

I am CDO, bitch - lsq
http://www.pixelonomics.com/chief-design-officer-pepsi-cdo/

======
alabut
I'm a CDO and occasionally feel the sting from it being such a new term. When
the press covered Referly's big new features last week (an API, shopping
experience and design overhaul) the ones that mentioned me put my title in
dick quotes - "Chief Design Officer" instead of Chief Design Officer. And it
sounds too similar to CTO to just say CDO when you first meet people, so I
just say I'm a cofounder.

It's ok though and stuff like that's rare. Overall I feel a growing
responsibility to represent design founders and it's what most accurately
represents my role anyway. CDO is more fad-proof and less limiting than other
titles like Chief UX Officer (too much focus on function, plus UX is industry
jargon) or Chief Creative Officer (too much focus on visuals and marketing,
plus it makes you sound like a Don Draper wannabe).

------
toomuchcoffee
"As a matter of fact, yes I _have_ decided that the purpose of my life is to
sell sugar water, bitch!"

------
johnrob
_We live in an era when most companies are competing neck to neck on
technology._

This is a key insight. Design isn't any more or less "important" today - it
has simply become a more critical place of battle. If two products are even in
terms of features, design can be the tiebreaker.

~~~
alabut
_If two products are even in terms of features, design can be the tiebreaker._

Design can be even more critical than that and more valuable than feature
parity. Facebook had way less features than Myspace - you could do all kinds
of stuff on Myspace like listen to music, customize your page, have photo
slideshows - but Facebook's design was a welcome relief from the haphazard
Geocities-like mess that Myspace devolved into.

And similarly, Facebook's current crowded interface leaves room open for even
better designed networks like Path, Instagram, etc.

------
jongold
Crappy article but I enjoy the sentiment.

~~~
lsq
Crappy writing, opinion or are you calling the whole design movement crappy?
Coz its easy to call something crappy. A little harder to be a constructive
critic.

------
brennenHN
Wait, I thought I was the only one who realized how important design was!

