The Times They Are A-Changin’
SPARK has changed a lot over the past 24 years, and while I wasn’t a part of that until 2012, I can attest as well as anyone to our ability to adapt. By definition, we’re in an industry of innovation—of change—so we have to evolve in order to stay relevant.
One of the more recent changes, as many of you may have heard, was that I was promoted to “Design Manager” towards the end of 2020. This was not simply a title change for the sake of bolstering my ego. In fact, it’s representative of some of the moving and shaking that’s happening behind the scenes here at SPARK, so I wanted to share what this promotion means for me, for the company, and for you, our clients and partners.
What Does It Mean To Me?
Well... I didn’t get a company car or box seats at FedExField (*cough cough*), but that’s not actually what I’m looking for in my career. I enjoy being challenged and engaging both sides of my brain at work, so even if I was offered a seven figure salary to stare at a wall, I think I would have to turn it down.
And while I won’t claim that I would do my job without a paycheck, what really motivates me to get out of bed is the opportunity to make things that are truly unique every day. Things that are clever or unexpected; that can change how people work; that make life easier, more comfortable, more exciting, or less wasteful. Things that can improve the human experience in some way or another.
That doesn’t mean I expect every day to be a rocketship to the future. Sometimes you have to sit in on a three hour conference call or wade through an ocean of tiny electronic components on DigiKey. It’s all a necessary part of the process. However, the more I feel that my time and brainpower is going towards a well-defined, purposeful goal, the happier I will be. I don’t mind working hard if that effort is aimed at making products that people actually need and will enjoy using.
I would like to think that also translates to better end products for our clients as well, because I care about the work I do. Believe it or not, sometimes I care more than our clients themselves! I care how well a design solves an actual problem; I care whether somebody will use it and smirk to themselves thinking, “that’s cool;” I care how long it will survive and where it will end up when it finally breaks; and yes, I can’t help but care about that microscopic fillet on the underside of the battery door that nobody will ever see...
These are the things SPARK keeps me around to think about and implement in our designs—your designs—in order to make better products for you and your customers. By promoting me, SPARK is also showing their dedication towards adopting similar “design thinking” practices for the work that we do; a dedication towards thoughtful, purpose-driven design with the end user in mind.
I appreciate that SPARK recognized that drive and motivation and that they understand what it means for our clients. My new title doesn’t dramatically change what I do day to day, I’ll just be more broadly involved in projects and working to share my process and way of thought with the rest of our team so we’re all marching to the same beat. It’s a little more authority to push for the extra mile even if it means a lot of mouse-clicking, dry erase scribbling, or taking an occasional budget hit for the greater good. It’s a signal that we’re diving deeper into user-centered design, because if a product has obvious value to the end user that doesn’t just keep me happy—it keeps our clients happy too.
What Does It Mean For SPARK?
SPARK has helped a lot of people over the years, and thankfully we remain quite healthy, so we would like to think that our approach works. But that doesn’t mean we can’t make it better. Perhaps that’s just the mindset of designers: we are always striving for improvement.
In 2013 we changed our company name from SPARK Engineering to SPARK Product Development to illustrate a simple point: We are evolving. Hiring me in 2012 and then promoting me this year, are moves that elevate the importance of Industrial Design within our company, but the buck certainly doesn’t stop with me. We’ve added a number of new faces to the team in the last few years—all with new skills, insights, passions, and perspectives.
These continual changes are representative of an ongoing shift at SPARK from pure mechanical engineering to broader, more holistic design capabilities. While we will always remain rooted in that framework of mechanical design and manufacturing expertise, we also want to be proactive in seeking out ways to collectively grow rather than resting on our laurels. My promotion is simply one more catalyst for internal growth in the direction we feel would best serve our clients.
Moving me into more of a leadership role will serve to actively drive our team to be more thoughtful about the end user throughout the entire design process. Industrial Design can be much more than a surface-level aesthetic pass at the end of a job—the approach we lovingly refer to as “lipstick on a pig.” It’s a school of thought focused on making products intuitive, smart, ergonomic, marketable, and generally pleasant to use (i.e. improving the user experience). The aesthetics (the part where we make it “look cool”) are just icing on the cake.
SPARK’s work will, of course, remain mechanically sound, but we’re also aiming to instill a higher degree of mindfulness about how every decision made along the way will impact the humans who will ultimately use our product designs. This leads to more creativity from beginning to end, because It requires careful consideration of both the quantitative and qualitative aspects of product development and demands ingenuity to satisfy both while still respecting real world constraints—which is exactly the balance that SPARK has always aimed to maintain.
And while none of this is new territory for SPARK, we’re being purposeful in doubling down on the value of these less tangible aspects of product design.
What Does It Mean For You?
Plain and simple—it means you should only expect the quality of SPARK designs to continue improving. We’ll still deliver high quality, manufacturable, tool-ready products with personalized service, but we’re also capable of doing much more.
We’re investing more time and brainpower into consumer and market research, as well as what we like to call “Phase 0,” or “Discovery” work. This is the front end effort that helps us clearly define a problem, a user, and the competition, identify potential opportunities and pain points, and assess relevant materials, technologies, and processes. While these steps may sound squishy, the up front leg work is what helps to establish the framework for a successful end product—focusing downstream efforts and opening the door for us to drive innovation that truly speaks to your end users.
As always, our proposals will be customized to your specific needs though. Not every project requires a deep dive and we’ve never believed in forcing clients through a cookie-cutter “patented five-step program.” We know every project has real world constraints, and while we can certainly admire the design sensitivity of an Apple product, we also recognize that the average inventor can’t afford a development budget and tooling fees that would bankrupt a small country. So we’ll take into consideration where your project stands, where it needs to go, and your budget and time constraints in order to construct the most efficient path from A to B.
One important distinction is that projects tend to fall along a spectrum from execution of a specific task to exploration of blue sky possibilities. The more exploration that a project requires, the more iteration is typically involved—meaning higher budgets. On the other hand, execution can be quick, but rarely results in anything groundbreaking.
It’s not always obvious where a project lies on that spectrum, so even a small investment in “Discovery” work can pay dividends. If we have a well-defined picture of the problem we want to fix, who it’s for, and what their priorities are, it can steer ideation, guide decision making, identify areas where more thought is needed, and reveal where exploration might be saved—so you can get the most bang for your buck.
At the end of the day, our goal is to make our clients happier, and we all believe that comes from delivering exceptional products that their customers will love.
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Interested in learning more or starting a conversation? Let us know how we can help solve a problem for you.