Design_at_the_edge

Presenting -Wise before/after the event?

  mmm..... mooongaa.. OWL 
  Originally uploaded by lijojohnson

A B(log)ramble: One of the challenges we face when presenting is that we have probably  lived with the topic for a long time and have knowledge in depth and breadth (Garr Reynolds has more discussion of this). The challenge for our audiences is they are suffering from information overload- as Melanie McGrath puts it in Motel Nirvana- "information flows into us faster than we can bail it out  again as neat packaged theories“. So one of the roles of a good-to-great presenter is to ask "What problem will my presentation help them address? Will it inspire them to act?"

When I am presenting I ask " How can I package my 'neat [and unique] packaged theory' and transfer it in an entertaining way that will enable my audience to actually do something with that information and knowledge afterwards?" Transferring knowledge is an interactive process, so delivering a monologue is not great for ensuring it happens. I exploit a framework of presenting called Beyond Bullet Points created by Cliff Atkinson. You can read about it here, or in the book.  In essence Cliff's framework facilitates the rapid design of a seductive presentation, but only if you let go of old habits,,,

Download a pdf of BBP storyboard sketchpad here.

The beauty of this approach is that we, as presenters are forced to confront the setting, or context of our presentation; what is the role of the audience; what has changed to cause us to be concerned (A); where we want to be (our ambition/aspiration) (B); how might we bridge the gap/make the journey between A and B. Key points 1,2,3 (...4), are the enablers for the journey.

The first five slides on the storyboard are setting up the presentation and enables you to align the audience behind your approach to a particular challenge, what we might call introducing the package and capturing their interest. 

This picture and the next uploaded on by jsc*. Used with thanks under CC.

The next slides are where you reveal the contents of the package, revealing a key point at a time.

Depending on the time we can just look at each sweet and hear a quick description; more time allows us to sample one in each quadrant; even more time allows us to reveal all that makes each quadrant allowing the tasters to develop a complete experience! Recalling that experience later should have those that have favourably 'bitten'  into the experience to come back for more. What we don't want is the disconnection between the audience and the presenter revealed when you ask "How was the chocolate?"

only to receive the reply "We expected a cheeseburger!"

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

Being innovative means behaving innovatively!

  Sculpture at Chatsworth House, Derbyshire - IMG_1034 
  Originally uploaded by TwentyTrees

 

 

In the ghosts of past successes  I wrote of Giant Hairballs that snarl up creativity in organisations..
Corporate appropriateness comes from looking up to see The ghost of past successes but not backward to feel the inspiration, hard work and risk-taking that actually created that success. Managers that are creative leaders know how to tell those inspiring stories that energises the team to go off at tangents, to explore and discover- to become Teams from Heaven.

The challenge in organisations, whatever their size is to accept that risk-taking, confident that the team leadership and individual capabilities and dedication factor up to a big-hit innovation.

Last night I attended the Inaugural lecture of Professor Alison McKay entitled

Designing for the unexpected.

The introductory news release states:

The business environment within which engineers and designers are working is changing dramatically. The days of designing, making and selling physical products are becoming
numbered as customers increasingly demand product performance and through-life support services that meet their individual needs.

This lecture will explore how the demands on engineering design systems are changing: from the need to support the design of shapes and products through to support for the design and operation of networks of organisations and the services that they deliver.

The actual lecture exceeded expectations as Prof. McKay took us on a journey across her landscape of discovery, highlighting the challenges of engineering teaching where students tend to be internally focussed on the 'problem'; conventional industrial design where the student is focussed on 'form' and the real world that needs designers who are integrators of hard and soft sciences. Moreover they need to do this integration over a long period working with products containing technology that may be obsolescent by the time they are in service and obsolete before they are retired.

Pixar atrium picture uploaded by Andrew Butts. Used with thanks under CC.

   

This morning I read (this McKinsey interview -reg required)
Innovation lessons from Pixar: An interview with Oscar-winning director Brad Bird

which, I believe, makes a case for turning out individuals from  Professor Alison McKay 's Product Design BDes with some 'rough edges' rather than  'well-rounded' ones that slide into a slot in the corporate structure! Whilst good design is an integration of the Points of view of many disciplines, great design is the outcome of creative conflict between those disciplines. That requires 'attitude', which organisations find challenging. Brad Bird articulates it very well in the article and there is another interview here. I'll explore Brad Bird's interview and the lessons we can draw from them elsewhere.

ADDENDUM: This week's Economist print edition has an article Disney: Magic restored That analyses Disney's ups and downs over the past few years. Here is a relevant extract:

"What accounts for this renaissance? Mr Iger's management style is said by many to have unlocked Disney's creativity. “There was already creativity inside Disney, but Bob removed the barriers to it,” says Peter Chernin, chief operating officer of News Corporation, a rival media group. “Michael Eisner was all about his own creativity,” says Stanley Gold, a former Disney board director who led a campaign to oust Mr Eisner in 2004, referring to the way in which the former boss meddled in the detail of Disney's parks and movies. In contrast, he says, “Bob pushes creative decisions to the people below him.”

In addition, Mr Iger's acquisition of Pixar, a studio that insists on creative originality, has sent a signal to people inside and outside Disney. “A few years ago we weren't necessarily seen by the creative community as the place to be,” says Tom Staggs, Disney's chief financial officer, “but now that has changed and people want to work here.” Mr Iger immediately put Pixar's top people in charge of Disney's animation business, and last year he put an end to the practice of making cheap direct-to-video sequels of old favourites, such as “Cinderella II: Dreams Come True”—Disney's equivalent of frozen food.

One former Mouseketeer argues that Mr Iger cannot take much credit for Disney's recent string of hits. “All the great new shows from Disney were developed, and many of them launched, when Michael Eisner was leading the company,” says David Hulbert, a former president of Walt Disney Television International. “The TV and studio creative cycle lasts several years, so we will have to wait some time yet to see what Bob Iger's cautious, centralised and consensual management style produces,” he adds....

....But its creative momentum and proven ability to extract value from its hits means it can afford to feel more optimistic about the future than most big media firms."

So maybe we are seeing what a great deal of great knowledge-creating organisation leaders do... Be autocratic about the goals but democratic about the means."

New tools must mean new opportunities

   
  Originally uploaded by bizmac

The trouble with new tools is that they often require little effort to use but some effort to exploit. Salman Rushdie, on a recent radio programme was asked how he found it when he started to write his novels using a PC rather than a pen. He replied that he had resisted the changeover as long as he could but then took the plunge and really worked at mastering the PC. When asked if it affected the quality of his work he replied "You buy a new pen and at first it writes its own sentences, but after a while you get used to it and you begin to write your own."

An interesting aspect is the possibilities afforded by the PC and its applications, if we are prepared to take the time to learn them, practice them and ultimately master them. In the words of Churchill, "we shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us." (On October 28, 1943 at a meeting in the House of Lords). In a similar vein some 20 years later, Marshall McLuhan said: "we shape our tools and afterwards our tools shape us." Peter Senge in his book "5th Discipline Handbook" discusses learning in the context of a system consisting of to a triangular Domain of Action (Guiding Ideas; Innovations in Infrastructure; Theory, Methods and Tools) in order to achieve change. For enduring change we need connect this with the Domain of enduring change (Attitudes and beliefs, skills and capabilities, awareness and sensibilities).

But ultimately learning is judged by results. Measuring those results can have an effect on the outcomes. One can imagine that ultimately the word count per day might rise considerably as one abandons a pen and moves to a word processor. So as a crude measure we might say productivity has increased and pronounce the adoption of new technology as a success. However when the book reaches the market and is not as successful as the last 'penned' version we might argue that the fashion has changed and so we need to take a different slant on the plot. The real reason might be that we have only used the PC and not exploited it. The output has been faster and therefore against some measure we are more productive but the total result is ultimately less effective... The challenge is "What gets measured gets done" but unless we have the right measures in place we will not be able to direct our practice and learning in the right area. So we really need to think through what we are trying to achieve in order to specify the right critical success factors and key performance indicators... remembering that they are not the same... critical success factors are the drivers, the 'things' to be achieved; key performance indicators tell you how your are travelling towards the goal.

If we need 16 highly experienced stress engineers in order to achieve our goals then a kpi that states it is the number of people recruited in the next quarter (and your bonus depends on it!) then the recruiters will find a way of getting all 16 on-board even if we have to massage the standards a little. If the kpi is to recruit the 16 best engineers then the time-scale will be challenging as well as the remuneration (or working environment). Remember... "What gets measured gets done".... so if the objective is to obtain airworthiness clearance by the end of the next two quarters we can put a plan in place that may involve building a global team of partners with the required technology, infrastructure and relationships that can support and enable the activities 24hrs/day, 6 days a week, and come in at or below the budget and early!

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

Thus, by creating powerful guiding ideas, finding new theories, methods and tools and combining with innovations in infrastructure we can deliver stunning results.

 

What happens when design factors change?

  packaging design factors 
  Originally uploaded by IC Pod

During the late 1980's and early 90's the changing socio-economic factors driven by globalisation in general, and regionalisation in particular had a great impact on the rules that conditioned the framework of new product design. I was involved in plastic packaging design at the time and realised something was going on when the task of applying the new  rules of blow moulded pack design led to the destruction of the aesthetic designs devised by external packaging design houses and marketing working in concert. Diagnostic activity made us realise that the rules of the game were changing rapidly. The rules traditionally used by design houses with the support of marketing meant the gap between what was needed and what was offered was increasing over time; it was inevitable that how we designed and developed the packaging needed to change. The additional unknown was that our group was unsure of the new rule book as it was an emergent situation changing over time as we iterated around the challenge. In effect we had moved from a set of projects that, if plotted on the Design Diamond matrix would have been a point in 'painting-by-numbers', for manufacture and 'making a movie' in marketing development, to a 'sometimes a quest', but often stumbling in a 'fog' even challenging the aesthetic- a situation we thought of as 'everything to play for'.

We realised that we could classify our challenges as 3 sets of factors:

Aesthetics: crudely- the shape, etc.

Geometrics: pallet fit, shelf fit, filling line fit, ergonomics, interaction of product-packaging, ullage, etc.

Structural: warehouse stacking, hydrostatic bulge, capping performance, etc.

shown in the heading illustration.

We used the diagram as a tool to explain what is going on to all the people involved in making the project a success.

Design houses tended to live in the aesthetic space, whilst marketing inhabited the geometric space(but at a local level).

We acted as a proxy for the people affected by the factors in structural space..... manufacturing, supply chain, in-use, etc.

Many of the factors live in more than one space. For example, ergonomics can be influenced by any of the factors. Structural integrity can be compromised by aesthetics; aesthetics by geometrics and so on. We needed to move into and play in the deltoid shape where all 3 spaces overlap so we can search for optimal trade-offs.

Picture uploaded by myrtle_avenue_brooklyn. Used with thanks under CC.

Another change catalysed by the pressures of design rework resulting of the destruction of the 'old' rules was the start of earlier inclusion of key players in the total product innovation process. This meant that my team's impact moved from being involved after the designs were agreed between marketing and the design house to being actively involved in the ideas phase first as referees with the new rule book and then as orchestrators of the new interactions.

We developed this approach into Design4Excellence; nobody was keen on the name so I now call it Design@The_Edge.

Fast forward to the morning of 12th April, I was browsing the Daily Telegraph magazine in the Courtyard Coffee House and found this article:

High Concept : In her new book 'Process' tracing 50 classic designs from idea to finished object, Jennifer Hudson describes the development of Konstantin Grcic's Miura bar stool from rough sketch to plastic wonder.

Here is an extract  from the article:

"Grcic is an intuitive designer. Once he has made a model, he can assess its form and aesthetics straight away.; whether it has potential or is feasible, and where the design could lead. For example one of the features of Miura is that it stacks, but it was not conceived this way. It was only after creating a built structure that Grcic saw that it would take a slight adjustment to add this feature. Once Grcic had established the overall geometry, the computer was used for modelling the Miura's complex freeform surfaces. During this phase, heavy use was made of rapid prototyping facilities. CAD (Computer-aided design) data was fed into laser-sintering machine making it possible to produce a series of life-size models.

Grcic develops prototypes from an early stage, first to check proportion and then to make ergonomic, structural and aesthetic tests. Software may appear to model a form perfectly, but it is only when it is viewed in 1:1 that physical problems become apparent. This was particularly the case with Miura, whose structural complexity, soft surfaces and refined curves were difficult to judge on the computer. \once the full-size model was created, the stool was judged top-heavy. Parallel to the design process, CAD files were forwarded to the structural engineers, who performed both static and dynamic stress simulation to test that the stool was safe and stable.

After a year of development, in 2005 Miura was considered ready for production. Initially it was thought the stool would need to be gas-injection moulded, as the thicker sections such as the legs, needed to be hollow. This would have involved a very expensive mould. After further consultation an alternative plastics engineer was found who could inject the plastic solid. It was a risk, as so much plastic, once ejected from the mould, could distort during cooling. the radical injection technique needed fine adjustment and a lot of pressure, but  it eventually succeeded in cutting production costs considerably."

The tool is made from steel in five parts to mould the complex geometry of the stool.

I assume the pictures in The Telegraph Magazine are from Jennifer Hudson's book.

To watch a interview with Konstantin Grcic at his exhibition This Way Up click this link to watch Flash video in new movie window. There is biography on his web site including this extract:

"Konstantin Grcic creates industrial products widely described as pared down, simple, minimalist. What sets him apart from the minimalism in fashionable currency today is that he defines function in human terms, combining maximum formal strictness with considerable mental acuity and humour."

The lessons learned in using our triumvirate of factors was that people could take on-board the evolving factors if we treated the evolving set as tacit knowledge that needed to be transferred through face to face discussion around the diagram; not as a list. We can also note how similar the spaces and factors apply in a more general sense as exemplified by the practices of Konstantin Grcic and his team.. the video also reminded me of Charles and Ray Eames way of working with clients and technology... but that's another story.

Let's face it: SpaceBook is the new black!

  Hannah showing off her iPhone 
  Originally uploaded by adactio

If creativity is "just connecting things" then let's face it... this maybe a creative B(log)ramble! I have just read Design Sojourn's post entitled Designing Products that will work with Web 2.0 strategies. That got me thinking about using Web 2.0 to allow for distributed design and development of innovative new ways of innovating new products, services and experiences! I looked at O'Reilly's Web 2.0 blog that labelled the second avalanche of web activities as Web 2.0, which got me thinking about the lost chapters in Rich Gold's Plenitude... the 3 Spaces I referred to here. Gold refers to the...

"Desire: To make the world damp. To turn the world into a giant text chat room.

The Desire of ubiquitous computing was to overlay on top of this Wet environment a Damp one. In the middle of a wet meeting you would be able to email a colleague in another room, another building or around the world. In the middle of eating lunch at the company cafeteria with your office mates, one would be able to tap out an email message and send it off to your wife, or husband, or to your boss, or to your rival.


pictures link

 

The Wet would become augmented with the Damp. At any moment you could chat with any one else in a possession of email device."


Photo uploaded by Andre Charland. Used with thanks under CC.


At the millennium, we were facing a tough journey across the competitive landscape. Accelerating avalanches of change -digitisation, globalisation and spiritualisation -were engulfing those who were not agile enough to exploit insights, creativity, innovation and design. In our case the teams making the journey were evolving from local, through regional, to global cross-functional, trans-organisational people distributed in time and space. My insight was that projects went off-course, even if people were originally aligned with the project vision and goals....as new information became available to distributed individuals and there was a delay in interpreting it in a group sense there was alignment drift and actions become discordant with the overall theme. Any software, systems and process that can help increase opportunities for collaboration and minimise vision decay would be worth looking at. Groove Networks had just announced Groove, described as collaboration software for ad-hoc workgroups, but experience had shown that just acquiring a group tool does not mean it will transform the culture of the organisation.

John Burkhadt wrote "....... I hadn't realized how much I depend on Groove now.  It has become fundamental in the way I get work done. 

For example, I work closely with another engineer. I'm constantly sending him messages and chatting.  Often we're in real-time and we'll have a chat window open and we're debugging stuff and dropping new binaries in the space.  We can do so much together so quickly that it becomes natural and the tool is suddenly transparent. I think it got so transparent for me that I took it for granted.

Groove takes some getting used to. And it takes some effort.

Groove is not just technology, but its also centred around people. It takes effort from both fronts. Just because you have some collaboration software doesn't mean you suddenly know how to collaborate online. It takes some practice. But the payoff can be huge. I can't imagine life without Groove..."

We decided to try Groove (this is early 2001) on a distributed project. The operation of the project taught us that tools do not adopt people ... the people adopt the tools and to do that they need absolute clarity on the pain and benefits of adoption. Adoption only brings benefits when people feel that choosing the tool was an enlightened act; using the tool was not too mind bending; exploiting the tool was a very positive experience. Bill Jensen's CLEAR behavioural communication model is a useful starting point for effective thinking and acting... but he suggests that most people will stop using CLEAR after a couple of months!

Certainly using Groove let alone exploiting it turned out to be a challenge that we tried over a long period on a few key projects. We soon realised that Groove is a platform. We could reference documents, do email, instant messaging. We wanted to have a sketching facility to support design activities and found a simple tool that had been created as a plug-in which was useful. NetMeeting as a standalone application was, at that time a challenge as we could not cross corporate firewalls..and it was difficult to keep addresses. However we found that using it as a plug-in gave us Groove security plus a way across firewalls, linking our trans-organisational teams! Another plug-in worked like Skype, and then we embedded ALIAS PortfolioWall. After the tests we determined that clear articulation of potential benefits to the team users was key to getting attention (case studies helped). Web-based training facilitated getting people on board.. flexible tool "add-ining" was useful to enhanced utility as we discovered emerging opportunity. But at the end of the day IT support and senior executive leadership was essential. Where these were not available people lost enthusiasm and project benefits were brushed aside by political correctness... who determines and what triggers individual bonuses? Doesn't mean decisions were wrong (corporate values) but may not be in the interests of creativity, innovation and good design in a changing world. Groove has moved on and is now in Office 2007 as Groove 2007.

In Hyperinnovation Michael Schrage writes:

"As quickly and easily as word-processing programs alter text and spreadsheet software manipulates numbers, these “design processors” enable instant iteration in the pursuit of innovation. As networks link previously disparate parts of the organisation with each other, with key suppliers, and with customers, “design processing networks” create new opportunities for collaborative iteration both between firms and within them. Iterative capital becomes an essential investment for firms managing strategic alliances and supply chains."

Picture uploaded by jared. Used with thanks under CC.

Iterative capital is defined as: "a resource that gives companies the ability to play seriously with more and more versions of various ideas in less and less time." Schrage observes 

“Networked Iterative Capital is like networked financial capital: its velocity and impact increase as it hurtles towards opportunity.”



Picture uploaded by Tim in Sydney. Used with thanks under CC.

But to ensure Iterative Capital is deployed effectively we need to allow the growth of what Tudor Rickards calls Teams from Heaven that have a

Strong platform of understanding,a
Shared vision and live in a
Creative climate; with shared
Ownership of ideas, develop a
Resilience to setbacks and include people who are
Network activators and as a total team...

Learn from experience

So is Web 2.0 the answer.. or part of the answer

if we regard it as the gravitational core.. a platform then we need to be able to operate to expand our user insights by using the iterative capital generative capability of web 2.0 -based philosophies and tools to generate a suite of tools that facilitate and enable the potential for creative teams to form... to coalesce around an insight, idea, concept and make it into a winning experience in terms of how 'things' are done and what 'things' become. We need a SpaceBook that facilitates teams (extended and core) to seriously play and create new things that have value.. that value potential being created by understanding the intersection of need and technology earlier in the process.

Certainly Web 2.0 can be a platform for superior Design and Innovation networks which I have discussed here... whilst this is a basic model it will be populated with knowledgeable detailing which is informed by the interaction of the key organisation's culture internally and externally.... which may be the key to success or failure in the longer term.

Fritjof Capra in The Hidden Connections writes that Culture is created and sustained by a network (form) of communications (process), in which meaning is generated. Culture’s material embodiments (matter) include artefacts, and written matter through which meaning is passed from group to group over time.

To truly exploit the potential of new and emergent tools, technologies and processes people that make up the culture and its organisations must learn to do things differently in order to generate artefacts, written matter, etc. that make new meaning... and this takes time.


Picture uploaded by hal990. Used with thanks under CC.

To facilitate this artefact building we need social interaction and co-ordination; and tools that help the group do the things they need to do. One of the beauties of network-centric tools is that one can observe the activity that takes place and see who is more active, or less active in the chaotic interactions that make up design and innovation and then ask people "Why?" in order to enquire "Why do you spend a lot of time or hardly any time?" Of course it does need to be empathic enquiry in order to learn what is going on rather than direct enquiry which may elicit  reactive group-speak that does not add to the knowledge for action.
So maybe Design Spacebook is what we build; maybe Facebook is the platform. So all we need do is decide what we want to build on it! But we need to remember that to use social systems in an innovative way we need to support not only the processes of networking and negotiation, but also of enabling. Enabling the development of competences around goals and tasks is a leadership skill; deploying leadership enables members to strive to be the right people for the task, doing whatever it takes to achieve!

Design Pyramid

  SF07Looney05 
  Originally uploaded by Thor Cat

About ten years ago I got really frustrated that so many new product development projects were failing to make it through the funnel; one design house we worked with had been commissioned to work on 21 projects, only one of which made it to market and most of them failing well into the capability phase.

To utilise a rich soup of tacit and explicit knowledge I worked with a couple of collaborators to develop tools for the new millennium (I can say that now, but originally it was to address our dis-functional team working and the low hit rate of successful new projects).

The Design Pyramid evolved from a discussion about satisfying consumer needs and how Maslow had researched an put forward the hypothesis of a hierarchy of needs. We consulted his work and came up with this:

We realised we could translate the levels into understanding the consumer experience of the total product by answering a simple question: "What are they looking for?":

Starting at the lowest level we can express "What are they looking for?" in terms of the consumer's experiences and demands, for instance:

I want it when and where I need it       [function]

I want to be able to rely on it              [reliability]

I want it to be simple and easy to use   [engagement]

I want to like it and relate to it            [personality]

I want it to say something about me       [icon]

… and I want to love it!

We can begin to develop a deeper understanding of how our total product/service is satisfying or exceeding consumer expectations by looking at each level of the experience and the contribution made by the technology, packaging system and  communication.

We may unearth some really interesting consumer insights tand begin to map them onto the Consumer Experience face.

We can then look at how the consumer experience is constrained or enabled by the other faces.

As we discover the possibilities of new and different technologies we can look at the enablers and constraints that they may offer. We can look at how we wrap the technology in a useful and pleasing form or packaging system.

Also we can look at the affect of existing or new communication channels and the way we exploit them, with the affordances of the other pyramid faces, etc.

We can also ask ourselves "What is an excellent product?" which enables us to explore the mapping of excellence versus what is available now, identifying the gaps between them.

So using Design Space ensures the team, in a clear and practical manner, understands, evaluates and optimises the relationship between the Consumer Experience, Technology, Packaging System and Communication in order to define a portfolio of opportunities for closing the gap between the current product and an excellent product. Services can be approached in a similar manner.

Although Maslow originally asserted that people satisfied their lower level needs, starting at the lowest level, before moving up, it has become apparent that individuals actually make quite complex trade-offs across levels.

If we deconstruct the hierarchy and think of it as three sets or spheres of needs:

then we get a better perspective of the consumers trade-offs going on between the material and social needs and the needs of personal growth. We reach a decision by consciously or unconsciously  making trade-offs  between our various needs and wants, so we can regard our needs - material, social and personal growth - as overlapping and interacting:

Hence the in spite of reviews that heap praise on product Y for having more features and performance than product X (more than meets people's material expectations)... droves of consumers actually buy X because it more than meets their social and personal expectations. This also makes it pretty difficult for the producer of Y to change direction and put together an offer that the consumer finds attractive and authentic and more particularly do it again and again - think RAZR. (NOTE: the producer needs to change as well as the product stream!)

Using Design Pyramid helps uncover the gap between what the experience the consumer may want and need compared with what we actually offer; and then allows us to look for gap-closing ideas, concepts, prototypes, stories, etc., using Design Space to ensure we are exploring the maximum amount of territory to optimise our solutions.

[draft]

The innovation imperative

  little springs design inc. 
  Originally uploaded by aNantaB

This picture sums up the innovation imperative very nicely...
They are stating that If you really know your customers; create products and services that meet their needs, delighting their senses then you are well on the way to making sure that they will keep coming back to you.
Little Springs describe themselves as:
"Specializing in the practice of user-centered design for the mobile industry, Little Springs Design understands the needs of your business and customers. We bring our knowledge of the user, their needs in design, and the potentials of technology to you."
Chapter 1 of Electric Dreams: designing for the digital age, written by David Redhead in 2004, opens with a quote from Tim Brown of IDEO:
"Once design was about designing objects. Now it's about anticipating behaviours. Designers need to be film directors rather than sculptors."
Designing Interactions by Bill Moggridge, founder of IDEO, was published late  2006 with an introduction by Gillian Crampton Smith. She says, in a section called Designing for Everyday Life:

"Twenty years ago, when personal computers were first becoming popular, they were mostly used as professional tools, or games machines for teenagers........
We've come to a stage when computer technology needs to be designed as part of everyday culture, so that it's beautiful and intriguing, so that it has emotive as well as functional qualities.....
It [the book] describes the challenges designers face in making this powerful technology fit easily into people's everyday lives , rather than forcing their lives to fit the dictates of technology."

which just reinforces what the headline picture describes... but how to do it for everyday objects and activities?

The good news is technology enables us to collect and share information; to interact around it and derive more interesting insights that can drive our innovation endeavours.

The other bit of good news is we can probably make a start with what we know and design activities to uncover what we need to know, and don't already know, thus planning activities that close that gap.

An interesting development last night was a radio discussion on the Chris Evans Drivetime show of the arrangement between the BBC and Nintendo to ensure availability of the iPlayer on the Wii box.  In the blog

Wii becomes home of online video  there is an explanation of why the Nintendo box came first when conventional logic might favour the Xbox or Playstation. Read the blog for a fuller explanation that starts

"According to the Beeb's Erik Huggers it's because Sony and Microsoft wanted to "control"  the iPlayer.

He said: 'If you want to get on the PlayStation or Xbox, they want control of the look, the feel and the experience; they want it done within their shop, and their shop only.' ......

What's more interesting is that the BBC's work with Nintendo has gone a step closer to achieving what many companies are working at - namely, bridging the gap between the web and the TV."

On the programme Erik Huggers explained that there are 2.5m Wii consoles in UK many belonging to people that are not hard core gamers, spreading across the ages from young to old, so it was a profile more likely to  be interested in the  iPlayer's benefits. Nintendo will make a small one off charge for the iPlayer channel subscription.

The iPlayer is also available on the  iPhone Touch and iPhone, discussed here, which is intriguing given the claims and counter-claims about closed and open systems.. maybe there is another layer called closed and open thinking? Or even closed and open behaviour?

In other words really knowing your customers; creating products and services that meet their needs, delighting their senses so you are well on the way to making sure that they will keep coming back to you.

Picture uploaded  by emsef. Used with thanks under CC.

 

Daring to dream and then to deliver

  dream cup 
  Originally uploaded by uncommonmuse

I dream, I test my dreams against my beliefs, I dare to take risks, and I execute my vision to make those dreams come true." -Walt Disney.

Disney's process, quoted by Walt Disney  “Dream, Believe, Dare, Do”, I describe as

Dream the project outcome
Evaluate what is needed
Realistic assessment of what will work, timing, etc.
Make the dream come alive
Deliver the dream
Live the dream!

 

But dreams without purpose can be counter-productive so it is better make sure they are aligned with the strategy and goals;

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

that is not to say we should not challenge them but eventually we need to have a reasonable degree of alignment remembering that

“There is no freeway to the future - often not even paved roads but instead uncertain terrain and wilderness. So pioneering leaders rely on a compass and a dream.” - Kouzes and Posner.

Vision, a compelling view of a future, creates meaning and purpose which catapults both individuals and organizations to high levels of achievement. We create meaning in our lives by pursuing our future visions, and we refine our visions based on the meaning we are discovering through our experience. But visions, in particular, are best when they are co-created by the team itself, which means it is easier to 'live the dream'.

Joel Barker states that

"Vision Without Action...Is Just a Dream.

Action Without Vision...Just Passes the Time.

 But, Vision and Action...Can Change the World."

Picture uploaded   by Argyleist. Used with thanks under CC.

“The next step is to create the right combination of people working together as a team. 'Have dreamers, have planners who can take the dream and put together a plan, and then have executors who can make that plan a reality. And let all of those people interact and work closely together,' says Ron Beegle, executive VP of the Gap Inc. Direct.'"


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Don't wait, select your blocks and build!

  Waiting for a Lego revolution 
  Originally uploaded by _Dusk_

The beauty of Lego is that it is a collection of various shaped blocks that can be assembled into objects the shape and function being limited only by the imagination of the creators and their skills in utilising the function of the blocks and the ability to acquire other blocks that are emerging of different shape and function... of course we can add Mindstorms to the mix and really open-up even more possibilities Those creative and executive skills enable our organisations to envisage ways to delight the user/consumer and using technologies (building blocks) familiar to us, and other technologies understood by collaborators, By assembling those technologies and then packaging them in ways that delight the consumer we can deliver a winning experience. In the 90's, as a design technology and process exploitation group we spent a great deal of time working on delighting our clients... the project teams that we were invited to partner. This book

"Design-Inspired Innovation" helps articulate what we were up to as collaborators with multi-functional teams. A reviewer of the book writes:

"This book defines design-inspired innovation in terms of three different, equally important aspects. Two of these, technology and needs (i.e., satisfaction), are well known in current practice. The third, however, summed up as language, is either disregarded or neglected. Language in this instance refers to the meaning of the product in the sociocultural milieu in which it is perceived and used: It is the product's emotional and symbolic value. An aim of design-inspired innovation is to achieve success through a high level of sociocultural fit.

A recent example described by the authors is the iconic iPod music player by Apple: a product that has revolutionized the way we listen to music. The creation of the iPod was, essentially, the combination of existing technologies in new ways. It was developed for Apple by Portal Player, a firm with design expertise in portable music players. Working with Apple's suppliers of five key off-the-shelf components, Portal Player developed a reference model that, with additional design input by Apple, became the iPod. However, it is not merely a music player in conveniently compact form. It has developed meaning and has become, virtually, an expression of its user's sociocultural fit in the same way that a BMW is not merely a car but is an expression of its owner."

A slide by McKinsey (in German) encapsulated the innovation dilemma. I can't find the source but adapted a few years ago to look like this

Basically this matrix nudges you in the direction of new products (and services) that have the potential to disrupt the market by deploying the building blocks of organisational infrastructure and technology you and your partners are familiar with.

To make this activity (seriously playing) more structured (and more challenging and fun) we created a tool called Design Space, a conceptual, mental, virtual and physical space to ensure that project teams take into account all significant factors in their creative collaborations. It never ceased to amaze me what we uncovered as cultural barriers to "doing the right thing", let alone "doing the right thing right". For instance, in one "Design Space" session we were trying to get a feel for costs of two or three different cap designs... the consumer group had ranked them on visual appeal from digital renders.. and thay were closely ranked.. so we were looking for other differentiators to help in our narrowing down of concepts to work on. The buyer (in charge of procuring this particular class of component) was extremely reluctant to even voice an opinion.. no matter it was time for dinner and then another session tomorrow. Over dinner I was chatting with the buyer and as the drink loosened all our tongues he told me the story of how as a trainee buyer he had costed something at x and it turned out when the actual order was placed it was 1.25x, and his boss had never let him forget his "failure". First thing next morning the team created a 'concept costing' that had no validity outside the meeting and gave relative costs for comparison only. Within an hour we had our 'costs' and it turned out that the concept rated second (just!) was 15% cheaper than number 1. As we were in a cost-sensitive market sector we knew which one to go for. Another time we were doing the same exercise on a less price sensitive sector and we chose concept number 1 as it was only 1.1x the cost of concept 2 but it was significantly preferred by consumers. So 10% was worth investing in. There is also a challenge if it was 100% more than concept 2 which may have meant the trad-off would go the other way... but in the absence of cost information at the initial decision it becomes incredibly difficult to stop the train and switch concepts...confronting the 'tyranny of trade-offs'; that is why the way we build conceptual models plays a key role in determining how we perceive and play with our building blocks..as Michael Schrage says in Serious Play:

 

The value of prototypes resides less in the models themselves than in the interactions - the conversations, arguments, consultations, collaborations -- they invite. Prototypes force individuals and institutions to confront the tyranny of trade-offs. That confrontation, in turn, forces people to play seriously with the difficult choices they must ultimately make. The fundamental question isn't, What kinds of models, prototypes and simulations should we be building? but, What kind of interactions do we want to create? The latter question aims at the heart of strategic introspection. Consequently, the design focus - the value emphasis - must be on the quantity and quality of human interactions that modelling media can support. Who should be working together? What should they be talking about? Who should see the model next?

Because previously there was a lack of a 'concept costing' building block buyers were regarded a cynics because we felt that any deviation from what we already produced to something new and conceptual was always met with reluctance and to misquote Oscar Wilde, buyers had the reputation of knowing

"the price of everything and the value of nothing".

A Design Space conversation changed that view for ever and opened up possibility in the minds of the team members. They knew that their ideas and opinions would be listened to...it would not be treated cynically. In the words of Ovid...

Picture uploaded  by berzowska. used with thanks under CC.

“A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a quip, and worried to death by a frown on the right man’s brow.”

I was leafing through my old notebooks and came across this, written in January, 2006 (thought... did I write it or copy it... creative or karaoke?):

"The odds of success of a concept, but on the variety of methods used to investigate and promote the concepts. The rapid discovery and rapid design techniques move concepts along the process faster, but unless we constantly evolve new methods for executing the process we will not reap the benefits. Innovating faster means learning faster; somewhere at the beginning of the project we need an idea for the product or service, driven from an insight about the consumer and a story about how it (the product or service) would work, and what it would do to change the life of of that consumer."


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

So start playing (seriously) and have fun with your (and other people's) building blocks. The story can promise much; and that promise is delivered by the result of serious play.

 

Massive change... by creative design?

  massive change 
  Originally uploaded by 416style

I have been intrigued by the way that all the  major innovations I have studied recently have involved networks of stuff, people, etc. in order to emerge as successful 'things'.
I read an article in the Daily Telegraph recently, "Extraordinary foresight made Winston Churchill great"

Extracted below...about Churchill and the modernisation of the Royal Navy prior to the First World War. Churchill persuaded  many top people to take a risk on changing the way we exercised seapower to meet the threat from the German efforts to create a formidable naval power.

"From the moment he arrived at the Admiralty, a young man of destiny, Churchill started to prepare the fleet for the Battle of Armageddon he believed was inevitable. He immersed himself in the work of understanding the Royal Navy, its strengths and flaws, and     the challenges it would face from its likely foe. To prepare it for war, he would first have to know the state of affairs.

With the Admiralty's yacht, the Enchantress, as his home and office, he mastered every detail of navy tactics and capabilities. He appeared to be everywhere at once, inquiring, badgering, learning.

He was interested in everything from gunnery to the morale of his sailors. He was fascinated with aeroplanes and immediately understood their utility in warfare. He spent hundreds of hours learning to fly. He crawled into the cramped quarters of gun turrets and learnt how they worked.

It became his practice to solicit information and opinions from junior officers and ordinary seamen, often ignoring or arguing with their superiors. The respect he showed them, and the increases in     pay he won for them, made him a favourite in the ranks.

Churchill had been alarmed by the Admiralty's lack of co-ordination with the War Office and the Navy's desultory planning for war. Over the objections of the Sea Lords, he established the Naval War Staff to co-ordinate plans with the War Office. In his first year at the Admiralty, he replaced three of the     four Sea Lords.

With John (Jackie) Fisher, former Admiral of the Fleet, as his counsellor, he set about building new ships that would maintain Britain's advantage over the German fleet. Churchill proposed a new fleet of five superdreadnoughts that would boast a battery of eight 15-inch guns, each firing a 1,920lb shell. No gun of this size had been built or even contemplated by another navy.

"Enlarging the guns," he wrote, "meant enlarging the ships, and enlarging the ships meant enlarging the cost."......

When the new 15-inch gun proved a "brilliant success", Churchill turned next to the problem of speed. To combat that new and troubling weapon of naval warfare, the torpedo, the battleships would be protected with 13 and a half inches of steel armour. The guns and their shells already added weight. Churchill's answer was to order them to carry four instead of the five turrets of the existing dreadnoughts, and to add more boilers.

But the ships would still not be able to reach the 25 knots that would give them superiority in battle. One remedy was evident to both Churchill and Fisher: oil. Oil was more combustible and burned     hotter than coal and it produced steam faster, which in turn enabled a ship to accelerate more rapidly and to rely on fewer boilers.

What is more, oil-burning ships created less smoke, making them less visible to the enemy. They required less manpower and could remain at sea longer.

The decision to convert the fleet from coal to oil was the most controversial of Churchill's reforms. Britain produced no oil.  It produced coal. The oil supplies of the world were under foreign control. Oil was flammable: a direct hit on a tank could set off an immediate inferno. Storage tanks ashore would be vulnerable to attack........

Curchill argued  "If we overcame the difficulties and surmounted the risks," he said, "we should be able to raise the whole power and efficiency of the Navy: better ships, better crews, high economies, more intense forms of war power - mastery itself was the prize of the venture."

.....In 1914, one month before the "guns of August" began their four-year cannonade of the First World War, Churchill secured for the British Crown a 51 per cent controlling interest in the Anglo-Persian Oil Company for £2.2 million."

We can write a similarly complex story (e.g. The Perfect Thing) for the Apple's creation of iPod, iTunes and ITMS.

...and Andrew Hargadon writes of Edison in When Innovations meet Institutions: Edison and the Design of the Electric Light and Ford and again I am struck by the number and variety of factors that need to be tackled to create a successful innovative 'product'. But then all these innovations I regard as platform innovations... They allow organisations to build a whole systems of 'stuff' upon them. It is intriguing to try and work out  what is the platform. Getting it wrong can be expensive.. as IBM found out when moving from large monolithic computers to small PCs it discovered the operating system became the paltform.

Is the iPhone a similar platform? The Wired article here describes the potential of the device to disrupt and ends...

"It may appear that the carriers' nightmares have been realized, that the iPhone has given all the power to consumers, developers, and manufacturers, while turning wireless networks into dumb pipes. But by fostering more innovation, carriers' networks could get more valuable, not less. Consumers will spend more time on devices, and thus on networks, racking up bigger bills and generating more revenue for everyone. According to Paul Roth, AT&T's president of marketing, the carrier is exploring new products and services — like mobile banking — that take advantage of the iPhone's capabilities. "We're thinking about the market differently," Roth says. In other words, the very development that wireless carriers feared for so long may prove to be exactly what they need. It took Steve Jobs to show them that."

Over at Logic and Emotion there are two entries that are intriguing:

The first was published just after the iPhone launch entitled iPhone Ecosystem an extract below

 

"Can Apple pull it off?  Will the iPhone repeat the success of the iPod in the MP3 player arena or does it even need to?  What about fragmented carrier considerations, such as not all carriers supporting the same technologies?  I think Bruce makes a good distinction between "cool product" and "revolutionary product".  The iPod changed the face of how we enjoy music.  The iPhone seems to at first glance posses the same potential—if it can overcome some key barriers."

and the second is more recent entitled Space in your pocket:

.

picture link.

David Armano writes

"I was sitting in the audience at the CanUX conference when I got the e-mail.  Someone from our Toronto office had sent out a note with a link to this prototype of an experimental iPhone Web application. I was immediately delighted at both the idea and execution and couldn't  wait to get the thing running on my own iPhone.  My initial thought?  How cool.

But let me take a step back and offer up an insight as someone who loves their iPhone.  The iPhone was designed with "talkability" built right into it.  By this, I mean it's an extremely effective way to do "show and tell"." He then goes on to describe the potential of "show and tell.. makes you think... that massive change will come about by creative design... and why creative design?

In the words of László Moholy-Nagy, in Vision in Motion, Chicago 1947, p.42

 

"Designing is not a profession but an attitude

 

Design has many connotations. It is the organization of materials and processes in the most productive, economic way, in a harmonious balance of all elements necessary for a certain function. It is not a matter of façade, of mere external appearance; rather it is the essence of products and institutions, penetrating and comprehensive. Designing is a complex and intricate task. It is integration of technological, social and economic requirements, biological necessities, and the psychophysical effects of materials, shape, colour, volume, and space: thinking in relationships. The designer must see the periphery as well as the core, the immediate and the ultimate, at least in the biological sense. He must anchor his special job in the complex whole."

To sum up what is expected of a design innovator I would start with the words of my then chairman

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

 

“If I were to predict the sorts of organisations which will succeed in ten or 20 years’ time, it will be those that are extremely good at managing informal networks of alliances - internally and externally; extremely good at managing knowledge; and extremely good at managing diversity.”

 Niall FitzGerald

 Chairman, Unilever plc

 FT, September 18, 1999