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!

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.

Design 2.0: Robyn Waters

Robyn Waters is the founder of trend consulting company RW Trend, and before that was the VP of Design for Target. She believes that “good taste and great design don’t have to be expensive”. Target’s strategy of differentiation through design has allowed it to compete successfully against behemoth Walmart.

The 3H design theory

HEAD need
HANDBAG value
HEART love, want
Most people go to Target with a $10 list, yet people end up spending more than $100. That’s the effect of the Heart.

Trends and desires

“Trend are signposts pointing to what is going on in the hearts and minds of consumers”.
The key is to figure out what’s important, not just what’s next. The best example of this philosophy is Philippe Starck’s sippy cup, pictured above. Target executives were skeptical, after all a sippy cup isn’t supposed to have a stem and look like crystal glass. Starck insisted and pushed the design through, convinced that every little girl should feel like a princess. Lo and behold, it was a tremendous success, with the $3 cups now selling for $100 on eBay. Other examples of trend-aware design abound, such as LG’s cellphone with a Qiblah (pointer to Mecca), or this Prada perfume bottle design inspired by the 30s and 40s.

Left brain, right brain, and the creative process

Robyn used the above diagram to explain the creative process to Target executives, which was apparently no easy task. While numbers are useful as a research tool and a success metric, not everything can be measured – you have to leave room for the right brain to operate, the incubation period. It is through a combination of left and right brain thinking that you arrive at illumination.

Various quotes

“The hear has its reason, of which reason knows nothing” – Pascal
“Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts” – Einstein
“Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is important, but what they hide is crucial” – W. C. Fields
“When opposites supplement each other, everything is harmonious” – Lao Tzu
“Growth is a creative process, not an accounting process” – Robert Redford
“The art form of our busines is intuition” – James Sinegal, CEO CostCo, on how his company is about more than just penny-savings, it’s about a ‘treasure hunt’.

Design 2.0: Steve Portigal

Our second speaker was Steve Portigal, the founder of Portigal Consulting, “a boutique firm that brings together user research, design and business strategy”. Not only was Steve’s talk full of marvellously dry humor, but it also made a number of interesting points.

Wired for stories

Human crave stories. Stories are essential for our emotional, mental and spirititual health. At a neurological level, our brains are built to imagine stories from the facts we observe. As any creative writing course will tell you, setting influences character and behavior. Transposing this to a product viewpoint, context is the setting, and our goal is to tell a compelling story.
2 books recommendations:
Understanding Comics, by Scott McCloud, on comics and the art of storytelling
99 ways to tell a story: Exercises in Style, by Matt Madden, on how one story can be told in many different ways (inspired by Exercises de Style, by Raymond Queneau).

Defining context

Context informs design, design creates context. Even the simple questions who, when, where can lead to surprising insights.
Who A snow-shovel won a number of awards because the designers figured out that women were the principal users and thus needed a smaller handle.
When The words we use reveal the frame of reference: horseless carriage, cordless phone.
Where The ‘third space’ between office and home requires new designs. In doing research for a laptop design, a team found a guy editing videos sitting in a tree in a park. Not a common case for sure, but people are constantly using objects in unusual situations.

Discovering cultural context

The idea is to identify cultural norms – what is normal? For example, handsfree headsets led to a lot of ‘people talking to themselves’ jokes, but this has now become common enough that it isn’t jarring anymore. Another example is the play “A Number” which recently closed in San Francisco, in which one actor has to play three different people. In the UK production, the actor used accents to differentiate the protagonists, but that wasn’t possible in the US because accents have a different connotation here. Once you have identifed the cultural norms, you need to look for overlaps of different cultural contexts that can lead to new and surprising ideas.

CRASH!

As a sidenote, halfway through Steve’s talk the banner on the stage collapsed with much drama. Not only did all speakers escape unharmed, but the powerbook even survived the six foot fall. Way to go, Apple design!

Design 2.0: Diego Rodriguez

Introducing our first speaker: Diego Rodriguez. Diego is a professor at the D-School and works at IDEO. He also writes the design blog Metacool. You may remember me writing about his Creating Infectious Action conference a few weeks back.

The Aquarium Analogy

Diego began his talk with a picture of the jellyfish tank at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. A decade ago, a designer tasked with creating this amazing experience would have thought of what shape to make the glass, how to set up the lighting, and what scenery should go in the tank. Nowadays, a designer would take a much broader perspective. How do people get to the aquarium? Where do they park, where do they stay? Is it enjoyable? The immediate design of the jellyfish tank is but a smaller part of the experience of visiting the aquarium – the point being that a great experience means a great ecosystem fit.

Three approaches to design

The above diagram illustrates the three sets of factors to consider when approaching a design problem. Design thinking traditionally focuses on the human factors, on how to make a product desirable. This is a great way to ensure a product will meet a true user need. However, Diego emphasizes that the other two perspectives must also be considered, in particular the business side which is sometimes overlooked by designers.

4 key characteristics of a successful design thinker

• * optimism
• * the mind of a child, the ability to be curious and naive (in a good way)
• * wisdom, the ability to draw on experience
• * building to think, prototyping

T-shaped people

T-shaped people is an old concept that IDEO uses to describe its hiring practice. T-shaped people are people with very deep knowledge in one domain (the stem of the T) but some knowledge in a wide variety of other domains (the bar of the T). The idea is that multi-functional teams of T-shaped people form the strongest design teams because each person has some understanding of their teammates’ fields. In Diego’s words, “design thinking is the glue that holds things together”.

Build a fruitfly

For the sake of argument, let us suppose you were tasked with building an elephant. You may think that the best way to do so would be to build a small elephant and let it grow from there. But with a 23 month gestation periods, building even a small elephant takes time. The trick is to instead build a fruitfly, that can evolve and adapt quickly. The same goes for products.

Designing for business to create value

The trick is for the business to make the shift from thinking of itself as the center of the solar system, to seeing itself as a big player in the ecosystem.
Three steps to success:

• 1 – ensure desirability
• 2 – balance desirability across stakeholders to create a non-zero-sum game
• 3 – build fruitflies, not elephants, and iterate quickly

Design 2.0: Introduction

For the last conference I blogged, I posted notes that pretty much followed the flow of the talks. This time, I’m instead going to try to summarize the key points from each speaker. First up, the introductory comments by Core founder Allan Chochinov and moderator Jessie Scanlon from BusinessWeek.

The general theme

The theme of the Core77′s Design 2.0 conference in San Francisco was “Products and their Ecosystems – understanding the power of context in product innovation.” Allan remarked that all products exist in a context, a continuum of products created before and after, and must therefore fit in with these other products. On the other hand, a lot of products challenge and subvert the ecosystem, and it can even be argued that the truly innovative products are those that disrupt existing ecosystems and defines new ones.

Ecosystems

Both Jessie and Allan enumerated some of the many ecosystems in which to consider a product:

• * manufacturing
• * distribution
• * daily use
• * post-use (trash, recycling, re-use)
• * other products used alongside
• * product line
• * brand
• * cultural context

Sony’s example

Jessie nicely illustrated the topic through some anecdotes about Sony. Sony used to be a very innovative company, but has somewhat lost its image as leader in the marketplace. This is due in part to a lack of attention to ecosystems.
Among other things, Sony engineers used to spend a lot of time with English-speaking researchers to understand a new market. As they grew more proficient in English, the engineers increasingly relied on their own information-seeking skills and thus started to miss the cultural context that only native speakers could give them.
Also, Sony failed to consider the full ecosystem of their product line. While Sony never ceased to produce well-designed products, these products did not play well with each other. So while an individual product might work fine, using several Sony products together was not nearly as painless as it could and should have been.
These are but two examples of how Sony lost its top spot as innovation leader in the portable music market to Apple’s seamlessly integrated experience (oh yes, I did just refer to the iPod. How could I not…)

Design 2.0 Writeup.

I attended Core77′s Design 2.0 Conference in San Francisco today, and it was a blast. I took copious notes, so expect a series of posts about this event over the coming days.

Update: the writeup is now complete!
* Introduction
* Diego Rodriguez
* Steve Portigal
* Robyn Waters
* Peter Rojas
* Q&A
* Closing thoughts