Request for Designer-Community Interview

[Chuck06]

I think it would be a cool idea to arrange an interview with an actual LEGO designer answering questions submitted by the CC community.

My ultimate vision: a podcast between a community representative and a lego designer (perhaps an admin or an ambassador). Not being anything of a tech person, I have no idea if it would be possible to arrrange something like this with the two parties of the interview most likley being on different continents.

Perhaps more realistic vision: A lego designer responds to community questions in plain-old type form. This would be easier technologicallly, and perhaps legally, as LEGO could pick and choose their responses to questions.

In either case, the CC community would submit questions in the forum. The questions would be filtered for interest, relevance, appropriateness, etc. The final list could even be submitted to LEGO for approval and preparation.

Now for the hard part: anticipating feasibility issues that would have to be worked around. Here are some, but I'm sure others will come up with more.
-language barriers: are there any English speaking designers? Would we need an interpreter?
-technological issues (ultimate vision only) Who has the necessary equipment and can configure it properly?
-legalities: What would the designers actually be alllowed to talk about? Who would have to approve what they are able to say?
-interest/redundancy: Interviews have been done before, but have they been done quite how I'm proposing? Does the community have any interest in something like this?
-badgering poor busy designers: would the designer be willling/able to take time to answer our questions? Is our community big enough that LEGO would see the effort to be worthwhile?
-organization: who would be in charge of coordinating this effort?

So everybody, tell what you think. Personally, I think the idea very feasible if the right people are willing.


-chuck

[Bruce N H]

Hey,

This is a good idea. We've actually had a few things along these lines in the past. Back in 2004, Jake McKee, who was at that time in charge of LEGO relations with the fan community (he has since left LEGO for another position) participated in two discussions in our chat room. Transcripts are here and here. In 2005, Mike Rayhawk, who is a member of the AFOL community (including our forum) and also a commercial artist who has worked (or still works?) for LEGO participated in a Q&A in our forums. Then in 2007 we gathered questions in the forum, that Matthew Ashton, Creative Director of LEGO Playthemes responded to. I don't think we've done a similar Q&A since, so this would be a great time. I'll do some checking into how we could set something up.

Bruce

[davee123]

-language barriers: are there any English speaking designers? Would we need an interpreter?

Probably not. English is the "language of business" in Denmark-- I'm told that everyone basically speaks it in the workplace. I know several designers hired in the last few years ONLY spoke English upon their arrival (Denmark requires some degree of Danish competency after X years in order to stay in the country, though)

-legalities: What would the designers actually be alllowed to talk about? Who would have to approve what they are able to say?

I think most of the questions people typically ask have either already been answered or can't be addressed-- but there ARE a lot of questions that I think are interesting. In particular, I think we'd love to hear more details about the process behind the recently debuted sets. Things like "why a goat?" and "why do something more peasanty?" There are a lot of things that would be interesting to hear, but they probably would pertain to how particular decisions were made-- obviously not with regard to how FUTURE decisions are being made.

-interest/redundancy: Interviews have been done before, but have they been done quite how I'm proposing? Does the community have any interest in something like this?

I'm not sure I've seen a video/audio interview between an AFOL and a designer-- certainly between AFOLs and other LEGO employees-- and certainly of designers themselves. And there have been transcripts of interviews between AFOLs and designers. So, a lot of similar things have been done. But I'm not sure I've seen anything exactly like what you're talking about.

-Is our community big enough that LEGO would see the effort to be worthwhile?

I don't think it would be viewed as something exclusively for C-C, to be honest-- C-C is large enough (I think!) that it gets pretty broad exposure across the entire hobby. So if it were hosted on C-C, I think that would be viewed as being given to the community at large. And that's certainly within LEGO's scope of vision.

I'm all for it happening-- these kinds of things are usually pretty fun to watch, and can be informative (although at this point, mostly full of useless trivia tidbits).

DaveE

[Aliencat]

Great idea Chuck! This is something that would be really cool especially for the newer fans who haven't been around for the previous interviews that Bruce mentioned, but still have unanswered questions.
I've talked to quite a few of the designers in Billund before. Last year I was also in Billund for a week to work with a number of LEGO designers on a new upcoming theme (stay tuned, january 2012!), so I know a bit about the going-ons in the product design process.

-legalities: What would the designers actually be alllowed to talk about? Who would have to approve what they are able to say?

I think most of the questions people typically ask have either already been answered or can't be addressed-- but there ARE a lot of questions that I think are interesting. In particular, I think we'd love to hear more details about the process behind the recently debuted sets. Things like "why a goat?" and "why do something more peasanty?" There are a lot of things that would be interesting to hear, but they probably would pertain to how particular decisions were made-- obviously not with regard to how FUTURE decisions are being made.

This is why we, as a community, could set up a list of questions first, to make sure we have a bunch of excellent questions that a) don't make the designer feel he's wasting his time, and b) aren't about anything the designer is not allowed to make any statements on.

-Is our community big enough that LEGO would see the effort to be worthwhile?

Absolutely!

I'm all for it happening-- these kinds of things are usually pretty fun to watch, and can be informative (although at this point, mostly full of useless trivia tidbits).

I agree, and like I said especially for the somewhat newer fans it could be a very informative experience.