Who Will be First to Hire an Athletic Director of Design?

This essay was written for the Makers of Sport® newsletter in January 2016. Monday Musings and Weekend Reads were the written editions of the newsletter that accompanied the podcast; the archived email is on Mailchimp. The newsletter's links and announcements are trimmed here.

Hey y'all! Happy New Year. I hope each of you had a great Holiday Season and are back in the swing of things. Speaking of, Weekend Reads is back from its Holiday hiatus and feeling refreshed.

This past week, there was a very passionate conversation in the sports business community on Twitter between designers and marketing/PR folks about designers being at the athletic director level of college sports teams. Of course as a designer myself, I have been advocating for this for a long time, and objectively so. Designers think differently than others. They are constantly analyzing and solving problems in their heads; judging the world around them on what changes could be made in order to make an experience more seamless.

When I refer to designers, I don't mean Photoshop monkeys that just crank out the things people tell them to; rather, I mean strategically-minded individuals who fundamentally approach design as more than just cake decoration, but problem-solving at a root level.

Design is not an event that happens at the end of something, but a process that never ends.

It has long been an issue in sports that upward mobility for designers is basically non-existent. Typically when working in-house, you may begin as a graphic designer, move up to a senior designer and lastly a creative director if lucky (and if the school has a true creative director as most college athletic programs will have a "director of creative services" that is really just a fancy title for a graphic designer and is paid equivalent).

Many of the most talented designers working in sport tend to move on to another industry once they reach the level of what would typically be a creative director's equivalent experience. Long hours in the college athletics business are not conducive to family life and salaries for design/creative directors in other industries or niches of business are typically much higher-paying than in sports.

Historically, designers in sport have been used to execute ideas that more important people get together to conceptualize and plan; and they are asked to do so in world record speed.

I believe based on the happenings in the technology and startup world, that we will see a fundamental shift in this method of using designers in sport. If you take a moment and consider the most successful companies in the world: Disney, Apple, Google (including YouTube), Facebook (including Instagram), Target, Harley-Davidson, Nike, Volvo, Mercedes-Benz, just to name a few; all have one thing in common — at their core, they value good design.

John Maeda — design partner at Silicon Valley venture capital firm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers (KPCB), and previously president of the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) — believes that design is a critical factor in launching successful ventures today. And as a firm that has invested in Square, MyFitnessPal, Twitter, Google, Amazon, Uber, Soundcloud, Spotify, Slack and Nest (just to name a few), one simply need to experience the products and services these companies offer in order to understand that design is at their core and really sets them apart from their competitors. Especially in providing a quality and seamless experience.

In a recent interview with McKinsey & Company, Maeda quotes Thomas Watson, Jr. (IBM): "Good design is good business". He also mentions that Moore's Law's efficacy in technology is dwindling; that we are no longer driven by bigger, faster and more memory, but rather how a product or service makes us feel. How is it easy it to use? Does it save us time? Does it look good? And most importantly, does it work?

Steve Jobs once said "design is not only how it looks, but also how it works". If you consider for a minute Apple's products, not only do they look visually pleasing wth rounded corners, clean & consistent areas of space, high quality metals and minimal yet pleasing aesthetics; but they also work very well. They are easy to use and just tend to work out of the box. In regards to an overall experience, design in that instance is unobtrusive. It is providing an overall user experience built into a larger ecosystem that eventually encourages one to buy more Apple devices because they all work seamlessly together in that greater ecosystem. Sure the physical products were designed, but this ecosystem is where design was implemented at a greater level. Designing the processes and ecosystem, effectively sell more units. It's genius marketing that isn't quite billed as marketing to outsiders.

The technology industry is beginning to understand and value having designers being involved at the root of their companies. There have been 27 designer co-founded startups acquired since 2010 by companies like Google, Facebook, Adobe, LinkedIn, Dropbox and Yahoo. One of those companies, Instagram — a favorite amongst the sports business — was acquired by Facebook for $1 billion (it should also be noted that Slack, a designer co-founded company now has a valuation of over $2 billion). Now there is an investment fund founded by a former Facebook designer that invests solely in design-lead businesses.

Design is about creating experiences and evoking an emotion through some form of visual method or physical process. In Fall 2015, I went to Disney World with my family. It was my first time there and I was amazed at the overall experience. I checked my family's bags at an airport in Lexington, KY and I didn't see them again until they were delivered to my room at the Disney resort we were staying at. This made travel a much more pleasing experience. Most people traveling to Disney World are traveling with families and as we all know, travel can be a pain, especially with kids. Disney wanted to make this travel process as seamless as possible on their end making it easy for families to check their bags, board their planes with their kids and jump on a Disney shuttle bus upon Orlando arrival that takes them right to their resort (in which they've already checked-in online and have been provided room access through MagicBands, a $1 billion experience design project by Frog Design, that were mailed ahead of time) while not having to worry about getting their luggage, finding a ride to the hotel, etc.

This was a process that was designed. And at Disney, all roads point to the creative department. Walt Disney recognized the value of creativity and well-designed, well thought out processes. He understood that people value good experiences and that good experiences are what bring people back.

Now imagine taking a designer in an athletic department and using them not only for pushing pixels, but being a systems thinker like the aforementioned? Designers are already taught to think in systems and good designers (ones born for this profession) tend to do so naturally.

What if they were allowed to apply this systems thinking to things such as ticket processes, entry ways in stadiums and traffic plans; as well as the obvious marketing plans, social media strategies and digital products? What if they sat at the table with head athletic directors, associate athletic directors and presidents planning out future experiences for the brand? Both physical and digital. What if they were allowed to be entrepreneurs, pitching new ideas, products and services to fellow decision makers?

In the book, Do You Matter: How Great Design Will Make People Love Your Company, author Robert Brunner (designer of the first iMac and Beats by Dre headphones) states that "you matter to customers only to the extent that you have become connected to their emotional needs and desires". What other industry has such an emotional connection with their user base than in sports? Designers can influence this connection.

He also states that "when your brand communicates well, you create a context of expectations. The product is emotionally prequalified before the purchase is made". Is Oregon Football already emotionally pre-qualitifed because of their relationship with design-lead company, Nike? How about we swap out the word "purchase" with "recruit's decision".

USA Today recently reported on athletic departments spending money on environmental graphics and how it is a recruiting advantage. Since 2010, schools have been averaging $2.5 million per year in spending on such endeavors. Obviously, some of this money goes towards fabrication and installing, but, imagine if an Athletic Director of Design lead the design portion and was available in the beginning to conceptualize physical spaces with the outside firm where graphics could be swapped out continuously rather than having to essentially bring back in the outside firm to charge more money to revise the graphics in physical areas?

Recently, Oregon State University hired an Athletic Director of Ideation. Although the gentleman that was hired is not traditionally a designer (more of a PR/social media background), I believe it to be an overall step in the right direction for college athletics.

I also have it on high authority that a large SEC football school is about to bring on an executive creative director. Therefore, moves are being made as we speak.

Designers: now is a good time to prove yourselves and make sure your strategic abilities and systems thinking are known by superiors.

Athletic directors/marketers: embrace the change that is bound to happen and allow designers to be more than just pixel pushers, but a strategic partner — a lateral design thinking member of your organization. Someone you exist with, not over.

Have a good week and Happy New Year!

Cheers,

Adam