Noise Between Stations

Category: Design

  • Authority vs. Truth

    If you haven’t yet heard David Weinberger’s position on authority vs. truth in media — the disclosure of accuracy in mainstream media vs. Wikipedia — you should, it’s one of his best ideas.

    If you visit the article on “conservativism” at Wikipedia, you’ll see–at least as of this writing–a strong warning at the top, complete with a graphic of a hand warning you to stop:

    “The neutrality of this article is disputed. Please see discussion on the talk page.”

    …The question is why we don’t see these warnings in newspapers and especially in newspaper archives.

    Luke has a nice outline summary of Weinberger’s opening plenary at IA Summit 2006. The whole summary is worth reading, but especially the part on authority.

  • Business Design Career Advice

    I’ve gotten this question from students and others entering the field a few times, and frankly still ponder it for my own purposes, so I’m going to lay down some thoughts on it here.

    The question is:

    I’m very passionate about pursuing design strategy and bridging the gap between developing engaging user experiences (product side) with the economics/marketing/strategy (business side).

    The way the question is framed is telling. 99% of us still think of business and design as separate concepts. And all the Fast Company cover stories aren’t going to change managers’ attitudes for several years.

    If we acknowledge these concepts have not been bridged already, we can expand this question to ask “In what kind of situation can I experience the sort of personal growth necessary to learn what I need” as well as “What kind of organizations will have greater success in bridging these concepts?”

    To know where to work to experience personal fulfillment requires knowing what companies will have some success in this area. And that requires knowing what clients these companies are likely to have. Taking a client-centered approach I ask who is this client? Maybe it’s Steve Jobs, because although he already does it better than the rest of us he might want a staff that can do what he does. It’s not a manager at a conservative company, because he won’t experiment with new approaches. Probably the client is someone who has a need for a new approach, is open to learning on the job, but can’t do it herself.

    So what sort of business designer will be more likely to service this client? Let’s go through the usual suspects:
    Design firms: Have creativity credentials, but not necessarily the business rigor needed to help the client feel comfortable experimenting with her budget.
    Management consultancies: Have business credentials, but aren’t positioned well to sell the more customer-focused, qualitative, creative approaches to the work.
    21st Century firms: For lack of a better term, these are firms that are relatively new but started with this sort of challenge in mind. At MIG we attacked this problem head on, did some great work, but as a new, small firm faced a tough business development environment — if business and design are still two different concepts, selling them as one ain’t easy. Others like Jump Associates do great work and thrive, I suspect, because they emphasize a traditionally-valued competency, like customer research. Ditto for Katzenbach Partners with organizational development.

    What does does that mean for the person wanting to learn and do business design? I’d say look for 1) a firm committed to developing this offering, and 2) a firm that emphasizes a competency that parallels your interests.

  • A Bit of Gloating Over China’s Manufacturing Problems

    Given my feelings on the humanitarian, labor, and political problems in China, I’m not too sorry they’re going to take an economic hit on product safety issues. It was just a matter of time.

  • Meg Whitman on the Strategic Advantage of Design

    Alex Kirtland blogged Whitman’s comments from eBay’s Q2 analyst conference call, where she said “making improvements to the user experience is one of our main strategic priorities.” See Alex’s post for the full quotes.

    As I gather more examples I’m feeling more confident in my theory that strategic delivery points — gaining a sustainable competitive advantage in customer delivery — helps companies thrive on the Internet but offline as well, even in the absence of other strengths or compensating for other weaknesses.

  • Note to Self: Resist Accepting Millions of Dollars

    Something to keep in mind just in case someone ever wants to throw several million my way…

    I still don’t think you should raise as much as you can, for several reasons, but I’ll just highlight the most important. You will spend what you raise. If you raise $10 million, you will quickly ramp up to a burn rate of $800k a month, because the investors don’t want their money to sit in a bank account earning interest with 36 months of runway while you hire employees 2 and 3. The amount of money you raise sets you off on a course at a specific pace. Your board will want to know why you aren’t deploying capital. You will hire a marketing team because you can afford to hire a marketing team. You will hire a vp of sales before the product is ready because you can afford to hire a VP of sales. Companies that raise $10 million dollar A rounds don’t raise $5 million dollar B rounds, they raise $30 million dollar B rounds. If you have not accurately predicted how quickly you can grow the top line, you will quickly find that the cap table has gotten away from you, and you will have less flexibility to build the company the way you might like to if the market zigs when you thought it would zag. You want to give yourself the flexibility and room to react to market forces so that you can build the best company possible.

  • Great Design Story of Spaghetti Sauce

    It feels unnecessary to link to any particular Ted Talk since so many of them are so good, but I will point out one or two of the many I’ve been watching lately while I fight off a cold from my sofa.

    Malcolm Gladwell tells the story of the man who invented the spaghetti sauce flavors we have today. It’s a great lesson in how asking new questions and going back to customers can change an entire market category. And Gladwell tells the story without talking about design or innovation or anything of that sort. He looks through the eyes of one passionate individual.

    I think the commitment of individuals more than anything is what makes these kinds of advances possible, more about that in a post that’s still in draft mode.

  • Photographer Recommendation in New York

    I splurged on a new headshot recently and was lucky to find Carla Coria, a photographer here in Brooklyn, New York who does amazing work with a simple studio and a digital camera. She made prep easy and effective, the shoot as fast and painless as possible, and a week later had a final shot plus 200 others all ready on a DVD. And if she made me look decent, you know she’s got skills.

  • Launched!

    The first SmartEx class was taught this week and went off without a hitch. While it’s a real working course from the students’ point of view, behind the scenes I’m using it as a prototype to quickly learn better ways of doing everything schools do. I was even planning to take a hit financially in the interest of testing, but enough people signed up to make it profitable too.

    Incidentally, I love the local retail stores that proudly display the first cash they made, posting bills on the walls. Here’s my digital equivalent of that, a screen shot after the first students signed up…

    First smartex signups

  • The Cost of The Ferrari Brand? At Least $390 Million

    Ferrari Enzo

    Ezra Dyer puts Ferrari’s brand-production decisions in perspective:

    Ferrari had 1,000 orders for the $650,000 Enzo after the car was unveiled in 2002, but the company stuck to its decision to build only 399 cars (plus one for the pope). By my math, that means it left $390,000,000 on the table in the name of exclusivity and almighty demand. With those 600 never-built Enzos, Ferrari essentially invested $390 million in its own legend.

    Because nothing whips rich people into a frenzy quite like telling them they can’t have something.

  • Interview with Alex Kirtland at UsableMarkets

    Alex Kirtland interviewed me for his blog UsableMarkets about my work on Smart Experience. Here’s a highlight of me in a young turk mood…

    …Smart Experience students tend to be younger, technically-savvy, and willing to experiment, so we don’t have to adhere to tradition when we think another way is better. If we want to run a “class” about field research that meets in private homes watching how people use their home computers, we can do that. We don’t have a binder full of stifling policies to keep us from innovating.

  • Slides from “Getting Good Designs Built”

    I posted the slides from my Getting Good Designs Built talk at the New York IxDA meeting earlier this week. Of course you won’t get the full experience from a deck, but there’s some useful references in there.

  • Back Home After Overlap 07

    Overlap 07 event

    I ventured up to “cottage country” north of Toronto this past weekend for Overlap 07, now in its second year of exploring the overlap of design and business in a small event format out in a beautiful, woodsy setting. Again, it was inspiring and useful, perhaps more so as the mix of design, business, media, and scientific perspectives was more even. Thanks go to the folks from Torch for making it a success.

    There’s a lot to say about it. But one of the big topics of conversation was our growing discomfort with field’s myopia with innovation: discomfort with the word as well as the focus on the high-risk/high-return sort of innovation. We talked and heard research about organic growth and risk profiles that allowed companies to thrive in the long term with less risk and pretty good returns. The highlight IMHO was Jeanne Liedtke‘s overview of their research in this area and the profile of individuals who tend to succeed, which I summarized:

    • Personality of ambidextrous entrepreneurs is shaped by their work experience, usually changing roles often to build their repertoire.
    • They exert great influence in their environment.
    • Some are assholes, but some simply practice pragmatic leadership — setting goals, expecting performance, being tough but still loved as leaders (not just touch-feely counselors).
    • They have a true interest in customers instead of the usual market research.
    • They have a senior boss run cover for them as they ignore organizational constraints to pursue revenue.

    Along the way she mentioned the work of Carol Dweck who I need to read up on.

    There’s some Overlap07 photos on Flickr.

  • Blue Oceans for Little Fish

    I recently finished my first three-week session at Stacy’s Boot Camp, a calisthenics-based workout class held for one hour, three times a week, for three weeks. Sometime during the class when I was trying to avoid thinking about the pain I was in, it occured to me this is a wonderful example of a Blue Ocean strategy on a small scale.

    • The classes take place in New York City parks, so the costs and kept low and the savings are passed to the student
    • The unique offering requires no gym, and therefore no knowledge of equipment, no signup fee, no long obligatory memberships, etc.
    • It’s a very intense workout, using the latest understanding of body-weight strength training, three times-a-week whole-body workouts, and circuit training. Some simple content expertise makes this possible, and there’s no doubt that at the end of the session one is in better shape than at the beginning.

    The kicker is that this doesn’t have to be a small business; Stacy could expand to parks all over the world, much faster than a gym chain could.

  • Frog Design Groks SmartEx

    Ian Curry, design analyst at Frog Design, pens an interesting look at the current state of design education in The Known Unknowns: Exploring the evolution of design education in response to the industry’s expanding role. We’re honored he includes SmartEx alongside the Institute of Design and Stanford’s d.school, two schools for which we have great respect.

    Curry writes…

    Lombardi’s current project is designing a design school. Yes, a design school, but not as we know it. He hopes to close the gap between what schools teach and what the industry requires. As a web guy, Lombardi sees this gap as the result of a classic coordination cost problem. Traditional schools are beholden to administrative tasks, which lessen their agility when it comes to changes in the field. Lombardi’s answer is a new kind of school, coordinated over the web but with meetings in real classrooms around Manhattan. Launched recently, Smart Experience is essentially an experiment in bottom-up design education. Using a wiki-like format, students request topics they want to learn about and instructors pitch classes they want to teach.

  • Props from Lou Rosenfeld

    Lou Rosenfeld, who helped create the field of information architecture with the “Polar Bear Book” blogged his reaction to Smart Experience…

    “…Smart Experience is essentially a broker of dialogues between teachers and learners at different levels, starting with sharing thoughts on rough topics, and ending with an actual course (with students, a teacher, course materials, and a venue).

    Victor, whether he realizes is or not, is now officially an infrastructuralist… Best wishes, Victor; I’m really looking forward to watching Smart Experience grow!”

    Thanks Lou!