Shedding some light on design firms and Web 2.0

I received this very thoughtful email from a Douglass Turner and thought that it would serve better to answer his questions here, where we discuss the business of the design industry. It also prodded me to dig around the net a bit and find out what design firms are doing online. Douglass' email quoted in blue, my responses in black.

I am an Apple Computer alumnus and Silicon Valley veteran. I like to think of myself as the vanguard of a new wave of professionals from Apple, Pixar and other elite, visionary companies whose skillset spans design and technology.I recently returned to the States (Boston area) after eight years in Scandinavia (Iceland) involved in Internet projects, mobile wireless projects. I am currently looking for a position in the design industry and as I research the state of the industry I notice something truly strange: someone forgot to tell the elite design agencies how to properly leverage the Internet platform.How can companies so talented in other domains so completely miss the fundamental transformative and disruptive power of  Internet 2.0?

Here, I'm going to assume that that 'elite design agencies' refers to those who specialize in product and industrial design, for the branding and interaction design firms that I know of are certainly leveraging the internet platform. Some examples that come immediately to mind include our own contributor,  Luke Wroblewski, Dirk Knemeyer, Management Innovation Group - whose roots are certainly in Information Architecture and Interaction Design, Adaptive Path - while not 'designers' in the classical sense are certainly active in Internet 2.0, and of course more conventional design studios such as Method, Inc , who just launched their "Interface Innovation" at MacWorld 2006 and the Apple Store. [disclaimer: that was the project I worked on last fall]

For example, try and find an RSS feed at IDEO, Davos 2006 attendee and America's poster child of all things innovative. No luck? How about a weblog? Nuthin huh? Well surely they at least have web page of collected podcasts of David Kelley's most inspirational talks. Nope?

Here though, I must agree that these are missing from IDEO's site. It would indeed be nice to have a web page of collected podcasts like Lunar Design has here, and The Prepared Mind has here. As for design firm weblogs - there are individual weblogs of practicing industrial designers - Metacool by Diego Rodriguez who works at IDEO and teaches at Stanford's d.school is one of the better known, and Frogdesign, while not maintaining their own weblog, contribute a weekly newsletter to Gizmodo. Cheskin has a blog where their VP Design Strategy contributes along with other designers, both Lisa Leckie and Joanne Mendel are alums from the Institute of Design.  And Pentagram's Michael Beirut is the founder of The Design Observer - which needs no introduction.

Kinda weird, no? Hang on a second, how can these companies adequately advice clients on design strategy with such a glaring weakness in their skillset? I just don't get. >From Pimp my Ride to Google Maps Mashups consumers have risen up and taken control of their product experiences to a degree never seen before. The Internet is at the center of this trend and elite design firms appear asleep at the wheel. They remain firmly planted somewhere circa 1995 cranking out pointless Flash powered vanity websites. 

If you could shed some light on this odd state of affairs I would really appreciate it.

To summarize, there are firms who are indeed leveraging the power of the web and availing themselves of podcasts, blogs and other media to communicate their strategies. At the same time, there are a number of firms that could roll off the tip of my tongue who aren't using web 2.0 technologies. But does it necessarily mean that this is a glaring weakness in their skillset?

Yes - if, they are in the business of creating online strategies focused around the power of the technology that underpins the changing web.

No - if, they believe that they should focus on their core competencies - creating customer experiences and enabling users around products and processes that reach far beyond the web.

It would be easy to say, IMHO, that what an IDEO needs to do in order to address this 'glaring weakness' is put up podcasts - but the question then becomes, do they really need to? Why do firms blog or create podcasts? In order to communicate their design philosophy, create a brand, have a conversation with their audience. Are we really unaware of IDEO's design philosophy, brand or their audience? Their audience was at Davos, and they were conversing with them there.

On the other hand, for argument's sake, unlike the majority of the design firms mentioned above, IDEO is the single largest design firm with almost 400 employees - a corporation in the design industry. I'm minded of this post on "Big Blogging - 5 Steps to corporate rollout" which articulates some of the issues around corporate blogging. Perhaps it would be the same as asking why a DesignContinuum (250 plus employees) is not blogging? Because a quick look on their front page tells you about all the other people talking about them.

The bottomline, imho, is it's a choice, and it seems likely that there will come a time when not having a 'conversational two way' presence on the internet will be a 'must' and not a choice, just like today not having a website if you are a company is unthinkable. But is it necessarily a reflection of weakness and a demonstration of their 'backwardness' if they are innovators? I don't think so. The two concepts are separate and cannot be equated.