Blogs | design mind

热情的悖论

Reena Jana — Tue, 15 May 2012 01:54:45 -0500

Scott Barry Kaufman，一位专注于智力、创造力和性格等方面发展的认知心理学家，开始反思他在教育、商业和社会研究中所施用的方法——他通过多种手段接近对方，甚至包括文字和访谈这样的交流方式。Kaufman对目前心理学实验研究的深入浅出的分析见诸《今日心理学》、《哈佛商业评论》在线、《科学美国人》等刊物，以及他刚刚上线的个人站点，Creativitypost.com。

在文章中，Kaufman不断探讨了在任何创造性工作中，无论是组建一个家庭还是完成一篇博士论文，热情所扮演的角色。Kaufman拥有耶鲁大学心理学博士学位，在纽约大学任职，这位和善的先生不仅仅对于用创造力和热情来营造和谐有兴趣，他无惧于探讨实现某个目标的内在欲望会如何损害一个人的健康——特别是在被迫拥有热情的过度竞争环境当中。Kaufman试图讲述有害的热情和积极的热情之间的差异。或许需要逆转前者，鼓励后者。

可否给出心理学领域中关于“热情”的简要定义？热情是这样一种能量，它能够激励你完成一个项目或一项任务。它和灵感的作用相近。当我们全心投入一件事情当中，我们感到摆脱了外界束缚。时间隐退，我们自由流动。研究表明，流动与热情直接相关。

心理学家多年来在实验室中研究“热情”。但直到最近我们才重新界定了这个概念。我们了解到各种各样的“热情”，特别是所谓的“积极性”或“积极的热情”。事实上区别不同种类的热情非常重要。有时候我们遇到披着热情外衣的狼——或者叫做被迫。Robert Vallerand为区分被迫热情和主动热情（积极性）做了大量研究。

所以说有两种热情？至少两种。有趣的是，研究中人们自我汇报为积极或被动热情的都认定为“热情”，而不去界定它。他们高度认可这种热情，而这其中恰蕴含了两者的不同。一旦怀着不同于积极性的被迫热情，人们会感到被工作所控，即便他们并没有被控制。充满积极性的人能够集中精力工作，他们称之为“专注”。这种工作中的“专注”和积极热情更加相关，区别在于一个人多大程度上受到他/她所处环境的控制。那些拥有积极热情的人会更多感觉到来自内在的驱动。

那么如何分辨被迫热情呢？当你想摆脱时就能做到么？这种能力与自尊心相关，也同样和积极热情有关。

与此相对，被迫热情和负面的自尊心有关。一旦你总是反复想着“我必须做到。我不得不做，因为我完全倚赖这项工作”，这预示着自我失衡。

然而，有时这些带有被迫热情的人会自欺欺人，认为他们充满着积极性。的确，你可以自欺欺人。有些怀有被动热情的人认为成功的唯一方式就是走极端。他们倾向于认为自己是苦行僧，做得越多就会做得越好。很多管理者也认为这才是他们要雇佣的人。长期来看，它慢慢积累，终会导致崩溃。这或许听上去是常识，但是Vallerand和他的同事通过研究证实了这一点。

研究中，他们让受访者汇报工作时间和感受。积极和被迫的人在工作上花的时间是一样的，但区别在于那些自认为更好地掌控时间的人是积极者。思考方式的差异显而易见。但我们并不是说，人们不该努力工作，或试图不切实际地去平衡工作和生活。

当然这些完全合理，比方说你下定决心拿下一个博士学位，而暂时不考虑孩子和结婚的事情。完全合理。但重点在于，当你做出这种工作生活的平衡决定时，需要问问什么驱使你做出这种决定。我建议再想想。退后一步。你是否想证明自己足够聪明？获取博士学位能够提供和结婚及拥有孩子一样的成就感么？

让我们谈谈热情和被迫如何在办公室中被混淆起来。工作中是否容易控制别人的热情——无论好的坏的？我想Google善于发挥员工的最大潜能。要知道，传统的２０％法则证明，人人都想做成某件事，但最终结果并不完全由他们的表现决定。这就是像花时间陪玩一样。显然正是这种荒谬的思考方式在起作用。

如果雇员和雇主能够更好地换位思考，对于理解热情大有裨益。很多雇主并没有花时间了解下雇员是否开心。要做到这点需要时间积累和彼此分享，找出人们是否感觉被控制。

有时候雇员需要他人来帮助他发掘热情。但这似乎也充满矛盾。雇主越多施以热情，人们越难自身发掘。令雇员们想想热情这件事并不需要你在场。

雇员需要培养一种发掘热情的意识，也即自我评估。或许最好问问这些雇员何时以及如何掌控某件事。这似乎才是引发热情的关键。

如果追逐“热情”多年之后，你和你的团队依然失败，那将如何？你如何知道何时该放弃？那种持续失败的感觉存在执迷于某个目标的风险，你总想去证明自己可以做到。很简单，你需要问问自己是否还有热情。

渐渐习惯用积极方式思考的人会认为失败是正常的。这样的人能够学会面对失败和摆脱阻力。

并不存在所谓的魔弹。多数人不会花时间自省，并考虑他们追逐热情的理由和动机。需要经常审视你的内心。你有多期待达成目标？你有多大的精力来保持热情？你工作的时候开心么，或者说感觉到负面和被动的情绪？

同时，寻找有助于支持你的环境非常有用。记住：你无法控制热情本身，当你感觉到大部分得到控制的时候，这恰恰是积极的热情。

（Scott Barry Kaufman是认知心理学家，纽约大学心理学系兼任助理教授。他同时是The Creativity Post网站的创始人以及The Future Project的首席科学官。他为《今日心理学》、《哈佛商业评论》和《赫芬顿邮报》等撰稿）

A Conversation on Creativity, Passion, Education--and Psychology's Role in Each

Reena Jana — Mon, 14 May 2012 22:28:49 -0500

Ever wish you could ask a psychologist about how creativity really works? If you had this pscyhologist's attention, wouldn't you also love to ask about whether the passions you pursue at work and at play were healthy and balanced? And then...why not ask about how to cultivate more creativity and positive passions among future generations of designers and innovators?

At frog's New York studio, we had the opportunity to do so on May 11. Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman, who teaches at New York University and blogs for Harvard Business Review and Pscyhology Today--and who was featured in the current "Passion" issue of Design Mind magazine--joined us for lunch. It was the second in a series of thought-leadership discussions at frog New York, for which we invite leading thinkers to not only present, but also discuss timely ideas with us.

As we all enjoyed a mid-day feast of Indian food, Dr. Kaufman spoke in the same casual, ultra-accessible tone that he uses in his posts. He both summarized and translated current research in psychology, revealing some interesting tidbits to the crowd while avoiding dry statistics or jargon. At one point, for instance, he quizzed the room, asking whether we thought we are more creative if given a blank slate for developing fresh ideas, versus presented with a model or sets of examples to follow. Then he revealed that current research shows that people are consistently more imaginative if they follow examples, rather than when they have carte blanche to create. Part of the reasoning, he explained, is that people generally refer to popular, existing (i.e. generic) ideas when they have full freedom. For instance, data shows that most leading science fiction writers describe aliens or other "invented" otherwordly beasts in ways that reflect well-known animals much more than they are truly original creatures. Counterintiuitively, following examples can offer more effective springboards that can actually guide us away from more typical ideas.

Dr. Kaufman also shared some traits of motivated creative people: a positive attitude, for instance, tends to result in more instances of self-reported "inspiration." And when people are passionate about their tasks and have minimal external stress, they feel more excited to work. While some of these findings may seem obvious, the fact that they're backed by numerous scientific studies is, well...inspiring. Or at the very least, comforting.

At frog, Dr. Kaufman also took time to discuss his own passion: re-booting the U.S. educational system. He's involved in an organization called The Future Project, which aims to do so by empowering kids to engage in project-based learning, group collaboration, and engaged problem solving. All of these goals are combined with encouraging students to present their work with confidence. When he described this type of approach, it was easy to see a parallel to frog's own idea-generation process--a rewarding and fascinating context for Dr. Kaufman's lunch conversation.

Photos: Kajsa Westman

A Hackathon to “Reinvent Business”

Tim Leberecht — Sun, 13 May 2012 07:45:58 -0500

Can social technology enable companies and the people within them to make better decisions? Can it improve corporate behavior? Can it perhaps even help restore the social contract between business and society? These are just some of the questions to be tackled by the “Reinvent Business” hackathon – a collaborative, rapid ideation and programming workshop – to be held in San Francisco on June 9-10, Hosted by frog and LRN, in partnership with BSR, Carnegie Mellon University, Dachis Group, Net Impact, Silicon Valley Bank, Fast Company, and the World Economic Forum, the two-day event will bring together software developers, designers, gamers, film makers, writers, business leaders, and other creative minds to imagine, design, and build a more human and truly social enterprise. The goal is both simple and bold: to develop concepts and prototypes for innovative products and services that have the capacity to transform business from within.

The World Economic Forum formed a Global Agenda Council on Values in Decision-Making (of which I am a member) in response to the current economic crisis to realign our collective mindset and develop practical approaches for a more moral economy. It has developed an ambitious agenda to help organizations translate human values into practices and behaviors that strengthen our institutions and positively impact the state of the world. New challenges call for new approaches, and we hope that with this hackathon as the starting point, we can engage the tech and creative communities in an ongoing constructive dialogue on how technology, and especially social technology, can change corporate behavior.

This need for behavior change, for “reinventing business,” is an urgent one, considering the growing number of voices that observe a crisis of capitalism and demand its fundamental transformation. In an op-ed piece for the Huffington Post, “The End of Capitalism – What Comes Next?,” World Economic Forum Founder and Executive Chairman Klaus Schwab draws a clear line between the original, defensible idea of the free market economy and the worrisome decoupling of the financial system and value-creation that makes an overhaul of its technical aspects mandatory. But he also argues that simply correcting excesses is not enough – we need a more radical reset. Schwab reminds us of the Stakeholder Principle he introduced in 1971, which is now more relevant than ever, propelled by the rise of social technologies: “In an age when social networks are enabling greater participation and transparency, companies will only be able to achieve economic success if they can generate long-term benefits not just for their shareholders, but also for the common good.”

While most companies will subscribe to that point of view rhetorically, the disconnection between business and society (and, as studies show, between management and employees) is indisputable. From Occupy Wall Street to public resignation letters in the New York Times, the widening ‘trust gap’ between business and society can’t be ignored. In a recent column, The Economist contends that companies should worry less about their reputations and more about how they do business. And indeed, increasingly, consumers and citizens demand that companies match their words to their actions, far beyond just Mission Statements, Codes of Conduct, and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs. For today’s consumers and citizens, integrity means that a firm’s decisions and behaviors are fundamentally and consistently aligned with its values and principles as well as those of its stakeholders (which include society at large).

Yet the crisis of capitalism is not only a crisis of integrity, it is also one of meaning. “It is the job of companies to produce meaning,” writes management philosopher John Hagel, and with a growing number of consumers and employees expressing a strong desire for purpose beyond profits, and even the Harvard Business Review espousing happiness as a new economic paradigm, this appears to be a ripe time for reinvention. As the world becomes more interconnected and interdependent, the lines between the corporate and the social, the professional and the personal blur, and the younger generation of netizens in particular expects heightened levels of transparency, responsibility, and inspiration – both as consumers and employees. Being “In Search of Excellence” therefore no longer suffices; companies and their leaders now need to pursue significance.

Achieving this vision requires changes in two key dimensions of our economy: what we consider to be “value” and the values that guide how we create it. We need a more inclusive value definition that is respectful of all stakeholders’ needs, fully aligned with human values, and transcending the merely transactional; and we need inclusive models of value-creation that are inherently social.

At the national level, Bhutan’s Gross Happiness Index, as an alternative to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), has gained many admirers, and both the French and the UK governments have begun to emulate it. Moreover, there are supra-national organizations and NGOs such as the New Economics Foundation in the UK that have long proposed new indicators of economic progress grounded in the belief that we need a more holistic, integrated understanding of the economy instead of one that is purely based on financial terms.

At the corporate level, social media and networks have disrupted traditional paradigms of productivity and organizational behavior, and enabled participatory models of value creation that fully harness human potential by leveraging social technologies to maximize social capital (e.g. enterprise social networks, crowdsourcing). Consequently, the social enterprise of the 21st century recognizes social capital – in other words: talent, inside and outside of the organization – as its key asset. In his article, Klaus Schwab describes this as a significant paradigm shift:

“Capital is being superseded by creativity and the ability to innovate – and therefore by human talents – as the most important factors of production. If talent is becoming the decisive competitive factor, we can be confident in stating that capitalism is being replaced by ‘talentism.’ Just as capital replaced manual trades during the process of industrialization, capital is now giving way to human talent. I am convinced that this process of transformation will also lead to new approaches within the field of economics. It is indisputable that an ideology founded on personal freedom and social responsibility gives both individuals and the economy the greatest possible scope to develop.”

With the rise of “talentism,” the need for a real understanding of the common human values that connect organizations and individuals is becoming ever more important. Transparency, inclusivity, individual empowerment, and organizational responsiveness are crucial in nurturing businesses’ social fabric and facilitating empathy and collaboration. Yet, the challenge remains: How do we translate these values into day-to-day corporate behavior and into tangible, personal experiences? How can companies become open organizations that harness and build social capital both inside and outside of their institutional boundaries?

This is where our “Reinvent Business” hackathon comes in. Whether it is a mobile app that uses real-time peer feedback from social networks to help address ethical dilemmas, or a tracker that captures and measures alternative types of value, or a data visualization tool that illustrates the unintended consequences and the externalities of decisions, or an ‘empathy app’ that lets you see the world through someone else’s eyes, we hope for concepts that radically rethink the current business frameworks while at the same time offering practical solutions to business leaders and employees.

To be clear: We don’t expect this hackathon to produce any silver bullets, nor do we aim to “productize away” the deep and complex challenges of a moral economy and a more human enterprise. But we are poised to spawn a conversation by tackling concrete problem spaces that might inspire further-reaching, broader solutions.

Learn more about the "Reinvent Business" hackathon: http://www.reinventbusinesshackathon.com/overview.html

To participate in the "Reinvent Business" hackathon, apply here: http://www.reinventbusinesshackathon.com/apply.html

CCA Junior Critique

Max Burton — Fri, 11 May 2012 10:35:48 -0500

Last week was the culmination of a 16-week Industrial Design junior level class from the California College of the Arts (CCA). The class was divided into two groups with two different subject areas for the students to choose from. Myself, Max Burton from frog and Karson Shadley from Shape Field Office taught a segment on ‘wearable sound’ and Chris Luomanen of Thing-Tank and Rob Swinton from Huge Design taught a segment on ‘personal mobile safety.’ To enhance the level of realism and to develop connections with the local professional design community, we held the final presentation of the students’ work at frog design in our San Francisco studio and Lunar‘s head office in Potrero Hill with many local industrial design professionals as guest critics.

The course is intended to emulate a real-life design project. Students go through the entire design process from choosing an end user and discovering opportunity areas through design research. They then go onto concept exploration, sketching, model-making, 3D CAD and rendering and final presentation. We put an equal emphasis on problem solving and a rigorous design process as we did on the final physical form factor. In today’s competitive marketplace for industrial design it is essential that students demonstrate their capacity for original-thinking and problem-solving skills as well as the high mastery of skills that are fundamental to be a successful industrial designer.

This year the overall level of the work was high, but as always there are some student’s work that really stands out. Joanna Gallacinao designed an MP3 player around the unique needs of the visibly impaired. The product was distinctive in that the headphones could gradually switch function from playing music to a ‘super-human’ mode of an enhanced ‘listening’ ability that helped the visibly impaired users to acutely listen to the sounds around them while navigating through a city. This enhanced listening ability along with tactile audio controls that were super-easy to use for people with or without sight issues and her product demonstrated an original solution to solving a real life problem. Joanna also designed her product to be so cool that anyone would want to own this product therefore not stigmatizing the blind.

Jean Lin designed Arm Ray, a wrist device that illuminated the wearer for nighttime use. Her insight centered on wheelchair users who can be difficult to see at night and who are often forced to use the road to navigate through a city. The devices were suitable for all types of people who needed to be seen during the night such as runners and cyclists.

Walter Tien designed the Mobii, an interactive game and media console for children to use while travelling as passengers in a car. Parents are all too aware that children traveling, as passengers can be a dangerous distraction especially when they get bored. The Mobii that Walter designed was more than just an Ipad as it had a three dimensional interactive user interface that not only fun for kids, but was also a brilliant learning tool to help them develop their dexterity and cognitive thinking.

Nari Hwang designed ‘Genie’ a bracelet for the elderly who were living in assisted residential care homes. This unique band was not only used to help identify the owner, but could be used by the senior citizen as an keyless access to the senior citizens residential care facility, their personal mailbox and their individual apartment. There was also an optional “life alert” module that slid onto the bracelet that seniors could use to get immediate help from medical staff. An ingenious feature of the bracelet was a fold out key for access should the electronic system fail in any way. The addition of the traditional key along with the use of leather and metal demonstrated a lovely mixture of analog and digital that is an appropriate solution for senior citizens who may be not as technology-savvy as a younger population.

Henry Wu and Yanika Tinaphongs teamed up to answer the unmet needs to the street musician. They designed a watch that doubled as a guitar tuner and an amp that was specifically designed to be portable and folded out for tips. Music and cords could be stored inside the amp during transport. The most impressive aspect of their work was the high level of craftsmanship demonstrated in their physical models and the cohesion in design language between their products and their brand identity.

Candice Lin interviewed wheelchair users for the invention of her product the Para Pak. In her interviews Candice discovered that wheelchair users had a need to store their personal belongings with them while getting around. Her insight was that wheelchair users are currently using a work-around solution by using existing backpacks on the back of the wheelchair seat. This current solution is awkward as the pockets are all in the wrong place and very difficult for wheelchair users to gain access to their personal belongings while on the go. This is an area ripe for innovation and Candice was able to uncover many problem areas and resolve them through good design.

Charles Weber took on the challenging space of disaster relief and preparedness. He designed a wall-mounted unit that lives in a prominent part of the home. During most of the product’s life it functions as a center for important information such as the weather and local news. In a disaster such as an earthquake, it doubles as an emergency information center along with a light, local maps with a GPS that shows important information such as the location of local disaster relief centers or hospitals. The product is easily programmable for the different languages of the local community. The design was simple and refined in its form making it suitable for public parts of the home such as the kitchen or living room all year round.

Sneha Cyriac designed the Museo, an interactive museum guide specifically suited for children. Through her research with children her insight was that current museum audio devices are adult centric, which usually meant that kids are quickly overwhelmed and then bored. With the Museo children can learn about art in a more fun and playful way while at the same time illustrating their own art book. Sneha thought through the entire experience from picking up the unit at museum entry, through to using the Museo in the museum and even the idea of a take home art book that could be proudly presented on the family fridge. Sneha showed how product design today is as much about designing experiences than a stand-alone object.

Full list of presenters and projects
Kiran Lakhani
Yixin Yuan
Christine Kim
Jean Lin
Hugo Kuo
Rocco Xiaoke (jacket for moves)
Cris Orozco
Alok Bhandarkar
Nichole Rouillac
Scott Ross (walkie-talkie hand unit for firemen)
Mark Lee (wireless speakers and MP3 controller)
Ava DiCapri (wireless drum kit)
Abha Dasgupta (Medical practitioners note taking kit)
Joanna Gallacinao (MP3 for the visibly impaired)
Henry Wu + Yanika Tinaphongs (
Bennett Gershkow + Galen Chinn (ultramarathon headphones and replenishment reminder)
Shiv Kehr (hospital doctor/patient privacy)
Sneha Cyriac (kids' museum audio guide)
Eduardo DePaulis (snowboarder inter-communication)
Nari Hwang (elderly forgetfulness)
Charlie Weber (emergency transmitter)
Justin Crandall (portable latrine)
Candice Lin (wheelchair backpack)
Ken Chen (wheelchair communication)
Cindy Chiu (wallet/purse for loss prevention)
Daeun Kim (air filtering cycling mask)
Walter Tien (backseat driver game for kids)

Guest Critics
Norio Fujikawa (creative director at astro)
Jesse Madsen (lead designer at astro)
Pablo Pardo (owner of pablo)
Tung Chiang (senior designer at one&co)
Joseph Becker (assistant curator at SFMOMA)
Christopher Kuh (senior designer at ammunition)
Justin Porcano (owner of upwell)
Jessica Lisagor (Arch 1 at perkins+will and cca)
Mara Holt Skov (cca)
Steven Skov Holt (cca)
Colin Owen (cca)
Will Loor (Lab 126)

Instructors
Wearable Sound
Max Burton (Executive Creative Director at frog)
Karson Shadley (Owner of Shape Field Office + friend of Lunar)

Mobile Personal Safety
Chris Luomanen (Owner of Thing Tank)
Rob Swinton (Lead designer at Huge and ex-Lunartic)

Reel Form

Jonas Damon — Fri, 04 May 2012 14:23:08 -0500

As designers we enjoy figuring out new ways of interacting with the world around us. Clients often come to us with raw, just-invented technologies, and we help add a human perspective. New technologies prompt new forms, and we look for meaning in form. A product’s personality is the sum expression of the content it delivers, the function it performs, the behavior it elicits, and the aesthetic it portrays.

Design communicates, and usually we want to say something new. But then there are moments when new isn’t the desired way forward. Too much has been said about skeuomorphism - the practice of disguising the new as the old to add instant familiarity, an act often seen as declawing the experience potential of design. But when we want to create emotionally charged objects, integrating known references often communicates much more effectively.

For a while now I’ve been interested in using cultural capital as reference material for design, most recently with audio equipment. I’m intrigued by music and audio because of their rich emotional impact and cultural heritages. Music provides many of our most visceral experiences; it communicates directly with our mood and behavior. For example, the classic 80’s boombox has become an oft-used, not-too-subtle visual reference for the party that certain music provides. The boombox’s iconic form is obviously effective in communicating the vibrancy of popular music, but it doesn’t quite reflect the high fidelity technology of bygone eras that best enhances other types of music. Enter the reel-to-reel player. Predating CDs and tape cassettes, the reel-to-reel player is a magnetic-tape-based recording and playback technology which creates a rich and complex sound; it outputs authentic music to an audiophile’s ear.

Reel-to-reel players also have a great physical expression: two seven-inch reels mounted side by side on the front of a case, feeding magnetic tape from one reel to the other. This piece of equipment tells a wonderful story of form and function in the context of music recording and reproduction. I’m not nearly old enough to remember their heyday, but I miss their analog form an awful lot.

While smartphones have become our de facto music players, low quality music files and ubiquitous device docks with miniature speakers have laid waste to rich compositions that should be experienced without compromise. But play data-compressed, or “lossless,” audio files such as FLAC or Apple Lossless, and pair your smartphone with a robust, well-engineered sound system, and your ears may be in for a treat. How can this be communicated? I thought it was time to revisit a reel-to-reel player’s iconic semblance to bridge the experiences of just-good-enough digital music and shared, amplified sound. So I’ve designed and built an iPhone speaker in the form of a reel-to-reel player.

Two powerful 6-inch speakers are visible through the reels, the concentric rings of the black speaker cones vaguely resembling spooled audiotape. The tape head – the input module that would read music off the tape in between the two reels – appropriately becomes the iPhone dock. I’ve referenced a form factor with a history of over 70 years, powering it by an infant technology, playing music that could have been composed only days or hundreds of years ago. This remix of eras is perfectly tuned to music, as music transports us back to moments scattered throughout time. Referencing an old form factor to communicate a qualitative activity and give meaning to a new device actually makes sense in this context. The iPhone is layered in front of the player, a literal reflection of one technology and one form factor supplanting another.

With my previous exploration into analog form, I was interested in how iconic product shapes communicate functionality, and how that communication was lost when all our devices converged into anonymous slabs of glass, plastic, and metal. This reel-to-reel player is less academic; it is a mash-up of functionality and reference (the players never produced the actual sound, they relied on an external speaker system). Its motive for being panders more to attaching a meaningful, expressive form to a nostalgic longing. The old form is given new life, disguised as an iPhone-dock-boombox. The intention is perhaps more in line with music itself: more about the emotional, less about the rational.

The Networked Urban Environment

Jan Chipchase — Thu, 03 May 2012 17:06:45 -0500

Imagine never having to look for a parking space ever again. Imagine that from here on out, this problem is solved. Fast-forward to 2025. You’re driving from Brooklyn to Manhattan...because driving in New York City, and everywhere else, has become much simpler a task than it was a decade or so before.

Or has it?

On the surface, yes. While we may not be zooming around in speedy Minority Report-style vehicles in 2025, by we will have full (and fast, convenient, sufficiently cheap) access to data that is in the cloud - either through our vehicles (which will gradually take on new tech features with the same slow evolution as they always do) and more likely, simply because the cloud is anywhere we are - whether its accessible through our smartphones, tablets or embedded in the world around us. These services just might make life easier and more efficient than flying sedans ever would: our daily online calendars will automatically sync with those of our colleagues for meetings, those of our our children for school pickups, and even those of automated parking spaces.

The car itself will reserve and pay for a spot on the street or in a garage automatically, just as we pay seamlessly for electronic books and music via our Amazon and iTunes accounts today, without typing in our credit card information over and over again. Our computers handle the admin; we get on with our lives.

In 2025, we’ll even be comfortable delegating some of the administrative minutiae of travel to our cars to sort out; in essence, the car and the cloud will act as personal assistants and ‘travel agents’. Your travel agent will know the maximum we want to pay to park or want to walk from our parking spot to our destination. If plans or traffic patterns change while we’re en route, it will automatically off-load the reservation it has, and negotiatie an alternative. If our meeting or meal runs over and we can’t make it back to retrieve our car in time, the car itself will communicate with the next person’s travel agent - that is booked for that spot. Today in situations where someone is inconvenienced a ‘fine’ is levied to punish socially errant behaviour - the rules can be rewritten so that the inconviencer can directly compensate the inconveniencee, peer to peer, no middle man taking a cut.

Urban infrastructures are increasingly being equipped with sensors and other means of collecting information and channeling our everyday actions, from energy use to parking patterns, into software and networks that analyze data and act upon it. Cities--and communities-- are becoming “smarter” as “the internet of things” evolves. What this means is that more and more people and things, including parking spaces are becoming connected, allowing for better prediction models of traffic and energy usage thanks to real-time data flows, leading to better awareness of current resource statuses and more practical matters such as more dependable payment mechanisms.

The smart-parking scenarios will arrive more quickly than you think--in fact, they’re already nearly here. On the most basic level, anyone can get free driving directions and an instant, estimated time of arrival from Google Maps, when they agree to share where they are at a given moment via GPS. Throughout Europe now, you can reserve public parking spots via SMS messages. In San Francisco, you can time a meeting so that you don’t pay peak-prices for parking, determined by a dynamic market pricing system launched as a pilot program this fall (and running through summer 2012) by the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency to help alleviate congested streets. It uses real-time data tracking to determing the cost of parking at 7,000 of San Francisco’s 28,000 metered spots, as well as 12,250 spaces in three-quarters of the parking garages owned by the cities.

And then there are much more intricate examples, on epic scales. In September, the technology company Pegasus Holdings announced it is building a $200 million test city on a city scale in New Mexico--from scratch, where it will try out networked parking and transportation systems among other infrastructure innovations. In Asia and the Middle East, smart cities are being built from scratch: Tianjin Eco City in China; Songdo, South Korea; and Masdar in Abu Dhabi. In each of these examples, developers are working to implement traffic-solutions that will make use of new, networked technologies, all as part of creating more energy-efficient communities.

These optimistic visions aren’t just about making parking a more pleasant experience. They’re largely about solving urgent problems in a time of economic and sustainability-related challenges. According to a report by IBM, the economic impact of traffic congestion is $4 billion per year in New York alone, in terms of estimated lost work hours, pollution-related costs, and wasted fuel. In the United States, traffic congestion losses are growing at 8 percent a year, the most recent estimate being $78 billion in 2005. Worldwide, in both developed and developing-world cities, traffic congestion-related expenses represent between 1 percent and 3 percent of most cities’ GDP.

And on a larger scale, beyond parking and traffic, a recent report by Ericsson (published earlier this year) found that the more networked, or “smart,” a city is, the more that city sees benefits to its “triple bottom line” (its financial, societal, and sustainability-related successes). For every 10 percentage points increase in broadband penetration, the report found, the isolated economic effect on GDP growth is approximately 1% of GDP.

Whilst the pain of finding a parking space will dissipate into the cloud, the cloud will hide other, less apparent costs. The concepts of the “smart” car, “smart” parking and payment systems, and “smart” cities are interesting enough. But all are really just a smoke screen for a much deeper set of political and even philosophical issues that will impact urban dwellers in the near future, especially as more than half’s the world’s population will soon be living in cities. That set of issues centers around the delicate dance between public and private ownership of space, both in the cloud and on the ground.

The private sector is heavily involved in developing many of these and other massive urban infrastructure projects that are likely to or already use much of our personal data to create more efficient public services. To give a sense of scale, there are 100 private funds seeking to raise $95 billion for infrastructure investments globally, according to research by San Francisco-based fund adviser Probitas Partners. IBM is working on a smart-parking system with a start-up called Streetline; a consortium of nine companies including Accenture and Panasonic are building a “smart town” in Fujisawa, Japan.

The new model of privatized infrastructure is necessary to make up for city budget gaps in an era of economic challenges. And it certainly can cultivate much-needed employment. The New Mexico example, for instance, has been applauded by the state’s governor for possibly creating 4,000 new jobs. But bringing corporations in to help build new traffic and parking and other urban solutions can also raise important questions.

That’s because while this model can provide convenience, it could also create new problems for the communities that will use these smart infrastructures as well as the companies and governments that built them. Let’s go back to the parking example. Soon, there could be the possibility of third parties figuring out a way to unofficially buy and sell parking spaces in dynamic parking markets, via peer-to-peer systems of trading spots on the street. Will this become a punishable act, a violation of the rule of paying city authorities? Or will private-sector companies find ways to work with entrepreneurs who might see business opportunities in a once-regulated, government-operated systems, raising prices for parking even higher than the peak costs?

This is just one example.

I raise these questions not to cast doubt on the new public/private infrastructure--one that blurs the roles of citizens’ public and private lives, as well as the changing balance between the public and the private sectors in numerous cities turning to corporations to upgrade and update urban environments. Instead, I hope to provoke both cities and companies to consider the possible dilemmas that the new models will face: Who has the rights to exploit what happens on your sidewalk? Your neighborhood? Your roads? What are the rules? Who sets them? Who profits?

To avoid possible pitfalls will be the following when designing the new public/private infrastructure projects, it will be necessary to

- Establish clear policies on how any use of citizens’ data might be used when tracking anything from parking habits, energy use, or any other behavior that is documented and analyzed as part of a smart infrastructure

- Consider potential black markets and data or payment security breaches and be prepared for violations of new system rules (as in the parking example)

- Create best practices for both corporations and governments, and share information via networks of smart cities, both real and “test” centers

- Work with community groups and citizens and all other stakeholders, in terms of involving them from the beginning of infrastructure planning to get feedback

Of course the evolving visions of massively networked urban infrastructures are as unique as the evolution as each city itself, and in many ways these nuances are the essence of life -- home, families, businesses, communities coming together. In the big scheme of things, “smart” is interesting but pales in significance to relevance.

***

frog became a member of the New Cities Foundation (NCF), a global platform for innovation and exchange on the future of urbanization, along with GE, Cisco, Ericsson, and others. The partnership will be highlighted at the upcoming New Cities Summit that will take place in Paris from May 14-16, 2012 with the theme Thinking Ahead, Building Together. At the Summit, frog will run an interactive session -- "Navigating the MetaCity" -- offering a glimpse into a future city in which various layers of software constitute a powerful computing platform for hybrid digital-physical environments.

Image from Shutterstock

Love Notes from Scrum Board

Mattijs Knol — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 14:09:26 -0500

According to the book, Strategy and Business, by Booz and Company’s Barry Jaruzelski, Richard Holman, and Omar Daud, “Globalization has created scores of nimble competitors in every industry; as a result, the product development environment is too volatile for linear, standardized processes. In such a landscape, an approach that embraces the value of flexibility and unpredictability is needed to generate more stable and successful outcomes. Paradoxically, although gated processes are focused on linearity and order, they often result in chaos. In contrast, the agile model, driven by chaos and uncertainty at the front end, yields greater order at the latter stages of product development.” frog has adopted a facet of the agile model, Scrum Methodology, to create a flexible process that adapts to the constantly evolving needs of a client.

Why should I fall in love with Scrum?

As seen with Appie, Scrum methodology allows for flexibility and prioritization of features, going beyond the original scope of a project where appropriate. With this new technology, any iteration becomes a deliverable product, ready to be released to the public, tested and reviewed. Scrum allows the change of a project’s priorities and ensures the most relevant features are released in the right order, allowing a frequent inspection of the roadmap and change according to needs discovered throughout the process Scrum also focuses on the relationships between individuals and the emerging needs for those teams rather than the rigid structure of the process. The creed of Scrum can be summarized as follows:

- Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
- Working software over comprehensive documentation
- Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
- Responding to change over following a plan

The engagement

Albert Heijn, the biggest supermarket in the Netherlands, started a full Agile collaboration with frog to create a personal shopping service that helps customers remember, choose and obtain their daily groceries. The new service and app (created by a mobile design company), called Appie, gives the list making process a makeover. Users can add anything to their list in any way they prefer. The app harnesses a smart user interface to recognize product names in whatever way the user identifies them, makes suggestions for products to add to a recipe, and can be updated and shared with other users in real-time.

Following earlier successes using the Scrum Methodology, frog employed it over the 16-month project period with Albert Heijn. The core motivation to use this methodology was based on the need for a timely product release. New versions of the Appie online service needed to go online as soon as the feature was created. Another advantage of the Scum methodology is that it enables a cross-country, cross-disciplinary team of both frog and the client the ability to collaboratively change the scope and priority of the project during the process.

After having the first launch of Appie, AH and frog were able to make releases every two weeks. This approach is well supported by the Scrum methodology since the goal of every sprint is to create a releasable product, with updated or new functionalities.

Make your relationship work

To fully activate the Scrum methodology, team members take the design sprint to a new level. After each two-week design sprint of rapid iterations on concepts, there are extensive product demos and retrospectives to evaluate the sprint. But in the spirit of the Scrum’s innovative process, deviations from the process are also documented, aggregated and assessed in order to experiment with new rules of the methodology.

Most people associate Scrum methodology with development. However, at frog, design is always one sprint ahead of the development team in order to ensure that all design be ready before a development sprint begins. During the development sprint the designers are available to support the development team in case of questions or small adjustments required. In this way, designers are concurrently working with developers during the whole process.

In the case of Appie, new features were added so frequently that we were able to harness Scrum to create new releases and quicker feedback loop to incorporate customer feedback related in a minimum time period.

It takes 2 to tango

As from the start of the project we brought all member of the Appie team together to collaboratively create Appie. A product owner and concept developer from Albert Heijn, a number of developers from three different companies, and the frog design team with a dedicated Scrum master formed the team who created Appie.

While working with Albert Heijn, a number of developers from three different companies, testers, the frog design team and a Scrum master were all brought together to collaboratively create Appie. With Scrum, there is no hierarchy in team roles and all team members are responsible for the end result. This joint liability ensured every team member to contribute to the project meaningfully and created seamless collaboration to achieve the final result.

It was also a unique benefit to have a client contact in the project room to give more extensive context beyond the usual touch points like presentations or alignment meetings. This created a culture of transparency, with the client able to ask questions and give feedback on the spot. When the client shifted priorities, the team knew right away and could respond with new insights into methods, processes and team interactions. The constant collaboration required trust, openness, and adherence to respectful criticism.

We all love fun

Aside from being an effective process driven methodology, scrum is also fun, stimulates intra-team cooperation and aligns the team to work together on one goal, of creating a successful product. Creating a project room with all possible scrum artifacts on the wall made all internal team agreements visible and created the opportunity to be playful with the design. The team created the “10 commandments” of scrum, outlining the main rules of the project. They were created by the team to make sure everybody had the same understanding about team expectations and agreements. One of the agreements from the “10 commandments” was that everybody should attend the daily stand-up at 9:30 AM. If was one the team members was in late, this person needed to chip in 5 euro for our beer-list. The bi-monthly team party, sponsored from the beer-list contributed as well. Introducing this was not only a great stimulation for punctuality, but also helped the team spirit through social events.

黄金分割－西方的风水

Mario van der Meulen — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 01:24:14 -0500

前不久，我们上海工作室的视觉设计师与我分享了一张苹果公司Logo的设计图，展示了设计所用的原型结构和看似十分复杂的数学原理。一个中国朋友想知道是不是西方一个“好设计”必定是经过详细周密的计算。在我们的谈话中，我将这种设计原理和已有的中国风水实践相结合了起来。

风水在西方的看法中从不涉及神话。也许是因为对于它的谈论和呈现方法的缘故，风水常常被当作迷信而受到冷遇。然而，重中之重，风水是一种获得能量的方式，而非一种宗教的表达。风水被视作“气”，常常被认为是世间万物周围所环绕的能源。但对于绝大多数西方国家而言，这些气则被认为是电磁能源或者磁引力。虽然许多西方人认为风水只是依存于亚洲的神秘哲学，但事实上它也是有一定的科学依据的。

风水应用是一门学术研究学科，并不会受到任何迷信的影响。风水其实和代表吉利的红门或代表发财的水没有任何关系。毫不夸张的说，风水是一种能力，它通过观察、可重复的计算以及古老方法论来察觉和纠正能量流中的不平衡因素。通过对于自然环境和人造器物的对比，风水创造了一个能够使自然能源充分发挥其潜力的平衡环境。理想的能量流可以在需要它强大时变的足够强大，又可以在需要它变的柔和时变的柔软舒缓。这种能量流从来都不是一条用以保护最短距离的直线，而是一种能够成比例增大的浪潮和漩涡。风水是一个用来衡量环境和谐的标准系统。

这些都不是罕见的事情，对于西方而言也不算新奇。风水被东方人用作追寻和谐平衡的方式，却在西方以数学和数字的方式来呈现。黄金分割就与风水具有着相类似的原则和规律。

黄金分割的数值为1:62。斐波纳契数列是这个比例的核心，想必读过达芬奇密码的读者也许都还记得，达芬奇的才华便是将黄金分割应用于个人作品的构图和对称性之中的能力，达芬奇运用黄金分割来使自己的作品趋于完美。

读到这里，您是不是会觉得我这样讲有点怪？如果有的话我深表歉意，但黄金分割的应用要远比名画和畅销书来得多。我们周围到处都可以看到黄金分割的应用。斐波纳契数列可以追溯到整个自然界：从树的分支，到植物树叶的排列，再到菠萝的大小，乃至波浪的曲线。这个数列适用于所有生命的成长：包括一个单细胞，一粒麦子，甚至人类的DNA。就连你手指的骨头也大约符合1:62的比例。

依靠随处可见的黄金分割，人类已经进化出一种预想心理，他们通过探寻事物是否具备黄金分割来感知其舒适性和自然性。我们现已将其应用于建筑、艺术和音乐作品，甚至还包括面部识别软件。这里和大家分享一些比较具有代表性的例子，如埃及金字塔和基督十字架等。当然日常平凡的物体中同样保持着这一原则，比如你的信用卡就是一个完美的黄金分割矩形。

所以拥有黄金分割比例分配的设计都是具有强烈感召力和吸引力的，风水的基本原则使万物皆有能量互联，它的目的是帮助创造和谐的能量。其二者之间拥有着共同的目标，只不过一个是数字和线性的（黄金分割），而另一个则更加容易理解并存在于空间之中。两者都是唤起我们情感共鸣并连接我们快乐情绪的创造性成果。将二者称为一样的事物未免过于简单，但是他们两者同时表达了人类渴望成功的情感诉求。

我们回到这个最为经典的苹果Logo 。这张设计图向我们展示了它是如何符合黄金分割构图比例的，有些人没准会质疑这个品牌有些“过于自我”。我认为它还具有如风水一样积极向上机具魅力的能量隐藏其中。

这里便引出了下一个问题，是否有品牌因为风水问题而影响到其成败呢？

在接下来的文章中，我会深入的分析风水是如何引导品牌设计，以及如何帮助他们在中国乃至全球范围内获得成功的。

Mario在八岁的时候就已经牢记64种绘儿乐颜色，时至今日，他已经熟记这些颜色所对应的Pantone色号以及这些颜料为环境带来的利与弊。他也是中国GIGAbase循绿基金会的总监及联合创始人之一，该基金会为非盈利性机构，致力于研发适合品牌、制造商及设计师使用的绿色设计解决方案标准。Mario最近被第一财经周刊评选为中国创新先锋50人。

Redesigning the Shopping List

Andrea Bebber — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 17:45:32 -0500

“One of Albert Heijn’s greatest strengths as a company is our ability to understand what the customer wants and translate that insight into innovative products and services.” - Dick Boer, President and CEO

Winning the hearts and minds of customers by creating daily relevance

Two years ago Albert Heijn started with a complete new service in the consumer retail area. The objective of this new service is actually strongly rooted in the company’s foundational principles. Back when Mr. Albert Heijn was still a small local grocer, he knew his customers on a personal level that enabled him to respond more adequately to his customers’ daily needs and create a lasting emotional loyalty.

Now Albert Heijn is on a mission to become that ‘personal shopping assistant’ once again. In order to do so, they must shift their focus from food to the daily needs of their customers. But how could the supermarket leverage the emotional loyalty that their heritage built and transform it into eventual growth?

frog teamed up with Albert Heijn to create a service that offers genuine help and relevance to the daily lives of their customers.

Appie

A first step in becoming the personal shopping assistant is Appie, a personal shopping service that helps customers remember, choose, and obtain their daily groceries. As a nod to a more personal relationship with consumers, the system adopted the nickname that the Dutch have used when affectionately referring to the supermarket chain for decades.

During the kick-off of the project, Albert Heijn told frog that, “People have been making lists for ages. In order to be successful we need to be better than pen and paper.” This challenge invigorated the team and became one of our critical measurements throughout design and development. We started by familiarizing ourselves with existing customer insights. Albert Heijn has collected a ton of information on how people make shopping lists, what items they put on their list, what items they end up buying and how much of that they buy every week. One of the key insights we pulled from their research was that in order for consumers to adopt the service, it had to become part of their daily routines and rituals.

With this new digital service, we wanted to make list making available anywhere and anytime, updated in real-time, and shareable with anyone. In addition to list making, we wanted to support customers in their entire shopping experience by helping them find products in the store, offering home delivery and even guiding them as they prepare dinner. Based on the Albert Heijn research, we concluded that when it comes to routine based grocery shopping there are many user scenarios to consider. Some customers add items to their list every day, while others pressure cook and create their list right before they go to the supermarket. Usually when customers go to the supermarket they forget to buy some of the products they put on their list and when they go shopping at an Albert Heijn supermarket they buy 50% more products than they originally had put on their list. And of course the list includes reoccurring items every week as well as special needs items for holidays or the occasional Summer BBQ.

In the end, all of this comes down to a very simple, but constant question “What shall we eat tonight?” Lifestyle preferences are the most influential factors when answering this question. Albert Heijn structures their product assortment using these key principles that strongly relate to these lifestyle preferences: the best buy, enjoyment and health. These principles are instrumental in defining the way Appie helps customers shop for their groceries.

Leaving pen and paper behind

Appie is primarily designed for the reinvention of list making. Customers can add anything to their list without changing their personal styles. It doesn’t matter whether product descriptions are vague or specific, whether it describes a specific type of tomato, toilet paper or tennis racket, or whether Albert Heijn sells the product or not. Appie never forces customers to do anything, but always tries to offer information where it might be relevant.

Creating a user interface that transforms an analog ritual into a more effective digital platform is an interesting design challenge, The list component has to account for the various ways users reference items (i.e. bananas vs. Chiquita bananas) or how they convey the quantity (i.e. two bananas vs. two bunches of bananas). It was also important to add functionality to the list that helps customers add items to their list quicker (i.e. autosuggest), and personalize the lists by suggesting items based on past purchases, related ingredients for meals, or items that are on sale. Suggestions are tailored to customer needs by using a basic version of personal ranking. For instance, related products that customers bought before and related products that are on sale appear higher in the suggestions lists then other products. Albert Heijn intends to further develop ranking by adding more parameters to the equation in order to generate even better matching suggestions (e.g. ‘items put on the list’, lifestyle preferences like ‘organic’ etc.).

Appie also personalizes the shopping experience by allowing customers to sort their lists according to the layout of the Albert Heijn store. By bridging the gap between digital channels and the physical store, precious time is saved from searching the store for products.
The personal shopping experience is enhanced when customers join Albert Heijn’s loyalty program. The free and anonymous membership comes with a membership card that gives customers discounts based on the products they buy. When the cashier swipes their Bonus membership card at the cash register all of the purchased products are stored in the customer’s Appie profile. Also, their “Bonus” discount based on those products is directly deducted from the total amount they have to pay. This also allows customers to track their purchasing history.

On top of that we made the list available on multiple platforms and enabled customers to share their list with others in order to add items to their list together. It was challenging, yet crucial to ensure that the synchronization rules always kept customers lists up-to-date to seamlessly socialize the lists.

Transforming meals into lists

The Appie service also includes a recipe finder that helps customers find relevant recipes in a database of more than 10,000 recipes. Recipes are an important part of the service because they help customers decide the tricky question of what to eat. Customers can filter down results based on lifestyle preferences and recipe parameters and incorporate those ingredients into their lists like they do with products.

Integrated delivery done right

Using agile methodology (designers, developers, test analysts and a team of product owners working in one space throughout the whole process) frog, Albert Heijn, and other contracted companies (Cap Gemini, Icemobile, and Qualogy).* have been able to collaborate and communicate seamlessly. This enabled the team to rapidly deliver Appie across multiple platforms like the PC and iPad, while the iPhone and Android App being delivered by another Albert Heijn team.* It also allows the team to work with Albert Heijn to progressively enhance Appie with new features and better data every month.

Where to go next?

Nowadays more than 350,000 households in The Netherlands use the Appie platform daily as their personal shopping assistant that helps them shop for their daily groceries. In the coming year Appie will include enhanced features like home delivery and a more personalized offering.

The Golden Ratio Otherwise Known as Feng Shui

Mario van der Meulen — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 03:21:23 -0500

Earlier this week, one of our visual designers in Shanghai shared a jpg file depicting the Apple Inc. icon, and its construction using circles and seemingly complicated math. A native Chinese, he wondered if the Western icon had to be designed so pre-calculated in order to be considered as “good design.” During our talks, I related this design principle to the established Chinese practice of Feng Shui.

Despite its perception in the West, Feng Shui does not involve mythology. Perhaps because of the manner it is talked about and presented, Feng Shui often gets brushed aside as superstitious hoo-ha. However, at the core, Feng Shui is an approach to energy, not an expression of religion. Feng Shui, referred as “qi,” can be described as the energy that surrounds everything in the world. For the West, this is recognized as electromagnetic energy or gravitational magnetic energy. While many Westerners believe that Feng Shui is only based on Asian mystical philosophy, it is in fact rooted much more in science.

The true application of Feng Shui is a scholarly study, unimpeded by any superstition. Despite its portrayal, Feng Shui has nothing to do with red front doors or water features. Feng Shui is, quite literally, the ability to detect and correct the imbalances in the flow of energies through observation and repeatable calculations, as well as the implementation of time-honored methodologies. By the proportioning of natural and artificial artifacts, Feng Shui creates a balanced environment that allows natural energy to reach its full potential. The ideal flow is strong where it has to be, and soft or slow where it can be. That flow is never a straight line that has to cover the shortest distance, but rather proportionate and incremental “waves” or swirls. Feng Shui is a benchmark ruling system that measures the quality of harmony.

None of this is uncommon or even new for Western cultures. Where Feng Shui is an Eastern approach to harmony and balance, the West applies a mathematical and numeral approach to measure the same thing. The Golden Ratio is one of the precepts that shares similar principles and objectives as Feng Shui.

The Golden Ratio is numerically described as 1:62. The Fibonacci numbers are a key component to this ratio. All you Da Vinci Code readers may recall that the secret to Da Vinci’s genius was his ability to apply the Golden Ratio in the composition and symmetry within his works. Da Vinci applied this rule to shape perfection.

Did I geek you out by that? All apologies if I did, but there is more to it than famous paintings and best-selling books. This ratio is all around us. The Fibonacci numbers can be traced throughout nature, from branching in trees, to the leaf arrangements in plants, to the scales of a pineapple and even the curves of waves. The sequence is applicable to the growth of every living being, including a single cell, a grain of wheat, even human DNA. Heck, even the bones in your fingers are proportioned roughly to the 1:62 scale.

Because the number and ratio keep popping up everywhere, humans have evolved with a pre-disposition to feel comfort and natural beauty in objects that reflect the ratio. We’ve applied it in architecture and art, as well as in music compositions and even facial recognition software. We know most of the famous examples, such as the Egyptian pyramids or the Christian cross, but everyday mundane objects hold this principle as well. Your credit cards, for example are perfect Golden Ratio rectangles.

So while the outcome of a Golden Ratio proportioned design is to have an enhanced appeal and attractive energy, the basic principle of Feng Shui is that everything is energetically connected, and its purpose is to help create balanced and harmonious energies. I see both as sharing the same objectives, be it one is numerical and linear (the Golden Ratio), and the other is more lucid and spatial. Both are creative outcomes that resonate and link with our emotional well-being. To say both are one and the same would be oversimplifying it, but there are common grounds beyond a human desire to formulate a measurable success.

Back to this memorable symbol, the Apple icon. The jpg demonstrates how the icon fits the Golden Ratio composition rules, and few of us would challenge that this brand has “something going for itself.” I would also argue that it contains a certain positive and charismatic energy, which equals good Feng Shui.

This poses the next question – are there brands out there that do well – or fail to do so – because of their Feng Shui?

At eight, Mario van der Meulen could list up to 64 Crayola colors by heart, and today, he knows all of them by Pantone swatch number, plus the ecological impact each of those inks hold. He is a globe-trotting, urban-adventuring, vintage-collecting optimist who finds inspiration in the details of everyday life. Mario is Creative Director at frog, based in Shanghai, China. In 2012, Mario was recognized by CBNweekly as one of China's Top 50 Innovation Pioneers. You can follow Mario @SGTHdesigns.