This article was written for Yanko Design (YD). As I know some Design Sojourn readers don’t really frequent YD, I have decided to republish and keep a record of the article here. Enjoy, and I’m looking forward to your comments if you have not left any before!

Have you ever wondered how you could be the best designer in the world? How to be that money making Design Virtuoso? I know I have. What about you?

I sort of knew what it took, but I never really knew what it took, until today. According to Chris Guillebeau, the man behind The Art of Nonconformity, if you want to a virtuoso, or just be really good with anything (music, sport, design etc.), you will need to invest approximately 14,600 hours of practice or training to get there.

The time cost of becoming a virtuoso—which I’m defining here simply as a measure of extremely high expertise—is about 10 years of consistent training for at least several hours a day. This is the consensus view from a wide scientific literature on virtuosos from various disciplines.

Roughly, this breaks down to 14,600 hours over the course of a decade (4 hours a day, no weekends or holidays). According to experts who study the experts, If you spend approximately 14,600 hours practicing the cello, learning to be a surgeon, playing chess, or doing any activity that has a progressive learning scale and can be evaluated by other experts, you’ll achieve the status of being a virtuoso.

Yes, there are some disclaimers, and the most important one is that you have to have somewhat of a talent at playing chess or cello to begin with. But most virtuosos are not innate geniuses; they are instead highly disciplined individuals.

Extracted from: The 14,600 Hours to Virtuosity by Chris Guillebeau.

Wow. Now you know why some designers seem to be able to sketch, CAD or even design better than others. They have invested the time and effort to perfect their art.

Why some designers are so good?
I am willing to bet that those car designers who are able to sketch or draw so well, have put in serious time into their profession. Furthermore, I will not be surprised if many of them have been already sketching cars before they even got into design school!

Therefore, if you want to be really good at something, you have to first set a goal and then put in the hours to get there.

When I started out my design career, I was an old school designer living in a transition period between 2D and 3D. I had no 3D skills and no job because all the design firms were only hiring CAD jockeys at that time. Therefore I was determined to learn 3D and be the best CAD jockey there was. I made a decision to be very good at Rhino3D, in an environment dominated by Alias and Pro-Engineer.

So I put in the hours, invested weekends, read the Rhino Manual from cover to cover (I kid you not!), and did all the tutorials. Not only that, I searched out every hint and tip there was on the web, and even participated in the Rhino software Beta feedback team. In no time I was churning out Rhino CAD files dead quick and to a quality that was even manufacturing ready!

Passion and Dedication.
Chris talks about Talent being but one of the elements in the equation. I agree, even with design, Talent is nothing without discipline. However I like to add, particularly with design, Passion and Dedication are another two elements of this equation. I find that the two are linked, if you have a Passion for something, Dedication is not far behind.

There is a clear difference with a designer that lives and breathes design vs. a designer that is “oh-hum” about design. Having Passion is not just about loving design, it is also about the dedication to get knee deep in it, and the will to be designing almost all the time. I can relate to designers like Marc Newson who always seem to be critical of their surroundings and never seem to stop wanting to improve it. I can see also passionate Designers taking part in design competitions, creating their own products, or even solving problems outside of design.

It is Passion that is the fuel that keeps the fires burning and the designers going in the wee hours of the morning.

Being a “Jack of all Trades” is Only the Starting Point.
I like to close this discussion up by addressing a big complain I always here from Industrial Designers. That is we end up being “Jack of all Trades, and Masters of None”. Yes and No. The nature of the industrial design profession requires us to cover a lot of ground at school. However learning does not and should not stop when you graduate. When you do graduate, it is now up to you to focus on areas you are either interested in or perhaps areas you want to improve. For example if you start clocking just a few hours a day in sketching, you will soon have 10 hours a week, 40 hours a month and 480 hours a year etc. You see, you don’t have to put in that 14,600 hours to be a Virtuoso (unless you want to!), but anybody can start being better in something when the time is invested in doing so. Best of Luck!

Jabra Go 6400 headsets. Via: Fastcompany

When Apple launched their G3 “Bubble Gum” colored transparent iMacs in 1998, the world loved it. And as a result Apple was reborn. Unfortunately, the world loved it so much that almost every other product released was either transparent or in “Bubble Gum” blue/pink/red.

The same thing happened with their white/black iPods and Macbooks. Suddenly the world suffered from a color deficiency and far to many fingerprints. The problem was that in 90% of of the time, the application of these elements were wrongly seen as “only just a surface treatment”, or even just a fad.

ASUS’s Eee keyboard, a touchscreen PC-in-a-keyboard. Via: Gizmodo

Looks like in 2009 the story is still the same? Just like the iPod, Apple was not the first to create a phone with a touchscreen, but they were the first to create a compelling product proposition with the help of their easy to use and iconic (excuse the pun) iPhone interface. The immense popularity of the iPhone and its interface has launched a number of products with iPhone like touch screen interfaces. Whether used in the right context or not, you be the judge?

Interestingly, since I started watching this topic in 2006, everyone who is anyone (including yours truly) jumped with their $0.02 cents worth in trying to figure out just what this is all about. However many posts never seem to get the idea of Design Thinking right, and the definition and objectives for Design Thinking never clearly expressed.

I started this discussion in June 2006 with my post “Everybody is talking about design, creativity & entrepreneurship“. In it I concluded that while Tom Peters suggested that “Design was It”, it was not clear, at least to me, to do what? It sounded to me more about encouraging a more creative businesses mindset or managing innovation and creativity within an organizations.

In Nov 2008 with “Design Thinking or Just Thinking“, I lamented that it looks like Design Thinking was just plain old Thinking after all! However I did hypothesize that: “Design Thinking is a thinking process that anchors your decision making with multi-disciplinary influences”. I think I was getting close, but I still missed context, the “Why” we do this. Why would non-designers (the Business in this case) be interested in Design Thinking and the Design Process?

More recently, a number of online posts on this topic has push this issue, in my humble opinion, to a tipping point.

John Medea, in his post Learning from How Designers Think and Work, focused on Designer’s value and pits Designers to be “experience perfectionists”. Unfortunately, the purpose of such “experience perfectionists” is still not clear.

Bruce Naussbaum in his usual misrepresentation of designers asked: Is Design Too Important To Be Left Only To Designers? In this case he talks about how designers are angry/concerned/afraid of “other people” working with design thinking, or design processes, or how designers are still stuck in their silos. Not sure to which designers he has been speaking to, but much ado about nothing as usual. Do check out the brilliant blog response by Robert Brunner called “Is Design Too Important To Be Left to Thinkers”.

The good news is that I think we are now a step closer. John Edson who wrote “Designing Business; Businessing Design“. Describes Design Thinking within organizations by this:

Empowering the drive to create products aimed at the needs of real people is this question: Does the business culture favor conversation–or is it stuck in hierarchical control? Classic business management education values control and it depends on deductive reasoning to create that control. “The most important business transformations cannot be proven before they are undertaken,” promotes Roger Martin, the dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. “Analytical and deductive reasoning practices in business destroy value.”

{snip}

In my view, it’s crucial for business to awaken to the powers of design. I don’t think that future enterprises will be able to connect to customers or remain competitive without increasingly fluid and agile management practices that respond more to the idiosyncrasies of real people than to the current fiscal quarter’s numbers.

But when it comes to the profession of design, discovering and answering the unmet needs of customers requires a designer’s ability to move beyond the expected. It’s our job to create these wonderful expressions, giving personality to a company and delight to the customer.

Reads a little complicated? Let me try to distill. So why are businesses so interested in design thinking?

In my humble opinion, designers have the ability, through their consumer insights and boundless thinking, to come up with un-tested opportunities that businesses are not able to due to the culture and way in which companies are run. The common results focused business culture thrives on the tried and tested, which business leaders know is not conducive for the future and the next big product break through. It is the designers ability to manage and work with the risk of the unknown (concepts, designs etc.) that is going to help win the day.

A perfect partnership don’t you think?

Beautiful work by the students from The Shenkar College of Engineering and Design, Ramat Gan. They were tasked by their lecturers to re-invent the Coffee (and Espresso) or Tea Cup by “deep diving” into our coffee culture and understanding the coffee drinking rituals involved.

Espresso and Cappuccino cups by Lee Casper

Overall fantastic work, and a great showcase of how Designers can gain critical insight for product creation through ethnographic studies. Just where is this school? I would love to visit it!

Check out the rest of the refreshing concepts at Design Boom.

Fortunately during my sick leave, I had the opportunity to do some serious thinking and reflection. In particular, what I wanted to do with this blog and it’s role in my life.

Early in January this year, I announced the launch of Design Sojourn Version 4.0. It was a good revamp of the site and as well as refocusing its content. Particularly important was that I shared a new blog description and focus which was “How to master the business of strategic industrial design”.

However at the back of my mind I still could not decide what I wanted to get out of this blog. As it is now 6 months since the last update, I thought it might be a good time to share with you how I see my blog going forward.

I have this bad habit. My attention to things get somewhat shorten due to my very wide and diverse interests. Luckily this blog has prevailed as it is not like the 95% of the other blogs out there that have not been updated in the last 120 days. So I decided to focus my activities to keep things simple and in perspective.

I made a list of in all the things that I did or things that were important to me. I then reorganized a few things and painfully “deleted” the others. In particular, I searched out for synergies in my interests, activities and personal goals. As part of this analysis, I had to asked myself again: Why do I blog?

I felt in many instances that this blog was drifting aimlessly. What I realized was that while this blog had a focus, it did not have a purpose or an end goal. While some bloggers may be happy with this, as in blogging when they feel like it, this lack of purpose did not sit too well with me.

I learned early on that as I have so many things to do, I need to be selective in what I end up doing. Therefore, I needed to be clear why I would invest the time to write and maintain this blog. Life is too short to waste doing pointless or senseless things.

Thus I have decided to evolve this blog into a conversation platform that will lead towards my writing a book called “The Art of Design Leadership” or something close to that.

I find a lot of comfort in this decision, and making it was a lot easier then I expected. I have been blogging for almost 4 years and this blog has more than 500 posts of rich Strategic Design content. Compiling all this time an effort into a book just makes sense to me.

Going forward, my posts will still be a journey in Strategic Design, but it will now have a higher purpose and over arcing structure towards the creation of the different chapters in my book. Finally, in true Web 2.0 fashion, you will be able to interact, feedback, and comment on the book’s content as I develop it.

So with this new purpose in mind, I have spent the last couple of weeks cleaning up my blog with the focus on readability and navigation. I removed “chicklets” that were redundant, reformatted the site to improve logical flow and reduced the amount of ads you would see.

However the biggest change is in simplifying my categories to reflect this new blog direction. Here they are with quick descriptions.

About Design Sojourn: What’s new at the Design Sojourn Blog or what I am up to in my adventures in design. A place to put the more general and non-design administrative stuff like this post!

Design Articles: Pillar and foundation articles on Strategic Industrial Design and Design Leadership that define what Design Sojourn is all about.

Design Leadership: Short reads about Design Strategy and Managing the Business of Design. This new category combines these two old topics in a logical manner that also reflects this blog’s new direction.

Designer Lifehack: Quick tips, hints, random musings and activities that could help make you a better designer. Majority of this content was written during in this blog’s first 3 years, much of which are still relevant today.

Entrepreneurship: Thoughts on my experiences being a design entrepreneur. More legacy content that can still be an interesting read.

Industrial Design: Multi-disciplinary Industrial Design related discussions and critiques. I used to have to have another category called Meta Design, but as Industrial Design has evolved into more than what it used to be, I felt comfortable to use this as a general description for both categories.

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So what do you think? Does this make a lot more sense to you? I am looking forward to reading all your awesome feedback. Thanks in advance and do stay tuned, as regular programming will resume shortly!