Thought You Should See This

What a lovely and clever video celebrating the 40th birthday of...

helenwalters — Fri, 25 May 2012 11:02:00 -0400

What a lovely and clever video celebrating the 40th birthday of legendary collective Pentagram. As type foundry Hoefler & Frere-Jones tweeted, the designers found a way “to summarize 40 exceptional years, without being self-congratulatory.” Beautifully done—and very happy birthday, Pentagram!

How Can Companies Copy Cities Successfully?

helenwalters — Fri, 25 May 2012 08:15:18 -0400

Jonah Lehrer was an entertaining presenter at the 99% Conference, and he flagged some particularly fascinating research, from Geoffrey West, of the Santa Fe Institute. A theoretical physicist, West’s interest in “general scaling phenomena” led him to study cities. Lehrer then outlined the difference between cities and companies, which might seem rather dull but was actually quite thought-provoking. For instance, Lehrer described, while the two might look somewhat similar on the surface, there’s one critical difference: cities never die. “They’re immortal. You can nuke a city and it’ll come back. You can burn it to the ground and we still have San Francisco.”

Companies, in contrast, die all the time. Lehrer cited a fact we’re all too quick to forget (or fail to remember) when we’re bemoaning the death of another industry icon: the average lifespan of a Fortune 100 firm is only 40 years; 25% of Fortune 100 companies die every decade. And when they’re gone, they’re gone.

According to West, the reason for this is that as cities get bigger, everyone within its confines becomes more productive. “That’s why urbanization is the great theme of the 21st century,” said Lehrer. “We cram ourselves together; we have more ideas.” The design of the city keeps us all on our toes.

Companies enjoy the opposite effect. As a company gets bigger, everyone becomes less productive. Bureaucracy happens; meetings happen; management happens. There’s less profit per employee; they’re no longer able to innovate at the same rate; people get in the way of creativity and innovation.

“The magic of cities is that they’re freewheeling and chaotic,” concluded Lehrer. “It’s a bunch of strangers bumping into each other. Cities don’t try to maximize creativity which is precisely why they do. Companies on the other hand micromanage, we chain ourselves to desk, we don’t drink beer in the afternoon, we brainstorm when we don’t want to brainstorm.”

I love this insight. Now the question becomes: how can companies better imitate cities?

[Photo: Julian Mackler]

"No one gives a damn about graphic design and color. That doesn’t change anyone’s life;..."

helenwalters — Fri, 25 May 2012 07:40:54 -0400

“No one gives a damn about graphic design and color. That doesn’t change anyone’s life; that doesn’t mean anything.”

- A somewhat surprising assertion from well-known graphic designer, James Victore, speaking at the recent 99% Conference. Victore went on to describe his work for the NYC Department of Probation (see a slideshow of the work in the spacecontext designed by Jim Biber of Biber Architects.) It’s clear that Victore does think that design can make a difference when considered holistically, and he closed with a piece of encouraging advice for the assembled design-centric crowd: “Just ask! Ask for more time. Ask for more creativity. Ask for more money. We always ask, and we sometimes get it.” And, he concluded: “at the risk of sounding like a Miss America runner up, your work is a gift. My work is a gift. My work for the DOP was a gift… The world is waiting for your gift. Give it to them with both barrels.”

My colleague Jeff Wordham gave this presentation at the recent...

helenwalters — Thu, 24 May 2012 07:30:28 -0400

My colleague Jeff Wordham gave this presentation at the recent Brandworks conference. It’s a smart take on how to think about — and organize for — launch, and includes principles for those thinking about the launch process (and those looking for ways to improve it.) The presentation includes persuasive examples from companies including Procter & Gamble, Hyundai and, yes, Apple and is well worth taking a spin through. Kudos also goes to Doblin’s Angelo Frigo, who was instrumental in putting it all together.

"The crash will come. And Facebook—that putative transformer of worlds, which is, in reality, only an..."

helenwalters — Wed, 23 May 2012 04:12:00 -0400

“The crash will come. And Facebook—that putative transformer of worlds, which is, in reality, only an ad-driven site—will fall with everybody else.”

- Much post-Facebook IPO post-rationalization going on. Marketplace’s Heidi Moore pointed out some stark figures: “Facebook’s market value at its highest: $112 bn. Today: $93bn. So Facebook lost $19 billion of value in one trading day.” And media commentator Michael Wolff chimed in with The Facebook Fallacy to pick apart the problems with the business model of the Silicon Valley social media darling.

Radiolab's Jad Abumrad on the Messy Process of Design and Innovation

helenwalters — Tue, 22 May 2012 10:21:00 -0400

Jad Abumrad also spoke at the 99% Conference. The founder of the experimental radio show, Radiolab, and winner of a Macarthur Foundation “Genius” award last year, Abumrad was simultaneously self-effacing and steely. In particular, he had a refreshing take on how he answers the difficult question of how exactly he made Radiolab into a success story: “In those moments I find myself bullshitting,” he confessed. “There’s a gravitational pull to talk about things in ways that are really not true.”

The desire to retroactively neaten up the messy process of design and innovation is understandable and pervasive. Yet Abumrad’s clear point was that there had been no clear plan in the early days of the show. How they would pay for the program, what the business plan was… all unclear. Instead, they were left with what he called “gut churn” and the existential angst that accompanies the question, “will I survive?”

Abumrad wasn’t advocating not considering the deeper facets of a problem, but instead was describing the “radical uncertainty you feel when you work without a template.” And, he added, “we don’t talk enough about how crummy it can feel to make something new.”

[Photo: Julian Mackler]

Nest's Tony Faddell on Prototyping and Getting Projects Approved

helenwalters — Tue, 22 May 2012 09:47:00 -0400

I recently attended the 99% Conference in New York, a refreshing gathering whose focus is less on the generation of ideas and more on their execution. (The conference’s name is a riff on Edison’s famous quote about the need for only 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.) The next few posts will feature some of the highlights, with the sought-after accolade of My Favorite Speaker* going to Tony Faddell.

The former Apple designer (Faddell was responsible for the iPod) has recently been lauded for his success with the Nest “learning thermostat,” a simple-to-install device that helps people to understand how their home uses energy (and therefore set it to save.) Faddell was energetic, inspiring and utterly committed to the concept that it’s the team that makes the difference between a launch’s failure or success, not simply the value of the idea itself. And it’s clear that the curiosity he described as being present from his early youth is still an integral part of the way he does business.

Prototyping, too, is a key skill that he believes needs to be mastered by more than designers. As Faddell described, in the 1990s people would all too often come to him with a great idea for a “kitchen computer.” They’d tell him all about how it would work, how beautiful it would be and how people could use it to get recipe information. And yet, he’d reply to them:

“You understand the hardware, the screen, the internet connection… but you didn’t attack the real problem. You didn’t prototype the user experience. You prototyped the hardware to get people to say that’s cool. But you didn’t look at the hard, hard pieces of the puzzle: how will people interact? How will they get two touches on the screen? How will it work? Too often people go for the easy thing but it’s the hard thing that sets the schedule, the budget and whether it’s doable.”

His advice: “find the hardest thing… the thing you really want to change, and look deeply into that.”

I also liked his three necessary qualities for getting projects approved:

1. Passion. This includes both the passion of youth and team members but, Faddell described, what is necessary is a “thoughtful passion, not an egotistical passion.” This is about being introspective about what you’re trying to do and then communicating that effectively to the people you’re trying to get join your team or who can approve something to move forward.

2. Presentation. This isn’t merely about making something look slick, but about looking at all the details and anticipating concerns, questions or risks, especially those of importance to those outside a core team. “Make them a part of the process,” advised Faddell, and acknowledge the challenges ahead and explain how they’ll be managed. By anticipating difficult questions and having, if not answers, at least the ability to show that they’re considered, the quantiest of analysts can be brought on board an innovation project.

3. Partnership. Getting the right senior leadership on board any innovation-related project is critical, Faddell advised. If conversations are starting with questions about shipping, product numbers or return on investment then as far as he’s concerned, you’re not working with the right person who will be able to give the necessary amount of air cover to your nascent idea. Instead, make sure you’re working with people who can be emotionally and rationally engaged in an idea’s worth. They’re the folks who will help you when others raise reasonable doubts.

Finally, a lovely, honest admission of the reality of innovation and entrepreneurship. “If it doesn’t feel like a rollercoaster day, you’re not doing something right,” said Faddell. “You need to feel that doubt every single day.”

* This is not a real thing.

[Photo: Julian Mackler]

"This year, the costs of dementia care will be $200 billion. By 2050, $1 trillion. Make no mistake,..."

helenwalters — Mon, 21 May 2012 11:46:16 -0400

“This year, the costs of dementia care will be $200 billion. By 2050, $1 trillion. Make no mistake, the purpose of long-term-care insurance is to help finance some of the greatest misery and suffering human beings have yet devised.”

- A Life Worth Ending is a harrowing piece by Michael Wolff on the care of his elderly mother. As the intro puts it, “The era of medical miracles has created a new phase of aging, as far from living as it is from dying,” while the American healthcare system has become so systematically dysfunctional that “emergency rooms, the last stop for gangbangers and the rootless, at least in the television version, are really the land of the elderly,” with the aged charged hundreds of thousands of dollars (or, at least, taxpayers charged the same) for treatments and the chance to continue a relentlessly bleak life. I was also taken with his description of the “furniture of aging” — “its own horrid story.” There’s much here for those interested in innovation or design to think about and apply when attempting to help design humanity back into (the end of) life. And then the stark conclusion, where Wolff describes “the absurdity of where we are, here on death row, measured not just in our heartache but nationally in hundreds of billions of dollars” and details his plans for his own demise. Devastating.

I’m completely biased, as the animator who made the film...

helenwalters — Mon, 21 May 2012 05:42:37 -0400

I’m completely biased, as the animator who made the film above is a friend of mine, but I love this submission for The International Douglas Adams Animation Competition, which challenges creative types to produce an animation to accompany a lovely audio recording of sci fi writer and Hitchhiker’s Guide creator, the late Douglas Adams, talking in 1993 about the evolution of the book from rock to silicone. Judges include the imperious Stephen Fry; winners are announced on Friday.

"Risk aversion is a hapless approach for a company that’s hoping to develop new technology...."

helenwalters — Mon, 21 May 2012 05:01:57 -0400

“Risk aversion is a hapless approach for a company that’s hoping to develop new technology. It’s tempting in a downturn. But long-term research and development, expensive and often filled with failure as it is, is the only route to discovering it. By taking the cautious path, companies risk a drought of ideas. During the downturn we have doubled our team of engineers and scientists and ramped up investment in research and development.”

- Sir James Dyson, founder of Dyson, outlines his approach to innovation, design and risk management, critical when the economic chips are down.

The Flipped Classroom: Answering Obama’s Call For Creativity In...

helenwalters — Wed, 09 May 2012 09:32:00 -0400

The Flipped Classroom: Answering Obama’s Call For Creativity In Education gives impressive examples of how thinking differently about the structure of education can have enormous effect. Turns out, changing the focus of how time is spent in class and how time is spent on homework can have enormous impact on the students.

Dominique improved in all six of his classes, carrying a 2.88 grade point average last fall compared to his previous D/F average. For the first time, he is talking about going to college.

Meanwhile, the pilot of the experiment reported these results:

Failure rates overall decreased by 30% to 10.8%. The breakdown by subject: English went from 52% to 19%; social studies from 28% to 9%; math 44% to 13%; and science from 41% to 19%.

Pretty impressive, huh? So now here’s my question: what influence might design skills (and, for that matter, writing skills?) have on such initiatives? The slide above, grabbed from the Fast Co Exist story, is like a technical manual on how not to design, while the writing is grammatically incorrect and somewhat incomprehensible. Yet they still got the results… the incredible impact happened quite without the influence of so-called “good” design or writing. So this begs the question, if the results are there, why do so many of us get hung up on the importance of things being “correct”? This is a serious question, and one that I think gets to the heart of designer insecurity. Do all teachers need to be designers and writers too? If things can happen quite well without designers, however can they argue that they actually need to be an integral part of the system? Or do we argue that the impact would be *that much greater* if those other skills were deeply integrated? Answers on a virtual postcard, please.

[Story via Beth DiLeone]

"The design community needs to move on from the incessant argument over the importance of design..."

helenwalters — Tue, 08 May 2012 11:19:45 -0400

“The design community needs to move on from the incessant argument over the importance of design thinking and process. It is time to claim victory. Get over it. The argument is boring. Design is important. We stipulate that design is about more than sexy products. We get that design is about delivering a compelling customer experience. We know that business model innovation is fundamentally about designing new ways to create, deliver and capture value. Now, can we get on with putting design thinking and process to work to enable business model innovation?”

- In The Problem With “Design Thinking,” my friend Saul Kaplan goes a little nuclear on his designer friends. I actually think the discussion around design thinking (to which, I confess, I have contributed more than makes me in any way comfortable) has moved on, though I still think examples of those who’ve figured out how to implement its ideas effectively are few and far between. This is an excerpt from Saul’s new book on business model innovation, just published, and which I’m looking forward to reading.

"The apps were, in the jargon of information technology, “walled gardens,” and although..."

helenwalters — Tue, 08 May 2012 11:13:31 -0400

“The apps were, in the jargon of information technology, “walled gardens,” and although sometimes beautiful, they were small, stifling gardens”

- Why Publishers Don’t Like Apps is a great piece by Jason Pontin of Technology Review, explaining why apps haven’t proven to be the savior of publishing. The lack of linking and creation of “small, stifling gardens” is key, as are the economics of a business model that actually forced publishers to pay Apple for the privilege of selling single issues of magazines. Then there were the immense technical challenges, none of which mean a fig to the reader but which cause expensive headaches for the publisher. In short, the overarching question is simple but profound: what do users want or expect from their digital reading experience, and how do publishers provide that without bankrupting themselves? Clearly, providing a walled garden experience doesn’t cut it, and Pontin is searingly candid in his assessment of Technology Review’s own rather desultory experiments:

We sold 353 subscriptions through the iPad. We never discovered how to avoid the necessity of designing both landscape and portrait versions of the magazine for the app. We wasted $124,000 on outsourced software development. We fought amongst ourselves, and people left the company. There was untold expense of spirit. I hated every moment of our experiment with apps, because it tried to impose something closed, old, and printlike on something open, new, and digital.

That last phrase holds the key. As long as publishers attempt to shoehorn the old into the new, it proves they still haven’t understood the shifts to their business.

I clearly remember someone showing me John Derian’s work...

helenwalters — Fri, 04 May 2012 12:48:56 -0400

I clearly remember someone showing me John Derian’s work about a decade ago, and I didn’t understand it at all. Then I remember wandering into his store in the east village a few years later, and becoming completely smitten with it. This video is wonderful, and Derian clearly utterly charming, though I do wish we got a clearer insight into how exactly he does run the business side of things… His acknowledgement that he’s baffled by financial matters is honest—and let’s face it, a common complaint from creative types. So what’s his solution to managing the need to remain focused on his passion and talent—and care for his staff and his flourishing business?

[Video via Jon Barrett]

Great chart that unpicks the difference between a...

helenwalters — Fri, 04 May 2012 10:25:36 -0400

Great chart that unpicks the difference between a “well-organized” conversation and one that is actually well designed. This might seem like a little thing, but I’d go so far as to argue that, as human beings are essentially the most critical element in any innovation initiative, this is precisely an area in which we should all invest much more attention and care. It’s likely the topic will get more attention soon, as my colleague, Chris Ertel is working on abook about designing strategic conversations at this very moment—along with Lisa Kay Solomon, who teaches the MBA in Design Strategy course at California College of Arts. For now, take a look at some of their early findings (and other charts of this ilk) in this piece they wrote for the Design Management Review. Well worth the read.

"There is no single right answer or path forward, but there is one right way to frame the problem."

helenwalters — Fri, 04 May 2012 10:05:19 -0400

“There is no single right answer or path forward, but there is one right way to frame the problem.”

- Nominally a book review, Clay Christensen’s Life Lessons is really more of a lyrical spin through the acclaimed Harvard Business School professor’s life and works, with a nod towards his upcomigng title, How Will You Measure Your Life? It’s a really lovely profile, featuring a guest appearance from Doblin’s own Larry Keeley, playing the role of merry contrarian, as per.

I’m still of the old school way of thinking that...

helenwalters — Thu, 03 May 2012 11:23:13 -0400

I’m still of the old school way of thinking that technology is a fantastic, amazing tool that works best when harnessed in the name of a really good idea. So I can do without the trend for turning everything and its cousin into an app. But this one is pretty smart. The Pain Squad app is designed to help sick children collect critical health data about how much pain they’re feeling. Turning pain management into a game, complete with leveling up and encouraging words for the kids via celebrity videos just might help the patients imagine that they’re not on their own in dealing with their illness. And the exploitation of the touchscreen functionality of the iPhone helps get around the real problem with data collection: getting people to do it consistently. Of course, not every patient will have an iPhone, or a smartphone of any kind, and it would be sad to eliminate the poorer sections of our community because of this absence, but this is well put together and hopefully, just a bright beginning.

[via Brent Choi]

"I think the people behind this Popchips ad are not racist. I think they just made a racist ad,..."

helenwalters — Wed, 02 May 2012 18:50:38 -0400

“I think the people behind this Popchips ad are not racist. I think they just made a racist ad, because they’re so steeped in our culture’s racism that they didn’t even realize they were doing it.”

- I don’t say this often, and I don’t say this lightly, but stop what you’re doing and go and read Anil Dash’s screed, How To Fix Popchips’ Racist Ad Campaign. It’s not what you’d expect. Because it would be easy to sound off about the thoughtless callousness and disrespect of an ad campaign that for absolutely no apparent reason depicts Ashton Kutcher dressed up in vaguely Indian garb and coming out with patter that might have seemed out of place in British comedies from the 1970s (which did a lot to perfect the art of casual racism). Easy, but unhelpful. Instead, Dash takes a hard look at the culture in which this type of “creative” output was ever deemed appropriate, and has tough words for all concerned. Most of all, he pleas for all of them to avoid the usual measures of crisis management. Dash writes,

Those superficial corrections don’t change the process. Back at the office, the Chief Marketing Officer knows that all the people who hate that brand followed them on Twitter for the day to see how they’d respond, so they later crow to the CEO, “We got a 12% bump in social media metrics, looks like I get my bonus!” The PR firm says “Well, aside from the tiny minority of people who complained, we actually got a ton of media mentions, so I can still use this to pitch ourselves to our next client!” The advertising firm says, “We can still talk about making an ad that got millions of views on YouTube, and having worked on a multimillion dollar campaign for a national consumer brand”.

And the end result is, nothing actually changes.

It’s absolutely true, and anyone reading it who’s had any kind of tangential experience of content creation or advertising or marketing or design or the twenty first century knows it’s so. Sometimes mea culpas that follow such gaffes are somewhat genuine, but let’s face it, we live in a society that exploits cynicism to an extraordinary degree. This piece calls for us to be more thoughtful, to think harder, to accept our personal limitations and to be prepared to have an honest discussion about the imperfect society in which we live. It’s a beautiful, thoughtful, heartfelt piece of writing that has completely made my day. Really. Go and read it. Now.

"From climate change to spiraling healthcare costs, from global poverty to food and water shortages,..."

helenwalters — Wed, 02 May 2012 14:53:59 -0400

“From climate change to spiraling healthcare costs, from global poverty to food and water shortages, wicked problems and their ramifications also impact organizations and their employees. As a result, the broad solutions we need might just come from market-driven companies seeking to out-innovate and outperform their competition. If companies challenge themselves and their competitors to seize advantage and momentum, the result might just be genuine disruption and transformation.”

- Wildly self-promotional post, as I co-authored Help Wanted 2.0 with Doblin’s CEO, Bansi Nagji. The piece was just published in Rotman Magazine. In it, we attempted to outline the practical ways in which people can think about wrapping their hands around the much buzzed-about topic of open innovation. Let me know what you think!

Thoughtful piece by Timothy Egan about e-books and the threat of...

helenwalters — Wed, 02 May 2012 10:46:00 -0400

Thoughtful piece by Timothy Egan about e-books and the threat of Amazon on the livelihood of publishers and independent book store owners, pointing out that despite the howls of “o me miserum” and fraught hand-wringing, “we have more books, more readers, a bigger audience for words, on pixels or paper.”

I’ve wondered before about those consumers who are less focused on bargain basement prices and who might want to know that a percentage of their money is going towards those actually producing the content (so I’m a writer, color me biased.) But the fear of innovation and transformation from those who wish things could just stay as they used to be is potent, dangerous and, ultimately, irrelevant. It’s useful to remind ourselves that markets shift, worlds change, whether we like it or not. Or, as Egan puts it:

Publishers need to reinvent their own future. They could offer packages. They could partner more with communities of interest, from environmentalists to religious conservatives. And, most important, they could start believing in tomorrow, instead of being afraid of it.

[Encyclopedia image via Stewart; Story via Maria Popova]