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Filed under: design | Tags: Charles Dickens, DailyLit, design, iPhone, obama, of, pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, Rhiannon Bowman, RSS, silica, siliceous, The Free Dictionary
There are two places that have a pretty slick design that you ought to check out. First was discovered (to me) by Rhiannon Bowman, an Obama and iPhone fanatic whose blog I have quietly followed for the last few months. It’s called “DailyLit“.
DailyLit has embraced new media (and attention spans) with their distribution model. They send books, in part, day-after-day through RSS or email. It’s brilliant. They include free old classics and new, for-pay books. I’m in a Dickens mood right now, and he is, thankfully, one of the freebies.
The second design that I have enjoyed is less obvious. My favorite dictionary site is The Free Dictionary. The definitions are more comprehensive, the synonmyns more accesible, and the ability to dive deeper into the copy is wicked. You know how you can double click a word to highlight it? Well, on this dictionary site, it takes you to the definition of that word. Any word in the copy. Say you look up pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, and you are unsure what is meant with the use of “siliceous”. Just double click and you get the definition:
Containing, resembling, relating to, or consisting of silica.
Silica?
A white or colorless crystalline compound, SiO2, occurring abundantly as quartz, sand, flint, agate, and many other minerals and used to manufacture a wide variety of materials, especially glass and concrete.
Of? It’s pretty long.
Filed under: design, leadership | Tags: Archibald Wheeler, Chris Langan, Dilbert, Imaginary Time, IQ, Malcolm Gladwell, Participatory Universe, Royal College of Art, Stephen Hawking
While reading about Malcolm Gladwell’s new book, I came across a name I’d never heard before: Chris Langan. So I decided to find out more about this guy.
Turns out, Chris has had a rough life. Born into poverty, he wore rags to school and was always the smallest. He noted that he was always “treated like scum by the rest of the kids.” As early as when “he was five, his mother—who’d in the meantime married and divorced a struggling Hollywood actor and given birth to two more sons—married a mean, hard-drinking tyrant.”
“He figured the best way to raise three boys would be to set up his own military platoon,” Chris says.
[...]
At six each morning, his stepfather would sound reveille on a bugle, line up his little soldiers at attention, heels cocked at 45 degrees, thumbs along trouser seams. He’d stand before each of the boys and feign a punch, usually a right jab that he’d stop an inch or two shy of their noses. If one of the kids flinched, he would sock him for real. Chris’s body was always covered with welts.
[...]
One morning when he was fourteen, Chris awoke to a flash of white light, followed by intense pain across his eyes. He jumped out of bed half blinded. Just home from an all-night drunk, his stepfather had wrapped his garrison belt around his fist and punched Chris while he slept. Since he was four years old, Chris had never once talked back. It was always, No, sir, Yes, sir; he’d never even said boo. Now he just went mental. Chris flew at him, knocked him across the room, against the wall, out the door. He beat down the old man in the front yard, told him never to return. He didn’t.
After high school, he dropped out of further education twice because of financial difficulties and spent the next few years doing odd jobs and temp work, such as at times working as a bartender and other times as a bouncer.
That’s one side of him.
The other half of his life was forcefully revealed in 1999, when he was tested and it was found that his IQ was 195. That’s like one in a billion smart. He spends a lot of his free time working on his
Cognition-Theoretic Model of the Universe. The result of ten years of solitary labor, the CTMU—pronounced cat-mew—is, says Chris, a true “Theory of Everything,” a cross between John Archibald Wheeler’s “Participatory Universe” and Stephen Hawking’s “Imaginary Time” theory of cosmology.
There is so much talent, so many diamonds that we miss because we expect people or ideas to fit within a certain framework. Chris was treated as a freak and simply ignored for years because he didn’t fit in. Two years ago I had the opportunity to meet with artists at the Royal College of Art. I was a business student in a design leadership program and we were working on a project together. They thought quite differently from us, and it took some time to grasp the differences, but when we finally broke down those walls, the results were astonishing. We need to do that sort of thing more often.
You know the other cool thing about Langan? It’s like we have Dilbert’s garbage man in real life.
Filed under: design, innovation, online media, politics | Tags: Audience, Chris O'Shea, democrats, design, Good Guide, memes, New Mexico Sun News, Nicholas Carr, obama, Obama Wins, politics, rAndom International, Royal Opera House, transparency, words that end in gry, xkcd
There were a few things I ran across over the last few days that are worth sharing but need not much by way on commentary.
1: A little cartoon that I, disturbingly, agree with.
source: xkcd words that end in gry
2: A newspaper in New Mexico “seizes the day” with their proclamation that “Obama Wins”. They also noted:
the newspaper has a goal of reaching one million readers with each edition, but prints just 10,000 copies of each of its issues.
So, “each copy must be read by 100 different and distinct people. This places an enormous burden on our intrepid readers. However, it is a burden that we must insist you carry. So, please, read quickly, care for the physical condition of the paper and pass it on to your next chosen reader.”
The liberal leaning alternative newspaper ended by imploring its readers to get out and vote, “even if we did spoil the ending for you.”
3: Well designed transparency—Good Guide gives more visibility into corporate political leanings.
4: Speaking of good design; a cool visual metaphor for memes (make your own interpretation).
Filed under: design | Tags: Bohemian Bachelor, design, Don't Make Me Think, elevator, protest, republicans, Slayer, TweetDeck, TwitScoop, Twitter
I work, along with all my coworkers that I have mentioned thus far (save the Bohemian Bachelor) on the top floor of the Zions building. When we approach the elevator up here, there is only one “call button” that we can push (as opposed to the other floors in the building that have two: down and up). It makes sense that there would be only one button; the elevator stops going up on our floor, so, of course, you can only go one way when entering the elevator.
When I time-to-time sneak into the office building basement for the ice cream and other fattening goodies, I have noticed that there are two buttons on the elevator. I am unsure why there are two buttons. There is no sub basement that the elevators we ride can access; the “down” button down there simply doesn’t do anything when pushed. It’s just sits, unused—perhaps in hopes that someday Zions will be able to access the lost subterranean country Bism.
On the other hand, automobiles have some subtle attributes that exhibit well thought out design. For example, in our automatic transmission Civic (the missus isn’t comfortable yet with a standard), we, like most, are unable to put the car into drive without fully pressing down the brake pedal. In my brother’s manual transmission Tacoma, he cannot start the truck without the clutch completely depressed (unless he pushes the override button).
Good design includes an easy pathway to obtaining the benefit of the product or service. That pathway includes some forcing of you to do the right thing. If you want users to act in a certain way, force it to happen. As Steve Krug reminds designers and design leaders, don’t make me think.
And consider that in reverse. If your design forces them to do something that isn’t necessary to be forced—remove it.
I have been thinking through this for us up here. Zions Direct Auctions has many aspects that I am quite proud of (as I have waxed on before), and with those positives, there are some design elements that we have seen as shortcomings and are adjusting as a result of user feedback. As such, soliciting this feedback is something we are continuing to do more purposefully, so that we can keep step with our users usability needs. With that in mind, if you have any feedback for us concerning your experiences with our auctions platform, please let us know by emailing marketing [at] zionsdirect [dot] com.
Let’s get this right.
Off subject: Slayer, my taciturn office neighbor, introduced me to TwitScoop and TweetDeck this morning. My initial problems/complaints with Twitter has now been rectified. These two services act to aggregate and categorize tweets in an easy-to-follow and searchable manner. If you use Twitter (and that includes you, that’s right you—Mr. or Ms. “I-Just-Started-Using-Twitter-Because-All-My-Fellow-Republicans-Are-Using-It“), you should give both of these services a try.
Disclosure:
You may see that I like Zions Direct Auctions. I also work in marketing on that product, which means I may be a bit biased (but it also means I do something that I believe in).
Filed under: design, innovation | Tags: Aqualisa, innovation, iterative innovation, Kramer, Queen's Award, Quiet Innovations, Rawlinson, Seinfield, showers
British company Aqualisa was recently was awarded the Queen’s Award for Enterprise* because of the organization’s innovative products. Managing Director Harry Rawlinson remarked:
It is a real triumph for everyone at Aqualisa who has supported our ‘digital revolution’ over the last 10 years.
In another place we read:
What’s not to love about Axis Digital? Cool good looks and clever technology.
And the UK’s Intellectual Property Office reports:
In the meantime, the innovation team at Aqualisa is working on the next generation of electronic controls for showers, which will be able to give you a read-out of your carbon footprint, as well as playing music as an MP3.
That’s right; the next generation of showers. “Clever technology”, “digital revolution”, “innovation”, and “MP3” are not terms normally associated with showers. As a result of their different approach, Aqualisa has excelled in a typically commoditized field because of their ability to look beyond what the market is offering to what they’ll be able to create for their consumer-base. They are a design-led firm and that love of design, both in aesthetics and in functionality, has translated into beautiful and useful products for the bathroom
Though this seems like what most “innovative” companies try to do, it is what Aqualisa doesn’t do that is most impressive. Though we can see what the future holds for with the “next generation” product mentioned above, Aqualisa took a purposely iterative innovation approach toward preparing the market to be able to accept and embrace each successive technology. And, with this approach, they are able to make each step toward their eventual vision at the same time they are implementing and adapting to the needs of their customer-base. With this approach, Aqualisa can expect to continue to stay ahead of the competition without staying too far ahead of their customers’ needs.
(I couldn’t help but think of Kramer’s shower experience when I was thinking through Aqualisa’s approach).
*Gordon Brown categorized the “Queen’s Award winning companies” as the “standard-bearers for the very best of British business.” This and Rawlinson quote from: Press Release, accessed 16 July 2008
Filed under: design, innovation | Tags: Annie Reed, Blenheim Palace, dresses, flower girl, Just Change, Quiet Innovations, service innovation, supply chain, Thailand, Wikipedia
As you have no doubt noticed, or maybe I am being too optimistic in my assumptions, that on the right of my postings I have listed a few companies that I have deemed, “Quiet Innovations.” Some of these companies you may or may not have heard about; I purposely strayed from the Googles and Apples of the world, looking for organizations that have been less in the limelight but have nonetheless been particularly, and perhaps peculiarly, inventive in some part of their business. I plan on adding more to this list as I become aware of other organizations, and, as I do so, I will explain my rationale for adding these groups.
In the meantime, I will now spend a few days briefly examining these companies and explaining my attraction to their product or service offerings. It seems the best place to start is at the top with a little known Pacific Northwest company called Annie Reed.
On face value, Annie Reed is simply a small dress company. Small as in organization size and small dresses as it caters specifically to young girls with gowns appropriate for flower girls at weddings and other like formal events. Conceived and built by virtue of a close association with Thai dress makers, this dressmaker also has a higher mission to “not only create gorgeous, handmade formal wear, but to better the lives of the women of Thailand.” We often will find that such purpose, if it is ingrained throughout the organization, is a key indicator that a business will innovate rather than simply exist.
Though these aspects of brand focus and organizational ambition are positive steps for future successes, the facet of this company that piqued my interest initially was its approach to creating a customized product.
Typically in customization, there is a knowledge and cost trade-off that needs to be balanced. If you want to offer a tailored experience, you can either build off the consumers’ expertise and have them design the offering (like Wikipedia—it can cover every subject for free because people that read it, build it), or you can offer the expertise and let them direct you at a high cost (like Blenheim Palace).
Annie Reed offers the dresses in the same range as other designer brands, around $130 – 230, with a much higher degree of personalization. This appears to be viable through a two-part process. First, they created an online platform that limits the higher cost personal interactions, but still doesn’t require high levels of dressmaking proficiency by the consumer; this approach allows minute and multiple changes for users to create a custom-made product. The second part of this lower cost process is more utilitarian, structured around their Thailand-based supply-chain. Their close and direct association with highly-skilled designers in a lower-cost environment is not necessarily new, but the removal of cost-adding middlemen is an option that is not often available to smaller organizations. In Britain and India, Just Change has seen similar success in re-engineering the supply chain to connect communities.
In the sometimes insipid world of, of all things, making dresses for flower girls, Annie Reed as found a way to lever the shrinking and flattening world, while adding an effective online platform to create something unique and beneficial for their target market.
Filed under: community, design | Tags: canoes, design, Oxford, service innovation, Wolff Olins
Over the Fourth of July weekend, my wife and I headed to the wilds of Idaho to spend some time in the rivers and wilderness around Yellowstone National Park. While there, I noticed a change that my brother-in-law and grandmother had made to the canoes that we were using. Instead of the old, wicker style seats that had previously adorned the canoes (these seats had disintegrated), they had replaced the seats with a simple weaved, but stronger nylon cord design. When I came back in contact with the Internet, I looked up the canoe company and noticed they had made a similar change to their canoes in their more recent models (though other companies still sported the wicker: see image). Which got me thinking if they had made this improvement by luck or because of customer feedback.
Many companies have issues with one or a few aspects of their product or service that their most loyal customers have found some way around in order to have a more positive customer experience. In order to have the best experience for all customers, these customer-created innovations need to be either gathered and added in newer editions, or, in more innovative models, implemented directly by customers (this represents the most exciting and effective area for consumer involvement). I am not talking about special discoveries that are only available to your most active customers (these act as a reward for involvement with your brand), but simple steps to create a more accessible experience with your core offering.
For more information, it is worth looking at the “feeds” discussions in the service innovation study that I worked on with Wolff Olins last year (see Wolff Olins research page and rights reserved).
Filed under: design, innovation | Tags: Apple, design, Java, Motley Fool, Palm
Motley Fool writes:
Is Steve Jobs’ ongoing denial of Java a smart move to control the iPhone ecosystem? Or will he orphan the iPhone into a land of fringe applications, as competing devices lure away users?
For a time, PDAs were Palms, but Palm gave up their early, and seemingly insurmountable position, primarily by a strategically short-sided decision to not embrace a larger technological ecosystem. In so doing, they lost market share and, though are still surviving, are simply another “Me-Too” in the evolving handheld marketplace (now as Smart Phones).
With the appearance of significant threats to the iPhone, one would hope Apple would be very careful about what technologies they are stymieing with their more closed product. Design is not just about how aesthetically appealing a product is and is used, but how it interacts with the users’ world. In trying to push customers toward Apple products, Apple hopefully won’t continue to push their consumers away from their familiar and favored technologies.
Filed under: design, marketing | Tags: Brains on Fire, Clayton Christensen, design, John Bound, marketing, Michael Raynor, Nicholas Carr, Pirates, Roger Coleman, Spike
Spike at Brains on Fire wrote
In the vast majority of cases, pirates were violent and vicious – even barbaric. But for the sake of this post, allow me to put all that aside and talk about a handful of things that we, as practitioners of marketing, can learn from these dogs of the high seas. (read more below)
A bit of a stretch, but it is a fun way to get some ideas put across. My favorite was that Spike was going on a marketing book fast, but the second statement, “Realize that you’re in a democracy” is essential. In summary, do what your customers want or they will mutiny (he said “oust”, but “mutiny” is so pirate-y).
A lot of companies pretend to understand the basic idea of simply giving customers what they want for a price they are willing to pay, and yet matching customer desires with a new product or service is often one the most overlooked aspects of strategic planning. As Christensen and Raynor wrote,
By the time you add it all up, three-quarters of the money spent in product development investments results in products that do not succeed commercially.*
Warnings on what to watch out for when introducing and managing products or services can be confusing—race to be the market leader, make sure that you out-engineer everyone, but don’t do too much or you’ll be taken out from below.** If you look at the product or service management process on a more fundamental level, the answer is much clearer: match your innovation’s design with the customer desires.
My generalizing of this challenging task to the concept of matching design and desires may seem like too much of simplistic view of a complex principle, but it is through a user-centric approach—design-led innovation matched with broad customer understanding—that acceptance by a market is most likely to occur. These two areas (design and desires) represent a deep and often misunderstood aspect of product or service planning, but one that has increasingly come to represent the future of business strategy. Design experts Bound and Coleman explain,
Thinking and practice around universal design have been developed through industrial collaborations […] In parallel, the design and research communities […] have made significant strides in understanding […] consumers and integrating these [understandings] into design and new product development processes.***
Pirates got it; we should also learn to listen.
*Christensen, Clayton; Michael Raynor; The Innovator’s Solution, 2003, p 73, Harvard Business School
**See Christensen, Clayton; The Innovator’s Dilemma, 2000 edition, p 226, HarperBusiness and Carr, Nicholas G.; “Top-Down Disruption,” strategy + business, Issue 39, Summer 2005 for examples.
***Bound, John; Roger Coleman; “Commercial Advantage from Inclusive Design,” Design Management Review, Summer 2005, p 56 – 63
