Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
the entire tech world started to shift towards minimalism and this very essential design aesthetic inspired by this mantra of form, follow, function. I'm proposing a new formula that evolves from form, follow, function to form and function, follow meaning.
From the TED Audio Collective, this is Design Matters with Debbie Millman. On Design Matters, Debbie talks with some of the most creative people in the world about what they do, how they got to be who they are, and what they're thinking about and working on. On this episode, a conversation with Mauro Portini about technology and design, and about what a designer really does.
If the technical skill is what defines you as a designer, maybe you're not a designer.
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Chapter 2: How did Mauro Porcini's upbringing influence his design philosophy?
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Mora Porcini has built a career at the intersection of business, design, and humanity. Born in northern Italy, suspended between cultures and identities, he began his career with a restless curiosity that has carried him from Philips to 3M, then to PepsiCo, where he became the company's first ever chief design officer and helped embed design into the DNA of a global enterprise.
In doing so, Morrow was recognized as one of Fortune magazine's 40 under 40, a fast company master of design, and one of the 50 most influential designers in America. Today, he is president and chief design officer at Samsung, the first role of its kind at that scale, where he is advancing a bold manifesto he has titled The Human Side of Technology.
At a time when technology sits at the center of financial instability, digital toxicity and existential anxiety, Mauro is asking profound questions about what technology can do, and he is providing some provocative and rather optimistic answers that we're all going to talk about today. Mauro Portini, welcome back to Design Matters. Thank you for having me, Debbie.
Mauro, let's talk a little bit about your origin story for those that might not have listened to our previous interviews. You grew up in a small town outside of Milan in Italy with two passions, the world of literature and philosophy, which was influenced by your mother, and the world of art, architecture, and drawing, which was influenced by your father.
But you also described yourself as growing up in the middle, not fully northern, not fully southern, and suspended between identities. Did that early experience of cultural tension shape the way you design for global audiences today? I think is a big, big part of who I am and therefore what I do.
You call it tension because usually that's the definition when there are two opposites and you are there stuck in the middle. But paradoxically, I always found my comfort zone in the middle of those two opposites.
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Chapter 3: What challenges does Mauro face as a designer in a global context?
And again, back then it was me growing up in the north from a family from the south. Then it became me, designer, in the world of business. At the point that sometimes the business leaders look at me, you know, obviously as a designer, the creative, the alien that is landing on the planet of business. And then other times I have the designers looking at me as the business person and saying,
This person that understands creativity is close to the world of creativity. Obviously, he's the designer himself, but he's more belonging to the business world. And at the end of the day, I end up not belonging to one world or the other. Or I'm Italian. You can hear from my very heavy Italian accent. But I've been living 15 years in the United States.
I was an alien in the United States, even though over the years I became also a citizen. And New York today is still home. And I became an alien in my own country. And now I live in Seoul, in Korea, imagine. I'm even more of an alien there.
Chapter 4: How does Mauro define the 'human side of technology'?
But at the end, I feel a citizen of the world. I belong in any kind of situation. In those gray areas is where I define my identity. And so, you know, it's a very human need, the one of belonging. I mean, Maslow in his pyramid defined that need, that sense of belonging, you know, many years ago.
I found my belonging in those gray areas, in those areas where you can define your label, define your identity, define in a very original and authentic way who you are, who you want to be, and what kind of contribution you can give to the world. You've said that now, decades into your career, you try to preserve the mindset of an apprentice.
Did you approach your roles at Running Design at 3M and at Pepsi that way? Well, I always came into these companies with a lot of respect for the companies. They were big companies, extremely successful. I didn't come in with the arrogance of thinking, well, I'm a designer.
I know what you need to do because we designers know better how to design products and you're not getting it either because you are a tech-driven company or because you are a...
marketing driven brand driven company no I always started from a position of profound respect for what they were able to achieve I knew very well what I was bringing to the table obviously the more years the more experience the more confidence I had in what I knew but I always knew that That I have so much to learn, so much to learn for a variety of different reasons.
In the first experience, it was obvious. I mean, when I started to work at 3M, I was very young. I was 27. I had so much to learn. I never worked in a corporation of this size, you know, in a stable way. You know, in Philips, I was less than a year at the beginning of my career. There was all the world of technology to discover. In PepsiCo, the same. I'm an industrial designer.
I never work in the world of food and beverage. And I had to learn that industry, I had to learn the product category and to learn so much from the marketing community, from the brand community.
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Chapter 5: What role does cultural identity play in design according to Mauro?
And now Samsung, I'm mixing and blending the two dimensions, but there is so much to learn about the Korean culture, about a different way of doing innovation, of working. But beyond all of this, on top of what you can learn practically in your profession, there is the awareness.
that as human beings we never end learning i mean there is so much the more you learn the more you realize that you know nothing socrates thousands of years ago was telling us already the reality is that the more humble you are the more you know that there is so much out there to learn as an apprentice once again.
And the more you blend that anyway with a profound confidence about what you already know, but also with the ability and the readiness to steer direction, to change direction. And again, confidence gives you that kind of ability. The more I think you can flex to the different situations, the more you can keep growing and not become sterile.
So many people at a certain point with fame, success or certain achievements, they stop learning because they think, well, I made it. Now I know. And that's the beginning of the end. Yes. What are you still learning and from whom? What I'm learning right now, there is a lot that I'm learning, but one of the things I'm learning the most is about myself.
You know, I told you that I love the comfort zone of the gray areas, but after 13 years in New York City, 15 in the United States, with such a stable position like the one I had at PepsiCo, you know, with the success in the company, the credibility in the company, It was difficult to keep discovering yourself, to keep finding new aspects of yourself.
Going to Korea, getting completely out of my comfort zone, bringing my family with me, my young kids, my wife, my three dogs, and the sense of responsibility that comes with bringing all these people out of their comfort zone to a completely different kind of culture and way of thinking, working, behaving, connecting, And it's not easy. It's not easy.
And so right now, when I face day after day, different behaviors, different ways of approaching design, innovation, business or of living, sometimes is easy because it's inspiring and is exactly, you know, what I wanted to do. And And it's really exciting. Other times instead is complicated because it's so different from what I'm used to.
And in those moments that are complicated, you need to find strength in yourself, stability in yourself. You need to find your resilience. And what I know right now in my 50s is that that's growing. You know, that uncomfort is growing.
And this is beautiful because even in the most difficult moment, I'm like, yes, I, you know, I'm discovering new things about myself and I'm learning how to react to things that are, you know, don't make me comfortable, but it's exactly what I was looking for. And it's fantastic. At PepsiCo, you were embedding design into food, beverage, brand, and experience.
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Chapter 6: How does Mauro view the relationship between technology and human values?
Did you ever worry that You might be leaving all of that behind for something that was completely uncertain. Look, fear of the unknown and the risk connected to that is human. It's a problem because fear is a mechanism of self-defense, right? The nature God gave us. So, of course, I... I thought, is it the right choice?
And again, because I have young kids, in the middle of the decision, my second kid was born. And literally, I was having conversations with Samsung while my son was coming to life. And so, of course, there is this sense of responsibility that is very, very strong. In the meantime, though, I am somebody that needs to keep innovating and inventing things and growing.
So I knew that it wouldn't be easy to give up to this opportunity. So that was one reason. I was not looking for a new job. I could have stayed at PepsiCo 20 more years and continue. I would have generated new challenges for myself.
Think about the challenges of that industry in sustainability, health and wellness, or even just pushing design as a driver of business growth and brand relevance in that industry, in that company. So I would have found my challenges to stay motivated.
But again, a completely different kind of culture in a different country, in a different company, different industry, for sure, was really motivating. But there is also another reason. My passion as a child, my passion in university was consumer electronics. I did my thesis in consumer electronics in 1999 on wearable technologies. So on...
Clothing that are smart with flexible screens and pins that look and see and hear what you see and what you hear and can record all this information in a virtual memory. Back then, we were not calling the cloud, but it was what today is the cloud. And so on and so forth, a variety of different products and objects that you wear. enabled by technology back then was a dream.
It was just, you know, a vision of the future. And I started to work in Phillips on that vision of the future. And then life brought me to completely different directions. And what is 26 years later now, I find myself in a company in a moment in time that gives me the possibility to translate those dreams into reality.
But there is a big difference between the kid that graduated from school with that thesis on wearable technologies and what I am today is these two decades of experience. On one side, in the world of 3M and then with my own agency, is experiencing technology and really understanding how to leverage technology to create meaningful solutions for people.
Then the other part of my journey is experiencing branding and experience and really understanding how to create something meaningful for people through those levers. And so right now I'm connecting back the two dimensions to really understand
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Chapter 7: What is the importance of empathy in design?
And I remember when you got the design, the big design job at Pepsi, the design community was wondering, well, can he take his knowledge and expertise in a discipline that was very much about household goods at that time, you know, you did that gorgeous tape dispenser, and bring that alive to fast moving consumer goods.
And now you're moving from fast moving consumer goods to shaping technology used by billions of Can I, you know, I'm sure you're about to ask me a question, but there is something. People tend to look at just the few years of experience you have and the company you've been working for before the next experience, right?
So it's so paradoxical and sometimes it's funny how many people right now are like, oh, but he's coming from PepsiCo, consumer goods. They don't know you like I know you. Yeah. I mean, if you look at my 26 years of work, literally 13 are in consumer goods branding experience and 13 are in tech. And tech is where everything started. It was my passion. It's my knowledge.
And even in the 13 in consumer goods, tech was always a reference. Every new technology. technological product, new gadget, I will buy it right away, you know, to try to, because it's exciting to me. And yes, so, but again, exactly what happened 13 years ago in PepsiCo, many people now are like, well, but it's coming from brand and consumer goods.
Well, actually, no, now I have the two experiences, so... What changes when the object of design becomes as much about infrastructure when your work lives in people's homes and pockets and on their bodies? Is there a different way in which you approach that type of design as opposed to a fast-moving consumer goods, or do the tenets really remain very similar? Yeah.
I think there are a lot of similarities. What you need to do is to deeply understand the people you serve. And in consumer goods, there is a tendency that is probably driven by a culture of marketing or looking at people as consumers and focusing so much on the moment of purchase, what Procter & Gamble used to call the first moment of truth. It's so quaint now, right?
But, you know, that moment is what often defines CPG, you know, that industry. Because there is so much focus on what happened in Walmart, in Target, in the store. As an industrial designer, I've been trained to think about the user, you know, how people use those products. And so when I joined the world of CPG, when I entered the world of CPG,
My mission was to remember everybody that we shouldn't look at people as consumers and think just about that first moment of truth, but focus on that second moment. Every other moment after that. Yeah. Once it's in your house, what do you do then? So for me, that was true in consumer goods and therefore is still even more relevant in a world where people,
Once you buy the product, you bring it home and you live with the product sometimes a few years, sometimes decades. If you think of a refrigerator as an example of an oven or even TVs, you know, they have a long lifetime. But again, deeply understanding people, their needs, their wants and creating relationships.
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Chapter 8: How can design drive ethical responsibility in technology?
How has relocating shifted your perspective on leadership and hierarchy and creativity? You really are, as far as I know, the only president of design that I've ever heard of. It's a real new ceiling breaker for our discipline. How has your perspective changed? Well... I had to challenge many assumptions about how to be a leader. Really? Tell me how.
My first challenge in my journey was the one of an Italian moving to America and trying to understand how to be a leader in America. And it took many years to figure out exactly how to protect my country. My way of thinking and behaving all the way to my body language and my passion. So how to protect them first and then later on leverage them without alienating them.
the people I was interacting with that had a very different kind of culture. And after a while, I found that balance. I found the ability to speak the language of business of America, of the United States, the ability to navigate the complexity of these corporations, the culture of these corporations,
But being always myself, being always this Italian with this thick accent and this weird way of dressing and this passion and the ability to talk about love in a boardroom and connect love to productivity and efficiency as an example. Now in Korea, the body language is completely different. The Korean language obviously is very different than the English one.
You know, here I was the one not speaking the English language and somehow trying to connect. Now I'm there and the language that is spoken in the company is Korean. And of course, with me, we interact in English, they interact in English. but it's not anymore the language of the company.
There is a sense of hierarchy and roles and responsibilities that is very different than the American one and the European one. And so I'm trying to understand, I'm still in a phase of understanding how to
be myself, how to be authentic, how to work in a super collaborative way, blending the definition of roles and responsibilities, but also respecting what works in that kind of culture and try to understand how to inspire people without alienating them, how to find the right balance between change and respect for the incredible culture and business success that the company has.
And so it's not easy. The company is really trying very hard to help me as well. And this is beautiful. In what way? How so? Well, they understand that, you know, to become more and more global, you need to embrace more and more diversity. You know, I am the first president non-Korean in the history of the company, not just in design, in the history of the company.
And so for them, it's something important that transcends the discipline of design, the function of design in the organization. They are betting on diversity. They are betting in bringing in people that think different. And they really want me to be successful in that.
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