Speaker #0Welcome to Design, Material and Meaning, the podcast that explores the unique aura of design, fascinating materials and the senses that elevate them. My name is Claire Chinellato, Industrial and Luxury Product Designer and Creative Director based in Corsica. Through this podcast, I invite businesses, entrepreneurs... creative souls and designers to awaken your curiosity and discover exciting creations and topics. Together, let's look at the world through a new lens, the lens of global design. Let's get started. Today, I wanted to talk about a moment that can feel daunting or that you may have already experienced about a project, yet that... nobody really knows how to navigate. It touches most every field and yet I've never seen it properly addressed in posts, articles or even podcasts. So I thought we'd demystify it together. Picture this for a second. You're at your desk. Your designer walks in with your project in hand. This is the day they're going to present their proposal or proposals. So you're genuinely excited to see the work. You open the files together and then... Total in a blank. As delighted as you are to see what's been created, something holds you back. You don't know whether it's good or not. You feel something, but you can't quite put your finger on it. So you say it's good to avoid stalling things. Or on the contrary, you say, well, it's not quite... there without being able to explain why. And the conversation goes around in circles. That moment doesn't exist because you're unqualified. It exists because nobody ever gave you the right tools to navigate it. If you recognize yourself in that scenario, then you're in the right place. Because in this episode, you will understand why your first reaction to design can betray you and why it can cost. when you follow it too quickly or not at all. You'll then discover three questions that replace personal taste with strategic objectives. And finally, I will share a concrete three-step method to turn what you feel into useful, actionable feedback. Let's dive in. When we receive a design or brain does something completely natural, it reacts before it thinks. Within a fraction of a second, we've already formed an impression. We like it, we don't. Something draws us in or pushes us away. And that reaction, as genuine as it is, we mistake it for a judgment. When really, it's just the starting point. The problem isn't having a reaction. The problem is stopping there. And to illustrate what that can produce at scale, here is a perfect example. story I love telling. In 2009, Tropicana, a world-famous orange juice brand, decided to modernize its iconic packaging. The intention was legitimate. The existing design was considered too traditional, not contemporary enough, and a major agency was brought in. A budget of 35 million dollars was invested and then... The new pack was launched. Within just two weeks, sales collapsed. The brand recorded $20 million in losses and had to urgently reverse course, returning to its original design. So what happened? The iconic logo was made eligible because of its vertical orientation, nearly impossible to read at shelf level. The orange pierced by a straw, the instantly recognizable signature element, was replaced by a simple glass of juice for less distinctive. Consumers no longer recognized their product on the shelf. Most of them simply defaulted to buying something else. So, here's what interests me most in this story. The entire redesign was, I'm pretty sure, carried out and finalized without submitting a single variant to a consumer panel. No testing or not enough, no iteration, nor external feedbacks before launch. They decided, they produced, they launched, and they paid the price. This case tells us something essential. Design isn't validated in a meeting room among people who are already convinced. It's validated through dialogue, with the right tools, the right questions, and the right people around the table. Before we go further, I want to focus on something that holds many businesses back in their relationship with design, the fear that Back and forth means something is going wrong. Let's be clear. In a design process, iterating isn't a problem at all. It's the method. In product design, design thinking, UX, you test, you observe, you adjust, you start again. Not because you got it wrong, but because that's how you refine. Every piece of feedback, every adjustment, every version that evolves, brings the project closer to something more precise, more effective, more aligned with the reality of your audience. It's a living process, not a straight line. Obviously, we're not talking about printing 300 brochures only to throw them away with each iteration. Context changes everything. A print campaign doesn't have the same flexibility as a digital mock-up or a product prototype. But in every case... the mindset remains the same. Welcome adjustments as opportunities, not as warning signs. What could Tropicana have saved with a few well-managed iterations and some consumer feedback up front? Maybe $20 million. And above all, its credibility. There's another situation I encounter and see very often, and it's just as costly. Silence out of fear of causing offense. or of not feeling legitimate. You receive a proposal, something doesn't quite work, but you don't know how to say it. And because you're not a designer, you question yourself and your own legitimacy to give an opinion. So you validate vaguely, reluctantly, hoping it will work. And then the moment arrives. The print run is launched. The campaign goes live, the product is in your client's hand, and what didn't quite work has now become or will become a concrete visible customer problem. What many businesses don't realize is that most design contracts include revision rounds. Using them isn't a sign of weakness. It's exactly what they're there for. They exist to refine, clarify and... a line. Using them is working smart. Not shooting them out of politeness, then having to commission an entirely new project because the final reason doesn't fit. That's paying twice for the same thing. Saying what doesn't work with the right words at the right moment is doing everyone a favor. Your project, your designer, your timeline, and your budget. To step out the realm of personal tastes and into the realm of objective thinking, you only need to ask yourself three questions. Not before looking at the design, but while looking at it. First, does it serve the objective? Remind yourself what you asked for at the outset. Attract new clients, inspire trust, rethinking a space, a visual can be elegant, crafted, coherent. and still miss its purpose entirely. And conversely, something very simple can be exactly right. The number one criterion is the alignment between the output and the intention. Not beauty, not aesthetic. Second, will not target audience understand it immediately. Your designer is working for your clients, not directly for you. The right question isn't, do I like it? But will the persona, this visual, solutions, spaces, products, is meant for understanding within seconds, without effort, without hesitation? Tropicana learned this the hard way. A design that needs to be explained has already lost the part of its battle. And finally, is it consistent with who we are? A design never lives in isolation. It exists within an ecosystem. Your website, your social media, your spaces, your marketing materials, your value, etc. The question is simple. Does this solution belong to our world? Does it reinforce what we want to communicate? Or does it create a subtle dissonance you can feel but can't quite name. These free questions don't replace the designer's eyes. They give you a settling weight to have a real conversation with them. You have your answer to the free questions. Now, how do you put them into words in a way that's actually useful? Because something's bothering me, but I'm not sure what, or it's not quite there yet. Those are responses that leave your designer in the dark. Not because they lack talent but because they don't have enough information to adjust. I'd like to offer a three-step method. Observation, impact, direction. Observation. Describe what you see factually, without judgment. Not what you feel but what you notice. The headline is at the bottom of the visual, their color is very dark, there's a lot going on this space, etc. In fact, say what that produces in relation to your objective or your audience. As a result, the eye doesn't naturally know where to go first. It creates a very serious atmosphere that my distance eye organ clientele, the main message gets lost, etc. Finally, direction. Open up a path without imposing a solution. Could we explore something more open? I would like to try a version where the call to action has more room to breathe. You set a direction. You let your designer find the way. The nuance matters here. It's not about telling your designer they got it wrong. It's about giving them information they may not have had. Because you know your audience, your context, your story better than anyone. That's what real collaborations look like. Two examples to make the method concrete. Without the method, you would probably say, that color doesn't work for me, try something else. But with the method, this shade feels a little cold compared to the warmth we're trying to convey. Could we expose something more enveloping? And for a last example, say a new service is presented to you and you feel it's too slow. Without the method, you might simply say, it's not dynamic enough. Whereas with the method, you could articulate it as, I feel like the solution still involves quite a few steps that might make the experience feel too long for my clients. What could we work on together to streamline it? In both cases, you're not correcting, you're enriching. And that's a difference every good designer will recognize and value. I'd like... to share how this dynamic plays out on my end when I develop projects with entrepreneurs, organizations, and businesses. Because theory is great, but in the reality of a collaboration is often more nuanced, more human than that. When I sense that the professional in front of me has adopted, that they're hesitating between two directions, or that they just can't seem to decide, my First instinct is never to put them under pressure. I give them space, time to breathe. Because a validation extracted on the post is an unreal validation. It's a comfort response. And a comfort response always costs you later. Then, when I can see that something is nagging at them without being able to name it, I don't leave them alone with that uncertainty. I ask questions. I dig into what they're feeling, I put words to the ache, as I like to say. I reflect back what I'm hearing and gently bring the conversation back to concrete ground. The project's objectives, the target audience, the positioning, what we'd decided together from the start, not to convince but just to reframe. In 99% of cases, that work of dialogue brings out the most. fitting en soi. The adjustments that follow are logical, purposeful, and usually few, because they address exactly what needed to shift and nothing more. The remaining 1% for those who are curious is the case of someone whose business isn't yet structured enough for their expectations to be clearly articulated. Or it's what cognitive psychology calls confirmation bias. The tendency to validate what you already believe, regardless of what's shown to you. In those situations, even the best design process can't resolve everything because the obstacle isn't the visual solution, product spaces anymore. It's somewhere else entirely. But for everything else, and that's the vast majority, structured dialogue, patience, and the right questions are enough to unlock what seems stuck. To close, two very human behaviors that, despite good intentions, constantly work against the project. The first is quite famous. It's stepping into the file, moving an element, changing the color directly, just to show the idea the intention is good. But in doing so, you're taking one part of the creative work without having the full picture. Your designer has a formation, a logic, a systemic coherence that only they fully grasp at this stage. A single isolated change can destabilize an invisible balance. The second, validating without asking the question. Saying it's fine to keep things moving because you're busy or you don't know what to say. It seems holless, but remember, Tropicana, a vague validation is often a ticking time bomb. It always comes back at the worst possible moment, at print, at launch, in front of a client. So two minutes of reflections now and using the revision surround already built into your contract will always be worth more than two weeks of correction. or an entirely new brief down the line. What to take away is that validating a design doesn't require being a designer. It requires being grounded in your objective, attuned to your audience, and able to put words to what you're perceiving. With these tools, you don't become a designer expert, you become a valuable interlocutor for the people who are. And that's exactly where the magic of a good collaboration happens. And that's a wrap for today's episode. Thank you for listening, design, material and meaning. If this episode resonated with you, share it with your teams and with everyone who has ever found themselves slightly lost in front of a creative proposal. If you'd like to support the show, take a few seconds to leave a comment or a rating on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Deezer or YouTube. Every JSTAT makes a real difference to its visibility. See you very soon for a new episode of Design Material and Meaning around a material, a topic, or a hands-on approach to living with and understanding design every day. Until then, take care and stay curious.
