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!
Stories, moments, people and ideas of interest from within the worlds of innovation and design, spotted and written about by Helen Walters, writer and researcher at Doblin, a member of Monitor Group. Attitude, errors and opinions all the writer's own.
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May 25, 2012
May 25, 2012
"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.”
May 24, 2012
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.
May 22, 2012
Radiolab’s Jad Abumrad on the Messy Process of Design and Innovation
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]
May 22, 2012
Nest’s Tony Faddell on Prototyping and Getting Projects Approved
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]
May 21, 2012
"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.
May 21, 2012
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.
May 9, 2012
![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]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3rcarU2CL1qikpxao1_1280.png)
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]
May 8, 2012
"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.
May 4, 2012
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]
May 4, 2012
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.
May 3, 2012
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]
April 30, 2012
"A few workshops and an extracurricular competition won’t produce business leaders with real design-thinking skills. Business education must be completely redefined."
— My colleague Melissa Quinn puts the cat among the proverbial pigeons with her Fast Company piece about the Rotman Design Challenge, organized by the Rotman School of Management, part of the University of Toronto. Quinn highlights the continued gap between the rhetoric of those promising to teach “design thinking” (or “business thinking”) and what actually happens, and she has pointed words for both sides of the equation. The key, as she argues, is that the education system as a whole is outmoded, and we need no less than its meaningful reinvention so that both designers and MBAs can realize, appreciate and embrace the true value of the others’ craft, with real results.
April 26, 2012
Jay Doblin’s Seven Levels of Design
While we think about design thinking as being something of a modern day phenomenon, it’s really as old as the hills. I’ve recently been combing through Doblin’s archives—and I came across a piece written in 1978 by the company founder Jay Doblin. In it, he lays out how the changing levels of design give different opportunities to innovate, and uses the redesign of a gas pump as an example. Check this out:
- LEVEL 1: The designer accepts the pump’s performance but shortens and cleans up its form.
- LEVEL 2: Performance improvements are made. Either money, gallonage, or fillip can be punched directly. Inserted credit card automatically bills the customer.
- LEVEL 3: Changes the basic mechanism. The station is like a parking lot where hoses are pulled from trap doors below ground. All the controls are on the nozzle.
- LEVEL 4: Involves products which are outside the company’s control. No liquid fuel is pumped; pressurized cartridges are inserted into the car. One cartridge fits all cars (like sealed beam headlamps), a one-price sale.
- LEVEL 5: The service performed is changed; there are no more gas stations. Fuel cartridges are bought anywhere, like beer.
- LEVEL 6: The service is eliminated; cars never need refueling, they run indefinitely on atomic power.
- LEVEL 7: Transportation is eliminated; all human contact is by telecommunications.
So, apart from making me wish I’d had the chance to meet Jay, what does this mean? Well, it means that 35 years ago, designers were thinking about increasing their scope from object to system, about how to elevate themselves from beyond providing the superficial aesthetic appeal of a product to considering its strategic consequences, even its point of existence. And honestly I think it’s telling and somewhat depressing that we’re still struggling with this whole discussion today.
April 23, 2012
"These DIY methods disrupt the traditional triangular relationship between the designer, the manufacture and the consumer – because now you can be all three."
—
An interesting, provocative review of the Furniture Fair (Salone) in Milan from The Guardian’s Justin McGuirk. In From Handicraft To Digicraft, Milan’s Furniture Fair Looks To The Future, he looks at the influx of DIY types wielding Makerbots and Arduino-fueled products galore. Or, as he puts it, rather more eloquently: “All over Milan, this tension between mass production and self-production, between handicraft and digicraft, was to the fore.”
I confess I stumbled slightly over his later assertion that hackers have traditionally been “outlaws”. Maybe I’m wrong, but I always thought of the original hackers (the Woz types and those attending the Homebrew Computer Club back in the day) as those who were willing to share just about everything and “hacked” purely for the joy of learning and understanding… very much in line with the spirit of these present day hackers. It was only in the interim that a more nefarious splinter group of hackers arose, with less idealistic goals at their heart. Anyway, I digress. The killer point of McGuirk’s review comes at the end and any would-be innovators would be wise to pay attention:
This was not a particularly strong year for innovative products, with many companies playing it safe or re-upholstering old classics. So let’s just accept that there was a more compelling story to tell. This groundswell of participative design, rapid manufacturing techniques and hacking is starting to challenge Milan’s design orthodoxy, making us forget about products and think about processes. Because the furniture fairs of the not-too-distant future will be for exhibiting new services and technologies, not just objects.
Now that’ll be a furniture fair worth attending.
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