Category: Process

• Lombardy Design Discourse

  HBR finally succumbs and publishes a design-is-great article, Roberto Verganti’s Innovating Through Design. Here’s his lead-off argument:

  If you shop at Target, you may have seen a distinctive teakettle designed by architect Michael Graves. Target’s version is a knock-off (by Graves himself) of his original 1985 design for Alessi, the northern Italian home-furnishings manufacturer. Alessi has sold more than 1.5 million of the original design at five times the price of the Target version. This outstanding teakettle (also known as model 9093) emerged from a process that Roberto Verganti calls “design-driven innovation.” In this article, Verganti describes how Alessi, the lighting manufacturers Flos and Artemide, the furniture maker Kartell, and a few firms in the Lombardy region take a distinctive approach to design and innovation.

  He then goes on to describe how these manufacturers — centered around Milan — nurture a community of discourse that eventually gestates into new product designs over the course of several years, contrasted with user research-generated design ideas.

  What’s new here is his view that one need not have any design training to participate in this process, the executives in Milan typically having been trained in law or engineering. A radical idea?

  1/24/2007

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• Time and Service Design

  A great outcome of Overlap is that the New York attendees — plus other peeps in our network — have been meeting up and continuing the conversation. Some of the same themes keep surfacing, such as the culture of business consulting firms and design firms, and social action. Another is service design.

  A fundamental question in service design that we’ve been asking is, to be frank, is this just the same old design under a new title? I’ve spent the better part of the last 13 years designing things for the Internet that, while they result in media and code, are delivered as services. So looking at service design from this point of view doesn’t look much different: there’s a lot of emphasis on the customer and their experience rather than artifacts. But at the end of the day even a service involves making stuff that ultimately facilitates the service.

  Service design does seem to be a wonderful catalyst for helping designers consider use of a product over time. Creating interaction points that happen over time isn’t easy to record or communicate, as we turn to time lines, storyboards, flip books, movies, and so on to capture these ideas. A central challenge is to help stakeholders understand what we’re creating in terms of the customer’s experience. It fails when you’re all sitting around staring at an artifact like a web page for a 10 minute critique — as if it were print — when the customer will only look at it for 10 seconds. It’s the experience that needs to be communicated and reviewed, and service design as a frame is helping us talk about these artifacts as interaction rather than just stuff. And that’s a good thing.

  Incidentally, Overlap will be happening again in 2007, coordinated by the Toronto set. Stay tuned for details.

  1/23/2007

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• Marketing Experimentation

  Last year I hacked away at an article about the need for a greater degree of experimentation in marketing organizations, but it never really seemed to gel quite right, and eventually I abandoned it. I’m happy to see that Joseph Jaffe completed the task in Manifesto for Experimentation. Successful executives I’ve seen already embrace this attitude when they become comfortable with tolerating risk, but it doesn’t commonly spread through organizations.

  1/12/2007

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• Feedback Leads to Expert Performance

  Of course we know feedback in human and product performance is important, but this study from K. Anders Ericsson is still interesting. He spent 25 years interviewing and analyzing high-flying professionals and is the coeditor of the recent 918-page book Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance.

  You have to seek out situations where you get feedback. It’s a myth that you get better when you just do the things you enjoy.

  Here’s a typical example: Medical diagnosticians see a patient once or twice, make an assessment in an effort to solve a particularly difficult case, and then they move on. They may never see him or her again. I recently interviewed a highly successful diagnostician who works very differently. He spends a lot of his own time checking up on his patients, taking extensive notes on what he’s thinking at the time of diagnosis, and checking back to see how accurate he is. This extra step he created gives him a significant advantage compared with his peers. It lets him better understand how and when he’s improving.

  1/4/2007

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• Old School Scrappy Innovator: William Norris

  Thomas J. Watson Jr., the head of I.B.M., which was famed for its militaristic corporate culture, was incredulous over Norris’s operation. So lean, so ragtag, so bafflingly humane. In a 1963 memo, Watson wondered how Control Data achieved with just a few dozen people what he had not with several thousand. Control Data later went on to defend its supercomputer innovation in an antitrust suit against Big Blue. It prevailed and won a settlement of $600 million.

  A good example of agile innovation, from The Bleeding-Heart Rationalist.

  1/1/2007

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• Get Real For Free

  The [[37Signals]] Getting Real book is now available free online as well as in PDF and paperback formats. With a focus on building web apps, it’s a great perspective on using an agile/craft way of working. It’s also a clever publishing strategy, analogous to the traditional hardcover/paperback progression:

  • Test and then build crazy excitement around the point of view
  • Publish a PDF version inexpensively and sell tens of thousands of copies
  • Release a paperback to capture additional market share (in time for the holidays!)
  • Release a free HTML version that also serves as a marketing vehicle for their other products

  Not too shabby.

  11/14/2006

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• Maybe Don’t Call Research “Research”

  Here’s a small but important lesson about getting field research done in a corporate environment. If you propose research, folks may hear that word and think R&D, and that’s not capitalizable, i.e. the cost can’t be allocated against a particular product/service. That means the cost can’t be delayed and counted against future revenues (delaying costs can be good for budget reasons or simply for the time value of money). This is because if you’re doing work for a project you have a much higher degree of confidence it will provide a return versus doing pure research & development.

  If you can make it clear that the work is applied against a particular project, great, but otherwise be careful of using the word research to people who might interpret it in the accounting sense of the word. As an alternative, how about information gathering? Any other suggestions?

  11/13/2006

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• Planning a Writing Day

  My friend Harry received this useful piece of advice from his writing coach. She suggested you follow this schedule during a day of writing:

  1. Spend 10 minutes planning your work
  2. Write and write until you are out of ideas and energy
  3. Reward yourself with fun work like research

  10/6/2006

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• Real Trends and Innovation

  I attended the World Futures conference in Toronto recently, and hope to find a spare minute to write up my thoughts on the conference. But one thing that struck me was how markedly different the tone of discussion was between people who relied on forecasting techniques vs. those that relied on trends. The former produced valuable and fascinating forecasts, but had to back them up with authority based on their personal ability, the validity of the technique, or sheer confidence.

  The trend people (e.g. SRI, Ray Kurzweil), meanwhile, were remarkably calm and even humble. They looked — as Paul Saffo would have us do — at least twice as far back into the past as they looked into the future. Granted, the trend watchers tended to watch technology, particularly information technology, and this is quite a bit less chaotic then, say, terrorism or epidemics. Nevertheless when looking at 20 or 30 years of data it felt significantly easier to make plausible suppositions about what the next few years will hold. Ray Kurzweil attributes his impressive performance as an inventor to his ability to track trends: “Invention is a matter of timing.”

  Subsequently, I’ve noticed that what is often referred to as a trend actually falls — perhaps because of our apophenia or simply marketing cahones — into one of three categories:

  1. Isolated — though remarkable — events
  2. Several similar events happening at the same time
  3. Predictions based on hunches

  Harnessing weak signals, wild cards, and Blink-style instinct can be valuable, but they’re not trends. One thing futures studies has to offer those of us working in innovation and design is, somewhat surprisingly, a more sophisticated use of historical information.

  8/8/2006

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• Fortune on Agile Businesses

  Fortune magazine has rewritten Jack Welch’s rules on management to reflect changes in the business environment. Jack’s first rule was Big dogs own the street and Fortune says that rule should now be Agile is best; being big can bite you.

  With the rate of change in business today, it’s hard to argue with the benefits of being agile, but exactly how does a manager make her organization more agile? I’ve been exploring this by adapting agile development principles for general managers, creating practices for becoming adaptive, fast, and focusing on value. I’ve really only scratched the surface so far; there’s incredible potential to improve the way we structure projects, make investments, and communicate, and it’s great to see media like Fortune recognize this potential.

  Link courtesy businessinnovationinsider.com

  7/19/2006

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• The Difference Between Customer-Focused Innovation and Cluelessness

  Last week a friend of mine was telling me about how new products are created at her software start-up. Essentially it consists of salespeople talking to current and potential customers about an existing product and asking, “What else would you like it do to?”

  That in itself is a fine question that acknowledges the customer as having valuable ideas. But in this case, and others I’ve seen, it comprises the entire idea-generation process and grows out of a requirements mentality that looks superficially at customers’ needs. The organization substitutes the customer for the business analyst and lacks a business model and product concepting process. Instead of having a vision of how the company could satisfy unmet needs or create new markets, they’ve abdicated responsibility for new product development to the customer, which doesn’t always reveal useful insights.

  These companies have a special need to move design and innovation activites from the production end of the business, which asks “How do we build?” to the front of the business, which asks, ‘What should we build?’

  7/17/2006

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• The cost of iteration

  

  Iterating on paper? Cheap.

  Iterating in software? Still pretty cheap.

  Iterating the Airbus A380? Not so cheap: “Airbus said Tuesday that it would produce only 9 of its giant new A380 jets next year, not the 25 planned, because of numerous design changes…. Small changes, like moving small pieces of equipment, were cascading through the system and creating the need for additional adjustments in wiring…”

  This simple idea, illustrated in painful penalties and time-to-market costs for Airbus, is elegantly expanded upon in Austin and Devin’s book Artful Making. The authors — one a business professor and the other a theater professor — contrast the cost of iteration with the cost of exploration, look at its use in industrial and knowledge work, and how the iteration cost curve changes over a project.

  In general the book is a wonderful look at applying “artful” (i.e. design or craft) ways of working to knowledge work, which is what business design is in large part all about. I’ve been recommending it to everyone.

  6/14/2006

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• Process Explained

  Here’s a wonderful little diagram from Central Office of Design…

  

  5/16/2006

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• Radiate information – First Draft

  [ this is a first draft of a chapter in Evolve, comments are appreciated ]

  Healthy organizations share information promiscuously to speed communication and generate tacit knowledge. Share current, important, non-urgent information using information radiators.

  In 1966 the New York Stock Exchange installed a huge electronic board that displayed the stock prices of every company on the exchange. The constant flurry of Exchange operations revolved around this board, kept everyone informed, and helped NYSE grow into the largest exchange in the world. Even today people refer to the Exchange as the “Big Board.”

  Usually we record and deliver our knowledge work in documents, documents trapped inside a computer or in a pile on someone’s desk. Imagine for a moment you are at the airport leaving for vacation. Your flight is delayed, and to find out the current departure time you and everyone else on the flight need to refer to a printed report at the gate that is updated every half hour (actually, given the efficiency of some airlines, I’m surprised this isn’t the case). Whether it’s a stock exchange, an airport, or a fast food restaurant, moving information out of documents and into the workplace helps people work faster.

  Try it now
  Isolate the most important information that is needed by most team members most of the time. It could be the status of each activity, how much work is left on each project, or the stage of completion for each activity. In a public area like a hallway, mount a whiteboard or poster board to track this information. Use highly visual formats like calendars, graphs, or charts so passersby can absorb updates quickly. Make it easy for everyone to make updates by leaving markers or sticky notes nearby.

  

  Guidelines:

  • Radiate information that is current, important, but non-urgent
  • Show the state of progress but don’t try to represent process
  • Make it visible to everyone in a high-traffic area like a hallway or kitchen
  • Don’t format it in a way that’s too pretty, precious, or permanent. By designing it so it looks editable and supplying tools like markers to modify it you make it easy for team members to update

  If the information needs to last a long time independently of people or teams at a company, use a format that will be found easily by subsequent employees. For more permanence, stronger materials like metal plaques can radiate long-lasting ideas like organizational values. Or you can locate information outside the organization, such as by publishing a book.

  References:

  What the Agile Toolbox Contains

  InformationRadiator

  4/27/2006

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• Do the easiest thing that could possibly work – First Draft

  When you have a new idea and you’re not sure it will work, create a tangible version of it as quickly as humanly possible. Even if it is very rough, something tangible helps you reach a solution.

  I’m sure you’ve been in this situation. There’s an important problem that needs to be solved before the team can move on with other work. It’s a complex issue, maybe it’s charged with emotions, and no one has an answer. You and your team stare at the paper, out the window, or up at the ceiling wondering how anyone could possibly purchase such an ugly light fixture. Short of the day ending or receiving divine inspiration, it is at this point that you should pick up a pencil/marker/keyboard/tool/whatever and do the easiest thing you can imagine that would solve the problem.

  When you’re trying to solve a problem and you’re stuck it’s because you’re trying to solve it in your head. Just as you can do simple calculations in your head but need a calculator for everything else, you can’t solve tough business problems in your head.

  When you draw, build, write, or use something that is physical, your physical senses help you understand more about the situation. You more fully understand the problem than if you only thought about it. Financial analysts do this by writing calculations on the back of a napkin or playing with numbers in a spreadsheet. Designers do this by sketching on paper or carving foam in the shape of a product. Engineers do it by combining parts they have on hand to make something new.

  This is not about conceiving a six billion dollar payroll system or a drug that cures cancer. It’s a way to make progress on one particular idea. It’s about making a physical thing you create quickly, learn from, and throw away.

  It’s important to ignore how well you’re doing what you’re doing, because that will distract you from accomplishing the goal. This may go against our usual inclinations to do things “right.” We’re taught to think things through and carefully design a solution. But when you’re stuck we need to overcome this tendency. Free your mind from all the rules you normally follow. Pick up the pencil and just sketch.

  You might even use techniques you know to be incorrect because they help you move more quickly. This is good. The are only two guidelines here:

  1. Do it quickly
  2. Create something tangible

  Try it now

  When faced with a tough problem, start by working with the familiar, asking, “Is there something that already exists that addresses this problem? What sorts of things that already exist might address this problem?”

  It may help – even just to save face in front of co-workers – to start by saying out loud as you grab the pencil, “This is something we’ll throw away later, but for now let’s try drawing something that will solve the problem. We can create the actual solution later.”

  ——

  This has been adapted from:

  The Simplest Thing that Could Possibly Work, A Conversation with Ward Cunningham, Part V, by Bill Venners, January 19, 2004

  Simplest or Easiest

  3/20/2006

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