Advertising bad. Human centred design good.
Hi friends. I’m Rita, designer at Common Good, an amazing design studio in Manchester.
In this blog I hope to articulate why advertising feels bad and human centred design does not. I’ll do this by telling you about my experience of leaving seven years of advertising work life in 2015 and starting a new career.
Me & advertising
Before this role I spent seven years on the dark side: advertising. I was a ‘Digital Creative’, a ‘Producer’, a ‘Digital Designer’… I’m not kidding you, at one point I was a ‘Digital Creative Project Manager’, a puzzling title that I liked because it allowed me to do anything.
I found my changing job titles fascinating. It seemed that I needed to have many hats. Turns out, having different hats allows a person to enter different conversations with a level of authority that makes other people listen or include the person. I had to be a project manager sometimes to speak to project managers, or a designer to speak to other designers. I changed hats to break into silos. Below a video of me in the middle of the Isobar Middle East office in Dubai, changing hats, having breakfast and working in a silo.
Silos made me sad.
I couldn’t collaborate with others due to the strict grouping of people into departments and roles. I didn’t have bridges to cross in between teams or individuals. Work seemed to go as far as my group of people could take it. Then you’d hand over to another group to do something. For example, ideate the big idea, then pass it onto the creative director to develop, then to the account manager to explain to the client. Hundreds of hours lost in translation.
Leaving
Having reached maximum frustration with silos and selling, I gave myself the opportunity to leave advertising in 2015. My transformational experience was completing my masters degree at Hyper Island, in Manchester. I fully recommend this course. It will change you. Below is another clip from me in the middle working — this time however, collaboratively.
The Hyper Island MA degree requires some serious academic effort which is achievable with planning and discipline. What is really hard is giving into the process. Unlearning and re-defining yourself as a professional takes enormous levels of courage. Courage to dance and say ‘I don’t know but I’m willing to find out’.
Why I left
In my opinion, advertising kills the problem solving abilities of a designer. After my experience at Hyper Island, writing my thesis on work culture and joining Common Good, I now know that designers need purpose to feel good and love what they do. We design because we’re connecting to a problem and applying our creativity, outlook in life and methods to solve it — with other people. No silos.
Purpose
I worked for at least five different advertising agencies in my time and none of them had a real company-wide purpose. They had a vision, beliefs, official processes and many other things that made them great, but no core purpose that lived in all projects and people.
There wasn’t any clear values informing the company’s decisions; and as a designer in one of many teams, this was obvious. I didn’t like it. Nobody liked it. The ambiguity of any situation made it possible for people with personal agendas to rock the boat and cause emotional stirs with or without intention.
Innovation
The methods I learnt in advertising (pitching, brainstorming, doing decks, briefings…) were well thought through initially, but not iterated upon. Processes did not adapt to new people joining the team or to the project at hand. This led to repetitive approaches.
One of my agencies published a book about the “Way” the agency worked, first published in 2010. Quite impressive. By 2015 however my colleagues and I were still wondering what the book was or what it said. The ‘way’ the book advertised wasn’t actually adopted. It was theoretical.
I need to work with people who want to push their tools and methods to be more relevant and useful every time.
Drive
Switching jobs every two years is an industry standard in advertising and in a small ecosystem where everyone knows everyone I knew who was planning a switch months before their peers did. Individualism is key in the sector.
Rumours about bad company culture and unhelpful behaviours by individuals was the main topic of conversation. Politics and agendas everywhere made it feel like breathing polluted air often.
I left advertising because the only reward for working hard seemed to be profit and awards (that lead to profit) — instead of the satisfaction of adding value and respecting my needs for rest and learning.
Me & Human-Centred Design
Purpose
Common Good has a company-wide interest and purpose of adding value. I know it and if you ask anyone in the office, they’ll tell you the same thing proudly.
I know that I can do great work if I add value, because the team around me will do everything to make that happen — because it’s what we all want. Being aligned feels so good.
Titles don’t matter at Common Good and I’m doing just fine as a designer. What’s most important is to build a strong culture, learn to work together, support each other and push towards adding value — all the while respecting our need for rest.
Innovation
Most companies applying or making a business out of HCD practices can be seen adapting their methods to fit specific projects. At Common Good we use well known human centred design practices but allow ourselves to choose our tools and our next step. We sense and then we respond.
By changing, adapting and even creating our own approaches we ensure that a problem is solved and our client is happy. They feel glad they used design thinking over other methods and are happy that we fixed a thing for them (or three). That feels really good.
Drive
Leadership, my colleagues and I are driven by the desire to do good work for good people. We’re all here to contribute and use design to solve problems. This feels different and so much better than advertising did because helping others is more rewarding that profit and awards. I’ve just said a very obvious thing, but as a young person in advertising, nobody told me this.
The bar for my future workplaces is now set at:
- Has a meaningful and pervasive purpose.
- Fosters and allows true innovation at all levels.
- Rewards the drive to help others. Starting with our colleagues!
In summary:
What about you?
I wanted to tell you my story about being a designer in two different environments and hopefully encourage you to question the environments you work in. If it helps, here’s a worksheet you can use to evaluate your surroundings. Do reach out with feedback if you use it please!
You can think about and see what is the by-product of clashing or aligning purposes. You’ll be able to objectively evaluate what needs to change in your work experience and I invite you to hack it and make it happen. It can be done and you can love your job. I’ve done it. :)
Unicorn. Out.
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Update: I eventually moved on from Common Good in 2019 only because irresistible tech and service design adventures awaited. Here’s a love letter to my team and below is a video showing you what years or over achieving in a purpose driven environment looks like.
