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Design Management

May 24, 2009 by Roy Johnson

managing design strategy, processes and implementation

This new title from publishers AVA deals with the business aspects of design projects. I imagine the ideal readers would be students of design who were taking a serious interest in applying their theoretical skills to the practical demands of applying them in the world of commerce and manufacturing. The structure of the book follows that outlined in its sub-title – one section each on design strategy, then managing the design process, and finally design implementation. Each section is split into the knowledge required, a selection of case studies, and an outline of the skills needed for implementation. There is an underlying supposition that in addition to aesthetics, good design management will also take into account profitability, functionality, and even ecological issues.

Design ManagementSo it’s design with very much a practical business slant in mind. There’s an illustrated timeline of design which starts at 1759 with Josiah Wedgwood, then takes in most of the best-known names in design – from Peter Behrens, Moholy-Nagy, Raymond Loewy, Charles Eames, and Viktor Papanek, to the establishment of the design standards which have blossomed in the last ten years.

Although design is approached in the text as if it were a science or even a branch of sociology, it’s quite clear that a lot of it is connected with marketing and publicity – though at least Kathryn Best admits this by discussing such issues as ‘audience’, ‘market’, and ‘product life cycle’.

The case studies are interesting, well illustrated, and up to date – including for instance the Oyster smartcard for travel in London which eliminates the need for paper tickets, reduces queues, and keeps cash off the buses. She also has no problem illustrating all the positives of a company brand such as Apple with its iconic iPod (designed by UK’s Jonathan Ives).

The extended analysis of real-world examples range from thermal imaging devices (heat cameras) to Camper shoes, and from ecological architecture to a new Honda motor scooter. There are also interviews with leading designers from companies such as Yahoo and the National Health Service.

There’s a certain amount of idealisation in all this. Only projects launched by huge companies like AEG, Phillips, and Sony could afford such comprehensive planning of its developments. I’m sure that the majority of design projects have to make do with fewer staff and resources, and a shoestring budget compared with the methods being proposed here.

However, there are plenty of flow diagrams showing the stages of these ideal procedures – so anybody can see the models of good practice and adapt them for their own circumstances. There are also guidance sections on team working and managing creative designers. These include non-hierarchical systems of working and, it would seem, working conditions and design studios straight from the pages of Architecture Today.

The last section on project management in practice is closer to ‘management studies’ than to design. It reinforces the ideas mapped out recently by Chris Anderson in his influential essay The Long Tail – that manufacturers today are reducing their costs and increasing their performance by carrying the minimum of stock, delivering within hours instead of days or weeks, and responding instantly to the customer’s needs. If you were wondering why some shops in the clothing trade only stock what’s on display, that’s the reason why.

It’s an amazingly thorough production. It even finishes with practical suggestions for communication skills, based on the notion that designers need to be able to write effective reports and good business letters. There’s a bibliography, a webliography, suggested design journals, and a glossary. It’s also stylishly designed and produced, printed on thick matte paper stock with colour-coded pages, bound in an attractive paperback A4 format, and elegantly laid out throughout.

© Roy Johnson 2006

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Kathryn Best, Design Management: Managing Design Strategy, Process and Implementation, Lausanne: AVA, 2006, pp.215, ISBN: 2940373124


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Filed Under: Product design Tagged With: Design, Design Management, Product design, Project management

Organising and Participating in Meetings

July 3, 2009 by Roy Johnson

how to run meetings and produce the paperwork

Oxford University Press have just brought out a series of short beginners’ guides on communication skills. The emphasis is on compact, no-nonsense advice directly related to issues of everyday life. In this case it’s organising and running meetings, creating the documents which support them, and participating in them to best effect. Judith Leigh usefully starts off Organising and Participating in Meetings with the language of meetings and the roles of key figures such as minutes secretary, chair, and observers.

Organising and Participating in MeetingsShe then describes how to recruit suitable people to participate in a meeting and serve on a committee, and how to arrange the practicalities of booking venues and travel arrangements so as to maximise the chances of a successful outcome. She then covers the key documentation of meetings – discussion papers, agendas, and reports. This includes the order in which items should be tabled and recorded, plus tips on dealing with documents in paper and electronic form.

There’s a chapter on participation which includes both the ‘rules’ of debate and argument, as well as advice on doing Powerpoint presentations. Then comes the most unpopular task of all – taking the minutes. You’ll be lucky if you can get anybody to volunteer for this job.

Then comes a real gem I haven’t seen in books of this kind before – how to participate in meetings conducted by telephone, email, and video conferencing. She finishes with a checklist of steps to be taken, a glossary of Latin terms and financial jargon, and some templates for meeting papers and agendas.

The chapters of this book are short, but almost every page is rich in hints and tips. The strength of this approach is that it avoids the encyclopedic volume of advice which in some manuals can be quite frightening. This is a book which will reassure those who need it.

If you’ve never run a meeting before, this tells you everything you need to know. And it’s all presented in a clear and simple manner, with the emphasis on achieving a positive outcome. That’s a long way from some of the farcical, corrupt, and often pointless meetings which I’ve had to sit through in the world of education in the last thirty years.

© Roy Johnson 2004

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Judith Leigh, Organising and Participating in Meetings, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003, pp.144, ISBN: 019866284X


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Filed Under: Study skills Tagged With: Business, Communication, Communication skills, Meetings, Project management, Taking minutes

Secrets of Successful Web Sites

July 18, 2009 by Roy Johnson

business strategy and management of web design projects

David Siegel is a Web design guru who made his name with the best-selling Creating Killer Web Sites. That was a manifesto on graphic presentation: this is his thesis on the organisation and management of web design projects. The first part of the book offers fifteen case studies; the second part is a methodology of web site design. This takes into account the business and strategic issues of making a site effective, as well as the technicalities of colour, page design, and navigation. The book will appeal to individual designers who want to create their own business – those people with ambition to move from the spare bedroom into their own office.

Secrets of Successful Web SitesThe case studies deal with companies such as Land Rover, National Geographic, Virgin, Porsche, a brewery, and a university. There’s also a fascinating account of the origins of Salon web magazine and how it functions. These are lively mini-essays which reveal the secrets of good business strategies – as well as some of its dangers and pitfalls.

The later chapters describe the planning and design strategies used on a typical web project. At its centre is the project or development web site – where prototypes, help files, and work in progress are posted for comment.

He takes his analysis right through to the launch of a web site, and even the fine details of whose names should appear in the credits. It’s full of interesting tips, such as getting clients to agree on structure and navigation before introducing colour – which is very subjective and almost always causes disagreements.

He’s very good on writing business proposals: how to work out what to charge, and what details to take into account when drawing up estimates for a job – as well as how to spot danger signs.

There are also some useful tips on contracts of agreement and copyright of work . These are backed up with downloadable template documents at the book’s own web site.

So, like his Killer Web Sites, this is full of thought-provoking ideas expressed in an energetic and ‘committed’ style. It’s also a beautifully designed and printed book. Anyone who is interested in e-commerce and web-based business will be interested in what he has to offer.

© Roy Johnson 2002

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David Siegel, Secrets of Successful Web Sites, Indianapolis (IN): Hayden Books, 1997, pp.304, ISBN: 1568303823


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Filed Under: Web design Tagged With: Information architecture, Project management, Secrets of Successful Web Sites, Web design

The Art of Project Management

May 24, 2009 by Roy Johnson

Project Management skills from A to Z

Scott Berkun was a senior project manager at Microsoft who worked on the development of Internet Explorer, Windows XP, and MSN. These are his reflections on the philosophy and practice of project management, and on software development in particular. Three things immediately stand clear: he knows a lot about his subject from practical experience; he’s thought a lot about its underlying principles; and he expresses his ideas in a fluent manner.

The Art of Project ManagementThe structure of the book is to take you through all stages of a software design project, from its first conception, through to testing and completion. There are lots of useful tips – such as his ‘rule of thirds’ in which the time devoted to any task of a project schedule is broken down into equal parts – one for designing or planning, another for implementation or programming, and a third for testing or troubleshooting.

He splits his exposition into admirably straightforward topics, such as ‘How to figure out what to do’, ‘Writing good specifications’, and ‘What to do when things go wrong’. His use of jargon is kept to a minimum and he explains any new terms the first time he uses them.

Much of the advice he offers involves nothing more than asking simple but deep questions about each stage of the project: ‘What is the product for?’ Who will use it? How will it be made? Who is responsible for design/testing/implementation?’ These might seem very obvious, but as he points out, many projects fail because nobody takes the trouble to ask them. He even provides a list of common bad ways to decide what to do.

He’s very good on the need for clear expression in all plans and documentation:

It should be understood that clear thought does not require many pages. The most effective leadership documents in the world are not very long. The US constitution, including the Bill of Rights, is a mere 7,000 words (about six pages). The 10 commandments are 300 words. The Magna Carta is 5,000.

Yet strangely enough he does not follow his own advice. His style is lose and conversational. It’s like someone talking to you in a bar. Although this makes for ease, it also extends the page count. This book could easily cover the same ground in a half of its length.

Next he shows what to do with ideas once you have got them, work gets under way, and the project starts to develop its own momentum. The answer to this problem is to use affinity diagrams. This is a fancy term for brainstorming, post-it notes, and putting ideas into logical groups or categories.

The next part of the book deals with the skills a good project manager needs: how to make good decisions; how to write clear specifications; how to develop good communication skills; and what to do when things go wrong (break the problem into small pieces).

The third part of the book deals with the psychological and political part of project management skills – building trust through commitment; getting things done by drawing up clear priorities and plans of work; and recognising that big deadlines are a series of smaller deadlines

Hitting deadlines is like landing airplanes: you need a long, slow approach. And you want to be ready to take off again quickly, without having to do major repairs.

Along the way there are many interesting anecdotes from his years at Microsoft, so the theory is backed up by real-life practical examples. For anybody engaged in projects, whether as manager or humble foot soldier, this offers a clear and reassuring account of the whole process.

© Roy Johnson 2005

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Scott Berkun, The Art of Project Management, Sebastopol: CA, O’Reilly, 2005. pp.488. ISBN 0596007868


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Filed Under: Web design Tagged With: Management skills, Project management, Web design

The Essence of Computing Projects

June 14, 2009 by Roy Johnson

project writing skills for higher education

Projects are now a major part of most undergraduate and postgraduate courses – especially in sciences, business studies, and information technology. Students are required to draw on a number of different but important skills to complete their projects, and it’s not easy to know what’s involved. The Essence of Computing Projects is designed to explain what’s required. It covers surveying the literature, project writing skills, documenting software, time management, project management, and presentation skills.

Project writing skills The chapters follow the logical sequence of undertaking a project, starting from defining the nature of research itself, choosing a project and writing a proposal, then planning what you are going to write – including timing and scheduling.

When it comes to the process of searching and reviewing the literature, Christian Dawson makes sensible distinctions between what is required at undergraduate and postgraduate level. The chapter which deals with actually writing the project confronts some of the most common problems – and how to overcome them. Running out of time, dealing with interruptions and computer crashes; dealing with your supervisor; and working in teams.

The latter part of the book deals with the presentation of your report in written form. Here he stresses the importance of abstracts and structure, presenting data in graphs, pie charts, and bar charts, academic referencing, and two items of special interest – commenting on program code and writing user guides.

Finally he deals with the oral presentation skills required to present your project. It also looks forward to what follows in academic terms – publishing your work, funding, and intellectual ownership and copyright issues.

If you have a project as part of the next stage in your studies, this guide will give you an excellent account of what’s required. You will have to flesh out the details – but that’s exactly as it should be, isn’t it.

© Roy Johnson 2000

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Christian W. Dawson, The Essence of Computing Projects – A Student’s Guide, London: Prentice Hall, 2000, pp.176, ISBN: 013021972X


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Filed Under: Computers, Study skills, Writing Skills Tagged With: Computers, Computing projects, Project management, Technology

Tools for Complex Projects

July 16, 2009 by Roy Johnson

large scale project management skills

Tools for Complex Projects is not just about project management – but the management of complex and large scale projects. That complexity might be structural (building a large engineering plant) technical (developing a major new chemical) directional (a cross-national political initiative) or temporal (national oil supply during a time of war). The overall strategy of Kaye Remington and Julien Pollack’s approach to this subject is to examine the nature of these complex projects in some theoretical detail and then to offer a series of practical tools for dealing with them. There are of course other ways of categorising complexity – most commonly by scale or cost of a project, its duration, or the degree of risk to its owners. Their claim is that the four categories they have chosen are more fundamental and will cover any project.

Tools for Complex ProjectsIt has to be said that the theoretical part of the book is extraordinarily dry reading:

During implementation, variance control must be vigilant so that stakeholders are kept informed of possible cost blow-outs. Techniques like Earned Value Management (EVM) a tool which links scope with time and cost, can be used to translate schedule slippages into budgetary terms.

Discussing the features of large and complex projects only really comes to life when concrete examples are used to illustrate the argument. It’s only when a chemical refinery, an ocean-going oil tanker, or the production of a full-length feature film hove into view that the picture snaps into focus.

The same questions are posed in each of these cases. What are the implications for communication and control within the project? What does the project manager need to do to in terms of team support, finance, scheduling procurement, and risk analysis?

In fact the larger the project, the more likely it is that these issues will be delegated to individual experts. The project manager however must have the skills to keep the larger picture and the smaller details in mind at the same time. S/he must have the capacity to be one moment an eagle, and the next a mouse.

The second part of the book looks at a number of ‘tools’ for dealing with the problems generated by complex projects. These in general are suggestions for defining the problems that arise using charts and ratings boxes; drawing up one-page ‘maps’ which show the ‘anatomy’ or connections in a complex system; and collaborative working arrangements (CWAs) instead of adversarial lump-sum contracts in the construction industry to reduce budget over-runs.

Some are fairly obvious such as splitting a large-scale complex problem down into a series of smaller discrete projects which are easier to manage and complete. Another is defining quite carefully the roles and responsibilities of project team members.

Multiple tools may be employed where uncertainties are created in long term projects (due to political or environmental changes, or financial problems arising out of volatile stock-markets. In such cases, a cost review might take precedence over an examination of delivery dates.

Risk-assessment maps can be drawn up to calculate the possible effects of worst-case scenarios. These look something like TV weather forecasts, where the arrows get bigger and are packed together more tightly – to show where the danger lies and where an emergency procedure needs to be put in place.

It occurred to me whilst reading this book that one of the largest and most complex projects I could think of was governing a country. I wonder if Gordon Brown or George Bush use any such management tools whilst simultaneously running democracies and waging costly wars – which we pay for. Somehow I doubt it, but maybe they should.

© Roy Johnson 2007

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Kaye Remington and Julien Pollack, Tools for Complex Projects, London: Gower, 2007, pp.211, ISBN: 0566087413


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Web ReDesign: Workflow that Works

June 19, 2009 by Roy Johnson

managing large scale web site makeovers

This is a book about managing Web re-design projects – but in fact the general principles could be applied to any large project. And the details could be applied to any first time Web design. The authors make it clear that they are not offering a Web design manual. It’s about project management. But the issues of what makes an efficient site can’t help keep cropping up again and again in the advice they offer. The main import of their strategy is to suggest timelines, planning schedules, and checklists for project teams involved in big site re-designs.

Web ReDesign: Workflow that WorksIt’s all fairly logical and obvious when you see it written down, but of course many businesses don’t work in this manner. There’s a relentlessly detailed approach to identifying and documenting every smallest feature of the client’s business and requirements. The problem with this approach is that it would cost an enormous amount in person-hours just to gather the information, irrespective of how useful it proved to be. I wonder how many consultancies could afford to factor in such workloads without fear of pricing themselves out of the contract.

The book is packed with worksheets and checklists, most of which are downloadable from the book’s own Web site. They even show examples of how to set charges and create a commercial agreement. There are useful definitions of the roles undertaken by various members of a project team – from the manager to designers and ‘backend engineers’.

There’s a good chapter on designing the structure of a site, naming its parts, and labelling its contents. They also deal with colour as a navigational and design aid, then finish with advice on preparing for and delivering a site launch, before maintaining it.

Almost every page has a screen shot or a diagram, and there are plenty of pullout boxes with tips and advice on everything from style sheets and file sizes, to testing, upgrading, and evaluation. It’s a bit like looking at a Web site in print form.

Two of the nicest features of the book are that their chapters and interspersed with examples of site makeovers, and there are mini essays from design and usability gurus every few pages. These make excellent reading.

This is all very thorough, and it will be of most use to designers and consultants working on big sites – but many of the detailed points of advice will be just as useful to serious small and home-based site designers.

© Roy Johnson 2003

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Kelly Goto and Emily Cotler, Web ReDesign: Workflow that Works, Indianapolis (IN): New Riders, 2002, pp.253, ISBN 0735710627


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