CHAT WITH AGENCY METHOD
FROM A DESIGN AGENCY TO A INNOVATION INCUBATOR
Method began as a design agency and has grown into an inspiring agency for integrated brand, product and service design, which impressed us particularly by its innovative spirit. We met Chris in the San Francisco office and learned more about the philosophy and approach.
The approximately 100 employees are working in the offices in San Francisco, New York or London. Withal steady growth the limit of 50 employees per office is never exceeded. A first sign of the culture, which counts at Method. It feels a bit like we were in a 15 year old startup that kept his inventiveness, the joy of it and the positive climate in the team.
As a logical consequence of growth and for a best project progress they work nowadays in departments and clarified responsibilities. In works similar to a construction – the department for Interaction Design is responsible for the architecture, visual design takes care of the look and feel, while the experts of Design Technology, are the nuts and bolts. Connected and held together from the client service like glue. It is crucial that employees switching both between the three locations as well as within the responsibilities in every office.
In addition to the work for clients such as Google, Nike, Lush, intel, TED, Nissan, Skype, Telecom and Visa especially the internal projects are exciting. Regularly idea approaches are presented from anyone in the team and might be selected in a pitch to become a project. This then gets a budget and timing and is equivalent treated such as paid customer projects. This creates repeatedly promising results, such as the production of an abstract tool for the design of screenless interfaces of tomorrow – the Internet of Things – see here or an intensive research with real social experiments on the future of money – see here.
But even in his work for clients convinced Method in its results. The passionate designers try to get to the bottom of almost everything while using brand values for strategic planning. Brands defines what a company stands for and why customers should believe in it and that is a decision making tool for design developments. The holistic approach is to understood as Method Experience Design – starts with the goal of the company, the brand, all linked interactions and experiences to the actual product / service and the desire and need of the end user.
We love especially the culture of the creative agency. In addition to the defined tasks can every employee take time and use infrastructure for its own projects. Furthermore the large, long table centrally in the office is used for regular joint creative expressions. Weekly Happy Hours in the office, kind of field trips and sports activities are even find great interest from former employees. Another event for the team is an interview session where changing staff become a moderator and will ask his or her colleagues everything they interested in. As we have seen it can be quite funny.
The culture at Method is based on 5 pillars: empathy, curiosity, experimentation, craft and rigor. With this self-concept Method can win and retain talents, surprise and acquire customers with innovations from their own plus always work on the cutting edge.
Be inspired by the works of Method – Check out the website.
Thanks to Chris and the team for an inspiring afternoon in San Francisco!
PHOTO BY INSPIRED EXPERIENCE