Let Us Be Humans Again.

We are at a very delicate phase in our history and it is obvious that many years of poor design application, planning, execution, and implementation of ideas that our leaders had in the past led us here. Most audacious attempts at innovation in recent times that would have landed us in a good position (2021 was once a future we saw) consistently met with brick walls cemented by deadly policies that were motivated by fear of the unknown or fear of missing out. The former because the custodians of our society have no clue if they are going to survive a world enabled by technology and they still want to selfishly enjoy its by-products and the latter because they obviously don’t want to miss out so they either ask for ridiculous stakes or outrageous (once in a lifetime) fees in what they contributed nothing to. The truth is, we all abused the greatest gift mankind had been given which is time and we wasted 60 years of it building a society with leadership that lacks a simple vision that could set a great people apart, the cohesion of ideas to fulfil that vision (each regime had theirs based on the size of their greed) and a uniform messaging across the tiers of government including the MDAs. Now, all we witness are separatists playing by the “Divide and Rule” playbook (one of the greatest pitfalls of a broken society).

In my own candid opinion and I really don’t care whose ox is gored or whose ego is scarred. The generations before us sold us out and they messed our future up big time but we can’t continue to dwell in self-pity or generational blame game narratives. I am not okay with this situation (only an insane person would) and the sad part is it is repeating itself.

1. We are not doing enough to build that future or society we so desire.

2. We are not thorough enough in our thinking processes.

3. We are not deliberate enough in how we want to live.

4. We are not hungry enough for the type of leadership we need.

Most people as old as our independence have little or nothing to offer us (aside from wisdom and their blessings) but we have more to offer ourselves and generations coming after us. We have to come together, collaborate more and organize ourselves to live and survive now. We missed 3 industrial revolutions, the 4th has made it a level playing field and we must not miss it this time!

Your idea is valid, your dreams are right. Stand up and fight for it.

We are at the point where all strategic planning and all manner of intelligence would fail and continue to fail because too much innocent blood has been spilled and they inherently cry for justice. May God forgive us all for our sins.

In conclusion, only True Love, Genuine Care, and Emotional Intelligence would save us because we are humans after all and that is where human-centered design starts from.

Let us all just be humans again!

I am Lexain.

DESIGN IS NOT A FRACTION OF ADVERTISING AND MARKETING

Recently, I was in a group conversation where I made a point about how advertising and marketing alone might not be solving real business issues, but Design could. One of the responses I got was “Design is a fraction of advertising and marketing”.

That statement inspired me to write this article.

In 2014, I just got into one of the small agencies as an Associate Creative Director. It was a leadership role and I was to lead the overall art and design output of the agency. My previous experiences in other agencies had led me to the discovery of Human-Centered Design and Design Thinking so I was passionate and willing to use the principles I learned to deliver the vision of the agency.

We had a chance to pitch for the defunct Skye Bank account that same year and we won the account together with another big agency. One of the ideas we proposed was called Skye Life Design which was supposed to be a mobile banking platform that offered advisory services and many other benefits. It was an idea I was excited about, so was @Ife Olatunji (an amazing strategist/serial entrepreneur) and Tunde Makinwa (the then Creative Director). We worked extensively on bringing the idea to life as shown below.

I had sleepless nights working on how the UI/UX would look, going back and forth with Ife to understand the audience that we were really designing for. We tried to convince the bank to implement it, but all attempts fell on deaf ears. The mistake we made was not knowing the agile way of building the platform by ourselves or at least collaborating with the right set of people who do, maybe by now we would have cashed out like Shola and Ezra.

I learned how insights from product design and development could help a lot with advertising and marketing communications. If I had known what I know today about entrepreneurship, start-ups, product design, etc., it would have been better designed with the sophistication of technology, UI/UX tools that are readily available today.

In 2013, as a senior art director in one of Nigeria’s most creative agency, I was the major art director working on a popular mobile money platform which was designed to target the unbanked. One of the many ideas, we proposed was the use of a USSD code since most of the unbanked had a feature phone at least and they could send and receive text messages. The quest to convince the team fell on deaf ears too and in 2016, GTBank launched *737# and the rest is history. This particular mobile money platform eventually launched their USSD code in 2017 and maybe the time was right or not but *737# would always have the first-mover advantage. In fact, I was disappointed to hear in one of the training sessions I was privileged to facilitate at one of the biggest banks in the country that they were truly the first to have a USSD code, but nobody heard about it and nobody used it.

 With the two experiences shared above, I observed that most businesses do not really pay attention to the “needs of the people”. They believe that the typical Nigerian audience is not smart enough to be communicated to in a certain way or not smart enough to adopt technology. They often go along with their ideas some of which are in total disconnect with the needs of the people and how they behave but still force their products and services on them with advertising and marketing. The sad part is that creative individuals in advertising agencies come up with enormous ideas like these that are never approved, end up in waste bins that I often question why agencies couldn’t convert these ideas to assets or innovative start-ups that can grow to be unicorns if built properly after all the marketing budgets of brands are the first hit when a situation like 2020 happens.

 As a designer, with the level of experience I have garnered around design, entrepreneurship, start-ups, branding, advertising, and marketing, one might seem like possessing visual powers to predict the future by simply studying trends and patterns, observing and paying close attention to human behaviour. I can opine that design helps to connect a vision, an expected outcome with people’s needs (that is if the vision is to genuinely solve problems). Design uses or follows a well-detailed blueprint to deliver an intent, starting with the people, understanding their needs, trying out several ideas with open-mindedness to get feedback in order to arrive at a functional solution that delivers the intended outcome beautifully. It is the process between ideation and proper implementation and this principle can be applied to personal life, products, services, business, systems, governance, and so on.

Imagine an individual who was involved in the design and development of a product or service like the Skye Life Design example. She would have first-hand knowledge, information about the audience, understand how they behave, their pain points and needs, their reactions, responses, and feedback to prototypes, and then the eventual product or service. She would have garnered enough insights that would also help and guide her to market the products to the existing and new audiences, and manage innovations around the product.

"Innovation happens by building, testing, getting feedback, learning, and iterating fast."

So, I cringed when I read that design is a fraction of advertising and marketing. I’d rather say advertising and marketing is a tool for selling what is designed, after all, everything made was designed.

"Design is a subset of the creative industry just like advertising is. It is not embedded in advertising."

The part of design that is a fraction of advertising and marketing is graphics and it is a skill set every professional must have as long as you present your ideas on PowerPoint slides. Graphics design is like knowing how to read and write in today’s world and platforms like Canva have democratized it to an extent and made it simple for anyone who is really interested in the simple basic stuff.

In conclusion, design is changing how organizations operate, innovate, build culture, achieve sustainability and good designers are going to take the lead in the future because design-driven organizations outperform their counterparts…ask Google, Apple, Coca-Cola, IBM, Nike, Starbucks etc.

Young designers on the other hand must not be too comfortable designing logos, social media posts, posters, and banners alone but learn data analytics, UI/UX, entrepreneurship, copywriting, storytelling, finance, law, history, culture across the world, machine learning, AI and many more if they want to be relevant in the future. Hence, you would not be seen beyond a common individual that puts layouts together when you introduce yourself as a designer.

Design, the Creative Industry and the Nigerian Economy

“I think chaos is the world’s way of keeping us honest and forcing us to use creativity to evolve.”

— Ari Weiss, CCO of DDB Worldwide

The Nigerian creative economy is vast yet untapped. It is potentially a multibillion-dollar industry with an estimated figure yet unknown due to the lack of proper organisation and documentation. Looking at the numbers and projections, we can get a glimpse. The music industry’s revenue has been projected to hit $50 million by 2020. According to Nairametrics, Nollywood contributed about N270 billion to Nigeria’s GDP as far back as 2016 and is estimated to generate $1billion in revenue by 2020. The Nigerian fashion industry accounts for about $4.7 billion of the over $2.5 trillion global worth and according to PWC the advertising industry was projected at generating $450 million in 2019. Even with these numbers, a lot of sectors within the creative industry are still disorganised and unaccounted for.

The creative industry is a major driver of socio-economic, cultural, and sustainable change all over the world and Nigeria cannot afford to neglect this sector in its bid to become more prosperous and emerge as a global economic power and a catalytic hub for development in Africa. This depends solely on three things; Vision, Creativity, and Execution (implementation).

EVERYTHING CREATED WAS PRECONCEIVED
”Vision is the ability to imagine how a country, society, industry, etc. could develop in the future and plan for this”. Cambridge Dictionary Online

Everything created started with a vision. An artist would sink in his own imaginations using lines and shapes to scamp his idea before finishing it up with colours and details. A fashion designer would have to illustrate his ideas before cutting the cloth to sew. A footwear designer must sketch his designs first on paper then on a last and have a mood board to know the type and cost of materials to use. In-fact some scriptwriters or movie directors have taken this discussion of vision to another pedestal by creating movies based on a future they have imagined and they are coming to pass: Back to the Future, Contagion, Black Mirror and Some episodes of The Simpsons that predicted Donald Trump’s election and his victory are just a few examples.

Let me digress a bit and put things into perspective.

In 2009, Vision 20: 2020 was conceived. According to the blueprint, the vision statement was “By 2020, Nigeria will have a large, strong, diversified, sustainable and competitive economy that effectively harness the talents and energies of its people and responsibly exploits its natural endowments to guarantee a high standard of living and quality of life to its citizens.”

It was a vision that was to make Nigeria one of the 20 largest economies in the world, consolidating its leadership role in Africa and establishing it as a significant player in the global economic and political arena. Well, the year is 2020 and with over 200 million people more than half of whom are young, Nigeria is the poverty capital of the world. As if that is not bad enough, it is very difficult to do business, global competitiveness is low, corruption perception is high, and the country is the third most terrorized country in the world. These problems did not accrue overnight. So, it’s either there was a significant error with the blueprint or the implementation strategy was just wrong.

 A few comments and feedback about the Vision 2020 as reported by Ebuka Onyeji, Premium Times, Jan 2020 follows below:

“Nigeria needs to define steps needed to be taken to meet the basic needs of her citizens and not hinge its development plans on GDP figures which do not impact on current realities on the ground,

“The country’s economic plans do not have the ability to address the unique needs of Nigerians at present.” ”

— Nnimmo Bassey, Environmental Activist

“The Nigerian Government’s Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP) prioritises physical capital over human capital”.
“The most important choice Nigerian leaders can make is to maximise the country’s greatest resource, which is the people.”

— Bill Gates, American billionaire & philanthropist, during his visit to Nigeria in 2018

“There was a serious disconnect between the visionaries and the citizens. Also, the corporate citizens did not buy into it, the political class did not believe in it because they did not develop it, it’s more of a technical document and they don’t even understand it.”

— Frank Tie-Tie, Human Rights Lawyer

EVERYTHING MADE WAS DESIGNED

An idea needs a detailed blueprint to be well-executed the same way it was conceived. Digital Product Designers design wireframes to have an overview of the entire platform or product before designing a prototype to test and an eventual product they launch. An automobile manufacturer or a civil engineer would follow a blueprint that shows the various parts of the project, the material types to be used, and how it would all come together before proceeding to a prototype and then an eventual product for a user to buy.

One of the major reasons why some sectors within the creative industry are not running at their full capacities and potentials is that like the Nigerian Government, they don’t have a thorough design and implementation. Nollywood is the second-largest producer of movies in the world after Bollywood, but they don’t generate as much as Hollywood or Bollywood. Except for a few producers and directors that insist on quality because they aim for renowned platforms like Netflix, Nollywood turns out movies in quantities and not quality. A lot of Nollywood movies lack good story structures, comprehensive scripts, mood boards, and storyboards to illustrate the character design, costume and set designs, camera angles, lighting, moods, etc.

In another category, footwear designers copy and paste existing designs and patterns and just change material types from leather to Ankara to Africanize it. Even though these sectors are on their path to innovation and growth, as innovation happens by doing, the players have to do better in thoughts, design, and implementation in order to attract the investments they deserve.

Design is mostly seen as an artistic expression, a graphical illustration of an idea, or the subjective visual interpretation of an imagination that must be ticked on a to-do list. Some believe when designers say design can change the world, they often mean using a poster or logo to change it but they actually mean using new ways to disrupt dated models, engage new and underrepresented audiences and improve lives.

Design is the creation of an experience, the process of the creation, how it is organized, and the outcome. It is a discipline at the core of innovation and changes toward a better and more sustainable future. Design can be an agent for sustainable change.

As a young graphic designer/art director in the advertising industry, I observed that the markets were filled with a lot of badly designed products and services. I realized that advertising and marketing couldn’t help to sell these badly designed products, so I decided to go discover how some of the best products, services, systems, and industries were made. The quest led me to the discovery of Design Thinking as a mindset and Human-Centered Design as a process which made me understand better the role of designers in this time and age.

DESIGN THINKING AND HUMAN-CENTERED DESIGN

“Design thinking is a human-centered design approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.”

— Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO

According to IDEO, Human-Centered Design is a creative approach to problem-solving that starts with people and ends with innovative solutions that are tailormade to suit their needs. To understand what people really want, one must observe them and put oneself in their shoes to understand their pain points and how they truly feel to draw out insights that can be used for the design process.

The Vision 2020 simply failed because the most important part of the process (the Nigerian people) was not paid attention to. The overseers of the blueprint and its implementation were in total disconnect with the people and their needs. We can draw the same conclusion with the creative industry too. It is not at its full potential or capacity yet because most players within it don’t know and understand those, they are creating products and services for.

Designers should be able to figure things out from end to end with the capacity of leading evolutions in the future. They would play more leadership roles within organizations to achieve key business goals (design driven organizations outperform the S&P 500 by 219%). They should be empathic, question the state of things, challenge stereotypes, and pay close attention to human needs. These qualities combined with technology, data science, the internet of things, etc. are important in order to solve the challenges we encounter today.

As a creative person, start-up founder, entrepreneur, advocate for change, government official, etc., you must have a designer’s mindset in how you think, generate ideas, and implement them.

THE DESIGN THINKING MINDSET

Ask “What If?” – Invite unusual perspectives and seek opportunities to grow.

Optimism – Open your mind to reveal untapped potential.

Human Empathy – See the world through the eyes of others.

Critical Thinking – Critique your thinking.

Curiosity – Never stop exploring new frontiers in your mind.

Experimentation – Make ideas tangible and have the desire to fail fast and iterate often.

Collaborate – Don't just connect things, connect with people.

Experienced Focused – Building experiences that connect to a greater whole.

From experience, executing a project the way it was envisioned takes patience, grit, discipline, professionalism, and most times, collaboration and we need all these to arrive at our desired outcome.

In Conclusion, to be in business, you must understand that you do not create for yourself, you create and design for people. Observe them, care about them, and understand them to gather insights and create genuine solutions that they truly need and be pleased to pay for.

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete”

— R. Buckminster Fuller, American Architect