Page 128 - Design meets Business:An Ethnographic Study of the Changing Work and Occupations of Creatives

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Design Meets Business
Theme
Appropriating Space
‘How does
a service designer ought to appropriate space?’
Organizing Time
‘How does a Service De- signer ought to organize time?’
Explanation
Decorating Work Space. For all designers, it was common to work in a creative work environment, decorated with stationary typ- ical to design- ers’ identity like Post-its, Sharpies, drawings and posters
Adopting
a flexible approach to organizing time. While in design pro- jects design- ers followed a project plan- ning, between pre-planned presentations and delivera- bles they pre- ferred to keep the planning of work activities open-ended.
Including clients in projects. Following the principle of co-creation, designers considered it all important to involve clients in their design processes.
Negotiations
Craft Designers: The craft designers were proponents of working independently from clients, keeping their workspace separated from clients.
Business designers: The busi- ness designers emphasized the necessity of including the clients in the workspace of designers, making them part of their work environment.
Craft Designers: The craft de- signers considered it important to spend time on making arti- facts, while the business design- ers emphasized the importance of developing good content. The craft designers did not want to spend time on additional tasks that were business-related.
Business designers: The business designers preferred to spend their time on the content of their work, strengthening the ‘story’ of their designs, and when needed spending time on business activi- ties and client requests.
Craft Designers: The craft designers were used to devel-
op their work independently,
only show their designs when they considered it ‘ready’ on pre-defined moments (such
as presentations). As a conse- quence, they often rejected client involvement in projects. They tend to identify end-users as key audiences.
Business designers: The business designers involved clients more often and tried to show interme- diate results to clients when they asked for it. They tend to identify the clients as a key audience.
Empirical Example(s)
“The client needs to trust what we do, and some designers might interpret his request [to sit with the designers] as a lack of trust. They do not see it as something personal. I think it is also not good to completely close off, and defend ourselves all the time” (Interview, business designer)
Jane asked the other designers: ‘where is Nadia?’ I [fieldworker] responded her that Nadia went to a little meeting room with the clients. Upon hearing this, Cleo said: ‘if I was Nadia than I would not plan any meetings with the client in the afternoon because we need to work. They already saw our work last week, there is nothing to show now’. ...We need to have time to work alone. We need our own time, to be crea- tive’. (Field notes, 24.09.2016)
Nadia: do you know something else we should do with them when they are here, maybe do the structure of the final presentation with them?
Carrie: but then they are not surprised
Nadia: I want to tell the story they want to hear. They are business people. (...)
Jane: do we trust them for that? Nadia: I do think we can trust them.
Carrie: also, we did a lot for them already but this... And the poster, do we present it like this? I know they pay us, but come on. (Field notes, 03.04.2017)
Involving Clients
‘When and how do Ser- vice Designers include clients in their work?’
Table 3.2
Intra-Occupational Negotiations to Define Occupational Mandate