Multidisciplinary teams – different people with distinct behaviors, journeys, aspirations, passions, and inspirations – is a fundamental asset for the success of any project. Furthermore, it is in the midst of diversity that, nowadays, we work innovation.
Rui Quinta, co-founder and managing partner of With Company, was the speaker of the Masterclass “Designing the ways we design everything”, promoted by Porto Business School on December 15.
With an academic background in Design, Rui Quinta is passionate about publishing, typography, and identity concept, and an entrepreneur since his twenties.
The co-founder of With Company admits that, after delivering the projects to the clients, he had to deal with many unanswered questions. Does it work? Are they selling more? Does it really impact the brand?
All these questions in Rui Quinta’s mind took shape, as he believes “design is not only seen as something that intends to design something from an aesthetic point of view”. And he adds "today we design businesses, we design services, we design systems, we design processes, and the word design lives in the beginning of all these things".
After a handful of adventures in the universe of entrepreneurship and innovative projects, Rui Quinta and Tiago Nunes founded With Company, which assists organizations in solving problems: spaces, products, services, culture.
Rui Quinta also talked about Peixaria Centenária, a transforming legacy of a family business – from the families of Rui, Filipe, and Joana. Why venturing into this business? They got tired of hearing “this business cannot be reinvented”, they also realized there are no street fish shops in the capital and no brand was communicating to the younger generation.
The blog Fishing for ideas, with almost ten years, was created by Rui and Tiago to document all the stages of Peixaria Centenária’s project. And through the blog they created a network of multidisciplinary experts. For example, a finance expert, food quality expert, and a marketing expert joined the project to contribute with their own experience and knowledge.
Although the success of Peixaria Centenária, and almost ten years after, a cycle comes to an end: a mix of new goals and wishes, present and future uncertainties; and some exhaustion.
During this masterclass, Rui Quinta addressed processes established to design something (a space, a service, a product) and the way; meaning, how we do things to reach solutions, aiming to solve complex challenges.
Rui Quinta shared the six principles adopted by With Company to approach a project:
1. Design from people: regardless the project, service, or product, it is essential to design from the behavior of individuals connected to the project.
2. Design the ways: the predisposition to innovation is fundamental. It is vital “wanting to do different things”, but sometimes the project idea is brilliant, but no one understands the vision; we are in the domain of latency in innovation. Therefore, it is essential to design the path towards the vision.
3. Design the middle: when the goal is to design, for example, a service, a product, or a space for two completely different “personas” (for example, to create a doctor’s office that will be used by doctors and patients). And that space must serve these two “personas” (to some extent, it must be a medium term)
4. Design from ingenuity: it is important to get rid of stereotyped ideas, prejudices. It is important to be able to look at the project “through a child’s eyes”.
5. Design with everyone: design with the whole community (clients, the team responsible for the project, investors, suppliers, for example), in other words, it is vital to design the project with everyone who “inhabits the ecosystem”.
6. Design inconsistencies: to design things (projects, services, products) much more adaptable to us who are "predictably irrational" (as Dan Ariely, author of the book “Predictably irrational” says).
