Into the Cogniverse with Jimena Perez
On Mexican design culture, the link between discipline and creativity, and how the two worlds of design & engineering grow together.
Jimena Perez is a senior strategist at Idea Couture in Mexico.
Could you introduce yourself a bit?
My name is Jimena. I work in Idea Couture’s Mexican office, which is located in Monterrey, in the north of the country. I was born in Guadalajara, grew up and lived for 18 years in a beach town called Puerto Vallarta. I studied industrial design in Vancouver and Guadalajara, and then worked for some studios that design products and furniture. 4,5 years ago I joined Idea Couture.
On paper I’m a Senior Strategist, but since we’re a small studio, I’m working cross-functional and cross-discipline, from strategy to research to design. But mostly, I’m into strategy and client relationships.
What’s the part you enjoy the most about your job?
I see both advantages and disadvantages in being a small team: We get to do a little bit of everything; we can work in several different disciplines and for a lot of different industries. That’s very interesting: instead of becoming an expert on a particular thing, you can gain a breadth of knowledge, which I really enjoy.
What’s the most important quality one needs in this job?
You need to be curious. That counts for any designer. You have to embrace and be friends with uncertainty. As designers you know this: you spend so much time trying to understand things, and that’s probably because creative minds tend to be always looking for answers. That’s the most valuable and important thing in our discipline.
You know how older generations wouldn’t ask questions and accept what their parents said? Instead, I would ask “why, why, why?” about anything. My mum tells me, “That’s your favourite thing to say! I really don’t understand who taught you to ask ‘why?’”. When I started working in strategy and saw the “Five Whys” technique, I thought, “Oh my god, I was born a designer!”
In the end, we’re all designers of our lives; everyone is constantly designing, deciding what the next picture of their own life story will look like. But the richest part of being a professional designer is that we’re not comfortable with a first answer. That’s the most important thing when working with different industries: you need to be aware that you’re not an expert in every industry. That’s ok, but be humble and say, “I don’t know what the problem is, I don’t know what you need, but I’m willing to figure it out with you.” Don’t get frustrated and embrace uncertainty.
How do you think design impacts society differently than other disciplines?
We need all the disciplines. There are more precise disciplines than design, which the world needs to get some sort of structure. But — and this is such a cliché — design helps to think outside of the box, to give the world another perspective, and to make things, perhaps, a little bit more challenging and enjoyable. There are different paths to get to a solution, and design gives us the opportunity of getting to a solution in an amicable, humanised, and fun way.
Speaking of fun, what do you do to unwind from work?
I like to think that being a designer is exciting. Sometimes it’s time consuming and stressful, but once I’m in a project I honestly appreciate the time.
Outside work, I’m completely obsessed with cuisine. I love cooking — I’m a complete foodie. And I don’t just love eating the food, I like preparing the food; I see it as an art and a way to design an experience.
I also enjoy dancing. It’s in my Latin veins, you know! I did classical ballet for a long time and I started a career as a dancer when I was about sixteen. I wrote a letter to the director of a university and I told him, “I want to be a professional dancer. I want to pursue that after high-school. I want to join your program.” Just as a listener, because I hadn’t graduated yet. He accepted, and I started dancing 6 hours a day. It was so much work, but I loved it. In the end, I decided not to do it professionally as I didn’t want it to be something stressful. Instead, I decided to go to art school! It was there that I then changed to design, and now, I’m an industrial designer.
Does dancing influence your work?
Definitely! Classical ballet is a very strict discipline. While I never felt like I gave up anything, my mum thought I was crazy to skip parties for rehearsals and to be on a diet to fit in my tutu. I learned a lot through dancing and studying movement and music theory. I can see a relationship between dance and design; both have an artistic and strategic side, and ultimately they are both languages spoken by those who create with passion.
I’ve followed my passion and I’m fortunate to say that I have many; all connected the arts. Maybe that’s because my mum is an architect and my dad is an industrial designer, I grew up in a world of creatives. It probably also has to do with the culture in Mexico, which is very open to arts. It got my creative juices flowing, and I learned to embrace that.
How does that manifest itself in your work?
In Mexico, it’s hard to build a career in design. It’s poorly accepted and less appreciated than in other countries. But dancing helped me understand that you can make a living out of something if you’re passionate enough. While I decided not to follow dancing, I decided to follow my other passion: to create things, to design. And on that path I learned about design strategy which gave me the opportunity to work in the field.
What are hot topics currently in the Mexican design community?
I think that Mexican product design stands out from the rest of the world as we experience a rebirth of ancient cultures. A lot of product and industrial designers are currently working with craftsmen from indigenious cultures. They don’t just incorporate craftsmanship into product design, but they really collaborate together, fusing techniques and letting the culture influence the design.
Take my earrings for example: they’re made with the very old technique Talavera from Puebla, a city in the center of Mexico, but by a contemporary Mexican design brand. You see that with a lot of things now. People value these types of craftsmanship and materials. While we are a big country with influences from all over the world, a lot of designers are also becoming very conscious about buying local, the circular economy, and so on. It’s a hot topic and it would be interesting to see how that can permeate design strategy. Stay tuned!
Are these topics already part of your work at Idea Couture?
I keep it in mind for Mexican clients as I really want to push the Mexican market, designers, and local communities forward. Some peers at Idea Couture worked for a large Mexican tile company and the outcome of the project was a collection of designs titled “The beauty of chaos”, which exemplifies exactly what Mexico is. They collaborated with a lot of designers from Mexico City, which is characterised by influences from the entire country, adorned by many architectural styles, and recognized as the 6th World Design Capital (the 1st in the Americas). The team tried to capture the city’s essence and pay it special homage.
I’ve worked on projects that touch upon the topic of circular economy, where you could see how different parts of the supply chain are affected by a new initiative or even the smallest change in a design. It makes you aware of how important support to the local economy is at the beginning, during the experience, and at the end of the life cycle of a product. I try to keep that in mind in all of my projects even when I’m working for clients outside of Mexico. If by any chance something of my culture can be of service or help to the project, then I bring it in.
That makes sense! So, Idea Couture was acquired by Cognizant in 2016; what perspective do you bring as a designer to such a big tech firm?
I really enjoy working one-on-one with people, in a team, in physical spaces, doing different things to stimulate creativity. I think the tech world tends to be more linear in the process. Bringing us in as designers and as a Latin culture was a really good addition, because even if at times our worlds don’t align, there’s a lot that we can learn from each other. We can learn the IT methods and the agile way of working. And we can bring this very creative, fun perspective to the table, which is important to not only give a solution, but a thoughtful solution. That way, ideally it becomes a company in which people enjoy the process of working on a product or service.
How did you experience the merging of Idea Couture and Cognizant?
I joined about the same time when Idea Couture was acquired. So in my first year, the merging started while there was still the Idea Couture culture.
It was a rollercoaster of emotions, a clash of cultures. When you graduate from design school you don’t really think that you’re going to work for a very big IT corporation. You have the dream of having your own studio and creating world-changing products and designs, stuff like that. But I ended up in this path, and I’m grateful that I have the opportunity to be part of such a large corporation.
There’s so much you can learn. Even if sometimes we don’t like it, there’s a lot of discipline and tools that come with being part of a large corporation and I’m grateful for that. Not a lot of designers are open to be part of this other world. We’re a little antagonized by the idea of a corporation. But if you give it a try, there are a lot of good things that it can give you as both a creative and as a person. It also gives us the chance to know other people from other creative disciplines, which is super valuable.
What would you say is the biggest difference between Idea Couture and Cognizant?
We have two clashes of cultures. We have the designer versus the engineer, and Mexico versus the US. In a design studio we’re more accustomed to doing things for the user. We really try to be the Robin Hoods of design; we try to help the person in need and fix the problem. We’re very passionate about it; it doesn’t matter if we spend a lot of hours and a lot of thought in that, we just want to nail it. Whereas, the way I see it, the engineers follow a more structured process and stick to a fixed amount of time. For them, the important thing is delivering. For us, the most important thing is what we’re delivering. This is a bit of a clash as it affects times, ways of working, processes. We believe that research is everything, whereas to the engineers it may appear less important, just a ‘part of the process’. There’s negotiation between our and their processes, which is the biggest point of tension.
What would you like to ask the next person we interview?
I think this initiative of creating connections is great. I’m always willing to work on different projects, everywhere in the world, with every discipline. I really enjoy that. That’s why my question would be: in a utopia world, in which there are no boundaries, how would you imagine that the different creative offices within Cognizant could collaborate?
For me, to answer my own question, I would love to have mentorship programs. Say, I wanna go to the Netherlands, I’m interested in a UX skill and I want to learn it there. Of course, you can learn a UX skill from Mexico, but we know as creatives that it’s very different if you have input from other cultures and the possibility of projects and challenges that differ to the ones in your country. It would stimulate the design community within Cognizant, strenthen the team and help the business to lead in the market.
With acquiring design studios, Cognizant managed to get in the creative side — but now we have to feed that creativeness. There are so many talented people; I’ve worked with Cadient, with the Toronto office, with the Mexican office, and I’m sure you have a lot of talented people at Mirabeau as well. I wish we could team up.
About
Into the Cogniverse dreams of a workplace where people feel a sense of human connectedness across the globe. We share the unique stories of individuals to build and strengthen relationships between Cognizant creatives, wherever they may be located. We bridge distances, stimulate curiosity, and facilitate discovery.
Want to tell your story?
If you’re a Cognizant colleague active in the creative industry, we love to hear from you! Get in touch with Annegret Bönemann or Lennart Overkamp. We’re aiming for a roster of interviewees as diverse and dispersed as possible.
