design schools and their faculty that focus primarily on technique will also be transformed by these AI developments. Curricula that haven’t yet moved away from teaching traditional production and performance techniques and toward digital skills will be forced to do so, as students seek these new, more employable skills. And they are advised to think more broadly about what design really is. Design is not just technique or even primarily about being creative. Design is not about photographic skill, illustration, animation, writing, or coding. Design is about solving important complex problems in the physical, social world. And design is not just about being an imaginative, out-of-the box creator. If your creations are not making a positive contribution to human experience or solving complex human problems, you’re not using your full set of design capabilities. Design is not just the attributes of a good design. Good designs are relatively easy to identify if the criteria are specific attributes of the designed artifact: the color scheme is complementary, the composition is balanced, the design for a building structurally sound, the ad copy is grammatically correct and well-stated, the code is elegant. AI is up to that kind of assessment and can generate some amazing images, building designs, statements, and code. But good design is not only about aesthetics, functionality or look and feel. Design is not just the product, the designed artifact. Design is about solving problems and having a positive impact on the world. And it is about the process for getting there. Therefore, good design, if we use Simon’s definition as a process that takes us from a current state to a desired state, implies a different assessment criterion—not attributes of the product but attributes of its impact on the situation as a result of that process. AI systems are not well suited to make those assessments. The guardrails built into AI systems often tell them what they should not do—not provide information that would knowingly harm someone, not share individual data without consent, not discriminate against individuals or groups, not break the law. But they don’t know what they should do; they don’t know about designs that are good. Designers can make that assessment. Design is about solving complex problems. For the foreseeable future, good design will require human designers if we define design not just as technique, not just as the attributes of the well-designed artifact, but as a process of successfully changing situations that aren’t working, that are problematic, that are harmful into situations that meet people’s needs and desires—designs that solve human problems. These are good designs. Great designs are ones that address problems that are particularly complex, ill-defined and highly constrained. And great designers are ones who can solve these wicked problems, ones who can make the world a better place. What does this involve? What are designers’ super powers? To solve problems, designers need to know a lot about the local design situation: where things are working, where and why they are not, who all are involved in the situation and in what ways, what the constraints are, and what human, physical and financial resources are available. Designers also need to understand the preferred situation, what people need, what they want, what they fear, what they desire, dream about, and aspire towards, things that people sometimes don’t even understand, themselves. AI can’t provide these insights; designers can. Designers need to design with purpose and values and understand the values of the people affected most by their designs. Of course, values vary among people. But there are underlying principles that most people draw on in their lives, even if they disagree on how to get there or what it might look like when they do, principles such as avoid harm, increase happiness and well-being, advance knowledge and agency, address injustice, build relationships. Good designers need to tap into these values, as locally felt, build consensus around them, manage conflicts, and turn these values into articulated, desired outcomes to aim toward. And good designs have the intended impact. So designers must be able to assess the impacts of their designs, both intended and unanticipated, and adjust the design accordingly. And, of course, designers need to know how to get from current situations to the preferred ones. Designers must have the ability to determine if this situation requires a product, that situation calls for a service, yet another would benefit from a built environment. They need to be able to assemble and coordinate the human and digital expertise, knowledge, and skills of different specializations to address these complex problems. They need to collaborate with the people most affected by the design outcomes. They need to manage the work flow and the resources that support it and make the tradeoffs that will inevitably arise. They need to tryout the products of this process, to see if these products are working, and if they are moving the needle toward the preferred situation. And they need to know when they are done, when the products, services or experiences achieve the desired impact, or perhaps when they are good enough. It is in the process of getting from here to there that AI will be an essential partner. For many of the components of the process, AI and other digital tools will be used in combination to support and augment the conceptualization and generation of prospective desired outcomes, the collaboration among people and resources, the rapid prototyping and implementation of the design, and the assessment of its impact, the finetuning of the design. An essential design skill will be knowing which tool can be effective in the process and in what way. And an essential skill in using AI will be the ability to express in words or images the complex relationships, problems and constrains that exist in the current situation and the as-yet-unrealized future situation that is desired. Words, images, music, and computer functionality will, no doubt, be an important part of these solutions and AI is great at generating these forms. But it will be essential to know when and how these productions can contribute to solving the problem, to making an impact. But above all, to make the world a better place, the designer must be able to make judgments about what is most important to design. AI will not replace the complex set of skills, knowledge, and values of designers, if design is conceived of as the process of solving important, complex, real world, human problems. AI will not replace you; it will be your friend. _________________ I would like to thank @Anshul Sonak, @Suzee Barrabee, and @Anders Sundstedt for comments on an earlier draft. Any remaining errors are mine. #design #designers #ai #largelanguagemodels #multimodal #generativeai #layoffsandjobreductions #designwithpurpose #designwithvalues #digitalskills #digitalreadiness #problemsolving #designabetterworld #maketheworldabetterplace

UI, UX, which one is which and why they seem to overlap sometimes in-concentrically depending on who you ask! First things first: the challenge of defining which is which. UI or User Interface design is more about the inter-actual experience a user has, while UX or User Experience is more about the relational experience a user has with the product. The one exits collaboratively with the other and as I will demonstrate below, they can and do have attributes that overlap. UI exists in every technological interaction we have, from a website or app to appliances such as tv's and washing machines. UI ensures that we can operate technology and UX aims to make us like that interaction. In a publication relating to statistics I recently read, but cannot name, one statistic related to the very high percentage of people who never adjust the temperature setting on their fridge. That the fridge has this feature is related to UI, you can interact with it. That people never bother to adjust it, relates to UX in that its users never really feel inclined to use it (have an experience with it) although it has some impact with the possible return experiences its users has. By that I mean there could be some value to reducing it in winter when its already cold or turning it up when its hot since both have measurable effects like saving electricity or ensuring bacteria doesn't grow on food. Personally I find that those two criteria wonderfully benefits my experience, in essence, can be dubbed a somewhat positive experience. There is also a much much larger scale to this UI/UX business. One can get very philosophical about it and somehow arrive at a place where some ethical and existential notions surface, but that's altogether a discussion for another day, but let's keep it simple for now. What is the impact of UI design in our everyday lives, and how does it change the way we interact with the world around us? There is a popular saying that good design is invisible, and in respects to UI I would say good design is invisible to the mind. Good UI ensures that technological interaction becomes as natural to us as walking, it comes with a bit of training and behavioral cloning, but there is an instinctual and natural process behind it. Some animals are born running, but mankind has a tendency to develop its responses more on nurture than nature. Likewise, we compile clusters of sound that we replicate forward to form words with that can convey what we aim to communicate, it may take a small while to learn to speak, but once we know how we can write books for people to get lost in, songs that emotionally bonds us, and at the very least create some sort of understanding. Just like we have evolved the sounds we make into multi-tiered systems that can leap across an array of behavioral traits varying from evolutionary survival such as relaying information needed to survive in the world, to creative compositions that expresses subjective meanings, we evolve UI's that can keep us busy for hours or on the other hand save as much time as possible. Here is a demonstration of UI in behavioral evolution. These same kids have no trouble navigating the ins and outs of cellphones. If you're a parent, you've probably heard about screen time. Screen-time is the measured time that children interact with devices. Sometimes before they can even talk they are already playing complicated games or browsing youtube. The fact that they are able to do so is directly linked to UI because they are interacting with the devices. How we feel about it (and obviously we feel "about" it enough to coin the term screen-time) that is a matter for UX. Facebook has updated it's UI a few times since it begun, and each time there were people complaining about it. The thing is, we are creatures of comfort, and technology has added greatly to the comfort in our lives, but there is a learning curve that comes with technology and at a certain point we tend to want to stick to what we know. When you're young, you learn to use a fork, you use that fork the same way for the rest of your life. In tech though, the tools change, so you have to learn all the time. If you have a lot of time it may not bother you that much and you may receive some satisfaction from it, but if on the other hand, and this is the case for most people, you have a job to do and a personal life to manage, you crave a few constants in your life, and this is why products seem to follow a pattern true to previous models. Chair styles may change, but you always use them in the same way, the same goes for electronics such as a kettle, and yes even the web. It because of this simple process that UI exists and why it is such a big part of UX.To demonstrate the differences I will create a photo editing/sharing feature for a fictional app. Getting started - 1. Sketching. There are a couple of scenarios in which UI can be applied. You could have an idea for a product and start from scratch, it could be that you would want to update existing products, or perhaps you have seasonal campaigns or promotions or even a couple of portals. Any of these may be restricted to device or have must be compatible with multiple devices. For example if you have a website, its good to have a responsive products so that the user will always have a good experience regardless of which device they use, then you have to design multiple interfaces. If you're just developing an app, you don't need to factor desktop or tablet views (although mobile in itself has different screens to consider). The starting point is usually compiling the requirements through sketching. Mapping the route that a user will take through your product to make it function. Sketches are usually a rough draft of the wire frame of the product. In the example to the right, the steps the user has to take have been listed and the primary pages have been sketched. It doesn't contain all of the pages the user will see yet, this is just the conceptual phase in summary. Some designers like to sketch, while others prefer to work in applications. I like using draw.io because I'm familiar with it and anyone can access or edit with permission which is great for when a client/ company doesn't have design tools. 2. Wire Frames. To the left is an image of the wire-frame I created based on the sketch. You could have a look at it here if you are interested to see how it looks in the application. As you can see, I've color coded the 4 primary steps in the usage of the application. Within these steps there are more screens to see. 1. Get an image. The user can take an image with their device or they can upload one from a library. If the user decides to choose to take a photo they will see the photo screen, if they choose to select from the gallery, they will see another screen. 2. When the user has selected/ taken the image, they can choose to crop it. This step has two parts, they can crop on the step screen, or click on settings and select a predefined dimension. 3. In this step the user can modify the image by changing its color, adding stickers and or adding text. There are 3 additional screens the user may see, or he can click on next if he doesn't want to use these filters. 4. This brings the user to the last step where they can choose to either save the picture or share it. Creating wire-frames are very useful to show members working on a product the scope of what they will be working on. It's very valuable for both the front and back end teams because it outlines the requirements. From this wire-frame the coders can start building the back-end and the designers can start working on the graphics, which is the next step in UI designing. This is known as the mock up phase. 3. Mock ups & 4. Prototyping. During this phase the product starts to resemble a complete product. Mock ups are used to give a good sense of what the final product will look like. They are more detailed than the wire-frames but not quite as functional as the next part which is the prototype stage. \ It's not always necessary to create prototypes for example if you already have a working product and are only updating some features. It's always advisable though to test the product in a live environment before publishing it. The reason for this is to avoid publishing embarrassing mistakes. If you have to present the product to investors for example it's quite handy to give them a sense of what they are investing in. The mock up is good for presentation purposes. It shows some or all of the screens, while prototypes are linked and can be interacted with which makes it good for testing. These two steps tend to go hand in hand and back and forward. Sometimes there is a need for a different graphic, sometimes a new functionality needs to be added in. It's very usual for this phase to take up the most time. Once the prototype is finalized, rolling out the product goes very fast, or should at least. Prototypes and mock ups may appear similar at a glance. What distinguishes them is really the interactive part. I hope you've enjoyed reading this and have a better understanding the different parts of the UI / UX design process.

Creating and operating on a solid business plan, is as essential to a company as defining the brand. The first and starting point is the logo. Creating mood boards are a great way to start the beginning of crafting a logo, but knowing what logo style is best suited to the task at hand, boosts the potential of designing a great logo. logo- before vowels log-, word-forming element meaning "speech, word," also "reason," from Greek logos" word, discourse; reason," from PIE root *leg- (1) "to collect, gather," with derivatives meaning "to speak (to 'pick out words')." In other words, your logo should speak. Before go into the different logo types, I will show a few examples of logos that "speak" to clarify exactly why the design of the logo is such a major part of your corporate identity. This giant known by many seems like a plain design, but on closer inspection there is a lot happening. First off the arrow is in a sunny yellow color, making the design friendly. It also looks like a satisfied smile, which is another positive reference aside from the sunny yellow. The other feature is that the arrow moves from the letter a to the letter z in the title. This can be interpreted 1, as them selling everything from A to Z and 2, point A to B which is a direct line. This logo definitely tells a story. Sticking to digital, here is another example. The letters ‘va’ are made to look like an analog wave, and the ‘io’ resemble the numbers 1 and 0, representing a digital signal or binary code, which is what systems are built upon. Vaio represents the integration of both analog and digital technologies in its products. This is also a logo that tells a story. Moving away from tech into something more indulgent. have you ever noticed the bear inside the mountain in this sweet logo? The bear represents the honey flavor of this chocolate and it aligns with the location where this product is produced, "the city of bears". The mountain of this image relates to an image that is well known, the swiss alps, helping class this product under Swiss chocolate, and Swiss chocolate is great! In fact the mountain is supposed to be the Matterhorn Mountain, but Swiss alps is more memorable. So now for the logotypes. There are eight main logotypes, each one has characteristics that can help identify what the company is all about. The Word Mark is a popular choice and many famous brands including Coca-cola, Google and Oracle have this logo type. Like the name indicates its a mark made by a word, the name of a company. Many companies shorten the word mark to an initial because Icons are such an integral part of our existence and responsive is a way of life, the shortened version works well on apps and small print. Switching between Word Mark and Monogram, which is the second logo type. Monograms are used primarily in companies that have a long name. Logo's tend to look best squared, the more rectangular a logo, the harder it gets to crop it to smaller scales. Examples of monograms include Mc Donald's and Gucci and Volkswagon. Good examples of a merge between word mark and monograms is the Google logo, Facebook, and Disney. This is where a relatively new type of logo comes in. The Responsive logo. A Responsive logo is very popular these days to switch between different media and media sizes. The full google logo is great for when you are online, but the shortened version looks better on mobile. The shrinking logo is an ever increasing trend. Responsive logos can also include Pictorial or brand marks, which are two other types of logos. A great example of this is the Heineken logo. Pictorials are a another way to accentuate the visual representation that may be the word that your company name is. For example Apple uses an Apple, plain and straight forward. It may also be a visual representation of a feature of your company name. For example Twitter uses a bird, the sounds birds make are tweet sounds, they twitter, although its not a direct association, its still a feature. Pictorials can also be Brand marks. Brand marks are more abstract forms of pictorials. Think Adidas, Master Cards and Pepsi. These are pictures which do not have a specific universal meaning. These types of logos are not easy to pull off because there is not a lot of information to go with it. Usually successful brand marks are the result of years of fine-tuning and development. Brand Marks works best when creating Combination logos. Combination logos are extremely abundant. A lot of really successful companies use combination logos and its not difficult to understand why. They are extremely flexible. The combination logo has both text and image elements in them. Examples of these kinds of logos are Starbucks, Hallmark and android. All three of these contain the written name of the company name, and an image although all the above have different images types. Star Bucks do not have an instant connotation of coffee to mermaids, but sounds rather more like a sports team, Hallmark has a crown in its logo. Although a crown is not a direct connotation, it falls within the symbolic representation scheme. Android is an example of instant connotation because the name and the image are both the same thing. Next up is the Emblem logo. Emblem logos have been around for centuries. They originated as family and regal seals. This kind of logo works well when they will be used to print on a large scale for example as a sticker on a product, or a flag. For these reasons they work well with the automotive and beverage industries, but also governmental institutes. Some examples are Alfa Romeo, Smirnoff and the United Nations. They have been simplified over time as can be seen in logos such as Ford, Vans and Ikea. The last logo type is the Mascot logo. Mascot logos are great for creating affinity to a character. Most of us do it, we relate to characters and have role models. In most cases they tend to be animals especially in sports teams where they are used most. But they can also be people for example KFC's Colonel or the Monopoly man. They can also be abstract characters like the Michelin Man, the Michelin Man is a character constructed out of tires. So now that you know what logo types there are, it should help you define that one logo that will represent your company fully.

The CID Quality Awards was created to make CID related awards more accessible and fair and to be inclusive of all CID Pro's based on talent and not just budget. In general, most awarders charge an amount to cover costs and it's frequently also profitable for the awarder in some way. Having declined offers due to the cost - with one costing nearly 700 Euro, the CID Quality Awards came to be. Currently the awards will take place solely online with the award sent by email and posted online. The entire project relies on donations and sponsorship. But! There is a vision. A vision of what it could be, based on the feedback and interactions of the past 3 weeks since this event went live. Recently I had 4 conversations with people from 3 countries who informed me that they wish to travel to Amsterdam and attend a physical event. So right now I'm conducting research and determining feasibility. (Everyone can see the final votes.) Aside from that, I also need to see what kind of budget I can expect to work with, so here is the next poll. (only voters can see the answers for privacy.) And lastly for the travelers. (only voters can see the answers for privacy.) So by these questions you can already tell a little bit about the scope of the dream. Someone had an idea to request that their company pay for it and so I'm sharing that so that if you are thinking the same, you can let me know if that's an option. Additionally, we will also be approaching bigger companies to see if they are interested in sponsoring and or collaborating. Do you or your company have potential to be added to this list? Get in touch. Any and all ideas can be considered. The main awarding event will remain free and online, but that doesn't mean we cant have a physical accompanying event. Another cool idea is to have some of the award winners give a talk or workshop. If you think this could be interesting for you, you know what to do. Here you may RSVP to the DiF event Or on LinkedIn Finally why don't you nominate someone? It's easy, just click the nominate button and fill in the form. Ten questions then you're set. We do ask for a link or reference that demonstrates the reason for the award. All the links can be found on the Awards page and you can also find an image that you may share with the person who you've nominated. We will post in the Design in Focus channels also and try to tag the person. This is what the sharable image looks like that you may find on the Awards Page. Which we will also share in Design in Focus HQ Thank you for reading, and also for answering the polls if you have :)

For those of you who will be writing articles to publish on Design in Focus (DiF), this post may be helpful to get you started. To start writing on DiF you need to first become a member. You can signup by clicking on Login. You should see a popup appear. Ensure that you select Join the network & community. We approve every sign up manually to filter out spam, bots, and other malicious type interactions. It may take a few days to get approval. This is the only reason that there is a required membership. We don't advertise to you, we don't allow affiliation paid marketing and or sponsorship in the members area. There are instances that we display other groups or organisations for example Ladies that UX, this is not meant as advertising in the regular sense, but informatising (if you accept that as a word) about things that have positive impact or value for CID people. Once your membership is approved and can complete your profile. 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Click on the layers to edit the content. Where you see the T symbol is where the texts are. To edit text double click on it or find the Text symbol in the tools panel. Remember to make all the S's yellow. 6. Add your name 7. Add your photo Click File -> Open & Place -> navigate to photo on your device -> select and upload. 8. Add the read more button 9. Make the relevant icon visible 10. Select a background image from the list or upload one of your own. If you upload your own background image, please set it to 21% opacity. 11. When you're happy with the composition, you can save the file by going to File -> Export as -> then select your file type, use JPG as this is generally a good format -> then save. B. Categories Lets readers browse posts by topic, when we have many articles and writers then this will be important. It is also used for strengthening the SEO. We can add more topics, if you have suggestions, please forward it. 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KPIs, t argets, and incentives. What they are and why they are different Before we get into the detail of target and incentive design, we need to be clear on what the terms KPI, target, and incentive mean. They are close cousins, but each has a distinct definition. What is a KPI? A Key Performance Indicator (KPI) is a measure of how we are doing at something that we care about. What is an incentive? If KPIs provide objective numerical quantification, and targets provide the context then incentives are intended to provide behavioral motivation. An incentive can be either positive (I buy myself a new smartwatch if I hit 80 kg), negative (I will put a padlock on the fridge if I hit 85 kg), or some combination of the two. What is a target? It is when we compare KPIs with targets that we start to make a value judgment about whether we are performing well or poorly. If my bathroom scales tell me I weigh 80 kg, my reaction would be shaped by my personal target. Weighing 80 kg when my target is 85 kg might be good news, but less so if my target is 60 kg. The target provides the context for reviewing our performance, as reported by our KPI values. OKRs - Objective Key Results If you haven’t come across them already OKR is a goal-setting approach pioneered in Intel, based on Peter Drucker’s work on Management by Objectives in the 1950s, which is now used widely across the corporate world. OKR stands for ‘Objective Key Results. The Objective element describes a substantial, often long-term outcome we want to achieve. How ROKET-DS™ extends OKR methodology ROKET-DS™ has been engineered to support the design of both one-off objectives (missions) and everyday ‘business as usual targets and incentives. OKRs are unashamedly project-based. They have a finite life, existing only until the outcome is delivered, then they need to be replaced or reworked. Individual OKRs are not designed or intended for long-term ‘business as usual management. The OKR approach does not cover incentive design. ROKET-DS™ is designed to integrate the target and incentive design process in one seamless method. How do we use the ROKET-DS™ Diagnostic? The ROKET-DS™ Diagnostic can be used in two situations. Firstly…. 1. Diagnosing existing target and incentive issues It’s quite common to have a target incentive system that is not performing as expected, which we need to ‘fix’. In this situation, an accurate diagnosis of all of the issues is essential before we start the repair process. The ROKET-DS™ Diagnostic will help us tease out some of the less obvious problems by using the highly visible issues as a starting point. Diagnosing existing target and incentive issues is Step 0 of the ROKET-DS™ method, which we will cover in Part 2 of this book. The ROKET-DS™ Diagnostic is the tool we use to do this. 2. Field testing new target and incentive designs for potential problems One of the major gaps in the SMART method is the lack of ‘real-world’ testing. In Step 7 of our process, we will cover a testing process called ‘Black-hat testing’, where we look for potential problems with our new designs before they are deployed. The ROKET-DS™ Diagnostic is a critical part of that ‘black hat testing‘. Next, we group them into four families, to make things a bit more orderly. Here are the four groupings… A. Target Design Failure: Issues with the way in which the targets are designed, indicated with the prefix TF. B. Incentive Design Failure: Problems with the rewards, incentives, or punishments on offer for achieving the target (or not), indicated with the prefix IF. C. Management Dysfunction: Management behaviours that make things worse, shown with the prefix MF. D. Behavioural dysfunction: Weird behaviours that often occur as a result of the other three problem families. We use the prefix DB to flag these. Looking at the failure modes we have identified, it becomes clear that certain issues like traveling in groups. For example ‘Winner takes all’ incentives can drive ‘Law breaking’, ‘Rule bending or breaking, ‘Using loopholes’, and other kinds of behavioral dysfunction. In any busy, complex organization there are many things going on simultaneously. Some issues will be highly visible, others may be buried and remain undetected. As there are multiple, often intertwined, relationships between these issues, a diagram can really help. To help make sense of these complex relationships we have developed a schematic called the ROKET-DS™ diagnostic. To learn more stay tuned to the Web Series - KPIs in Design by Ricardo Faria here on Design in Focus. Visit his experience portal to view and listen to all of his sessions.

Why are style guides essential? What value do they bring to the company, and what should be in it? I will attempt to answer these questions below. First off, let's look at why they are essential to have. There is the practical aspect which includes professional looking communiques that gives prospective stakeholders the impression that your company has a fine-tuned identity. Like people who you meet, corporate identities make an impression. Some people you meet and they never come back to your mind again, other people you meet make impressions that gives you a sense of subjective relate-ability. When those you engage with relate to your product or company it ensures retention, just like when you would like to meet a person again who has made a good impression. A prime example of this is how IOS and Android fans tend to stick to their device of choice. Higher retention in your consumer base automatically helps ensure that there will always be a market for your product. Of course I'm not saying style guides will be all you need, a business's success is based on many factors, but having a style guide is a cornerstone that will hold up your company, at very least visually. Then there is the financial aspect. Its nearly impossible to measure ROI KPI's because of the fact that you can not know each individual who interacts with your company, the best we can do on that level is focus on UX, because that is online and more traceable than real life interactions. So in essence the financial aspect can't precisely be measured, but, there are some advantages of style guides that do contribute in a positive way financially. First off your company could save when it comes to out sourcing creatives. When you have great templates and your staff have been shown how to use it, you would be amazed at the great looking stuff they can produce. A worthwhile style guide should always include some templates from which users can just copy and paste of drag and drop. Weather its having assets in a digital library such as excel or having the assets an a shared repository, or even both, there are a lot of ways assets can be used or created. In anyway its also important to look not only a marketing directives, think the presentations created by your team, financial overviews, quarterly reviews and emails. The way in which these are presented affect how inclined someone is to pay attention. When something is difficult to read its easy to loose attention. Thing that draws us to luxury items and to pretty things is the same thing that makes us engage with beautifully designed media. A diamond has very little intrinsic value as far as true value goes, but the business that surrounds it comes mainly from a thing we have with the ascetic beauty we see in it. Its absolutely undeniable, people have a tendency to want more of what they find visually pleasing and they are willing to spend their money on it. Another aspect that is somewhat below the surface has to do with the personal experiences that your employees have. Professionals have a lot to contend with, although not everyone gets into the rat race, for the most part and as for long as commerce continue to exist and people have to partake in it to make a living, the rat race will be an inevitable aspect of a professional's career. Many people feel undervalued in their work life, maybe they have a bottom position or they have been doing something for a really long time, but since work life takes up so much of our time, it's natural that we start to carry it personally. When your employees have tools to make awesome presentations and produce charts that others actually want to look at, they receive on some level, a sense of accomplishment because they get to experience someone paying attention to their work. Something that can be annoying to designers is when non-designers seem to be know it all's and think they can create better. Unfortunately, just like people who are good at tech can develop tools that automate their own functions or the functions of others inevitably removing those functions from the market, having a good style guide removes the need for designers and enables almost anyone in the company to create engaging content. Things that should be in your style guide and why. Style guides can be created at the same time your logo is created, or they can come after. Either way they will still build from the same foundation which is the logo. If you don't already have one or if you would like to know more about logos you can read about it here. Its good to know about them when you are developing your corporate identity because logos convey a lot of information about your company. The first thing your style guide should contain is obviously your logo and the fonts you use. Even without a developed style guide these two things can be used to make assets that relates to your corporate id. Some fonts need permissions or have to be purchased, this is information that should always be in your style guide. Kerning measures ensures the readability of your text. Its also smart to keep notes like who designed the logo should you ever run into copyright issues. The next building block has to do with color. Obviously you want to dress your company according to the style of the logo. Having a color scheme ensures that there are no "fashion" disasters, so to speak. Its important to have colors that work well together stylishly because image matters. Its also important that your style guide has the color codes so that the colors are always true to the style guide. The last essential building block is the treatment of the logo. How the logo is placed in media can make it look good or really bad. This section should include thinks like padding or margins, its will also include the different logo lockups. How to use it on light vs dark backgrounds and how to use it in color or monochrome backgrounds. An extensive style guide would also have other assets in this section. For example how to treat text. A good style guide has additional graphics and these would be included in this section too. With the criteria mentioned above just about any designer can create assets that feels like your identity. But within your style guide there can and should be sections for non designers. These sections are for the use of your employees. The most used would most likely be a area relating to print media. Letterheads, envelopes, business cards and power point presentation templates should be easy for the employee to access. This section should highlight all the ways in which your image can used in print media. When you've covered all your print media, its time to look at digital media. Digital media includes your website, social channels and apps. This is where having a library comes in super handy. For a lot of items it can be handy to save snippets of code. Its also good to have icon sets and css style sheets saved in the same sport. This section should also have case instances such as when to use an image asset such as an icon or when to use code assets such as buttons. What size metrics should be applied to which device and where on what website something is placed. When this section of the style guide is properly developed it ensures that your Omni-Presence is smooth with a steam lined image that creates generates recognition across multiple platforms. Weather your client visits your website, reads an email from you, uses or your app or follows you on social, they should always feel like they are interacting with the same identity. Now you should have a great style guide that brands all external communications with your corporate identity. The next step is to curate your internal coms. The advantage of using style guides in your employees everyday lives, not only makes their work look and feel professional, the generated assets can be used in any other communications, for example if you want to share online some statistics from you finance department or if one of your teams have to collaborate with another team to present information. Important criteria for this section include graphs and charts. If you would like a peek at some extensive style guides, here are a few that are quite well done: Swisscom Io, Calgary Chamber and Njord. You should now have a good grasp on Styleguides and the process behind creating, using and maintaining them.