Life of Design: Tony Eaton

Head of Product & Experience Design at Accenture Innovation Lab

Colin Campbell

Published in

Life of Thought

4 min readOct 29, 2017

1. How did you begin working in the wonderful world of design?

I graduated undergrad with a BFA in Painting and Printmaking and a minor in Sculpture and Art History. I really liked conceptual art like Duchamp and Cage. When VCU started the VCU Ad Center I applied for the graduate program in Advertising Art Direction. From there I have worked as a designer in branding and marketing, advertising, interactive advertising and now work in design strategy and innovation consulting.

2. What is the purpose of design?

Currently working as Design Strategist I create innovation strategies by facilitating and co-creating solutions with teams by applying Design Thinking.

From this vantage point I think the purpose of design is to help individuals and teams harness their innate creative talents to co develop innovative solutions to a multitude of challenges.

3. How would you describe the intent (mission) behind Accenture’s design? What core problems are you trying to solve? What experiences are you trying to create?

Working as a Design Strategist I work within Accenture’s Innovation Ecosystem. Our mission is to leverage human-centered design and design thinking methodologies to deliver innovative solutions for our clients and employees.

Currently I am working within the Future of HR team to help co-create with our global teams and employees what the future operating model of HR looks like at Accenture for our 400k+ employees. We will then work with our clients to help them change their HR Operating model to help keep pace with our ever changing world.

We are looking to create human-centered, customized experiences for our employees, our businesses and our clients that sense and respond to demand in real-time and rely on both people and machines to do so.

4. What’s one thing you believe about design that most others don’t?

The best solutions are co-created by individuals and teams.

Innovation comes from divergent ideas, emergent debate and conversation with solutions that are converged upon through the design thinking and innovation process. That relying on the cognitive phases of the creative process results in better ideas. That the cult of personality that relies on the “creative genius” is no longer helpful.

5. What key problems are often overlooked by design?

That depends on the person, design problems they face and the focus of the studio or team.

It also depends on what kind of design you are talking about, there are of course many fields in design.

Design Thinking methods do a wonderful job of developing ideas that are co-created and rely on the group to drive ideas along and shape solutions.

Perhaps other areas of design don’t do this as much or at all and may be missing out on potential innovative solutions that the design thinking process can deliver.

6. What is the most difficult thing about design?

Convincing some people that “Design” does not simply mean how something looks; colors, fonts, images, etc.

That design is a solutions based approach that solves challenges with co-created ideas and delivers human-centered innovations.

7. When is design done?

Solutions are ever changing — the only constant is change. Design should keep pace and never really be “done”.

8. What does the future of design look like to you?

More people, companies and teams regardless of their field employ and leverage the power of co-created solutions with Design Thinking methods, activities and process.