The Secret To Great Design? A Healthy Tolerance For Failure.
Experience design director Sergio Salvador believes that the first step to creating exceptional products is embracing chaos.
A tech-head ever since he got his hands on his first computer — the TK-200, a model only produced in Brazil — in the early ’80s, Sergio Salvador turned his affinity for technology into a life-long profession shaped by another one of his passions: design. With a degree in graphic design and more than 20 years working in interaction design, Salvador helped develop SMS games at a time when brick phones were state-of-the-art technology and built conversational interfaces decades before chatbots and virtual assistants became mainstream.
Now, as the experience director at Huge’s Rio de Janeiro office, Salvador splits his time between managing professionals, projects, and clients while also putting his ability to recognize amazing digital solutions to the test. “For me, as a designer, when I’m creating a product it’s exciting to spot a good idea among dozens of others. This has a little bit to do with instinct, but mostly with experience” he says.
Salvador spoke with Magenta about what he believes is the true nature of a designer’s work and why embracing controlled risk is the ideal approach to innovation.
Connecting the dots
My biggest contribution to a project isn’t taking part in certain steps of the process, because I have people on my team who are a lot better at that than me. I’m here to connect the dots and spot how certain elements can come together to produce a seamless digital experience. A large part of the job is recognizing this, being able to guide the teams so they focus their efforts in the best direction, and ensuring they have the best conditions to do their work.
Technique and emotion
Luciano Pouzada, the executive experience director here at Huge, once said something that I think pretty well sums up how I see the relationship between technique and emotion in our daily lives: As designers, our work should be more like an architect than a civil engineer. While the civil engineer calculates and supervises the construction of a bridge, the person who is really responsible for transforming it into an icon for the city, for establishing an emotional bond to it, is the architect. Good design goes beyond technique and reaches emotions.
Testing a hypothesis
There is an aspect of our work that is very controversial, it’s even taboo among professionals and in the market itself: design is about having a hypothesis and testing it. It’s inherently linked to risk and the possibility that your solution won’t be good enough. There are many people who don’t like to admit this, but it’s true. In this dynamic, the methodologies that we choose for a project, the team we put together, and the work we do, are all aimed at reducing risk. However, it is never totally eliminated. There is no silver bullet in design; we only have the ability to minimize risk.
Embrace error
The companies that are considered most innovative today days are the ones that have built cultures open to error. The problem is that this is a relatively new idea. The majority of traditional companies are still extremely intolerant of risk. In this sense, a function of our work ends up opening their eyes so that they can embrace the possibility of failure more comfortably — in a controlled, assertive manner, of course— which results in learning. If you look at a variety of market sectors, such as media, retail, and even banking, you can see how the companies that don’t really have this in their DNA are being trumped by the ones that do. In many cases, the companies that win are startups that were born to embrace a culture of risk.
“Go and fly, now it’s with you.”
I have a style of management that a friend once described like this: “Salvador takes you, throws you up and shouts ‘Go and fly, now it’s with you.” I have to agree with this. I always believe in the capacity of people and, as a result, like to give maximum freedom and autonomy so they can make their decisions, make mistakes in a controlled manner, and learn from these experiences. A lot of managers don’t like to run the risk of something going wrong and prefer to keep everything under their control, but I feel comfortable giving freedom to the people I manage.
Managing creatives
The biggest problem about working with people is that they are people. They are unpredictable. So I don’t think there is a set formula, especially when you are a manager. Each person requires a different type of conduct or approach and I tend to prefer dealing with autonomous, self-motivated people, because it’s a position that I have always tried to have myself. I try to look at a complicated situation and see the most positive thing that can be extracted from it, despite everything else.
Stimulating creativity
I’ve come to know that data and knowledge often show you the best path in the face of a challenge, but you can only reach the end of that path with creativity. It’s important to point out that, contrary to what many people think, methodology and creativity are not opposites. They’re not enemies. Some methodologies actually stimulate creativity — the question is knowing how to use them.
