David Lewis, Bang & Olufsen’s chief designer, discusses the company’s unusual approach to design with The Wall Street Journal.
Along the way he reveals the pioneering B&O design team only spends 2-3 days a month at B&O headquarters and works externally the rest of the time, they never meet, they have no fixed process, and they build initial versions of products out of cardboard and paper.
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: You spend just two or three days per month at B&O headquarters in Struer. Doesn’t this slow the design process?
MR. LEWIS: It’s a great, concentrated way of working. I come fresh and clean every other Friday all the way from Copenhagen and see things in a different way, because I am not at all part of the system there. I sit down with the engineers and go through 10 or so projects in various stages. There are thousands of things to discuss — the minutiae of angles, coloring, buttons, graphics and more.
This is not just my way of working. All designers for B&O — not just me and my team of six — are external. The company believes in it. My six-member team aside, designers for B&O don’t ever meet, we don’t have any cooperation with one another at all.
WSJ: How does the design process work when you are rarely on-site?
MR. LEWIS: Every time we design a new product, it’s like starting all over. Time frames, technology and demands are different each time. So we don’t have a process per se.
My designers and I do have an approach, though. Whether we are given a brief for a new product or we come up with an idea on our own — and it’s a fair mix of the two — we don’t sketch it. We model it out of cardboard, pieces of paper, little bits of plastic, whatever’s on hand.
We build it up little by little, the way a sculptor does. We stand around the object, have an open dialogue and modify it as we go along. Then, I bring that same model along when I go to Struer. That way all sides can see what the design is about and why it’s essential to do it this way and not another.
WSJ: How much does the final product depart from that cardboard version?
MR. LEWIS: Hardly. When it comes out unpacked at the shop, usually it’s exactly what was envisioned. One example: In 1993 B&O management said, “Make us a new speaker.” Just that. I had the idea to make something less present in a room, something that could offset the bulky television sets that still existed back then. Essentially, a loudspeaker that you could hear, not see. So we modeled ultra-slender column speakers with cardboard and plastic. Once it was in three dimensions that way, we could see all the details and really feel the design…
WSJ: How do you get your inspiration, your crazy ideas?
I often just sit and look out my office window for a long time, thinking. Why does this look so terrible, why can’t we do this or that?
I also visit art galleries and museums as well as Danish antique dealers with architectural furniture and the like, from the 1930s to ‘50s. I have a lot of it at home. It interests and inspires me.
Related
Getting Real: Built-in seats in “A Pattern Language” [SvN]
Meetings Are Toxic [Getting Real]
Finding fresh inspiration [SvN]
Martin Edic
on 30 Jun 08As cool as this is I have to point out that they have the luxury of designing devices that sell at two to three times the price of similar products from mass manufacturers who can’t afford to reinvent the wheel every time. Is this a good design approach- frankly, I don’t think it is from an efficiency POV (and I’m specifically talking about the ‘building from the ground up’ aspect not the telecommute- no problem with that!).
mkb
on 30 Jun 08“they build initial versions of products out of cardboard and paper”
I don’t think that’s really all that unusual. When I worked for a printer manufacturer, we had a cardboard and paper model of our new model’s enclosure. We chucked it when we moved the office, and the person who threw it in the dumpster got an award for ‘most expensive piece of cardboard disposed of.’
mkb
on 30 Jun 08In addition, this excellent book has numerous paper, foam, etc. constructions of Apple gear that never made it past the conceptual stages.
Rick
on 30 Jun 08I think it’s interesting that he thinks it’s good for the engineers if they have to struggle to make one of their designs work.
Like making something fancy in photoshop, handing it over to the devs and going on a vacation.
Tim Walker
on 30 Jun 08To my mind, Martin Edic’s point begs a question: Is it that B&O has the “luxury” to do this because they’re charging 3x as much for their products as mass-producers . . . or could it be that they’re able to charge 3x precisely because they invest so much in doing design a different way.
I don’t have an answer to this question—I just thought it should be aired.
Mark Sigal
on 30 Jun 08This methodology raises the design question of whether it is better to start by building/optimizing a piece of the whole, build from inside-out, outside-in or some other innovation approach.
I have come to embrace a methodology I call ‘Start in the Middle’ that begins with the premise of “job” orientation, and then defines use cases around a given set of jobs your target user would hire the product (or service) for.
The idea of Starting in the Middle is that once you have a designated a job or two that the product or service should be optimized around from a use case perspective, you can start in the middle of the use case and build out the skeletal workflows and user experience constructs integral to supporting the job.
This keeps you grounded on outcome enable-ment, while anchoring you in the ‘already in progress’ experience desired and as such, is reasonably specific.
Here is a post on the approach:
Start in the Middle http://thenetworkgarden.com/weblog/2006/03/start_in_the_mi.html
Check it out if interested.
Cheers,
Mark
David Andersen
on 30 Jun 08Is it that B&O has the “luxury” to do this because they’re charging 3x as much for their products as mass-producers . . . or could it be that they’re able to charge 3x precisely because they invest so much in doing design a different way.
Both, in part, I’d guess. Why do people buy B&O products? Are they worth 3x the mainstream products? How many people buy them because owning them makes them feel exclusive?
Matt
on 30 Jun 08I love hearing stories from these types of companies and seeing how relevant they are to designing anything.
Former B&O lead designer, Jacob Jensen, had this simple approach for knowing which design was the one>
“The only way I can work is to make 30 – 40 models before I find the right one. The question is, when do you find the right one?
My method is, when I have reached a point where I think, okay, that’s it, there it is, I put the model on a table in the living room, illuminate it, and otherwise spend the evening as usual, and go to bed.
The next morning I go in and look at it, knowing with 100 per cent certainty, that I have 6 – 7 seconds to see and decide whether it’s right or wrong.”
Al abut
on 30 Jun 08Their process of skipping sketches and going straight to physical models reminds me of the 37s rationale for skipping photoshop.
Rudiger
on 30 Jun 08You say “Bang & Olufsen design team avoids meetings/process”, huh?
Maybe that’s why their products aren’t very good.
CJ Curtis
on 30 Jun 08I think it is about exclusivity of owning B&O. Some people have to have it…just like a Tiffany diamond, or whatever.
No doubt they sell high end hardware. But their prices reflect the cost of their design, which is often downright bizarre.
Daniel
on 30 Jun 08Being Danish, and a design/engineering student, I’ve been exposed to more than my fair share of B&O this-and-that.
And I don’t really have much good to say about them. David Lewis is in the fortunate position (for him) that he totally dictates the design and the product portfolio. It’s basically: If he wants to design a DVD player, B&O will build a DVD player. Now, the question is of course whether or not B&O should really make another DVD player, yet that seems very secondary to Lewis’ design. Of course, they can veto it (I’m sure black-and-white television sets would be much prettier, as the B&O aesthetic is black-and-black, but they’re not that backwards) but that doesn’t seem to be the case. In short, most of the products seem very ill-advised. Fine, they’re not cutting-edge, but they’re not simple either, as other proven-tech products can be. Quite the contrary.
Anyway, with that out of the way, it should be noted that Lewis is not B&O. He’s rather a tenured designer. Bang & Olufsen themselves have a very, very, very detailed, fixed, and comprehensive process they follow. It’s called TOP (can’t remember what it stands for) and encompasses every single thing B&O does to take an inanimate, non-functional cardboard Lewis-prototype to market. It’s a good process, but it’s entirely dependent on Lewis getting ideas. Sure, the design should dictate what happens, but you guys say “let software push back” and preach using a little judo, and so on. There’s none of that in Struer. They’ll jump backwards through hoops to get it to work, and pass the comlexity and usability buck onto the customer.
B&O is the anti-thesis to you guys, sorry.
Daniel
on 30 Jun 08Addendum: I should add that Lewis’ approach is fine in itself, and that cardboard mock-ups and prototypes are a wonderful design tool. Dyson does the same. And again, B&O’s development process is fine in itself.
The trouble is the disconnect between the two. When Lewis delivers a design, that’s pretty much it for him. In your book (if my memory serves me) you advocate 3 man teams: one designer, one developer, and one who can do a little of both. That 3rd person is missing in B&O’s structure, and kept form appearing. And the designer and the developer are kept worlds apart on purpose. It’s not a good way to work.
Erik Peterson
on 02 Jul 08Perhaps, if the mass manufacturers took a risk on reinvention, they would offer additional value justifying a similar price.
Colin
on 03 Jul 08It makes me wonder….has anyone tried mocking up a website or web app with ‘cardboard and paper’? It sounds ridiculous, but certain people seem to have amazing skills with paper and scissors (i.e. scrapbookers) that don’t translate to a computer. And, while certainly a slow and slightly less flexible process, it may turn out some unique results…
This discussion is closed.