metacool

Do it to the hilt!

I believe in products that go beyond the ordinary to deliver memorable experiences. There’s so much clutter in the marketplace that merely competent functionality is, for the most part, a given. What matters more than ever are products which solve real problems in spectacular ways, creating deep meaning for users along the way. True product standouts come from people who take something and do it to the hilt.

Doing things to the hilt means going beyond what is “reasonable” or “expected” by the market. There’s a product development baseline out there which all know and recognize. This is the world of the Ford Taurus, Budweiser, and Taco Bell – all entities where advertising is used to create and push products, because the products largely can’t stand on their own. Why? Because each was developed to a specification of “market demands” laid out in a book, and the very act of writing guidelines down limits the potential for something wonderful happening. Some people call these specifications “critical to quality” metrics, or “CTQ” for short.

Screw CTQ. CTQ’s give us Velveeta, which is congealed boredom. Why not do things to the hilt instead? I want a rich, sublimating cheese that makes my nostrils flip out and my tongue go furry. How about replacing CTQ metrics with “Way Beyond Critical to Quality” (WBCTQ)? We need more people creating things born out of intense, total passion. Making things remarkable. Surprising. Blow-your-hair-back-and-part-it-down-the-middle-wow. Way Beyond Critical to Quality.

Why not innovate NOW?

Innovation is a big word in business these days, but the phrase "let's be innovative" can trigger a flood of procrastination and fear which does anything but encourage innovative behavior. 

The good news is that you can become more innovative just by taking some action, however small, today.  My favorite book on this subject is The Knowing-Doing Gap.  In one section of the book, 49ers coach Steve Mariucci explains how he stamps out inaction by not sporting a watch:

I always know what time it is. It is always NOW. And NOW is when you should do it.

Go on!  Go innovate!  Just do something, no matter how small it may seem to you.  Worlds will open up. 

Catch my review of The Knowing-Doing Gap at 800-CEO-Read-Blog

Art, Aesthetics, and the Meaning of Life

My peer, coconspirator, and friend John Kembel turned me on to this statement from MIT Media Lab prof John Maeda:

Amidst all the attention given to the sciences as to how they can lead to the cure of all diseases and daily problems of mankind, I believe that the biggest breakthrough will be the realization that the arts, which are conventionally considered "useless," will be recognized as the whole reason why we ever try to live longer or live more prosperously. The arts are the science of enjoying life.

A very compelling idea.  And if you substitute the word “aesthetics” for “art”, you get very close to the “aesthetics matter – a lot” thesis advanced by Virginia Postrel.  It's all good.

Subaru is the New Saab, part 2

In today’s New York Times, Jamie Kitman tells a sorry tale of the demise of Saab.  In an earlier post I asserted that “Subaru is the new Saab”, and unfortunately that’s literally true: the new Saab 9-2 is but a badge-engineered Subaru.  Kitman agrees that the WRX is the car that Saab should have been building all along:

"Authenticity issues aside, the turbocharged, all-wheel-drive WRX is, at least, the sort of car that Saab might have built today if it had only received enough financing in the 1990’s. Like the rally-winning Saab 96’s of the 1960’s, the 9-2X wrings maximum advantage from being a light car with a small engine and loads of grip."

In contrast, Kitman describes the new Saab 9-7X (which is really a Chevy truck) as “… the very antithesis of the Saab ethos,” and he’s right.  Just because you hang a badge on it and put the ignition in the floor doesn’t mean it’s a Saab, no more than lipstick on a bulldog makes a fashion model.  In Popeye’s parlance, things are what they are, and your brand (an odious word) is the sum of the feelings your products evoke.  A Chevy with a V-8 just can’t feel like a Saab.

Kitman attributes Saab’s crash to a lack of leadership.  I would go beyond him to say that leadership was surely lacking, but management, particularly “brand management,” was in no short supply at GM and Saab.  The old Saab was run by rally junkies who wore blue and gold underwear; it was run into the ground by a bunch of pin-striped, brand-managing fun sponges whose only gold is on their wrist.

Venture Design, continued

Cereality is a new venture which seeks to Krispy-Kreme-ize that great American breakfast staple, cereal.  I’m more of a plain oatmeal kind of dude, but on the road I’d much rather slurp up some Lucky Charms than a greasy Egg McMuffin, eh?  It’s a cool idea.

I think these guys are going to make it, largely because they’re employing a prototype-driven process to figure out what their offering should be (as opposed to what they think it should be).  As mentioned in USA Today, Cereality has been running a prototype shop at Arizona State University for the past eight months, and are going to try and roll the concept out to more locations later this year.

By prototyping their concept in a financially lean way, and in a low-exposure setting (i.e. Arizona vs. Times Square), Cereality has undoubtedly gotten deep learning on the cheap, without a lot of drama.  Future iterations will be more and more dialed in, and customers will find it really groovy.  It’s a smart way to go about building a venture – you can truly prototype anything, even sugar pops.

You can prototype with anything

A few days ago I was explaining the art of prototyping to some formally-trained businesspeople, and when I mentioned that Lego made a good prototyping tool, their eyes glazed over. I knew I had lost them. “Surely you can’t spur innovation with a stupid plastic toy,” their inner investment banker asserted. “Innovation has to be expensive and exotic.”

Not only can you prototype anything (see my Steve McQueen riff below for that discussion), you can prototype with anything.

While the CubeSolver isn’t a prototype of anything, it is an existence proof of how seemingly simple (but not simplistic) tools can be used to prototype quite complex systems on the cheap. How cheap? Well, if I asked a crack team of engineers from HP Labs to make me a Rubik’s Cube solver, I’m sure they would create something brilliant, but I’m equally confident that, compared to this Lego wonder, their solution would be complex, expensive, and require many, many man hours to complete. Those of you who’ve ever worked at HP will note that I made no mention of multiple project cancellations and restarts, as well as a crew of waffling middle managers with bad shoes. But I digress.

If you’re prototyping things right, you’re cheating and stealing. Cheating, because you use things like Lego to better focus your energy on solving high-payoff issues instead of the mundane. Notice how the CubeSolver doesn’t use any custom parts – that would have been a waste when so many off the shelf Lego pieces are there for the taking. Stealing, because you’re borrowing forms and ideas from other designers. For example, there’s nothing innovative about the grabber mechanisms – they’re a pretty basic, tried-and-true design. No, all the design energy went into solving the “big idea” problems.

You can prototype with anything.

Iridium, Steve McQueen, and Venture Design

Iridium. It was the ill-fated venture which placed 66 (out of a planned 77) communication satellites into orbit before finding out that the value proposition was fundamentally flawed. Millions of dollars were lost along the way. Could this fate have been avoided?

I think so. Had the Iridium venture been staged using a prototype-driven, do-and-learn go to market philosophy, its deep flaws would have surfaced well before the big bucks were spent. Much to the dismay of their users, Iridium handsets didn’t work under bridges or inside buildings – a showstopper? Imagine if Iridium had run a prototype service just in Australia; they would have learned all the killer handset lessons in time to correct course before running aground, and for less money.

You can prototype anything. Before filming his epic movie Le Mans, Steve McQueen actually took an entire film crew to the French race a year early, shot an entire movie, and then threw most of the exposed stock away. Why? Because he knew that they best way to learn how to shoot a great movie at Le Mans was to first shoot a crappy movie there. His camera people gleaned deep insights into camera placements, mounts, and techniques which put them in good stead when it came time to shoot the real movie. And the value of the tacit knowledge transfer involved cannot be underestimated: rather than try to explain to new camera people what he wanted, McQueen could point to actual film clips and say, “This is good.”

Prototypes aren’t just for physical products. Even ventures can be prototyped.

Seeking variance

"Six Sigma does not create innovation.  Six Sigma is not a solution for new products or a break-through strategy." -  Jay Desai, GE Six Sigma expert

Six sigma doesn't drive breakthrough innovation. New market innovation from divergence, while six sigma is all about convergence. 

Want to be innovative?  Fool around with a lot of ideas, quickly.  Only then should you employ six-sigma to drive variance out of the processes needed to bring something to market.

Subaru is the new Saab

Remember Saab?  The world-conquering rally cars?  The firm whose machines were hallmarks of iconoclastic engineering that coupled functionality, rationality, with understated yet compelling design forms?  The crew who brought us ignition on the floor, turbos under the hood, and huge fifth doors which opened up to a cavernous cargo hull?

Well, that Saab is dead, victim of a relentless drive up market to the fairyland of bigger margins and “aspirational” customers.  Somewhere along the way, Saab stopped racing and stopped loving cars.  They axed the hatchback (you can just see the PowerPoint deck and the MBA voiceover “… the hatchback segment share of market is decreasing year over year…”) and they lost their soul.  Only a soulless firm would slap a Saab badge on a Chevy truck, Saab's next big move.

On every parameter of what once made up “Saab-ness”, Subaru is, well, firing on all four horizontally-opposed cylinders.  World-conquering rally cars?  Check.  And piloted by a charismatic Nordic race driver who grew up driving Swedish cars, to boot.  Iconoclastic design sensibilities?  More than a heaping spoonful:  expensive boxer engines justified on the basis of lower CG, rounds of raucous turbos for the entire bar, and all-wheel drive on all models.  What Subaru has done is to whip up a distinctive mix of ingredients and pour it into cars that drivers love.  Then, instead of blowing their marketing budget on just the usual media mix, they’re out there mixing it up – and winning – in the World Rally Championship across every continent save Antarctica, letting the car-crazies among us know that Subaru creates exceptional driving experiences.  And as Malcolm has taught us, those Mavens are the key to word of mouth…

Your brand does not define the character of your products.  Your products (and the layers of sales, service, and support surrounding them) define your brand.  A brand is not about words and pictures, it’s about feelings.  And it’s the product (or the service or both) your company delivers that generates those feelings.

Want a strong, vibrant brand?  Make “branding” the job of your product development group and your marketing team.  Let the product crazies have the run of the house.  I’ll bet my TiVo that the Saab corporate lot is full of boring, unmodified Saabs driven by boring, by-the-number corporate zombies.  And the lot at Subaru?  Do I have to tell you?

Embedded Culture

Marketers, engineers, and designers are people too, and they are as much a product of their environment as the next guy.  Their daily life experiences inform their way of thinking, which in turn shapes their professional output.  The culture in which a product is developed becomes embedded in that product. 

Fiat is a good case in point.  Throughout its history, Fiat has been able to make fantastic, tiny cars, like the 500 Nuovo (whose design was cribbed in part from competitor Iso, which eventually became a BMW, but that’s another story).  Its success in doing so stems from multiple factors, from the political landscape (tax laws based on engine displacement), to the state of the market market (expensive gas, relatively low per capita earnings), and culture (how and where do live and what do we value).  In terms of automotive design, I  find the cultural one to be the most influential:  if you live in a city with small streets and limited parking, you’ll naturally develop spidey-senses that guide you toward tight, elegant, low-mass vehicular solutions.  If, on the other hand, you dwell in the flat and open expanses of middle America, well, you’re going to have a hankering for lead sleds that can burn across Oklahoma all day long without jostling unbelted, DVD-watching kids lounging in the back three rows of seats.

In other words, it’s no wonder why the automotive marques who built their reputations for superior handling and braking all hailed from within shouting distance of the Alps and the kinds of switchbacky roads that make tires and grown men scream.

So, when putting together project teams, try and staff them with people who “know” from experience.  They’ll be able to put that experience into the end product, resulting in a better experience for users.

All of this is a long way of saying that I’m thrilled to death by Fiat’s new Trepiùno concept car.  It recalls the old 500 while being new, and it's a fresh, compelling package for a small car.  While I’m not positive that it was penned by a native of Turin, whoever did it really gets what a Fiat is.  Let’s hope they can get it to market.

Jolie-Laide, part trois

The concept of jolie-laide (ugly-beautiful) isn't just about looks.  An experience, a product, or a service can be simultaneously ugly and beautiful in other arenas, too, such as taste, feel, and sound. 

As Seth Godin recently noted, having one part of your offering be ugly when all the rest is beautiful can be a bad thing for the brand experience you're trying to deliver.  We've all had product and service experiences like this: the lobby of the hotel is incredibly clean, but your room reeks of marmot.  Or the food in the restaurant is divine but the waiter is an asshole posing as a jerk -- you get the picture.

But a little bit of ugly isn't always bad.  For instance, take the Finnish drink Salmiakki, which is a mixture of salty salmiakki licorice dissolved in a potent spirit, like vodka.  The resultant brew is something to behold: it is highly viscous, even oily; it is black yet translucent, like tired motor oil; it hits the tongue with a syrupy sweetness, then transitions to a mouth-wrenching salty state, and finishes with a whoosh of strong alcohol vapor that takes your breath away.  I've never been able to drink more than a thimble-full at one sitting (and wouldn't want to), but when I do, it's quite the rush, kind of like jumping off a roof. 

Again, why not design some good tension into your product or service?  Think jolie-laide.

Defining Design, part 2

Stephen Bayley, whose writing stoked my interest in product design in the late 80's, writes:

"Presenting design as a self-dependent entity suggests that design is a transferable substance, inherent in some objects, but not in others. Instead of educating a public into an awareness that everything was designed, so therefore everything might as well be designed to please, the old-fashioned promoters of design suggested that only certain things were designed and that these were exclusive, precious, rare.

Of course, the truth of the matter is that anything which has been made has been designed: Whether it works well is a matter of engineering; whether it makes a profit is a result of strict financial controls. Whether it sells is a matter of comparative advantage and taste. All that really matters is the ability to make things, everything else is polite aesthetics."

Everything was designed. Think about it: every aspect of the built environment you inhabit was shaped by another human being. So, when people talk about Design with a capital D, or if they attach adjectives to the d-word, such as "good", "modern", "low" or "high", secure your wallet, engage your frontal lobes, and ask yourself, "what the hell are they talking about?". Just because something was created by a designer doesn't mean that its well-designed, even it is Good Design. If it works good, looks good, is a fit to nature and the environment, and adds to the sum of happiness on this blue planet, that's good design. And if someone in a village in Thailand made it, that's cool too.

Be wary of professional designers and their output. When it comes to aesthetics, creating an object or service or just a thang, is much like any other human endeavor; there are a few hideously talented individuals who make it look as easy as falling off a log, and then, well, there's the rest of us. Eminent designers like Ettore Sottsass can just see and produce things better than the average schmo, which means that when a less talented individual tries really really hard to make something notable, you can smell the over exertion a mile away. This is why I'm so wary of the kind of "high" design that's sold at museum shops and in expensive catalogs: it is generally so self-conscious, so determined to be beautiful and interesting, that it fails on all accounts.

Think of it this way: how many really interesting, timeless designs come out of the car industry in any given decade? I'm talking Porsche 911-quality designs here. One? Two? Then think about how cool the average race car or fighter airplane looks. Did a "designer" draw them? No! An engineer or some guy who just "knows" came up with their shapes. As Bayley says, it's really about being able to make things. The other stuff is just "polite aesthetics", fluff which is the realm of fashion.

Design is ultimately about the care and feeding of happiness. Designing something is not a self-dependent action, it's an expression of interdependence.

Oh my goodness, I'm beginning to sound like the protagonist of an Italian architecture manifesto, so I'd best stop while I'm ahead. My apologies.

Defining Design, part 1

"In design there is styling, art, and other terms intermingled.  Design means to me that every designing engineer has the opportunity to become at some stage an artist... that every craftsman who can do more than what he is trained to do is an artist." -- Ferdinand "Butzi" Porsche III

What is design?

Defining just exactly what design "is" can be a frustrating pursuit.  To begin with, is the word "design" a noun or a verb?  While I believe it is best used as a verb, I do like Butzi's definition of it as a noun -- and as the Porsche 911 is the product of his very capable hands, well, we should probably give his thoughts due consideration.  And it's true: when you're a design engineer and you get into a state of flow, odds are you're going to crank out some tasty stuff.  How'd you get there?  Let's call it art.