This article is about BMW's DesignWorks group. It teases about a new shifter design?!?!
![[scratch]](/images/smilies/icon_smile_headscratch.gif "Head Scratch [scratch]"){kind=icon}
Hopefully the iDrive knob is not the shifter knob!!!!
Next year, BMW will introduce a new shifter for its M-series line that Alec Bernstein calls a “Magic shifter.” But when it does, a Newbury Park-based team of industrial designers and engineers may be too involved designing a ground breaking model for the 2017 Model Year to notice the commotion.
Bernstein is the senior director for strategy, research and strategic partnering of BMW Group DesignworksUSA, whose 38,000-square-foot Conejo Valley headquarters is at the cutting edge of worldwide industrial design.
Purchased outright by BMW in 1995, the 30-year-old Designworks is not simply a proving ground for new luxury car design; it is a profit-center for BMW that has helped dozens of big name corporations improve the aesthetics and accessibility of their products.
Hewlett-Packard printers; Embraer private jet interiors; John Deere tractors; and Nokia cellular phones are just a sampling of the products that have known the input of Designworks’ 120 designers, modelers, engineers, technicians and materials specialists. Overall, half of the studio’s efforts are contributions toward car designs like the Z4 and the X5, while the rest are outside consultations with non-competing companies.
One such consultation began in January 2005, when Troy G. Hoidal, the founder of Santa Barbara-based Ecopod, met Designworks’ Peter Falt.
The result? The e1, a stylish bottle and can compacter and recycling container that will be released Dec. 1 and sold by Williams-Sonoma, the specialty house and cookware retailer.
“Peter’s vision and Designworks’ ability to create solutions and deliver triple bottom line results have prepared Ecopod to be the top retail stores in the world,” Hoidal said. “BMW has been a delight to work with.”
Although most of the employees are based in Newbury Park, the firm has recently launched a design studio in Singapore, and it also operates another in Munich, where BMW’s own in-house design centers are located. Whenever the automaker begins developing a new automobile—a process that can last as long as six or seven years—teams from Designworks and the other design studios compete for the project.
That’s not the only competition. There’s also an inherent conflict between the creative mindset of Designworks’ art-school trained industrial designers and the structured requirements of the company’s corporate parent and clients.
“I think, although it’s much better now, the business world has not really understood the creative process,” Bernstein said.
Corporate leaders expect predictions of when designs will be ready and the steps that will be necessary to meet those goals. Designers, he said, can’t so exactly predict what new ideas they’ll have; more often, they just know the number of ideas they’ll have.
Still, things are improving.
“People are aware of the value of design where 15 years ago people—particularly Americans—were not,” he said.
Although Bernstein said that Southern California’s abundant sunshine and brand neutrality make the region popular for industrial designers from every major automobile manufacturer, Designworks is the only studio in the area that is a profit center for its corporate parent.
But despite the conscious effort to design in Southern California, Designworks has a global focus.
Employees are recruited from around the world. As a global company, BMW needs to offer products that are suited for the various cultures in which it does business. Bernstein said that having designers who are conscious of these variations is crucial. For similar reasons, he said, Designworks has tried to encourage a gender balance among its designers.
“Design trends come from all over the world and there’s lots of value to mixing it up,” he said.
It’s not just about mixing up design, though. Bernstein said that in the future, more projects will be developed for the global market, and more of the work will be shared between its three design studios. Going forward, much of the company’s focus will be on the direction taken by the market in Brazil, Russia, India and China, what Bernstein called “BRIC.”
“There’s a lot of different scenarios for BRIC,” he said.
Still, improving automobiles for established markets like the United States and Europe remains crucial to Designworks, as evidenced by the new shifter.
That shifter seems to represent how the designers look at the design process, by asking questions, as evidenced by Bernstein’s description of the improvement.
“If a shifter could do anything, what would it do?”