Design Battle Cry

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

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...or how prototyping should be done

posted by Enric | 0 comments | Links to this post |  

Google Wave and the emergence of intelligent advertising bots

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

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People have been pretty excited about Google Wave since its unveiling. Most of this excitement though has been triggered by its new communication possibilities from the user point of view (synchronous multiparty collaboration, threaded messages, extended functionality through wavelets, etc.)

But what about Google’s plan to monetize it? What about the ads they most likely will want to display inside a wave? Plain non-flashy text boxes like the ones discreetly displayed in gMail? A sidebar full of ads like in a search results page?

Or.. what about forgetting the tried-and-true dumb visual ad that is asking for two milliseconds of eyeball attention and instead act boldly and create ‘intelligent ad robots’ who can actually assist you to accomplish any activity you are trying to in a non-intrusive and natural way? That would be something different and way more interesting for companies that want to avoid the classic ad bombarding to the masses and instead laser target their consumers in a more friendly way.

So far, the lineup of robots available now for gWave is not very extensive but it is already big enough to helps us understand the huge potential of having virtual agents inside a wave who can analyze the conversation, look for related data, and communicate back to the human participants inside the wave itself.

It is not difficult to imagine a ‘travel planner’ robot that would be added to a wave you just created with your friends in order to plan your next summer trip. As you start throwing around ideas about locations, dates, and budget with your friends, this travel robot would analyze the conversation and bring you travel suggestions from sponsoring companies related to the travel industry (airlines, travel companies, hospitality, etc..). Everybody would win here: you save a lot of time you would have spent digging for deals, and the travel companies can offer their products to a very receptive and  targeted audience. Oh, and Google makes some cents for every ‘touchpoint’ a robot does inside a wave. Deal!

There is one 'but' though. Will people really allow someone foreign to their group of friends to ‘interfere’ with their travel plans? Probably yes, but it will all depend on the way the robot's behavior is designed. Too intrusive, out. Too low quality suggestions, out. Too inaccurate, out. Too passive, out. Not easy to get it right. That’s the fine line engineers, designers, social researchers and anyone involved in designing these robots will have to walk. Unless these ad robots act as minimally amicable humans and provide a useful suggestions service, ads inside gWave will pretty much look like all the ads we have seen so far: a simple and ignorable chunk of text.



[photo: 'Fortune telling robot' by Paul Keller]



posted by Enric | 1 comments | Links to this post |  

Can we prime ourselves to be better analysts and designers?

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

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Recent studies by psychologists in California and British Columbia have shown that being exposed to nonsensical data improves ability to find patterns. This probably doesn't come as too surprising to most of you (after all, it supports the fact that creative types tend to be explorers, travelers, experimenters, always looking to experience something new), but what if we could prime ourselves to be better at our office design jobs in a way that doesn't require investment in air travel or special equipment? What if all it took to be more analytical and synthetic in our work was to read a Kafka story every before as a warm-up?

posted by Joyce | 0 comments | Links to this post |  

And the award goes to... the supply chain guy

Thursday, July 16, 2009

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A recent Wall Street Journal article has a very interesting data point on the impact Apple’s COO Tim Cook has had in the company’s turnaround:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124571582988539249.html

"Mr. Cook joined Apple in 1998 from Compaq Computer Corp. to fix Apple's then-troubled supply-chain system. At the time, Apple was dealing with bloated inventory and an annual loss of more than $1 billion. Mr. Cook was instrumental in closing down factories and outsourcing manufacturing to contractors.“He turned a company that was on the brink of bankruptcy into one that is generating a huge amount of free cash," says Charlie Wolf, an analyst at Needham & Co."

People who preach about innovation love to bring up Apple as an example: how cool the products look, how seamlessly all the products and services integrate as part of a larger system, how delightful the user experience is, and how edgy their stores look and feel.

But what many of them forget to mention are all the behind-the-scenes and not so salient strategies Apple has chosen in order to deliver these customer experiences in a more profitable way: simplifying the product portfolio to reduce manufacturing costs and increase profit margins, making a product available simultaneously in multiple countries to increase product launch impact while reducing marketing costs, making a one-size-fits-all cell phone without a physical keyboard to accommodate any current and future keyboard configuration and decrease localization costs, using open-source FreeBSD as the core of Apple OS X to provide stability to the OS and focus precious development efforts in a market-differentiating OS experience, locating the core of their developers in Cupertino, CA rather than outsourcing development to India to make development tasks more effective and achieve better alignment around user-focused corporate culture, and the list goes on.

All these decisions might not be obvious to many of Apple's users, but they definitely have been relevant in order to turn Apple's inventions into innovations. These decisions that influence both the user experience and the cost to bring it to market are made possible by the supply chain guy. Unfortunately for innovation practice, the work of our guy doesn’t get as much press as the eye-candy photographs of the products. But the reality is that the entirety of product decisions that affect the way you structure your company are equally important to succeed. While a great supply chain will not help you be more innovative (think about Dell’s recent troubles with waning demand in spite of having one of the most sophisticated supply chains), a bad one will definitely keep your great invention from the market way too long. Again, an innovative product can’t succeed without a well-thought-out way to bring it to market.

So how this relate to designers? Face it, talking about supply chain and the way a company structures itself to deliver its products is not the best way to get designers’ attention. All these behind the scenes processes and its consequences can cause designers' eyes to glaze over. "Supply chain" is neither shiny, nor glamorous, does not help win design awards, and is an unsexy term.

But if the designers’ goal is to really help companies to launch successful products, they really will have to start thinking about it next time they present their glossy reports to clients. No doubt clients will ask: “And how will my company launch this product?”

The answer "focus on the user experience" is not enough for a company, it is just the starting point. Companies need a routing plan. They need to find out the best and most creative ways to organize themselves in order to deliver (supply chain). Different products require organizations to structure themselves in different ways (supply chain, again), and innovators have to pay close attention to this if they want to increase the chances of market success.

So here is my message to all the judges that give yearly innovation awards. The next time you give an innovation award to a designer with black frame glasses and blinding white shoes, please have another one for the supply chain wiz who orchestrated the whole show to put that designed experience in the users’ hands.


[photo: dead reckoning]

posted by Enric | 2 comments | Links to this post |  

How we learn in the dark

Monday, June 22, 2009

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A recent visit to Paris's Dans le Noir restaurant got me thinking about visual, auditory, and kinesthetic (VAK) learning styles and what happens when one of the most heavily relied-upon modalities among seeing people is taken away from them.

This restaurant chain (in Paris and London) sells a unique dining experience by removing all light from their dining area and employing legally blind persons as waitstaff. You enter into a (lit) bar waiting area, empty all of your belongings and sources of light (including cell phones) into a locker, order your meal (a set menu with several mix-and-match course and drink options--we chose not to know the actual dishes before we ate them), perhaps enjoy an apertif, and then you're led by your blind waiter through two black velvet curtains to your table, which is in a room so dark that you cannot see your own hand 2 inches in front of your face (though one of my dining companions insisted he could--and later joked that he spent much of the evening waving his hand in front of his face while his mind filled the images in his head). You drink your wine, pour your water, and eat your dinner with a knife and fork completely in the dark. The noise level of the dining room quickly elevates as people who normally rely on vision for so many communication cues are forced to focus their auditory sense on identifying speakers and maintaining conversations; the waitstaff must come in to shush the room periodically throughout the service.

I am a predominantly kinesthetic learned myself, so my first instinct was to feel out my surroundings and understand the size and shape of the table, where the table settings were located, what material the furniture was made of, and how far the wall extended behind and beside me. My eyes instantly interpreted the tactile information into a mental picture of my surroundings, and I used this mental map to "see" the world as dinner went on. As soon as the dinner plates came to the table, there was nothing I could do but stick my left hand into the food and feel for textures, heat, and moisture. Most of the ingredients were eventually recognizable by smell and taste (we later cross-checked with a photo-album menu in the waiting area) but, to quote my fellow contextresponser Enric, "Food should be enjoyed by all five senses." Perhaps we are particularly sensitive to the visual aesthetics as designers, but I realized during this meal how much my enjoyment of food is influenced by visual data--and how this particular meal was less culinarily meaningful to me because I couldn't see the structure and the colors on my plate.

Nevertheless, a trip to Dans le Noir is truly a "walking in someone else's mocassins" worthwhile experience for creating empathy. I'm sure people with other learning styles will have different stories to tell about how they adjust to the darkness.

posted by Joyce | 2 comments | Links to this post |  

Virgin America: The blogosphere at 38,000 feet, -69 degrees and 529mph

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

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This post is coming to you from above. WiFi's new dimension: get connected while flying high. And, no, this is not a medical marijuana joke. I am blogging from my flight back from Boston to San Francisco from seat 13C, Virgin America flight #...who cares, I'm online. So far, I've skyped with my work colleagues, caught up on some work emails, got on HuffPo, paypal'ed a friend. What better to do on a flight than pop open your laptop and take care of some errands?

So Virgin America takes one of the first steps and offers onboard WiFi. At first, I am elated. I can get online and make this 6 hr flight go by a LOT more quickly than trying to sleep or listen to my iPod. Then I imagine more and more people with their laptops on the plane, kind of a scary thought, but then I imagine the tiny netbooks now and I'm less anxious.

Back to the WiFi. I am impressed.

Signing up was a charm. Finally, an airline who gets experience design. From the boutique-hotel style check-in to signing up for WiFi in a jip, this airline is getting my attention. I appreciate the screens on the back of the seats, but full-on access to the interweb is my cup of tea.

posted by maritoruiz | 0 comments | Links to this post |  

Rapid heuristic evaluation of Caltrain ticketing (a.k.a. rant about the 8-ride pass)

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

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Most people who know me would characterize me as fundamentally an honest and upstanding person. I've broken very few laws in my life and suffer from a torturous amount of guilt any time I feel like I've wronged someone. True, I run the occasional stop sign on my bicycle when there are no other vehicles in sight, but on the whole I'd say I'm a law-abiding citizen who has no intention of cheating others and would immediately attempt to right the situation if I felt I had.

You can imagine how frustrated I am, then, when the ill-conceived experience design of Caltrain ticketing labels me a criminal for forgetting to validate my 8-ride pass a couple of times. Now, the first time I got a citation was a fluke: I'd never used an 8-ride pass before and didn't even know what it meant to "validate" the ticket, much less when and where to do it. My assumption had been that the Caltrain official would stamp or punch one of the rides on my ticket as he made his rounds through the car. Instead, the official unforgivingly cited me for fare evasion, when anyone who looked at the pass could have plainly read that I'd purchased that ticket exactly 11 minutes before he laid eyes upon it.

I have been racking my brain trying to come up with reasons for a ticketing and boarding design that punishes (criminalizes!) honest but forgetful people, but I have yet to come up with a good one, so will offer my critique, propose a new solution and invite the rest of you to share your perspectives....

The problem

The basic reason why the ticketing experience sucks is that there is no consistency in how riders are accountable for these different passes. You can buy a number of different kinds of passes for Caltrain: one-ride passes, round-trip passes, day passes, 8-ride passes, monthly passes, etc., and this is great because different riders have different needs and should have options for the kind of ticket that best suits their riding habits. What's not so great is that, as a rider, you are responsible for remembering different behaviors depending on which pass you happened to have purchased the last time. I purchased a monthly pass for April and all I had to do was get myself to the station, get on my train, and pull out the pass to show the conductor if/when he passed through my train car during that month. Being that my project is finishing up this week and the monthly pass is no longer the best economical choice for me in May, I purchased an 8-ride pass last Friday to use for the rest of this month's estimated rides. Yesterday, I showed up at the Redwood City train station 20 minutes early and passed the time studying for an exam, completely forgetting to validate the ticket and not even realizing I'd forgotten until the official was coming through the train car. I didn't bother arguing with her (she didn't make up the rules, after all) but was doubly pissed off when I later discovered that she hadn't even written "VOID" across one of edge of my pass to validate it and hold me accountable for that ride.

In every other transit system I've ever ridden, there is a single point in the experience at which all riders--no matter what their transit needs or pass types, and no matter whether they swipe or insert or drop coins into a hole--have to provide proof of payment for that ride. On Muni, it's when you board the bus. On BART, on DC's Metro system, on Chicago's CTA, and on most metropolitan public transit systems around the world, it's when you go through the turnstile to get to the platform. Why, then, would Caltrain require some people to do something extra to a ticket they've already paid for before they board the train, when the rest need only to show their ticket aboard the train?

The solution

This is really such an easy problem to solve that I can't believe Caltrain makes it so hard for everyone involved--especially for all those officials who have to deal with pissed-off riders when they issue citations. All 8-ride passes already come with an expiration date, so what is the need for additional validation? I only have 2 weeks to use it, anyway. Call it a 2-week pass, if you want, and charge a little bit more money--but do away with the ride limit. Or, keep it an 8-ride pass and don't make me validate it beforehand if an official is going to pass through my car to check it, anyway; Caltrain officials always carry little tools with them to punch mysterious strips of yellow paper, so it can't be any more work to punch one of my rides as validation.

In the larger scheme of things, Caltrain needs to think about redesigning a better system of ticketing and payment so that it won't need to employ so many grumpy officials to be ticket police. We frequent riders appreciate the service and are willing to pay for the convenience it provides in our life, but everyone could be a lot happier--and things would run a lot more smoothly--if a more considered and use-centered approach to design were applied to the overall experience.

posted by Joyce | 4 comments | Links to this post |  

Frank Zappa spotted it before Apple

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

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In the next meeting with a client or a design neophyte, refrain yourself from using the overused quote "people want a hole in the wall, not a drill". Every single marketing student has learned it and repeated it ad nauseam. Better than that, you can use a quote from the visionary Frank Zappa:

"Music consumers like to consume music... not pieces of vinyl wrapped in pieces of cardboard."

Back in 1983 he already identified the motivations of people for buying music beyond the artifact itself (accessibility to a virtually infinite catalogue and playable from multiple devices with no physical limits) and triggered him to propose a system 'where you could subscribe to whatever genre of music you wanted and get it delivered in batches' which sounds a lot like iTunes music store but many years ago:

"We propose to acquire the rights to digitally duplicate and store THE BEST of every record company's difficult-to-move Quality Catalog Items [Q.C.I.], store them in a central processing location, and have them accessible by phone or cable TV, directly patchable into the user's home taping appliances, with the option of direct digital-to-digital transfer to F-1 (SONY consumer level digital tape encoder), Beta Hi-Fi, or ordinary analog cassette (requiring the installation of a rentable D-A converter in the phone itself . . . the main chip is about $12)."


posted by Enric | 1 comments | Links to this post |  

Pace of decision making as a factor of corporate innovation

Thursday, April 9, 2009

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Within big companies everybody wants to be an innovator. Innovation projects are started by executives and managers across the board and all of them want their teams to come up with the next big thing.

Unfortunately, no matter how well equipped these teams are in terms of skills, talent, and resources, one of the reasons why many of these projects end up going nowhere is because these teams have terrible decision-makers as stakeholders. Here are some symptoms:
  • Different project sponsors have problems aligning among themselves and they take too much time to make a decision on the direction of the project
  • Same sponsors spend an inefficient amount of time waiting to syndicate results with the involved executives and when the long awaited meeting happens no clear decision is made
  • Teams completely demoralized by all the constant changes in project scope, timelines, and resources

Needless to say, when I came across Scott Anthony's post "3 ways to fail cheap", I felt someone finally had the guts to talk about the not so rosy aspects of executing innovation.

"Increase the pace of decision making. Entrepreneurs with clearly bad ideas typically don't have the luxury of spending money on those ideas for too long. Companies, however, can let bad ideas linger for inordinate amounts of time because of slow decision-making processes. Shutting down flawed projects early avoids needless spending — and focuses resources on the best ideas."

The lesson here is that internal innovation teams who are ready to tackle any big hairy problem need managers and executives that can think in an agile way, make decisions quickly and enable the teams to move at the speed that is required.

On the contrary, managers who take a lot of time making decisions, are unfocused on their point of view, and fail at requesting prompt decisions from their superiors are just simply condemned to fail for good.


Photo by Sam UL


posted by Enric | 1 comments | Links to this post |  

Rapid heuristic evaluation of the new Facebook interface (a.k.a. Top five reasons why it sucks)

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

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A friend's Facebook status message recently read that she "is really only on FB for about 60 seconds every other day now that the design sucks." Here's why:

1. Feed takes up more screen real estate
Less dense information = more scrolling to ingest everything.

2. Unclear use of grid/column spaces
There are photos on the right, photos in the middle, status/Twitters in the middle, random events ("Highlights") that have nothing to do with me on the top right. What gives? Where is the logic? My favorite part of the screen is the extra white space on either side of the content when I maximize my browser window. Ahhhhhh.....

3. Awkward information hierarchy
Here is why I completely glaze over the rightmost column (aside from the "Highlights," which seems like it should be relabeled "Ads"): because hell if I know that my friend named her new photo album "Living la vida loca," I just know that I like to see Jane Smith's photos, and photos of Jane Smith. Um, it's "social networking" for a reason--make the people the focal point!

4. I have to work harder to get to the stuff I care about
...Therefore, I am less likely to stick around to find it. If Joe Bob is an OCD status updater, I have to read 5 of his status updates in a row before I get to learn something about my other friends. If I "x" him out then I lose all of his status updates. Shouldn't there be a middle ground, like being able to see just his latest status update? Also, don't make me filter people out. Software should be smart enough to track the people who's photos I comment on most, the profiles I visit (read: stalk) most often, and the organizers of events I attend.

5. Redundancy
What's the difference between the "Home" link and "Friends" link on the top nav bar? If I don't pick a drop-down "Friends" option, it appears that it just takes me "Home." Similarly, what's the difference between the "Profile" link and "Joyce Chen" link? We get seven links for the price of five, which in interaction design is not that great of a deal.

posted by Joyce | 2 comments | Links to this post |  

Welcome to the (Design) Machine

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

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"The idea [behind the Design Machine] was how can we make it easy for nondesigners to leverage the power of good design"

"Coca-cola: Building a Better Design Machine" [BusinessWeek]

This is an old article but I definitely think is an example of where the design practice is expanding to: creating meta-design tools and processes that will enable people who do not have a traditional design background to actually design something. And this something will be constrained and within guidelines, but will be good enough for people to actually make a narrow yet useful use of a design tool.
 
Design tools have become this uber-monsters that can do virtually everything: think about photoshop CS4 or the latest video editing tool you fancy the most. Is there anything they can't do? These are definitely tools for expert designers, who spend literally 100% of their time designing stuff. But what about the people who have a business function within a company other than design and wants to harness the power of design to do their job better? Do they really have to learn the whole complexity of of an advanced tool just to help them think, visualize, prototype or look for solutions that had nothing to do with the expert practice of design as an end?

The Coca-cola 'design machine' is just an example of how a company is empowering their stakeholders to make better design decissions that are aligned with the overall business strategy in a very friendly and non-obtrusive way. Coca-cola business goal is not to have people spend time thinking about the composition of an ad. They want people to think about how the ads can connect better with their customers giving a set of design guidelines. These design machine users leapfrog the operational aspects of visual design and move to a higher level of thinking in order to focus on what really matters to them which is to apply the best business strategy possible in alignment with Coca-cola brand strategy.

posted by Enric | 3 comments | Links to this post |  

Experience strategy as coreography

Monday, February 16, 2009

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I am always delighted to see Peterme use metaphors to explain in a very understandable way concepts that many people have trouble talking about in a clear way. The latest example I have bumped into is his no-nonesense explanation to the Harvard business suit crowd of what customer experience is:

"[it] isn't about money -- in my work, the biggest impact I've seen a customer experience mindset have is to help companies understand how they can better orchestrate existing elements to realize new value. I'm sure that sounds like some retread of the dreaded "Business Process Reengineering", but there's a key distinction -- this isn't about efficiency and effectiveness and reducing waste throughout your processes. This is about choreographing what you already have (technologies, people, offerings) to better respond to your customers' needs and wants."

When looking around me for the artifacts I enjoy using the most these days, I can't help realize how many of them are choreographed as more than just 'one trick pony' products. They are stupendous ensembles of pieces which are connected in a way that deliver a value to me far greater than the sum of its pieces. Here just some examples of what I am talking about:
  • Monocle: I like to refer to it as my monthly easy-reading digest on 'wordology'. The paper magazine delightfully covers a wide range of topics from A to E [Affairs-Business-Culture-Design-Edits], which makes it very convenient to stay up to date on current events without having to go through zillions of publications. They do the editing and orchestrating of distinctive non-mainstream stories for you and that's basically what you pay for: convenience . Oh, and also for making the most of your scarce free time, something other media outlets have not fully grasped yet (haven't media executives read about the attention economy in their own publications?). Besides reading the mag on paper I like to complement the experience by listening to their British accent flavoured weekly podcast, and check out every now and then their RSS feeds on my saturated gReader.

  • Songbird: think about it as an open source patchwork app that uses the browsing capabilities Firefox, an audio player with the capabilities of iTunes, and the flexibility of dozens of extensions to customize your listening experience (think last.fm, contextual song lyrics, concert tickets, related artists, etc.). If all these pieces already existed before Songbird, what is so awesome about this new app? The reason is that you can do everything you used to do with multiple apps (torrent client, browser, audio player) but now without having to leave a single app: look for new MP3s on Hypemachine, subscribe and download songs from mp3 blogs, read music news sites, access your last.fm account, listen to on-line radio, etc.

  • Garmin Forerunner 405: what i love about this sport watch is how seamlessly all the pieces work together. The wrist watch helps you keep track of time and heat zones during training. The desktop app downloads the data without having to remove the watch from your wrist to do deeper analysis of your workout. And the web app allows you to access your training data from anywhere and share it with training mates. It is so easy to take data into the computer that the first thing I do after running is to upload the data to the computer and review the training. Yes, that inmediate.
So-called innovators are always on the look for the next big thing, thinking such thing has to be a totally new groundbreaking product that no one has ever thought of it. In reality they would probably be better of and way more effective if only the looked into how to do more and better with thet things they already have around. Something a creativity masters already said some time ago when talking about creativity and originality:

“It’s not where you take things from—it’s where you take them to.”
Jean Luc Godard

posted by Enric | 0 comments | Links to this post |  

Pretty things

Friday, February 13, 2009

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This is cute: graphic design inspired by music. My only complaint is the user experience: I don't want to have to click to the next page/song and press Play, although I understand that the former feature could have been purposefully implemented to prevent a listener from missing all of the visuals if he Tabs away listening to the tunes and forgets to for the visuals.

I always enjoy Nicholas Felton's Annual Report and this year is no exception, although I find the triangle pattern obtuse at times and I wonder if there is a way to use such meticulously collected and organized data to tell a more rich and human story?

posted by Joyce | 0 comments | Links to this post |  

A timeline of design thinking mental artifacts anyone?

Thursday, February 5, 2009

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Situation
  • According to the IIT ID Methods Archive project, the 'Balance Breakthroughs' Model is a framework "developed originally by Doblin Inc." that "aids in conceiving innovations that cut across the three major areas of change and pull them together". The framework looks at what is possible (what is  allowed by technology), viable (how a business can be profitable), and desirable (what people value)
  • In 1969, Charles Eames drew a diagram to explain the design process as the intersecting point where the needs and interests of the client, the
    design office, and society as a whole can overlap. The diagram reads:

    "1. if this area represents the interest and concern of the design office
    2. and this the area of genuine interest to the client
    3. and this the concerns of society as a whole
    4. then it is in this area of overlapping interest and concern that the designer can work with conviction and enthusiasm

    Note: these areas are not static - they grow and develop as each one influences the others
    Note: putting more than one client in the model build the relationship - in a positive and constructive way - "

    Statement of the Eames Design Process by Charles Eames for the show "Qu’est-ce que le Design?" (What is Design?), Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, 1969

  • IDEO repeatedly presents in their IDEO University workshops and inside many of their publications a Venn diagram that explains the area where Design Thinking happens: the intersection of business, technology and people. They don't claim to have authored it but neither I have seen them  source it.


Significance

  • As more and more consultancies have entered the innovation consulting practice, we have started to see mental models that look familiar to all of us, usually reinterpreted and rebranded as unique knowledge assets to their organization. These are used and presented as main differentiators and as clear evidence of thought leadership by business developers around the world looking to persuade 'design-ignorant' companies to spend big bucks on them.

  • Aiming to get extra points from clients and the larger design community (specially students blinded by the new innovation star system), some of these consultancies even publish and sell PR materials disguised as books, which by the way, are still regarded nowadays as the ultimate embodiment of knowledge ( don't people know about vanity publishing yet?). These will present a couple of thought-in-house mental models and dozens of lightweight case studies directly extracted from previous engagements with companies that have paid religiously hefty consulting fees and whose design managers are more than willing to show up in the book so their companies can be regarded as those who 'get innovation' and are succeeding at riding the new marketing wave (at least that's how they would like to be quoted in an upcoming Bruce Nussbaum's blog post)
Suspicion

  • Will there ever be someone who creates a timeline of design models evolution so we don't have to see anymore these orphan newborn models grow up by themselves?

posted by Enric | 5 comments | Links to this post |  

Making a case for solitude

Friday, January 30, 2009

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Is it just me, or would everyone suffer from a mild panic attack if one of their friends were to disappear from their gChat list for several days without explanation? I recently experimented with blocking a contact from my list and was both amazed and terrified at how quickly that person ceased to exist in my reality. Another friend of mine explained that her company had allowed its employees to use instant messaging programs at work up until last year; suddenly blocked from seeing which friends/acquaintances were online at any given time, she felt isolated and anxious.

In our day and age, connectivity enabled by technology (whether via cell phones, email, instant messaging, etc.) is so widespread that to remove oneself from that network feels unusual and often uncomfortable, especially for the generation of kids who have never known communication without the Internet. In his article titled "The End of Solitude," published in the most recent issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education, William Deresiewicz explores the benefits of solitude and warns against its obsolescence.

He observes that, in our present age, visibility "is the quality that validates us, this is how we become real to ourselves — by being seen by others. The great contemporary terror is anonymity. If Lionel Trilling was right, if the property that grounded the self, in Romanticism, was sincerity, and in modernism it was authenticity, then in postmodernism it is visibility. So we live exclusively in relation to others, and what disappears from our lives is solitude."

What benefits does solitude provide? The impetus for and concept of solitude has changed throughout history. During the Romantic period, the practice of solitude is seen as critical to achieving sincerity: "the belief that the self is validated by a congruity of public appearance and private essence, one that stabilizes its relationship with both itself and others." In modernist society, solitude was seen as a refuge from the city and the masses. "But we no longer live in the modernist city, and our great fear is not submersion by the mass but isolation from the herd. Urbanization gave way to suburbanization, and with it the universal threat of loneliness. "

But Deresiewicz distinguishes between loneliness and solitude: loneliness is the negative experience of solitude, or the state of being alone with oneself. As with all things with which we are unfamiliar, "the less are we able to deal with [solitude] the more terrifying it gets."

What we lose by losing solitude is, "first, the propensity for introspection, that examination of the self that the Puritans, and the Romantics, and the modernists (and Socrates, for that matter) placed at the center of spiritual life — of wisdom, of conduct. Thoreau called it fishing "in the Walden Pond of [our] own natures," "bait[ing our] hooks with darkness." He argues that "no real excellence, personal or social, artistic, philosophical, scientific or moral, can arise without solitude" but admits that "Solitude isn't easy, and isn't for everyone." It's can be both impolite and unpopular.

What place does solitude have in our current society? Do you agree with Deresiewicz's position on the value of solitude? To me, I see the practice of design as an apt metaphor: we need to strike a balance between collaboration and teamwork, and individual focus and intuition, to create great work. In the same way, everyone can participate more successfully and authentically in a visible world if they periodically withdraw to re-examine who they are and what they want from it.

As a final thought, and to play Devil's Advocate: Do these same philosophies and values apply to more interdependent cultures, such as in Latin America and Asia? An American friend living in China once suggested that, whereas Americans will crave the solitude of hiking in wilderness areas far away from any sign of civilization, the Chinese appear to have no such desire. Most of the remote trails he took while hiking through national parks in Western China inevitably led him to incredible vista points that turned out to be fully accessible by tour bus, where his walking meditation would be interrupted as groups of Asian tourists descended to take photos before traveling on to the next lookout. Could our estrangement from solitude as a result of connectivity shape American/Western culture to become more interdependent?

posted by Joyce | 0 comments | Links to this post |  

Connecting the other 3 billion

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

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O3b Networks, O3b stands for Other 3 billion, aims to provide cheap internet access to the remote areas of the globe by 2010. Backed by Google, Liberty and HSBC, O3b is setting up a satellite network to connect the three billion people who currently don't have internet access. In most of the Western world, internet access came as the natural next step in communication technology, we already were enjoying the benefits of TV, telephone, newspapers and what not. These countries, however, will be catapulted into a global information society most of its inhabitants never knew existed.

I can only begin to imagine the impact this will have on these societies. Lack of connectivity and information access are a huge issue in these parts of the world - just think disaster relief, health care and all its related issues like birth control and aids prevention, access to education, access to (alternative) news sources, and most importantly, having the tools to communicate and to organize. Literally, I can see a world of opportunities opening up.

posted by Jan | 1 comments | Links to this post |  

What's in a name?

Thursday, January 15, 2009

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[Disclaimer: I used to work at MetaDesign and am still friends with many of the people who work there. I am also still friends with many of the people who left MetaDesign for Ammunition.]

Some of you have already heard my rant about this, but I've calmed down from my initial shock and would like to engage in a civilized discussion about the legality and integrity of Ammunition's decision to showcase on its new website all of the projects that Brett Wickens and Matt Rolandson led while they were Creative Director and President, respectively, at MetaDesign. I counted at least ten projects for which the client had actually hired MetaDesign, not Ammunition, but which are currently displayed in Ammunition's portfolio in addition to having already been on MetaDesign's portfolio for the last several months/years.

Now, it would be one thing if Wickens and Rolandson showcased these projects on their own personal websites; Adobe did, after all, hire Wickens and MetaDesign to design its CS1 and CS2 packaging. It did not, however, hire Ammunition, and while Ammunition attempts to give credit to MetaDesign via a small rollover link at the bottom of each project page, I still find this misleading or, at the very least, confusing.

Legality
I do not purport to have the slightest inkling about what kind of legal contracts were agreed to between the parties involved. Perhaps it is perfectly legal to cite projects in this way, especially since Ammunition founder Robert Brunner came from Pentagram, which operates more as a collective of design teams each led by a principal and each managing its own client accounts than as a single design unit. (When Brunner left to found Ammunition, he took his whole team at Pentagram--and ostensibly his clients--with him.) Perhaps this is the same situation that causes confusion over who designed the first Apple mouse in 1980. At the time it was Hovey-Kelley Design, but David Kelley later merged his company, David Kelley Design (I'm still unclear as to whether this is the same legal entity as Hovey-Kelley Design or a subsequent incarnation of it), with three other firms to create IDEO. So did IDEO create the first Apple mouse if Hovey and the other original team members do not and potentially never have worked there?

Integrity
Even if it were technically legal (with the appropriate credit citations), is it fair? What is integrity when it comes to design, given that so many products are the result of teamwork and designers are so fickle when it comes to firm loyalty? Wikipedia defines integrity as "the quality of having a sense of honesty and truthfulness in regard to the motivations for one's actions." Another definition describes it as "adherence to a code of values; utter sincerity, honesty, candor; completeness." Honesty seems to be a big player here, and perhaps that is why I still feel uneasy about the way Ammunition has represented MetaDesign's work, even though I can convince myself that it could be totally legal. If Ammunition were a person, I can picture him walking around in borrowed clothing and taking all of the credit when others compliment his sense of style, while anyone who bothered to look at the tags would find someone else's initials stitched into them.

When has something like this happened in the past, and how have people reacted to it?

How does a design firm brand itself if its identity is really just a collection of different brands associated with its principals and their past alliances?

posted by Joyce | 31 comments | Links to this post |  

Designing a Better Brand

Monday, January 5, 2009

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Adapted from HOW Magazine.

A prospective client asks you, "I've heard of you guys. Tell me about your firm."
You give the wrong answer: "We're a full service integrated design firm serving a wide variety of clients."

HOW TO FIX THIS

Describe your positioning in:
-a sentence
-a paragraph
-a page

Decide what you're not
Standing for everything = Standing for nothing
Goal: not to appeal to a larger number of clients, but fewer.

Go beyond awareness
Name awareness does not equal brand equity

Discover your brand
It's already in your company in the form of natural strengths and core competencies

Consider:
-What kind of clients have you been most successful in attracting?
-What types of assignments have you completed over the years?
-In what areas do you have superior knowledge or expertise?
-What do you do particularly well, perhaps better than most firms?
-What do you most enjoy doing? What do you hate?
-What target audiences have you come to know and understand?
-What distribution channels do you know best?
-What methods, approaches or philosophies is the firm known for?

Connecting value and audience
1) What value do we provide?
2) Who do we deliver value to?
3) How do we deliver it?

Differentiating position:
"We offer [your service] for [your market] by [your method]."

(This is hard because it involves giving something up)

Criteria for strong positioning
Authentic: an honest reflection of what the firm is capable of. Plays to the firm's strengths. Can have aspirational aspects, but only if the firm has the firepower to deliver on the promises.
Exclusive: It excludes as many prospective clients as it includes.
Polarizing: Appeals to only limited number of clients. It may even inspire controversy.

Match position with practice
Question:
"What needs to change in our organization for us to bring our brand to life in everything we do?"
Answer reflected in:
-product
-people
-promotion
-process
-place of business

Socrates said: "The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear."

Goal of successful branding: Be everything to somebody, not something to everybody.

posted by Erik | 1 comments | Links to this post |  

A Well Designed Business Model

Wednesday, December 3, 2008

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Hilti, a manufacturer of construction tools, noticed that when tools break contractors can't finish their jobs on time. Hilti realized that contractors don't bring in money by owning tools, they make money by using tools to get their job done as efficiently as possible.

So Hilti developed a business model where contractors pay a fixed monthly fee for a fleet of tools. Hilti replaces or repairs any broken tools and upgrades all the tools when the usage period is over. Contractors can select the type and quantity of tools they need.

As a result, contractors have a streamlined cost structure for tools and are more productive because of consistent high tool quality. Additionally, Hilti has incentive to build a more sustainable, long lasting, high performance product.

posted by Erik | 1 comments | Links to this post |  

Obama is acting as an integrative thinker

Monday, November 24, 2008

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One of the most useful things Roger Martin has done for the innovation community is to saliently describe what are the characteristics that define integrative/design/systems thinking:

"[integrative thinking] is a response when two available models oppose one another, and are each unsatisfactory. More conventional thinkers are inclined to accept the situation, and see their job as making the tough decision of choosing between the two.

Integrative thinkers reject the suggestion that, just because they're the only two models that exist now, those are the only two models possible. There is a sense that there is an opportunity to create something different."


And Today, I look at Obama's press conference announcing his economic team and, voila!, there they are: he does not want to choose and he does not want trade-offs.  He just wants the best possible creative solution for all Americans. CNN news has some excerpts:

"I've sought leaders who could offer both sound judgment and fresh thinking, both a depth of experience and a wealth of bold, new ideas, and most of all who share my fundamental belief that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street without a thriving Main Street"

And you can't accomplish this unless you have people who can work with both parties and with people who can listen, question and dialogue.

'Obama described Geithner as having "served with distinction under both Democrats and Republicans and has a long history of working comfortably and as an honest broker on both sides of the aisle.'

"In Romer, Obama said, he has found an independent economist respected by both conservatives and liberals who has done "groundbreaking research on many of the topics our administration will confront, from tax policy to fighting recessions."

Even though is hard to predict what is going to be the impact of Obama's economic plan, evidence so far is demonstrating he is approaching his challenge with high doses of innovative thinking. I am sure professor Charles L. Owen will comment on Obama's way of thinking very soon and without doubt will praise his systems thinking approach.


Picture: http://pol.moveon.org/mh/gallery/artwork.html?artwork=1

posted by Enric | 0 comments | Links to this post |  

Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time

Sunday, November 23, 2008

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(The following is adapted from the HBR article Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time by Schwartz and McCarthy)

Working longer hours is rarely the answer for improving performance.

This gets people exhausted, disengaged and sick.

Instead focus on renewing your personal energy by adapting rituals that replenish physical, emotional and mental resilience.

1) Physical Energy
>> Get more sleep
>> Identify energy lapses, such as restlessness, yawning, difficulty concentrating
>> Take quick breaks away from your desk at 90 minute intervals

2) Emotional Energy
>> Through detailed emails, notes or conversations regularly express appreciation to others
>> When an unsettling situation occurs, consider it through a longer lens. Ask, "How will I view this situation in six months?" Then ask, "How can I grow and learn from this situation?"

3) Mental Energy
>> Perform high concentration tasks away from phones and email
>> Respond to voice mails and emails at designated times during the day
>> Each night, identify the most important challenge for the coming day, then make it priority number one when you get to work in the morning

4) Spiritual Energy
>> Spend time on activities you do best and enjoy most
>> Live your values: if consideration is important to you but you're always late, practice showing up five minutes early for everything

posted by Erik | 0 comments | Links to this post |  

Managing Oneself

Friday, November 21, 2008

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Adapted from "Managing Oneself" by Peter Drucker

"Success in the knowledge economy comes to those who know themselves--their strengths, their values, and how they best perform."

To discover your strengths, do feedback analysis.
Whenever you make a key decision or take a key action, write down what you predict will happen. Six months to a year later, compare the actual results with your prediction.

This will show you the following things: your strengths, what you are doing or not doing that prohibits you from enjoying the benefits of your strengths, what you're not that great at, and what you have no strengths in.

Concentrate on your strengths.

1) Position yourself where your strengths produce results
2) Improve on your strengths
3) Identify ignorance toward other disciplines and open yourself to them when they solidify your strengths
4) Identify and remedy your bad habits that stand in the way of your strengths
5) Don't take jobs or assignments in areas where you have no strength.

Put yourself in the following position:
"Yes, I will do that. But this is the way I should be doing it, this is the way it should be structured, and this is the way the relationship should be. These are the kind of results you should expect from me, because this is who I am."

A fair question to ask of other knowledge workers: "What do I need to know about your strengths, how you perform, your values, and your proposed contribution?"

posted by Erik | 0 comments | Links to this post |  

Being thankful; restaurants that create community

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

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It turns out it can actually be a challenge to be truly thankful. We Westerners are brought up to take pride in being self-reliant and independent--so much so that it sometimes becomes difficult to say "thank you" when someone else performs an unsolicited, unexpected, authentic and selfless act of kindness. Rather than be truly appreciative of and celebrate that person's generosity, we find ourselves guilt-tripped into doing something equally generous out of a sense of obligation, Hammurabi's "eye for an eye" principle applied to philanthropy. The irony is that giving out of guilt does not feel satisfying at all.

Last night, a 70-year-old man in a suit sitting next to me at the bar at Avec paid for my dinner. Both of us were there alone, looking to have an exceptional meal (it was) on our business stay in Chicago, and soon found ourselves sharing our small plates with each other and with the couple on the other side of him, and exchanging stories about the other incredible meals we've had while traveling the world. When our bills came, he insisted on paying for mine and I relented after a minute or so of protest. Walking back to the hotel still trying to process what had just happened (and realizing that we didn't even know each other's names, having skipped the formal introduction part of a typical first meeting), I was momentarily overcome with guilt. Did I give in too easily? Was he regretting his choice? Should I have given him a hug or a granddaughterly kiss on the cheek to show how moved I was, even if it wouldn't have felt completely genuine? I felt buhao yisi, a Chinese phrase that doesn't have a succinct or accurate translation in English but generally feels like a combination of undeserving, ashamed, appreciative, and touched, all at the same time.

A brisk walk in the crisp, cold Chicago evening cleared away all of the negative/doubtful emotions and I convinced myself to simply feel blessed (for lack of a better word with less of a religious connotation), and to appreciate and remember mankind's capacity for giving.

A side note on environment impacting behavior: while other restaurants with more sophisticated or romantic atmospheres that I passed were rather empty and sluggish on a Monday night in a slowing economy, Avec was packed and bustling and couldn't keep a line from forming in its narrow entryway. I'm convinced that it's not just the food that brings people back, but also the sense of community that is fostered by the long bar and long tables where singles and couples are forced to sit elbow-to-elbow with strangers as they enjoy sipping from an impressive selection of imported beer and wine, and savoring the delicious concoctions coming out of the kitchen. It's hard not to want to talk about the food with neighbors when it's so good, and the structure of the restaurant makes these kinds of exchanges easy.

Photo courtesy of tellersfood.blogspot.com

posted by Joyce | 1 comments | Links to this post |  

What I Wish Obama Had Said

Saturday, November 8, 2008

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During the second presidential debate, which seems like ages ago, the candidates were asked a question that I wish Mr. Obama had answered differently: "What don't you know, and how will you find the answer if you're president?"

Mr. Obama responded that they should ask his wife what he doesn't know, and then went on a tangent about what America needs (tax relief, better health care, etc).

He missed an opportunity to talk about the power of open innovation working in politics.

A better answer would have been while he doesn't know which specific types of technology will bring clean power to American homes, he does know that building the right incentives will inspire Americans to invent them.

Or while he doesn't know exactly how to get Americans focused on preventive care, he does know that if you give employers and doctors and individuals incentives to prevent illness, America can build a healthier country.

Or while he doesn't know what the perfect mass transit system looks like, he does know that if you build the right rewards Americans will develop systems that make us less reliant on foreign oil.

These are just a few of the big problems Mr. Obama faces as president. He should not pretend to know precisely how to achieve these goals, nor should he simply pass slow moving and watered down legislation. But he should use his post to structure markets so they point toward goals that transcend politics.

posted by Erik | 0 comments | Links to this post |  

Obama.

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

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Good morning world. Yes, Obama was elected yesterday.

What has happened to the state of politics in the USA now? Will people continue to stay engaged? And what were the triggers that led to the highest voter turnout in ages? I believe there were a few things that led to this: the internet, the state of our country, and an Obama campaign that stayed optimistic and focused on resolving our country's issues. It's no question that negative campaigning, while dramatic, is fleeting and doesn't manage a sustainable interest. It's like a sugar high and both are unhealthy.

My mom, I'm proud to say, voted for the first time in her life for an American president after becoming a US citizen a few years ago. Though she's lived in the US since 1970, she is still working on a strong command of the English language. Yet, she had a point-of-view on the key issues being debated. Where, in the past, we avoiding talking politics, we talked genuinely about the economy, health care and education in the days proceeding the election. Something was stirred.

Yesterday, as my mom routinely picks up my nephews from elementary school, my nephews called to say hello on their way home. One of them had a mini-election in their classroom and Obama won handily 17-3 (this in NM which voted Republican in the '04 election). 10, 9, and 8 years old, they were screaming for Obama to win (even though their parents seemed to oppose the candidate). Something was stirred. I thought more about creative ways that teachers could introduce the notion of a political system at an early age.

This is indeed a new era in the American political system which has (to a pleasant surprise) created a sense of ownership and participation among the masses. The streets of SF were alive and with energy last night - hooligans - but, for an election?! Something deep was stirred and there is great momentum in the country right now. As Obama mentioned yesterday, this first step is but a chance to enable change. There is a responsibility we all carry now. But, no doubt, there is even more confidence in our abilities after yesterday.

Congratulations to Mr. Obama, his family, and the entire campaign. I'm giddy.

posted by maritoruiz | 0 comments | Links to this post |  

On Changing Yourself

Thursday, October 30, 2008

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The following is a summary of the article by Geoff Colvin found here.

Success is not based on natural talent. It is a choice.

Studies of accomplished individuals show that few of them achieved anything great before the individuals started intense training.

What separates high achievers from everybody else is something researchers call "deliberate practice." Deliberate practice is a set of elements that, when combined, form a powerful system to improve performance.

The elements are:
1) DP is designed to specifically improve performance. The idea is to constantly stretch yourself beyond your current abilities. This requires you to identify those parts of performance that need to be improved, then work on them. For example, Tiger Woods drops golf balls into a sand trap, steps on them, then hits them out.

Great performers isolate very specific aspects of their game and work on just those things until they get better, then they move on to the next thing.

2) DP must be repeated a lot. But you must choose an activity that is just beyond your current capabilities. Then repeat. For example, Ted Williams would hit baseballs until his hands bled.

3) Get regular feedback from somebody who knows what they're talking about.

4) Expect a mental exercise. This is not mindlessly hitting tennis balls against a wall. It is identifying and focusing only on unsatisfactory areas and working to improve them. Famous violin teacher Leopold Auer told his students, "Practice with your fingers, and you need all day. Practice with your mind, and you will do as much in 1-1/2 hours."

5) It's hard. Seeking out what you're not good at puts you in an uncomfortable spot. But overcoming those situations makes the difference. The fact that it's hard will prevent most people from doing this, which will set you apart.

6) Before work: Set goals. Poor performers set no goals. Mediocre performers set general goals that are focused on a good outcome (win an order, finish a proposal). Excellent performers set goals that improve their own process of reaching outcomes.

7) During work: Observe yourself. Novice runners think about anything that gets their mind off of running. Elite runners focus intensely on their bodies by counting breaths and strides to maintain set ratios. At work it's called metacognition, or knowledge about your own knowledge. Top performers do this as part of their routine.

8) After work: Average performers tell themselves they did fine, great or poorly. The best performers judge themselves based on what they're trying to achieve. You must select a metric that is just beyond your current limits.

So where do you start? By asking what you truly want, and what you truly believe. The more you want something, the easier it will be to keep at it when it's difficult. And the more you believe that if you put in the work you will eventually perform at a high level, the better chance you have of making it real.

posted by Erik | 2 comments | Links to this post |  

How To Recession Proof Your Job

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

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(the following is a summary of the HBR article "How to Protect Your Job in a Recession" by Janet Banks and Diane Coutu)

  • Lighten up. People prefer working with those who are easy to get along with, even over colleagues who are more capable but less friendly.
  • Look forward to a brighter future. Anticipate a state where things will improve.
  • Anticipate customer needs, both internally and externally. Make your contribution indispensable.
  • Become ambidextrous. Volunteer to take on more responsibilities.
  • Offer solutions to corporate leaders. Show why your department matters. Showing empathy for a leader improves your chances of keeping your job.
  • Unite and inspire colleagues. Revive spirits, get people talking to each other, have fun.
  • Become a good corporate citizen. Show up at the informal meetings you're used to skipping. Participate.
  • Get your ducks in a row. Revise your resume now. Make a list of contacts. Think creatively about your future. Make a Plan B that is better than your Plan A.

posted by Erik | 0 comments | Links to this post |  

In tough economic times, INNOVATE!

Monday, October 27, 2008

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In an article by Kellogg School of Management's Professor Andrew J. Razeghi, the author urges people not to cut back on research and innovation during tough financial times, because these are the areas that are most vital to a company's survival. He cites many examples of product inventions that we now take for granted that came about during the Great Depression because smart and creative people discovered and catered to unmet needs. For example, Miracle Whip was invented during the Depression and marketed as a tasty new dressing to make vegetables and sandwiches more appealing during a time when meat was scarce and expensive. It outsold all other brands of dressing and mayonnaise within six months of its initial launch.

Razeghi's six tips for innovating through economic downturns are:

1. Listen to the market. It's quieter when it's less crowded. Unmet needs abound.
There is no better time to invest in user and market research!

2. Invest in your customers. Now they need you most. Loyalty hangs in the balance.
Offer all kinds of services to keep your existing customers loyal to you.

3. Rather than reduce price, offer more value to your customers and demand greater value from vendors.
Reducing prices for the sake of reducing prices only serves to negatively impact the perceived value of your product.

4. Increase communication with your customers.
Don't let up on advertising; studies have shown that it is critical to maintaining sales.

5. Move longer-term projects forward, not back. Now is the time to grab market share.
Improve product quality and invest in new opportunities that will help gain you market share while other companies lost market share by cutting innovation resources.

6. In recession, not all costs are created equal. Maintain or increase investment in "good costs," prune "bad costs," and use judgment on "it depends costs."
"Good costs" are marketing, innovation and customer quality. "Bad costs" are fixed and working capital, manufacturing, and general and administrative expenses.

This article (which you can download here) definitely helps to promote the creative industry as our jobs are to help companies communicate to and develop new products for its customers. Still, part of me wonders if there is data out there that suggests otherwise? Who wants to play Devil's Advocates and do a little more research?

posted by Joyce | 2 comments | Links to this post |  

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