metacool

Innovation starts in the field

This series of photos arrived in my inbox via a friend of a friend.  They were taken somewhere in Thailand.

They show us how important it is to start the innovation process by going out into the field.  If we sit at our desks, or only seek inspiration in situations, people, and aspects of the world familiar to us, we miss out.  We miss out on witnessing the challenges that real people encounter in the course of their daily lives.

Such as trying to transport a toddler when all you have is a motorcycle and sidecar.

It's easy to be judgmental when viewing this photo.  I know I was -- "How could he do this to that kid?", I thought.  But design thinking is about empathy.  Put yourself in his place and imagine how his morning is going.  What did he eat?  Where is he going?  How is he feeling?  Does he do this each morning?  Is this a temporary arrangement?  Is it really as unsafe as it looks?  Is money a limiting factor?  If so, how?  Did he think this arrangement up or does someone else do it, too?  Is there a market for something better?

Judgment is the opposite of compassion, and by deferring judgment, one starts the process of innovation.

Design Thinking for a Monday Morning

Yawn, croak, stretch.  Well, it's Monday morning and now that all of that is over, it's time again to start thinking about the art and science of making cool stuff.  Here are some good reads that caught my attention and blew out the holiday cobwebs this morning:

Success Code for CEO's: get a design
Yet another article about the Institute of Design from the IndiaTimes.  This one features an extensive conversation with Robert Sutton, who is a core member of the d.school.  Robert and I will be teaching a d.school course at Stanford later this year.

Creativity's Economic -- and Sexual -- Edge
The always entertaining Dan Pink is writing a column called The Trend Desk, and this week's edition takes us on a whirlwind tour of mating behavior, BRIC, portion control, and sudoku mania.

Design: The New Corporate Marketing Strategy
This article by Ted Mininni ties a nice bow around a bunch of concepts involving a user-centric approach to marketing.  You need to register for the article, but it's free and worth your time.

Happy reading, and see you around the pages of metacool this week.

Come si dice "Brand Dilution"?

If you've spent any time at all wandering the halls of metacool, you know that I actively shun cynicism and empty criticism.  Design thinking, after all, is all about being generative, optimistic, and forward-looking.

But sometimes I just have to wonder what's wrong with a universe where things like this can happen: Ferrari Barbie

Enzo would not be pleased.

Keith Duckworth

This week, the world lost a great innovator, Keith Duckworth.

An engineer by training, Duckworth was one half of the vaunted firm Cosworth, designers of the paradigm-shifting DFV, which changed the face of motor racing and brought home 155 race victories.  Funded as a venture by Ford, the DFV acted as a modular platform around which indepdendent designers could, for the first time, create Formula 1 cars which could compete with factory efforts from the like of Ferrari. 

Duckworth was one of those fantastic engineers who, by embracing the realities of the business context they operate within, turn mere ideas into market-dominating innovations.

Unabashed Gearhead Gnarlyness

The Rivendell Atlantis
from the Rivendell website:

"Form follows function" works for nature, but too often with people, it's used as an excuse to rush to market something that's fully functional but still not so good looking.  (Have you noticed that old things usually look good? Manhole covers, typewriters, '50s station wagons, chairs, hand-saw handles, buildings, bells, letter openers, kitchen appliances, almost anything.  They were designed slowly, on a real drawing board, by people who were part industrial designer, part artist, part engineer.  When you mix those qualities with manual involvement and patience, what finally hatches usually looks good.)"

Studio 360

Here's something I hadn't heard before:  Studio 360 Design for the Real World

A nice bento box of audio insights.

metacool Thought of the Day

"My inspiration comes from my childhood. I have a theory: As a child, you do a lot of things, you soak in the most; 20 or 30 years later you are in a position where you can make these things that you dreamed of or thought of back when you were a kid. You can make them happen. The color turquoise became very fashionable when the iMac came out. The designer who designed it was 35, my age then.  I remember that turquoise was all over when I was 9 or 10. It was a color from my childhood. Orange was a color of my childhood. The minimalism from the 60s came back. The 80's are coming back in the work of the younger guys."

- Markus Diebel

Never Mind the Nano, Here's the Zepto

A while back I mused that "Nano is the new Turbo".

I was wrong:  Zepto is the new Nano.

My wish for 2006 is that some marketer, somewhere, brands something "Zepto", and that a competitor quickly ups the ante to "Yocto".  I really want to own something called "Yocto".  Yocto Yocto Yocto

India Times on the d.school

Here's an article about the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford (a.k.a. "the d.school) from the India Times.

Though it quickly ventures off into a discussion about more traditional approaches to design education, I like the article because of what it represents:  it's very much an example of Thomas Friedman's belief that ever-increasing flatness will, and it's also about the emergence of Dan Pink's view that R-directed thinking will be what enables one makes a good living in the 21st century.

Most of all, it affirms my belief that the d.school isn't so much a place as a state of mind.

By any other word would smell as sweet?

Following my post last week about the meaning of Ducati, here's some breaking news on Ducati: a majority stake has been sold by Texas Pacific Group (an American firm) to Investindustrial Holdings (an Italian firm). 

What's interesting about this from a meaning point of view is that Ducati is now owned by an Italian corporate entity, rather than by an American corporate entity.  Does it matter that the firm is now in Italian hands?  On the one hand, Ducati has certainly thrived for the past decade under American ownership.  On the other, the Ducatisti seem to think so -- they're already saying something along the lines of "Finally, Ducati is Italian".

I'm not so sure the nationality of ownership really matters to the meaning of a very nationality-centric brand like Ducati, so long as its deep roots in Borgo Panigale continue to be celebrated.  Mini, the quintessential British car, is owned and produced by a very Bavarian company called BMW.  Nor do I think it's really important where the nationality-centric object gets made.  For example, the BMW M Coupe, perhaps the most radical expression of BMW brand values ever produced, was made in the United States.  But critically, it was designed in Germany, by German Engineers.

So what matters?  I think what matters is that the people designing the offering really "get" -- and have control over -- all the tacit cultural markers that end up embedded in any designed object.  To the extent that one needs to live in a culture to really understand it, designers should probably live there if they are engaged in creating offerings that are largely differentiated on the basis of meaning, rather than functionality.

What do you think?