Last Tuesday, Jeevak was invited to speak at Plugged-In, an evening discussion at Pillar Technology in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Jeevak, VP and Director of Strategic Growth at Sundberg-Ferar, presented alongside Pillar’s VP of Digital Experience and Strategic Growth, Jeff Ivany, on the topic of “Good Design is (Truly) Good Business” – based on the ever-true adage by late IBM president, Thomas J Watson Jr. The event was hosted at Pillar’s studio, The Forge, in Ann Arbor against the backdrop of a spectacular panoramic view of the city.
Jeevak and Jeff will also be speaking at the next Plugged–In event this Tuesday at Pillar’s Columbus location. The event is free and open to the public. For more information and to register, click here.
Despite the continued relevance of Watson’s principle since its inception in the 50s, many business leaders today are still unaware of the undeniable role of design in the success of their products and services. As a business leader, knowing how to harness design in your company strategy is essential to gaining market share and developing products and services that are truly sought-after by your customers. Good design, or the absence of it, will determine the extent to which your products answer your users’ desires and needs. Jeevak and Jeff’s presentations explained the factors that designers take into consideration to make sure products and services meet user needs, deliver value and are designed with excellence and purpose.
Jeevak began the evening by explaining the rigorous discipline of industrial design and its proper place in the product development process for businesses. Industrial designers draw on many factors to produce good designs that will delight stakeholders and drive business. They start the creative process by drawing on a broad understanding of design across many industries to inform the design of one product in a specific industry. They also rely on collaboration with team members from many disciplines to deliver as thorough and cohesive a solution as possible. This kind of cross-pollination of ideas from other industries and individual perspectives results in a stronger end product.
As industrial designers, we believe that for the customer, the truest and most authentic expression of a brand promise is in the product itself. Generating value in a product from a purely business perspective means taking into account market competition, threats of new entrants or substitutes, and the bargaining power of suppliers and buyers, to name a few. However, the designer creates value in the product itself by applying a deep understanding of human behavior, the culture and context for which the product is being designed, and how the product will be perceived and experienced by the user. The latter factors are what deliver a product that users want to buy. Creating products that customers want to buy, in turn, drives business.
Jeff followed giving an overview of the creative process that drives innovation at Pillar Technology. They focus on delivering quality fast in the world of software design. To achieve this, they place an emphasis in their design process on accelerating the phases of defining the design problem and ideating on a solution in order to get to creating a prototype and testing it as quickly as possible. This way, more time is spent in testing the design and learning how to improve it which delivers a quality design faster.
Pillar Technology is a software technology consulting company with over 20 years of experience in uncovering and executing industry-disrupting opportunities across the nation. Their portfolio spans work in the medical, mobility and agricultural fields to name just a few, and this year, they were listed by Inc. 5000 as one of the fastest growing, privately held companies in America.
This event was a wonderful collaboration between Sundberg-Ferar and Pillar Technology, two studios highlighting the value and indispensability of design in any business strategy – both in the physical and digital worlds. We hope to see you for another inspiring discussion in Columbus this Tuesday at the next Plugged–In event!