Anything elegant is often simple; not everything simple is elegant. Things that are simple are often user friendly, not everything simple is user friendly. Sometimes complexity is needed. Simplicity has different meanings. Good businesses need to be simple and easy to understand, and that’s the investment criteria for Warren Buffet. Businesses are getting too complex these days and most executives, let alone CEOs, know all the moving pieces or have any idea of their risk exposure. And some rely on SAP to manage their enterprise and that’s unrealistic.

There are many different kinds of simplicity, sometimes in form and sometimes in function and sometimes both. Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. once said, “I wouldn’t give a fig for simplicity on this side of complexity, but I would give my life for simplicity on the other side of complexity.” Elegance is “far side” simplicity that is emotionally engaging, profoundly intelligent, and artfully crafted to be two things at once: simple and powerful. Why elegance? Is it an elusive target? Is it only applicable to design?

A business model includes the raw function of what we (economist) refer to as its “industry” (it’s a bank or a retail chain or a newspaper, for example), but can also include particular ways of operating the raw function (a branchless bank or low-cost airline, a discount retailer or a free online social network, for example). Thus the business model “function” can shade into “performance” when particular approaches to types of customer, levels of service and brand ethos are considered. The architectural side of the business model is how the core components are stacked together and that impacts the function as well as the performance. It can be simple and elegant AND it can be complex and elegant.

The relation of conceptual design and social interaction is an important issue that influences the future of industrial design management. The Social Web has made astonishing progress the last two years, while advanced manufacturing technology emerges in an endless stream. The results are an extensive amount of accessible data that can promote endless new ideas for innovation. The environmental effect and social moral concept of design, the manufacturing place and method of product, the materials, function and usages of product, as well as abandonment and recovery of product, have become the new connotative meanings of conceptual design. This goes beyond traditional product design.

From the design of product into the design of service, the design of material object into the design of virtual product and the design of service into social interactions… a completely new mode of industrial design is emerging. The whole world is moving into the era of accelerated digitalization and extended collaboration. Then, maybe we should be training a new breed of design called “Social” Design? Well, that’s sounds like “Anthropology meets Human Factors”.

There’s a NY Times article on Japanese industrial design guru Naoto Fukasawa. It is an interesting story about his design journey. He is being called a later day Charles Eames and is highly respected in his field. According to Brown, “He is able to interpret the relationship between people and objects in a way that is at some level obvious, yet nuanced and sophisticated. His approach to design isn’t intellectual, it’s human.” This is an interesting one, I find that architects can design great things while striving for an unrealistic level of perfection, yet industrial designers are looking for all the human elements or solving little problems of our lives. And, product development folks just want the coolest features they can add to it. Three very different schools and these are just my personal experience working with some of the best people in the business.

The world of industrial design is a great culture consisting of humanistic spirit, appealing aesthetics, human factors, philosophy, science, human interactions, space and technology. The industrial design culture is a product of this period, stigmatized distinctly with times. It is easy to see that the method and means of industrial design needs to evolve. I propose we stop calling it “Industrial” Design. Let’s use “Sustainable” Design and “Social” Design instead. After all, these names are way cooler.

Image Source: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/182/381627583_64915bfae0.jpg ;http://www.bdonline.co.uk/Pictures/web/u/p/p/Naoto_Fukasawa_for_web.jpg