Design_at_the_edge

Moving music on mobiles- iterating to perfection?

  musicstation 
  Originally uploaded by IC Pod

As Bill Buxton pointed out in Sketching User Experiences it took 3 years and 4 iterations for the iPod to become an overnight success. A few days ago I wrote (opaquely) about rapid prototyping and iteration as a way of achieving successful products, where a product is the outcome of the Design Journey. I referred to Charles Arthur's critique of the Vodaphone Live music download service available to mobile phone users and the shortcomings of this offer. Charles commented there
"Yes, Vodafone Live is a pain - but you should look at tomorrow's paper, where I review MusicStation - which really does do music to the mobile, properly. It's fantastic."

His review of Omnifone's MusicStation in the Valentine's Guardian. Arthur wrote:
"......It's a music subscription service, and you'll surely find yourself listening to more music, even if you don't actually buy more as a result....
It's very, very slick. There are 1.5m tracks on offer which does include jazz and classical,.....
In just a few days of testing I tried out a far bigger range of music than I'd ordinarily come across in a month. That's because it's subscription.....

Pros: Intuitive, cheap, good range of tracks, "community"

Cons: Sucks up batteries: your phone needs regular recharging"

So  why do I talk of iterating to perfection? I have mentioned the concept of Iterative Capital (It is a resource that gives companies the ability to play seriously with more and more versions of various ideas in less and less time says Michael Schrage)- the capability to design>build>play>reflect>redesign>... in an accelerating process that gets to the successful product much faster than trying to do it perfectly first time of trying.

If an organisation cannot spend its iterative capital wisely then other organization's innovation teams will and act  to  improve the offer.  In the iPod example Apple iterated to the tipping point  of success itself ... in the case of music on your phone it seems the iterations are passing between organisations... so iteration I1 seems to be the Motorola+iTunes offer- the ROKR E1- September 2005

I2 might be the Vodaphone Live

I3 could be MusicStation

so will we have an Iteration 4 and will it take the three years too launch THE SOLUTION... and yes I've deliberately left the iPhone out... The point I am trying to make is that getting the solution nearly right gives you a chance to try again but you have to have 2 capabilities: that of reviewing your own products and saying "could do better" and the capability to quickly act "better for us to do better rather than let our rivals do it for us".... or to put it another way

"Good enough is rarely good enough; excellent is usually better.. and the consumer is the arbiter."

Designing and presenting essentials- 2 creative zens

  Twisted 
  Originally uploaded by Conor Lawless

Janice Kirkpatrick wrote in Innovation—the politics of change, Sept, 1996

"The creative process, the process of designing, is an excellent ‘tool’ for analysis, synthesis and reconstruction of the world. It reveals the ideologies that motivate us and excite us. This gives us clues which we can then use in developing an innovative strategy which may yield a future which will be appropriate: familiar yet new, challenging yet supportive."

In his last book (of lectures to be delivered in 1984- he died in 1983) "Six Memos for the Next Millennium", Italo Calvino wrote of literature values he felt should be passed on to the next millennium:
1. Lightness- a reaction to the heaviness of life.
2. Quickness- should not be confused with measurable speed; it is about mental agility.
3. Exactitude - a planning process; creating a clear, memorable image; language with nuance.
4. Visibility- making complex relationships understandable and definable.
5. Multiplicity- a system of systems; interpretation at various levels
which he completed and left the title for the last:-
6. Consistency- clarity of content and aesthetics; holistic sustainability

Garr Reynolds writes on pages 31 & 32 of his book Presentationzen

"Creating presentations is a supremely creative process.....

...Once you realise that the preparation of a presentation is a creative act, not merely the assembling of facts and data in a linear fashion, you'll see that preparing a presentation is a "whole-minded" activity that requires as much right-brain thinking as it does left-brain-thinking......... the translation of your content into presentation form will require that you exercise much more of your so-called right brain."

On p.104 in the section on Simplicity Garr refers to the term being "essentially synonymous with clarity, directness, subtlety, essentialness and minimalism." which also maps onto the 6 Memos

If we pull all this together, we may see that the creative processes that gave us something to talk about are the very same ones that will enable us to create the story we wish to tell, and the audience want to hear! They both deserve the time to do a great job of designing the material, as in most presentations we are asking our audience to think innovatively and consider doing something differently. For as Bill Buxton says:

“You have to spend as much time directing your innovation and creativity to fostering a culture of creativity and a receptiveness to innovation as you spend on the ideas themselves.”


Picture link.
So we must remember to plan time and space into our schedules for the creation of a great presentation... as well as great products, services, experiences. Our audience deserves nothing less!

Observed experiences as a driver of innovation

Kevin and Chris
Originally uploaded by Stewart

Kevin Kelly (pictured on left, with Chris Anderson - past and present editors of WIRED). has written in his semi-blog- Sounding Good on NPR:

"I was interviewed by Madeleine Brand on NPR's Day to Day today. They wanted to know about my Countdown Clock. Here is the streaming audio. What was interesting to me was that they sent a sound recordist to my home to record my end of the conversation on digital tape because the sound quality on our typical phone line (and call-in show) is so bad. While I was in my desk chair on the phone to Madeleine in LA, the sound recordist was sitting in my office pointing a huge boom mike at my face. She then uploads the file to NPR's ftp site and then the engineers there merge my side with Madeleine's side of the conversation. Mucho work. Isn't it odd that in 2007, when we can download movies to our home we can't have a high-fidelity phone line? Does anyone know how feasible it is to create or hack a hi-def home phone line? We have DSL; it should not be that hard."

So we have identified WHAT is needed to improve the process but we don't know HOW... KK has given us an idea but the best way to take a Design Journey is to challenge starting assumptions; in Design Diamond terms this is a quest. My first reaction is to think "the BBC Radio News has good quality live interviews over the phone."

A quick search of the BBC website yields The journey of a radio news story which describes the use of ISDN lines to get the quality they require. So we could do ISDN or DSL..compared here. So we seem to need specific service provision.. maybe. What about 3G mobile phone technology? Could we build a system around something like a 3G phone such as the Serenata

that incorporates B&O audio knowledge? The answer is that I don't know but we are gathering potentially useful information on conceptual routes which we can subject to more rigorous filtering. We might even challenge the starting assumption that we need a better phone connection.

Walking through the whole process and noting the experience at each stage may yield the insights we need to design a system that fits in with the context of use.

Chips with everything

429407443_3983243307
Originally uploaded by IC Pod

One of those Energising Insights I have blogged about came one day in the mid-nineties, at a Tom Peters seminar. Tom held up his mobile phone and asked "What is this?". People called out
"A phone... a communication device... a command system....etc."
"You are all right and you are all wrong," Tom replied, "It is a computer that thinks it's a phone!"

This Insight meant that my colleagues and I were scanning for communication devices that might allow the packaging of fast moving consumer goods to 'talk' to the consumer... why? We weren't sure but there will be reasons.. it just takes time for the pieces to fall into place. In the late nineties Hasbro announced the COMMTech communicator device that enabled Star Wars models to utter a few words....

passing the reader device over the chip transferred the audio information to the speaker or into the memory and (upto four character's) phrases could be stored and replayed by pressing the appropriate buttons on the front face. The technology had been developed by Innovision R and T, who designed the custom chip. We realised that the process of transferring audio from one device to another might have other applications and we put together some ideas which were turned into crude prototypes by Innovision, as we did not have the expertise in-house. These working models or prototypes enabled us to demonstrate ideas to consumers, other departments and regions at a minimal investment compared with creating "real prototypes" that have resolved most of the issues in Design Space. These working models are designed to ask questions and change conversations, maybe even increasing the perception of opportunity without heightening concerns about risk. The prototypes can be used to mitigate perceived exposure to risk, by allowing people to seriously play with the possibilities and share thoughts about the validity of the concept and whether there are viability issues that can be worked on early in the process. Ultimately the concept(s) did not fit with business strategy and were dropped; the concepts have emerged from other maybe more appropriate organisations. What we must not do is assume that we should have done them, just because they succeed elsewhere.

It is interesting that since I began to 'Bramble' (Blog ramble) The Observer published Apple and Google ruled a year to note in your Facebook which included the paragraphs:

"The Apple phone is what corporate strategists call a 'game-changer'. It's really a powerful Unix computer in a tiny, sleek package. It happens to make voice calls, but in a way that's the boring bit. More interesting is its wi-fi capabilities and the way it makes web browsing feasible on a small screen. Its only serious drawback on launch was the fact that it is shackled to slow mobile phone networks. Its significance is that, at a stroke, it made everyone else's mobile technology look lame.......

What's next? As usual, William Gibson's aphorism ('The future's already here, it's just not evenly distributed') provides the best guide. Apple will launch a 3G iPhone and cause even greater havoc in the mobile-phone business. It will also launch a micro-laptop using the new Intel 45-nanometre Silverthorne chip, and open more stores in upmarket locations. It will, however, feel the heat of European regulators as they focus on 'interoperability' issues, in particular the way songs purchased from Apple's iTunes store will only play on iPods."

But Apple doesn't need to worry too much about opening up ... Charles Arthur wrote in the Guardian Technofile

"Music direct to your mobile is a good idea, but actually doing it with Vodafone Live! is just too painful" and ended with

"This may be the future of music for some people, but honestly, it could be so much better.

Pros: No need for a computer, lots of music

Cons: Tedious, bureaucratic, music can't be transferred"

Or to put it another way..  we create new products and services and the consumer rejects them for not "doing the job" then we are squandering our resources on failed projects, and the one resource we can't get back is time.

Tom Peters encapsulated my thinking when in FastCompany he wrote

 

“The fastest, smartest way to get your project defined and refined is to practice the art of quick prototyping. Don't keep your project hidden in some private skunk works until you can hone it into a perfect deliverable.“

As Organisations are making it easier to seriously play with prototype devices so that we can understand  what the consumer  will find acceptable long before we commit to produce a product.. where we may have  a range of options .. [the right] consumers are pretty helpful in  constructive feedback. We could cost-effectively create a range of prototypes using a platform approach building on modules such as those offered by Buglabs... as they describe it

      

The Platform   

    BUG helps you explore the realm of personalized devices and applications, and find ways to solve many of the problems current gadgets can't.    

   

    For example, with BUG, you can easily assemble and program a GPS + digital camera device that     automatically publishes geo-tagged photos as a web service. Integrating with an online photo-sharing     service like Flickr is only a few more lines of code away, and now you have your own real-time,     connected traffic-enabled mobile Webcam!    

   

    The platform is designed to enable a collaborative development     environment.  BUGnet, our online community, is tied in     directly to the BUG SDK, which allows developers to connect with others,     share information, and jointly build products or services.

Picture link

So we can rapidly try out combinations, adding and subtracting modules to build devices for understanding... understanding what excites the consumer by building in affordances for them to better do an existing activity or do one they hadn't anticipated.

We may not like the aesthetics of a bug-based device but we can play with affective aesthetics alongside the functional BugLab enabled explorations yielding a preliminary product brief based on VAKOG (visual, auditory, kinaesthetic, gustatory and olfactory). Usually we only play with the first three so in a hand-held device we may respond to the product prototype in various ways..... this is what it looks like/what do I look like with it? What does it sound like in use (the satisfying click of....)? What does it feel like in the hand as I use it (flip it... slide it... open, toss it, etc.)?

Picture uploaded by dpika. Used with thanks under CC.

It might be that asking Naoto Fukasawa to design the "Packaging for our Buglabs platform functionality might result in this used soap bar shape... or?

Can't innovate. Don't innovate. Go nowhere.’

high wire 2
Originally uploaded by _gee_

Sir George Cox has stated that in Britain

"We don't understand the relevance of design, suffer from lack of imagination and aren't ambitious enough.”

Yet if we look at the spend on design it is evident that whilst many organisations invest in design they do not see a significant return for it, which is hardly an incentive for them to continue, or for others to take the plunge themselves, which explains why Sir George suggests that our mantra is

"Can't innovate. Don't innovate. Go nowhere."

A key strategic role of design is making ideas tangible, telling the story of alternative futures, and defining the actual products and services to make those stories become experiences. therefore, it should be a strategic imperative that we use appropriate technologies, techniques and capabilities of design in the most effective way, maximising the return on our innovation investment. Yet, as we have said,many organisations invest in design through in-house resources or external agencies, without gaining much traction. I remember talking to an advanced projects team that were tasked with coming up with longer-term radical solutions and their complaint was that they're projects were judged by the same criteria as near term incremental projects which meant they didn't stand a chance. The project leader observed:

"Our project teams have previously carried out work creating visions of the future and identifying new customer opportunities, which has generated a substantial amount of new ideas. However we have lacked a process to convert these creative ideas into radical new concepts and prototypes that are tangible expressions of business opportunities and marketable products. We need to develop processes that support fledgling ideas and enable breakthrough ideas to be realised. A key issue is to work differently across all our disciplines (such as Research, Design, Development, Manufacturing, Marketing, Human Resources, partners and sub-contractors) as a continuum in order to deliver inspiring solutions to the marketplace that pack a  sustainable competitive clout.

In a nutshell, ideas must be allowed to break through barriers and present themselves to decision makers.“

Picture uploaded by sekimura. Used with thanks under CC.

Several challenges are contained in this statement that are essential to delivering a sustainable stream of winning new products and services. These challenges include better up-front design processes that support the emergence of more substantial concepts that are not killed by an inappropriate response to the uncertainty that is often the outcome of conventional risk management techniques. Collaboration between specialist disciplines that enable concepts to be assessed against the capabilities available in-house and outside. stronger links between strategic intent and project ambitions. Working differently means adopting different tools or adapting those we already have to achieve different ends.

Picture uploaded by MoonSoleil . Used with thanks under CC.

Collaboration:

If we look in a dictionary we will find it is defined as:

1. A joint intellectual effort

2. Treasonable cooperation with an enemy

Derived from: (Latin) com (with) + laborare (work) = work together

To elaborate is to extend an idea; to co-laborate is to do so with partners.

The problem is, that in the past conventional business models assumed the second definition was more likely to be true and so information was closely guarded and so no leverage came from sharing and discussing it.

Picture uploaded by fatal Cleopatra . Used under CC.

Real collaboration involves being open and frank, sharing information and knowledge to maximise the opportunity for the whole team to co-create motivating insights and a common vision of a winning product or service. We need to set our radicals free and be bold enough to reveal all our cards at the beginning of the process when maximum leverage is derived from the act of sharing.

Picture uploaded by ralphunden . Used with thanks under CC.

Today we must approach design from a different perspective. Truly sustainable design is based on a wide range of complex criteria; human experience, social, global, economic and political issues; physical and mental interaction, form, vision, and a rigorous understanding of contemporary culture. Manufacturing is based on another collective group of criteria: capital investment, market share, ease of production, dissemination, growth, distribution, maintenance and service, performance, quality, ecological issues and sustainability. Services are delivered through the application of products by the service providers. Experiences evolve where these services are the stage and products are used as props to engage the people. The combination of all these issues- of validity for our consumers and viability for our organisations- has come to shape our objects, informs our aesthetic, our physical space and culture, and our human experiences.(apologies to Karim Rashid)

To achieve great products, services and experience collaboration between all the key players needs to go up a gear and really engage in creating something special because of their knowledge and expertise and despite their functional positions and organisational loyalties. But if all the top team are not committed to changing the process of creating new 'stuff' then both definitions of collaboration might come into play with functional heads seeing collaboration as an act of disloyalty. But designing something memorable for the consumer may be all we have left to differentiate ourselves from the competition... and that means people discovering, adopting and exploiting processes, technologies and techniques to  collaborate effectively across barriers between all the people who can produce something special.


Picture uploaded by Yodel Anecdotal. Used with thanks under CC.

"In a world of largely saturated markets and many alternatives, astonishing the customer [through superior design] is the path to exceptional growth." -- Robert Heller, marketing guru

Creativity is similar In none of these cities

  In none of these cities 
  Originally uploaded by ale2000

One of the challenges of being creative is that people think they are disbarred from taking part because they aren't in a "creative job". I find that an intriguing statement because I would have thought a creative person would come along and find a way of automating it so that the person could be released to do more creative things!!??

I remember one of my colleagues at work who was bemoaning the fact he was on the 13th redraft of a very important (and political) report. We had a discussion on what the drafts were about and soon realised that he was in fact not writing a report but orchestrating a creative writing process that was similar to that for the new products and packaging that were our daily bread and butter. In fact the first few drafts were about divining and aligning the contributing group around a common vision. Then they were about developing a mutually acceptable knowledge base... and finally about telling a well argued, persuasive story that they could all tell... and sell with conviction. All these things were swirling around in my head just as the postman delivered a package... Garr Reynold's new book Presentationzen finally arrived from Amazon this morning... I opened the book at a random page and the name Brenda Ueland hit me. It reminded me that Garr had blogged on creativity here and here, using quotes from her book "If you want to Write" as anchors. Garr writes

"If you want to Write" by Brenda Ueland is one of the most inspiring and useful books I have ever read. The book was first published in 1938 and probably should have been titled "If You Want to Be Creative."

and

"You are original, unique, and creative
Even if you are not "A Creative" (artist, designer, musician etc.), you are a creative person. Probably -- assuredly in fact -- far more creative than you think. All people should work toward tapping into their creative abilities and unleashing their imaginations. Why? I think Brenda Ueland (1891-1985) puts it best:
        "First because it is impossible that you have *no* creative gift.

        Second: the only way to make it live and increase is to use it.

        Third: you cannot be sure that it is not a *great* gift."

                                            — Brenda Ueland"

Now back to Garr Reynold's new book Presentationzen. I haven't read it yet but I know I will like it. It is a very visual book... uncluttered, with many illustrations and lots of whitespace for thoughts to form. I'll write again when I've read it.. but it will become one of my many things to help me create more interesting 'stuff'... and what do I mean by things?

Steve Jobs put it succinctly:

 

" Creativity is just connecting things. You ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while.

"That's because they were able to connect experiences they've had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they've had more experiences or have thought more about their experiences than other people.

"Unfortunately, that's too rare a commodity. A lot of people haven't had very diverse experiences, so they don't have enough dots to connect and they wind up with very linear solutions."

Just remember
 

“The land of Opportunity is more than a place… 

it is a state of mind.”

 

'A Peacock in the Land of Penguins’ by Barbara Hateley.

Keep collecting and joining the dots... and the picture reminds me of *David Perkins... in a creative sort of way.

Picture uploaded on by .Bala. Used with thanks under CC.

 

Affordances of Naoto Fukasawa

  Fantastic packaging by Naoto Fukasawa 
  Originally uploaded by Nina Pope

I was in the Manchester Waterstones bookshop last night and flicked through the monograph on Naoto Fukasawa. There was a piece, I believe, by Masato Sasaki: Affordance and design: Product design from the core of awareness which included this description of Affordance:
A key concept in ecological psychology JJ Gibson coined the noun from the verb "to afford" to describe the property of things at large in providing organisms with perceived or latent potentials - "meaning", "values" or what Gibson called "action possibilities" - thus casting the otherwise passive environment in an active determinant role ( e.g. a chair is said to possess an affordance for sitting)  2 points of note: Affordance is not a stimulus that provokes a reaction or reflex (a chair does not compel a person to sit. Affordance is objectively measurable and not affected by ones ability to recognise those possibilities (a chair affords the possibility of sitting regardless of a person's mood or state of health). (first Published in Kokokuninyo monthly no 293 June 05 p.86). One of my first blogs was about this topic and I return to explore it further... The Thinking Allowed broadcast I mentioned here talked of the challenge of increasing personal skills in the context of an environment that enabled or inhibited natural creative interactions between people. Richard Sennett talked of laboratories, studios, workshops, ateliers as potential environments for more effective exchange of thoughts leading to interesting connections and the creation of new and hopefully useful knowledge.

So are cubicles affording more effective conversations?

picture uploaded on by webg33k. Used with thanks under CC.

or do we need a different form that affords a different interaction?

It really comes down to what you are trying to achieve... and a mixture of places is perhaps what we need to achieve... because

 

“Thoughts exchanged between me and another

are not the same in one room or another.”
[from an essay Light and Space in “Louis I. Kahn”] 

maybe the  "wet, dry and damp spaces" that Rich Gold described... as long as they are spaces that possess an affordance for creative conversation... for creative activity...  what we might call 'design spaces' filled with opportunity for the prepared mind.

Naoto Fukasawa senses what is the world around him possesses in the way of affordances but they may not be obvious to other people... on a 'cool' mobile phone he said

Picture uploaded  by xeeliz. Used with thanks under CC.

"My inspiration was not the Ferrari. It was the potato."

Creative people often use unrelated objects to seed their creative behaviour... IDEO talk of the inspiration of a Dove soap bar

for the design of the Microsoft 2-button Mouse discussed here.
A final thought from Michael Schrage in his book Serious Play ...
 

"Innovation = Reaction to the Prototype".

The crafting of skills for the future

  iStock_000005222864Small 
  Originally uploaded by IC Pod

I happened to tune into today's (6th February) "Thinking Allowed" on BBC Radio4 to hear Laurie Taylor discuss attitudes to craftwork and skill with sociologist Richard Sennett author of The Craftsman and Grayson Perry artist and potter.  I've downloaded the podcast to listen again.

It struck a chord with me as I have just completed writing a piece with a brief:

"to share their [the authors] opinions and knowledge as part of an article series, which considers the experience of transition within the context of the creative and cultural industries. Individual articles will focus on rites of transition within the sector - such as employment to self-employment – as well as theoretical and practical responses to challenges arising from change.(750 words)"

and the piece had to be submitted by the end of January.

The start of December found me deciding to write about the new roles necessary, in organisations of whatever size, to drive up the levels of creativity and the skills needed to underpin their continuing survival and growth. I used Visimap (reviewed here)as the tool to allow me to flit about as ideas, phrases, quotes, etc. occurred to me and by Christmas Eve had a presentable draft based on this map:

Just one challenge- it was about 1250 words long! Still let the words stew over the break and I'll see what comes to me by the New Year.

So getting back into the swing of things on 7th January I found an email chiding me for not submitting my piece on time and giving me a revised deadline of 11th! Panic....sit down and start ruthless editing. Does this sentence add to story or is it waffle? can I find duplication? Can I find a shorter more succinct phrasing? By Tuesday lunch I had a final draft that I was comfortable with   ...and (this is a first!) 750 words long. Emailed it... then checked email ... one from commissioning organisation apologising... I am in second wave of requests that don't need to be in until end of month.. Hey! i am ahead of schedule! A few days later I get a request to delete the "What do I mean by" branch and expand my description of roles... this results in a map that looks like this:

Now 753 words long! About a week later I have a telephone discussion with the managing editor and she asked me to put a paragraph or two in justifying the logical development of theses roles to inspire the two reader groups... new graduates starting their careers and leaders in industry responding to the need for change. I said " No way I can do that in 750 words total!". She replied " No matter, we have learned a great deal as we developed the brief from our client!"

Two hours later I had revised the start of the story to reflect its potential readership

The third and final map looks like this:

and has 991 words!

So what has this to do with "Thinking Allowed"? Well during the programme they talked of the instant culture leading to a down-skilling of people as they are not prepared to spend the 10,000 hours honing their craft (which equals a 5 year apprenticeship). Skill, they say, is being equated to a procedure where we can tick the box

rather than an ongoing process of doing 'x' better. Acquiring a skill is different from mastering one when one feels comfortable and fluid with their use.

Well although I am an engineer and designer by profession my competence comes from skillsets that are adjacent to my original discipline (mechanical engineering). I have used Visimap for years having been introduced to mindmapping at a time management workshop around 1987... here is a mindmap to plan out work priorities in 1995.

...and I have steadily expanded uses for it, such as project planning.. linking Visimap to MSProject, presentation storyboarding linking to Beyond BulletPoints technique.

As Richard Sennett puts it " Look, question something in particular, acquire adjacent skills to make it happen"..."skill building lies in the gap between thinking and doing."

So In spite of the excitements of creating a 750 word thought-piece it was my long use and play with tools that enabled me to deliver.

The link to the article is here [insert when published].