When Dan Harden was looking for a metaphor to describe the relationship between a designer and client he came across the word whipsaw — a saw for two persons.
Whipsaw is the name of the San Jose-based industrial design and product development firm Harden founded in 1999.
“The magic of this whole design experience often will come through this whipsawing back and forth,” says Harden, president and chief designer.
Whipsaw’s design process and client relationships have a dynamic push-pull action.
“I’ve always thought that design was kind of a social thing and I like to work with teams, I like to go back and forth with clients,” he says.
“Some of the very best relationships and end results — in other words, products that won in the marketplace, that were doing really well — were often born out of this relationship forming between the consultant and a client,” says Harden.
The best innovations happen when clients and the designer/consultant understand one another and trust one another, he says, calling it a “rhythmic reciprocity.”
“What you’ll notice after some time working with a client is this back and forth reciprocity, which is what will often create some super breakthroughs,” he tells Axiom News.
Empathy is a large component of this reciprocal relationship, when the designer feels and internalizes the client’s needs and vice-versa.
Whipsaw designers also experience similar reciprocity when working in teams, notes Harden.
The whipsaw relationship is important with the end user as well, says Harden, adding they interview many customers and learn from them. The client is the enabler and also a middle-man between the designer and customer, he says.
“(The end user) is often the biggest source of inspiration for every innovation that we do,” he says.
Fast Company magazine named Whipsaw one of the top 10 Most Innovative Companies in Design.
- More to Come
