Design 2.0: Closing thoughts

This is it, we’ve reached the end of my Design 2.0 write-up. To conclude, let me offer up some of my own thoughts on the conference. I’ll start by saying that this was the first design conference I attended, and I had a great time. I particularly enjoyed Diego’s and Steve’s talks, and got a chance to meet some really cool people during the mixer. Overall, the conference was definitely a success as far as I’m concerned.


Nevertheless, I think we all missed an opportunity to explore a very interesting topic. While the talks were entertaining, I found them overly broad, and only tenuously related to the theme. I wish there had been more parallels drawn with the natural world. I touched on this in my audience question about the fragility of ecosystems, but I had dozens more in the same vein. I wanted to be told about predators and parasites, evolution and natural disasters. How can our knowledge of natural ecosystems inform our decisions in product ecosystems? And how do product systems differ from natural systems?


I would also have liked to hear more real world examples and applicable lessons. Tell me about challenges posed by specific product ecosystems, how a given product succeeded within its ecosystem or how another one failed and why (and please, please don’t ever tell me about the iPod again). Also tell me about the research methods of people studying ecosystems: biologists, anthropologists, sociologists, and so forth. Expand my design toolkit, teach me how to think about my product in context. Many of these points were touched on, but ever so briefly and with very little substance.


If I had to sum it up in one sentence, I’d say it was a fine conference but that it didn’t really address the topic – and that’s a pity given the potential of the theme.



PS: If I hear one more vague question about “the social role of designers”, I’m going to have a hissy-fit. Consider yourselves lucky that I filtered the Q&A for you.

Design 2.0: Q&A

After the four speeches, the Design 2.0 panelists spent some time answering questions from moderator Jessie Scanlon and the audience. I’ve summarized the best ones below. All questions and answers are very roughly paraphrased and to a large extent reflect my interpretation of the dialogue.

JS: Peter, you contrasted Apple’s success with Rhapsody’s clunky integration. Does this suggest that more vertical integration is the way to go?

PR: In the short run, yes, but in the long run everyone benefits from openness. The iPod for example would never have been successful without the benefit of years of openness leading to the mp3 format. Rhapsody, while compatible with more devices, isn’t actually more open per se – it’s just differently closed.

JS: How do you create context for a product if there is none?

SP: The trick is to create hooks upon which a community can build a new context. Google and Amazon have APIs that allow outside developers to create mashups. In’N'Out Burgers has a very simple menu, but it also has a subculture of ‘secret’ items not listed on the menu, that spread virally via fans. In a way it’s bad design because the feature is hidden, but it’s also good design in that it creates passion.

JS: How does power flow through ecosystems?

PR: It’s cliche, but technology both empowers and disempowers. For example, Tivo has changed how people think of TV and given them control over this aspect of their life.
DR: True, but it turns out that the average Tivo user spends 18mn/day just using the Tivo interface, so for every step forward, there are also setbacks. How do we regain those 18 minutes? The question of open vs. closed actually depends on where you are in the power curve: at the beginning a closed system like Apple’s makes sense to get an integrated experience, but as usage norms get figured out, the system eventually opens up.
RW: Another way to empower the customer is mass customization, which is what the car industry is doing with the Scion xB and the Mini Cooper.
SP: Agreed, but in most cases there’s still a terrible lack of power on the user’s side. People are stuck – we have a long way to go.

JS: The left brain is linear and analytic, whereas the right brain is creative. Yet it seems that the design process outlined by Robyn is strictly linear. Is this really the path followed by most projects?
DR: It’s really hard to explain the creative process. You can’t just tell a client that it’s a ‘non-linear fur-ball’, so we describe it as 1->2->3->4 when in reality it’s much more complicated. As the client learns more about the process, they become more comfortable with the more exploratory approach.

Audience question (my question, in fact): Speaking of ecosystems brings up metaphors with the natural world. But natural ecosystems are often described as fragile, easily disrupted environments. Do you have to take care to not damage the ecosystem when introducing a new product, or are product ecosystems much more resilient?
DR: Basically it comes down to whether you want to stay in business after you introduce your product. You can introduce a product with a big splash, but it has to fit into the ecosystems to be successful in the long run. Go in small, learn what goes on, iterate and evolve to achieve fit.

Audience question (by Luke Wroblewski): There seems to be a tension between the fruitfly approach and the ecosystem approach? For Apple and the Monterey Bay Aquarium, it was necessary to create a cohesive ‘elephant’ experience. Comments?
DR: It all depends on the frame of reference. You pick your battles carefully to include as much context as necessary but not so much that it becomes unmanageable. Apple outsourced the internals of the first iPod so it could focus on the big picture.

Anyway, we’re nearing the end of my Design 2.0 coverage. Tomorrow I’ll post some general thoughts on the conference, and then I’ll return to my regular link blogging for a bit!

Stanford Design Thesis presentations

Tonight I got the chance to attend the thesis presentations for second year design students in Stanford’s Product Design program. It was a really fun time, with the projects ranging from playful solar-powered lights to commercializable fitness equipment. I was also impressed by the variety of the presentations, which used all sorts of mediums including video, live music, and physical product demonstrations. Unfortunately this was a private session, so I can’t write in more detail about the concepts for now, but I’m going to track down some of the students in the coming days to get their permission to write about this stuff. There’s also a public presentation this Saturday June 17th at 2pm in Annenberg Hall (I think this might be the location: http://campus-map.stanford.edu/index.cfm?ID=03-010).

Design 2.0: Peter Rojas

Peter Rojas is the founder of popular gadget blog Engadget, which he started after serving as editor for Gizmodo. As the last speaker, Peter was courteous to keep his talk short to leave ample time for Q&A.

Gadget ecosystems

What goes into creating a successful gadget nowadays? It used to be that a TV was a TV, and that was it. Today it has to interact with half a dozen different devices, from the DVD player and the Tivo to the stereo system and the custom remote. Gadgets are part of extremely complex ecosystems that need to inform the design.

Consider the different parts involved in creating a successful mp3 player. You need:
* hardware
* embedded software
* PC software, maybe Mac software
* a method to deliver music, e.g. iTunes Music Store or Rhapsody

This last step in itself involves getting the labels signed up, setting up a delivery infrastructure, a DRM mechanism, etc. Of course, a music store could in theory be spread across many different players, but more on open vs. closed below. Not to beat a dead horse, but Apple was successful because it offered a seamlessly integrated experience.

Cellphones are even more complicated: manufacturers, carriers, consumers, phone OS folks, chipset manufacturers, third party software developers and regulators all have to coordinate to bring a phone to market, and unsurprisingly it takes a very long time. Combined with haphazard integration across products, this causes a lot of frustration in technology.

Open vs. closed

Analysts have been babbling about convergence for years now, and yet we’ve seen very little progress in this domain. The trouble is that each company wants to control their system, with the end result being a balkanized ecosystem. Think of Intel’s Viiv platform, and AMD’s similar but incompatible effort. Companies won’t be able to change user behavior until they themselves change their behavior to enable simpler technology.

Stay tuned for the Q&A summary tomorrow, which has some interesting content.