design mind - business. technology. design.

New Digital Economics Silicon Valley

sabrina.sandalo — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 19:41:37 -0600

What Professional Designers Can Learn from the DIY Crowd

Adam Silver — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 16:11:57 -0600

It used to work something like this: when you had a design problem, you called in the pros. Let's say you sought the ultimate ergonomic office chair, or a device that redefined portable audio. You called in the industry elite to create an innovative product for you. For decades, we've approached design as the province of experts. But in recent years, there has been an explosion of user-generated design. Talented people are going it alone and bringing their designs directly to market.

What changed? In short: the Internet. The web has provided budding entrepreneurs with easy access to the materials, manufacturers, and talent that previously required corporate relationships and massive scale to acquire. It also allows entrepreneurs to better understand what they should be building - just by asking around online. It even provides the market, giving vendors access to scores of potential buyers through the web. Without the up-front costs of brick-and-mortar stores, it's easier than ever to reach an audience and make a buck. And, when anyone can set up an Etsy store to sell knitwear, everyone is a designer.

Success stories are everywhere. The Hidden Radio & Bluetooth Speaker, a recent project by John VDN and Vitor Santa Maria, has received raves from Wired.com, Core77 and BoingBoing. Designers by trade, John and Vitor recognized the need for a better portable speaker. The pair spent $50,000 of their own money to develop a prototype , then turned to Kickstarter to help fund their project. The site granted them a huge market of potential buyers and the ability to scale their project nearly risk-free. They've raised $938,771, nearly three times their goal. If they hadn't met their $125,000 threshold, everyone who pledged would have gotten their money back, leaving John and Vitor free to refine the concept. Kickstarter's low-risk, high-reward environment is exactly the type of online phenomenon that's encouraging entrepreneurs to make their own stuff.

There's another, potentially more radical model: fully crowdsourced product design. This online model was used to build Ray, a nifty solar charger for mobile devices that attaches via suction cup to a window (a house, car, airplane, etc.). The concept was driven by the buzz-worthy website Quirky, which has graduated from helping to prototype and manufacture simple plastic gadgets to producing fully formed gadgets purely via member input. In the case of the Ray, everything from the concept to the product's pricing was determined through direct user feedback. Quirky's relationships with manufacturers allow it to produce a huge variety of products, and more each year. And the Darwinian model ensures that only the best products get made, and ensure they have an audience of potential buyers awaiting them. Other competitors, such as Shapeways, are having success with a similar model.

What do these gadget marketplaces resemble? More than anything else, they seem to be getting their cues from app stores. Popularized by Apple, app stores have since been adopted by nearly every smart phone manufacturer and desktop operating system. While the web is the ultimate open marketplace, app stores have provided the necessary scaffolding - a built-in audience of users and a centralized market where entry costs are relatively low and exposure is high - to draw users and developers together. Indeed, it gave rise to folks such as Ethan Nicholas, who wrote the best-selling iShoot game in his spare time to pay his mortgage. The app wound up being one of the most popular iPhone games of all time, netting him more than $35,000 in a single day. He is hardly alone; market-research firm iSuppli predicts that the four major mobile-app stores will do $3.8 billion in sales this year.

What does all this mean for the pros? So far, the DIY projects have trended toward the simple, the straightforward and, occasionally, the gimmicky. This is in part due to the limitations of self-manufacturing. There are still many products which are too challenging to tackle with this model. But the passion, dedication and commitment of these designers is undeniable. More interestingly, many of these designers credit their breakthrough insights to the simple fact that, at least at first, they were designing for themselves. It's a reminder of the natural limitations of design research: no matter how hard we may endeavor to understand a target audience, users will understand themselves and their needs far more intimately. When they are empowered with the skills to design and build towards their own solutions, it's not surprising that they will sometimes build it better.

As designers, this realization is humbling, but also something that can improve our own form. When approaching the design process, how often do we attempt to build for ourselves, and consider whether we would want to use the product? How often do we channel our own passions, curiosities and beliefs into the things we build? We have arguably focused on the "other" for far too long, fetishizing what makes us different and unique. This sometimes yields smart insights and better products. But it can also create a problematic sense of distance between our users and us. This can hinder our work and produce generic, lifeless products. By identifying with our target, we are more likely to build products we love to use, and that others love to use as well. It is these products that will have the greatest chance of success whether we sell those products to our clients, our friends - or over the Internet.

This article originally appeared on TheAtlantic.com

发现颠覆性商机的四种途径

Luke Williams (卢克*威廉姆斯） — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 01:57:54 -0600

人们常常说：“苹果公司根本就不需要作消费者调研。”这句话通常会被作为反驳各种“需要作市场调研”观点的开场白。而事实上，苹果公司的设计人员也会进行相关的市场调研，只不过他们所做的这种市场调研不是你能够从消费者行为学的教材中找到的那些传统的调研方式。苹果公司所做的市场调研是对其产品被使用时的一种非正式的、即兴的敏锐观察。是否具有深刻的洞察力与天赋无关，关键在于意识。

意识的关键在于，关注你周边的文化、社会结构以及明确你的创意所服务的对象。其实我们每个人都曾有过意识方面的体验。例如，当你决定购买一辆黄色的MI-NI　Cooper汽车时，你就会开始四处留意这款车。当然，在你决定购买此款车前，这些车就已经在那里了，不同的是你现在才开始意识到，并开始关注它们。

恐惧缘于不可感知

关于消费者在苹果商店中与苹果笔记本电脑互动的情况，乔纳森.维，苹果公司的工业设计高级副总裁，是这样描述自己的观察的：“消费者在苹果店中更注重的是亲身接触的体验感受，他们从不介意通过移动或者触摸这些电脑来体验”。这一观察让乔纳森得出了一个重要的结论：“人们对于可感知的东西是不会产生恐惧感的，然而，一旦对某些东西或者事物产生了恐惧感，那就绝不会想去触摸它了。”

对苹果公司来说，这就是一个很好的商机，通过科技在消费者和苹果电脑之间建立了一种直接的接触体验，从而带给消费者一种实实在在的掌控感。我们再来思考一下关于“人们对于可感知的东西不会产生恐惧感”的说法，这是一种只有通过消费者与科技的互动来仔细观察才能够得出的结论。为了培养洞察力、发现商机，你需要仔细地观察消费者在体验时的真实表现，并善于抓住他们真情流露的那一瞬间，而不是只听消费者叙述自己的感受。

为什么说这点非常重要呢？这是因为仅仅为了颠覆而颠覆是毫无意义的。很多假设之所以最终停留在假设阶段，而没能成为现实，并不是因为假设太荒唐，而是因为颠覆的益处并没有被很清晰的体现出来。换句话说，缺少的并不是创意，而是消费者的视角。

要想真正具备洞察力，就需要掌握这点：将自己置身于消费者的世界中，从他们的角度去观察他们眼里的事物到底是什么样的。关键在于观察，而不是听说。我们应该从假设所处的现实环境入手，看看谁在那里？他们需要什么？什么能够刺激他们去购买？只有站在消费者角度去思考这些问题，才能够将假设转化为切实可行的商机。

归纳起来就是：假设引发了观察，观察锤炼了见解，见解孕育了商机。

我究竟在寻找什么？

我经常听到人们在市场调研时常会问一个问题：“我正在寻找什么？”而对此问题最普遍的回答是：“这是一个令人头疼的问题。”但很遗憾，这个答案在多数情况下都是不正确的。商务人士所接受的教育要求他们只需要关注问题，即那些运作不正常的事情，然后解决问题。这些人的座右铭是：如果一切正常，就无需去解决。

最成功的经理人通常都是那些能够快速找到关键问题，善于分析复杂数据，然后通过敏锐的思考得出解决方案的人。大多数经理人都成了这方面的专家，他们在物质奖励下（一般是业绩奖金），会尽快的解决问题。归根结底，我认为大多数调研者的目的就是试图找到问题，然后解决问题。

但是这样一来，那些调查者的思维就会被“要找出重要问题”的观念所限制，以至于做调研时完全忽略了其他事物。由于问题本身是显而易见的，因此去“发现问题”往往看上去是一项更容易完成的工作。然而，消费者的不满也是显而易见的，即使是调查者作为一个局外人，也很容易对此感同身受。但是，在某些情况下，那些貌似正常的细微之处恰恰就蕴含着大量的创新机会，虽然人们一直对这些看似正常的地方有所抱怨，却从未给予足够的重视。它们经常会被人们所忽视，因为这些情况很久以来一直如此，从未改变过。

“小毛病”：

因为太微小而容易被忽略

想一想刷房子用的简陋的涂料桶吧。多年以来，当人们打开涂料桶时，都是用螺丝刀撬开上面的盖子，一直如此，从未改变过。但是，现在荷兰男孩油漆公司（Dutch　Boy　Paint）推出了一种名为“Twist　&　Pour”的塑料制成的涂料桶，其特点是使用者可以轻松拧开桶盖，并且桶上还配有一个特制的壶嘴，解决了传统涂料桶倒出涂料后的滴撒问题。另外，通过涂料桶上的壶把，使用者还可以控制所倒出的涂料量，有了壶把也方便使用者携带。荷兰男孩油漆公司的营销总监亚当·察夫说：“来自消费者的反馈说，这种塑料容器是一种包装上的创新，早就应当有人想到这个方法了。”这个例子说明，大家以习以为常的做事方法（如用螺丝刀撬开涂料桶）可能远不是最理想的方法。

所以，你应该将时间用在寻找并解决那些不是问题的问题，即所谓的“小毛病”上，而不是去关注那些所谓的大问题。这些小毛病并不像那些“大”问题那么显眼，但通常都是人们感觉不方便、一直在抱怨的、微不足道的事情，因为大家经常会忽视这些地方，所以很难发现。

在调研时一定要做到目标明确，这样就更容易发现那些小问题，下面列出四种特定类型的“小毛病”：

权宜之计

这种解决问题的方法看起来似乎快速有效，但治标不治本，其作用只是有针对性地解决某个问题所显现出来的弊端，而无法彻底的解决问题。实际上，采取权宜之计这种解决问题的方法是很危险的，因为问题所反映出来的弊端一旦被消除之后，人们可能就会丧失解决问题本身的动力了。从长远来看，由于问题没有得到根本性的解决，问题本身就会越变越糟，人们最终不得不再次采取权宜之计。

消费价值观

消费者购买商品的动机在很大程度上取决于人们的消费价值观。对消费者来说，什么是他们认为值得的？什么是最重要的？而什么又是不重要的？当一个产品、一项服务或者一种购物体验与消费者的消费观念发生冲突的时候，往往就会出现我们所说的“小毛病”。

罗伯特·卡普斯在其于《连线》（Wired）杂志上发表的题为“刚刚好的革命”的文章中，将人们消费价值观的改变称为MP3效应：“我们现在更注重音乐是否可以随身携带而非音乐的音质（也就是说，MP3比CD更受消费者欢迎），更注重听歌的方便性而非歌曲的音色。我们喜欢快速获得音乐甚至下载盗版，也不愿像过去一样，为了听到精益求精的音乐而付出漫长的等待。

人们更关心的是可以随时随地听到音乐，并不要求音乐有多完美。这种改变已经变得非常广泛和深入人心。因此，当人们现在说一件产品是”高品质“产品时，其所代表的意义已经是今非昔比了。”

我们需要注意观察消费者对品质要求的变化，现在的人们是注重高品质的产品还是更倾向于低品质的产品。消费者对于所购买的产品或服务的消费价值观有所变化吗？这种变化是否说明消费者需求的产品与现实中所能买到的产品之间是有差距的？

消费习惯

通常情况下，人们越是反复重复一项行为，形成的惯性就越强，那么改变这种行为的可能性就越小。例如，很多银行的客户都说他们不喜欢自己的开户银行，希望换一家银行。但是一想到要关闭当前银行的账户，再去其他银行开户，他们就会觉得很麻烦，所以为了避免麻烦，他们宁可选择不换银行。消费者虽然对产品不满意，却会被惯性驱使，这正是我们需要发现的“小毛病”。留意观察消费者因为习惯使然而不得不处于某种环境中，打破这种习惯或者从消费者的惯性入手就可以创造出新的商机。

2005年10月，美国银行（Bank　of　America）就针对人们的消费习惯，获得了一个重要发现：那就是人们在交易时习惯按照整数的价格买卖，他们通常会将不足1美元的金额自动增加到1美元，因为这样就不需要找零钱，更加方便快捷。于是，美国银行决定推出一项“存零钱”的业务，当消费者使用美国银行的借记卡消费时，美国银行虽然会以整数价格结算，但会将实际货物价格与结账价格之间的差额，即化零为整所多收的钱返还到持卡人的账户内。自从推出这项业务以来，已经有超过70万人在美国银行开设了新的支票账户，100万人开设了新的存款账户。

应该要与想要之间

选择自己想要的产品，即消费者希望马上拥有的东西，还是选择应该要的产品，也就是从长远来看对消费者自己有益的东西，这是一个值得人们思考的问题。人们一直在两者之间犹豫不决。丹（Dan）和奇普·西斯（Chip　Heath）在他们《快捷》（Fast　Company）杂志的专栏中写道：“人们需要来拯救自己，这正是一个商机。”他们在文章中还提到了哈佛商学院博士生凯瑟琳·克曼（Katherine　Milkman）所作的研究，克曼一直致力于研究消费者是如何在“应该要的”产品和“想要的”产品之间进行选择的，她建议将二者合二为一。例如，西斯这样写道：“锻炼身体是"应该要的"，那如果健身房可以提供订阅杂志的服务呢？这样的话，如果你想看新一期的《名利场》（Vanity　Fair）（想要的产品），你就必须去一趟健身房。再比如电影出租连锁店百视达（Blockbuster）如果可以提供这样的服务呢-　只要消费者租纪录片（“应该要的”）就可以获得一桶免费的爆米花（“想要的”）？请留意人们"想要的"产品与"应该要的"产品之间的状态吧，在这样一个过程中，消费者需要帮助来拯救自己吗？”

需要澄清的一点是，我并不是抱怨市场调研的面面俱到和包罗万象，而是要申明市场调研不应该是这个样子，它应该是一种培养定性观察的有效方法。无论你怎么命名这种调研方法，它都应该具备快速、非正式以及直观的特点，其中最重要的一点是应具备可行性。整个调研的过程不应该超过两三天，在大多数情况下，它应该在两三个小时内就完成。通过这些学习，你能够尽早了解这种方法是否是有效的。如果有效，就可以进行下一步工作；否则，你只需要重新返回并修改，而不需要再耗费太多的时间和金钱重新来过。

当然，你也可以将成千上万的资金投入到有关人口统计学、心理学的市场细分、小组讨论以及定性研究等调研方法上。但我认为在市场调研的初始阶段尤其是在创新阶段，只需要通过简单地观察消费者的消费行为并向他们询问一些事先设计好的问题，就可以获得更满意的信息。

这种调研方法的成本低，有时甚至可以免费地完成。

共同期待下次Love What You Make急速面试

frog Shanghai — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 23:22:31 -0600

frog上海工作室近期成功举办了Love What You Make急速面试活动。本次活动邀请了16名从事设计相关行业的学生朋友们参与其中，他们与12名来自frog的团队菁英分享了其精彩作品并获取到来自青蛙们独到的意见、建议、经验与灵感。

活动中frog资深交互设计师Ryan介绍了本次活动的概念，亚太区市场总监Emily向参加活动的朋友们介绍了frog的前世今生，使得他们对frog有了更深入直观的了解。急速面试活动基于”speed networking”概念，每个参加活动的设计师会有两次面试机会，每次面试限定时间为10分钟。活动进行的如火如荼，参加活动的设计师纷纷拿出其得意作品与frog分享，整个活动在一个充满激情，紧张又不失闲趣的氛围下进行着。frog高级设计技术师Tobi给大家带来的音乐将整个活动气氛推至最高点。

本次活动共持续两个小时，活动中frog还向各位设计师提供了frog设计刊物design mind及Luke Williams的精彩读物《颠覆性思维》。参加活动的设计师们与大家分享了他们对于本次活动的看法，帮助frog将今后的急速面试活动做到最好。

让我们一同来期待下一次的Love What You Make！

活动精彩图片分享：

Davos Debrief: Data, Power, Happiness – It’s Getting Personal

Tim Leberecht — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 22:37:56 -0600

Following a year in which “people power” was the rallying cry from the Arab Spring to Occupy Wall Street, the World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting 2012 in Davos, which ended last Sunday, might seem like an elitist anachronism, but it is worth noting how the WEF over the past few years has tried in earnest to include voices from civil society as well as younger generations – from new, very active communities within the WEF such as the Young Global Leaders and the Global Shapers to – this year – even Occupy Davos. The result: As a “platform for multi-stakeholder dialogue between business, society, and politics” (in the words of WEF founder and executive chairman Professor Klaus Schwab), the WEF is more relevant than ever (full disclosure: I am a member of the WEF Global Agenda Council on Values in Decision-Making).

This year’s theme was The Great Transformation (borrowed from Karl Polanyi’s seminal 1944 book), inspired by the urgent need to explore new models of leadership and value-creation in the wake of a fundamental (identity, confidence, moral?) crisis of capitalism (sovereign debt crisis, lack of trust in business, growing inequality, etc.). Consequently, Professor Schwab remarked in his opening speech: “Davos is the world’s sanatorium,” referring to the local facility that rose to world-literature fame through Thomas Mann’s novel The Magic Mountain. The mood was definitely somber, at least in the beginning, and lightened up only a few days into the conference when the intense debates and working sessions brought forward more optimistic approaches to solving the world’s pressing problems.

The main topics in Davos were the Euro crisis (of course); the Network Economy; Big (Personal) Data and its implications for our concepts of privacy, productivity, and collaboration; and Values (converging several strands such as Michael Porter’s more integrative “Shared Values” notion of corporate social responsibility, the rise of social entrepreneurship, or the quest to explore happiness as an alternative metric for measuring economic progress, both at a national and company level - more on that later).

If there was one overarching theme for all these tropes, then it was the dialectic relationship between the potential and the risks of technological innovation. One the one hand, optimists were bullish about the digital revolution that has given amateurs unprecedented access to technology, as Neil Gershenfeld, Director, The Center for Bits and Atoms, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), noted: “Technology is allowing ordinary people to change and improve the world.” This becomes manifest in digital literacy, grassroots innovation movements such as Maker Faire, 3D printing, the mobile apps developer ecosystem, open data, and hackers-for-good communities. And the emergence of cloud computing means than anyone can quickly launch data-intensive businesses, which is accelerating innovation, product cycles, and competition.

On the other hand, the gap between individual understanding and technological progress seems to be growing. People’s fears about misuse of personal data, which led the European Commission to propose rather draconian data protection laws for Internet service providers and other data collectors, is creating a “huge barrier to progress,” observed David Blumenthal, Professor of Medicine and Professor of Health Policy at the Harvard Medical School, and a member of the WEF Global Agenda Council on Digital Health. The general public needs to better understand science and technology, he urged.

Public Parts-author and digeratus emeritus Jeff Jarvis sees the digital revolution disrupt every single industry and institution, and believes that technology is leading to an “efficiency over growth” paradigm, with far-reaching implications: “Productivity will improve. Companies will be more profitable. Wealth will be created. But employment will suffer.” Jarvis acknowledges that great wealth can be created by serving millions of people with relatively small staff – see Google, Facebook, Amazon, and other icons of the digital economy – but he cautions that this might just further widen the income and capital disparity, which is “just wide enough today to cause unrest around the world,” as he writes on his blog. “That’s much of what #Occupy_WEF et al is about. That’s what is causing such tsuris and uncertainty on the stages of the world (Economic Forum). That’s what is causing the institutions represented here to fear, resist, and regulate technology in the hopes of forestalling the change it is bringing. There is the root of the disruption we’re witnessing now even in Davos.”

The Arab Spring exemplifies the ambivalence societies presently face when it comes to technology. Yes, technology has given ordinary people, particularly the youth, a voice to question the status quo and the power to even topple regimes. It has created and amplified (a sense of) urgency, and it has opened the door to being part of emerging governance, but as we witness in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, it has not necessarily enabled the creation of stable, truly inclusive governments and economies that produce the kind of steep job growth these countries so desperately need.

Technological innovation is also overshadowed by widespread pessimism and a credibility deficit that have resulted from the failure of institutions to effectively deal with a number of the recent economic and environmental crises. Trust in government and business has further plummeted, reports the Edelman Trust Barometer 2012, and there appears to be a fundamental loss of confidence in decision-making, with large parts of society – particularly young people and the majority of the impoverished – feeling that they’re being left out of the process, despite the democratizing effects of social technology and media. Some in Davos therefore called for a new “social covenant” that mandates fairness and mutual benefit for all, but not only by redistributing wealth more evenly, but by including all parts of society in the creation of wealth (“inclusive growth”) and the decisions that drive it.

But here’s the problem, as far as business is concerned: While there is broad consensus on corporations’ means (and responsibility) to positively impact society (the leadership role of business, so to speak), business leaders themselves may no longer be the right people to spearhead it. Sure, corporate bosses still hold considerable sway over creating a meaningful experience for their employees (they can “create and kill meaning,” asserts the McKinsey Quarterly). But although CEOs are undoubtedly held more accountable than ever, they are facing not only an erosion of trust but also an erosion of their power. A recent Economist article describes these "shackled CEOs" as Gullivers who are tied down by Lilliputian forces – whether these are powerful boards, empowered employees, or a public that demands radical transparency. Consequently, among the world’s 2,500 biggest public companies, the average job tenure for departing CEOs has fallen from 8.1 years in 2000 to 6.6 years today, according to consultancy Booz & Company. In light of this trend, buzz words such as “humble leadership,” “servant leadership,” “open leadership,” and “bottom-up leadership” make the rounds, and Doreen Lorenzo, the president of frog, contends that the increased complexity of decision-making will lead to a “post-CEO world” where companies must move “from a guru model to one based on team leadership.”

Ironically, at the political level, the most inclusive model, democracy, is losing its halo, as it becomes pressured by ever-more demanding citizens whose frustration with their elected representatives and more publicized cases of corruption, nepotism, and decision paralysis is nowadays quickly amplified by social technologies. The Euro zone may be on the brink of disintegration, and the democratic legitimacy of the European Union, with so much policy-making power delegated to supranational authorities in Brussels, remains questionable.

The potent alternatives were on show in Davos, but not everybody may 'like' them: For one thing, there is state capitalism, which can claim credits for driving recent history’s most remarkable economic success stories: Singapore, Russia, Brazil, the UAE, and of course China. Over the past three decades China’s GDP has grown at an average rate of 9.5% a year, and over the past ten years its GDP has more than trebled to $11 trillion. This makes it the world’s second-biggest economy, and the world’s biggest market for many consumer goods.

A digital governance alternative is Facebook, arguably the world’s most powerful transnational organization, with a network of users that would count as the world’s third largest country. It already stores more data than any national government alone, and with its popularity, network effects, and comprehensive analytics, it holds significant deterministic powers: it can mobilize communities, influence constituents, predict trends and events, and draw a possibly discriminatory line between inclusivity and exclusivity (“weblining,” as law professor Lori Andrews calls it in her NY Times article “Facebook is Using You”). Like Google, it is inevitably evolving into the “The Matrix” or the uber-stream of what David Gelernter prophetically anticipated in 1990 as “Lifestreams” – albeit with little to no space left for ambiguity: the vision of a data-centric universe is one where human decision-making will be binary, with targeting so chirurgical that every '(life)stream of consciousness' will end with a clear ‘yes.’

Conversely, optimists herald the same personal data as a potential source for human development (e.g., through e-philanthropy or open-data initiatives such as the Worldbank’s) and refer to the rise of social innovation, social entrepreneurship, for-profit activism, and the concept of the Social Enterprise (as in Marc Benioff’s “Speedy-Open-Collaboration-Individuals-Alignment-Leadership” line). All of which are all fueled by the “new oil” data, if only it is put in the right hands.

And data can propel happiness, which has emerged as the buzzword de jour in business circles, also in Davos. Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh has established it as his mission and primary business objective (shoes are just a means to an end), and his book Delivering Happiness was a national bestseller. Virgin, Coca-Cola, and other consumer brands have made it their core brand promise. Healthcare companies, and other industries, are looking into social products and services to promote it. After the King of Bhutan pioneered a Gross National Happiness Index in 1972, initially subject to much ridicule, NGOs such as the New Economics Foundation have been promoting it, and more and more corporations and governments (UK, India, France, etc.) are now exploring happiness as a holistic metric for economic progress and effective governance. And the Harvard Business Review, in its current issue, even devotes a special report to the "Value of Happiness,” arguing that employee well-being can boost productivity, customer loyalty, and ultimately profits. Two years ago, who would have thought that this publication had a cover on happiness! It seems as if the tougher the times, the harder the soft topics become. This is encouraging.

[image credit: The Globe and Mail]

中国：创新与消费的未来－意见领袖调研活动

frog Shanghai — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 04:08:09 -0600

您是否一直关注科技、文化、经济以及设计的发展趋势？想要发表自己的独到见解吗？想与更多的意见领袖分享自己的经验和体会吗？快来参与frog的调研活动并与我们分享您的真知灼见！

frog的资深设计研究员Kajal Vatsa、创意总监Brandon Berry Edwards及资深交互设计师张雷中将会在SXSW 2012互动展览会的Interactive 2012环节中进行主题为“中国：创新与消费的未来”的演讲。

此次演讲将会从多角度展开讨论，如文化、科技与设计等。演讲内容包括：1. 具有中国特色的创新科技；2. 年轻一代对科技的态度和行为；3. 社交媒体的变化与预测；4. 医疗健康发展；5. 娱乐与新媒体趋势；等等。

本次调研活动中frog将与各位分享更多演讲信息，并邀请各位针对各自经历和体验提出见解，精彩的互动环节及美食都将在活动中一一呈现。恭请各位光临！frog将为各位积极分享见解的嘉宾们提供精美纪念品。

新浪微博活动页面：http://event.weibo.com/335326

Love What You Make

frog Shanghai — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 04:27:57 -0600

Love What You Make 你是否准备好在设计界展露头角大放光芒？你是否对自己的作品充满激情？你是否愿意与青蛙们一对一分享你的作品并获取他们独到的意见与建议？

青蛙诚邀您加入Love What You Make活动并且与我们分享您正在进行的项目或设计作品！活动中青蛙设计将会派出资深团队设计菁英与参加活动的15名明日之秀进行一对一的快速指导教学并从中获取青蛙独到的意见、建议、经验与灵感。活动基于“speed networking”概念，每个参加活动的设计师将会与1名青蛙面对面并分享其设计作品，限定交谈时间为10分钟。你也有机会从本次活动中了解到青蛙设计的前世今生并且结交新朋友。

活动规则：

• 本人来自设计相关专业—不论是互动设计师、视觉动画师还是工业设计师，只要本人拥有得意作品与我们分享，那么Welcome!

• 设计师有10分钟时间来向青蛙介绍分享其个人作品。如果你试图拖延时间，那么Sorry!

• 设计师可以随身携带自己的作品集。但仅能与青蛙分享一个作品，青蛙不接受任何形式的“讨价还价”。

新浪微博活动页面：http://event.weibo.com/331508

豆瓣活动页面：http://www.douban.com/event/15623843

The Myth of the Brand New Innovation Myth

Fabio Sergio — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 10:09:12 -0600

A version of this article also appears on FastCoDesign.

One could argue that Steve Jobs’ prominence in the collective imagination of what a truly innovative business leader should think, say, and do has only strengthened exponentially after his recent demise. As it often happens in the case of similarly influential, seminal figures, the hard recollection of facts and of “what really happened” gets quickly out-shined by references to memorable, albeit often anecdotal, events in that person's life. These are the stories that tend to be told again and again until they take on the aura of myths, and as even the modern Greeks can easily attest most human beings tend to embrace myths, especially when they come wrapped in compelling narratives involving a hero.

Along these lines one could also argue that Jobs’ near-ubiquitous biography has been instrumental in this still ongoing “mythification” process: If you happen to work as a professional in the creative industry, countless conversations these days start with a client, a colleague, or even a friend quoting a passage from the book, and one can can come to see this state of things either as a precious conversation starter or as an unavoidable reference to someone whom you're expected to either praise or criticize.

There's no denying that the role Jobs has come to play in the field of innovation-at-large is usually associated with the term “genius”—and I largely agree with this value statement—but what I’m interested in is how Jobs’ role in the high-tech industry fits with the forces currently shaping the perception of where innovation comes from in a contemporary business environment, both in large corporations and in small start-ups.

Are innovation and creativity the material of über-talented individuals working in splendid isolation, or are they the result of a team effort, even when well-orchestrated by a conductor?

The motivation for the reflections that follow relates to the slowly-building backlash against the current widespread industry notion that today's innovative businesses need to be structured around a shared vision, cross-disciplinary group collaboration, and a deep understanding of the intended end-users of their products or services.

Distributed evidence for this apparent innovation "pendulum swing" can be found in recent articles, including "Groupthink" by Jonah Lehrer in the New Yorker and “The Rise of the New Groupthink”, by Susan Cain in the New York Times. Lehrer takes the position that brainstorming is useless, while Cain posits that the current obsession with collaboration and “groupthink” needs to be rebalanced in light of evidence highlighting the key role that lone and often introverted thinkers and inventors have played in major recent and not-so-recent breakthrough innovations.

I cannot but associate these considerations with those that have fueled recursive debates around the role user research plays in driving truly disruptive rather than incremental innovation. For example, after the publication of his book Design-Driven Innovation, economist Roberto Verganti posted various reflections on the Harvard Business Review website, questioning the role and sustainability of so-called user-driven innovation.

In a recent-past-that-feels-like-ages-ago, these opposing visions of the world used to pitch Sony against Nokia, with Sony usually representing the “creating desire and demand” camp, and Nokia typically getting associated with the user-centered approach. Most recently, Apple has replaced Sony in flying the flag of “people don't really know what they will love until we show it to them” (this quote being my own anecdotal contribution to the Myth of Jobs), and Nokia's slot has arguably been filled by companies like Google with its data driven decision-making process, or Facebook and Twitter, both of which constantly evolve their services around customer feedback or manifest behavior.

So, what gives?

Is innovation the result of the prophetic reflections of lone, introverted, self-centered, creative geniuses, or instead the fruit of the collaboration of a group of talented contributors working together to shape a collective shared vision?

Are radically innovative (and successful) products and services the result of disruptive technologies and effective marketing acumen aimed at generating desire, or should markets and technological innovation eminently follow what people want, need, dream of, or aspire to, whether those desires are consciously expressed or need to be uncovered using insight-generating research techniques?

As a designer I think the answer is yes.

That’s because I don’t think there is an archetypal, simplistic image of what type of personality or process best fosters innovative thinking, or even what type of physical working environment can best support a creative culture. That view of the world is too polarized. In my experience there is no single specific behavioral trait, methodological approach, or carefully-selected set of contextual factors that guarantees success in the ability to think differently and translate that thinking into success in the market.

That said, there is indeed a common trait in the typical way creative thinkers approach challenges: they can comfortably hold opposing thoughts in their heads and get to work. At times, this trait can be misconstrued as “the magic of creativity” and especially in the design field I frown when I hear that label because it reveals a preconception that designers are industrial artists that purely rely on their intuition to give shape to their solutions. Not so. The truth is that designers often confidently leap off an unstable conceptual platform with the apparent confidence that the resulting oxymoronic cognitive springboard will not just overlook an empty pool and a hard landing.

Informed intuition. Controlled chaos. Abductive analysis. This is often the mindset of successful creative, innovative thinkers: seeing opposites and apparently contradicting goals not just as a potential for dissonance, but as an opportunity for dynamic harmony.

To paraphrase one of Walt Whitman's most famous verses “creative thinkers are vast, they contain multitudes”: creativity is inherently inclusive.

I will quickly also add that this ability applies to all creative thinkers, whether they are indeed designers, artists, technologists, engineers or economists, and however they might be labeled as, CEO, CMO, CTO, CCO or ABCDO.

Ok, so what now? The truth does not lie in the extremes, and definitely also not in the middle. The truth lies in harnessing the positive tension between the extremes, and fine-tuning it until it resonates with what current technologies can enable and with what intended consumers and end-users are ready to adopt in a given socio-cultural economic context.

Think of all the vectors that typically influence bringing a truly innovative product or service to market, and imagine them individually stretched amidst the opposing constraints that often define their conceptual and practical boundaries (time to market, development cycles, user experience, technical feasibility, branding, business models, just to name a few). Now imagine all these vectors as taut guitar strings, one alongside the other. Imagine fine-tuning each string so that it's in harmony with all the other ones when they are strummed together. Imagine this being not a one-off task, but a near-continuous activity that a talented musician needs to constantly perform as he or she is playing, not before.

Seeing an opportunity, a challenge, human beings, or the world as a whole, as multi-faceted systems that can only be approached in their full complexity: this syncretic way of thinking applies not just to the input, but also to the social and environmental context, and to the tools, process, and output of the work of creative individuals and groups.

From this conceptual standpoint, seeing brainstorming in opposition to solitary thinking, or user research as antithetical to disruptive innovation feels simply off the mark. These apparently opposing approaches are actually complementary, and effective innovators already use them as such, picking the right mind-frame and the accompanying tools and methodologies according to the specificities of the challenge at hand.

This holistic way of thinking and working is the trademark of places like the one I happen to be lucky enough to work in.

These are places where the physical working context combines an open-plan with project rooms of various sizes to support small group collaboration or individual focus, with plenty of highly transparent, portable cubicles most of my colleagues tend to refer to as “headphones”. They are environments where people can also comfortably work from home or from whatever concentration-inducing environment they prefer when they'd rather work alone uninterrupted. They supply a context in which an office is often not defined by walls surrounding an enclosed space, but happens to be the place where people live, work, and use the products and services we give shape to.

Also, these are places that are characterized by a highly collaborative, cross-disciplinary, and multicultural environment that encourages and often simply requires group collaboration because of the multifaceted complexity of the problems that need to be tackled. A context that at the same time expects every single team member to bring a strong individual point of view to an opportunity, a point of view fueled and sustained by personal passions and deep vertical knowledge.

These are places where a highly flexible process associates moments of deep immersion in the complex world of the people we shape solutions for, combined and interspersed with periods where rich stimuli are processed and interpreted to generate insights that inform the creative process without analytically prescribing mechanistic solutions.

Finally, these are places where effective ideation methodologies combine high-intensity collaborative workshops and workgroups, interspersed with slower moments of synthesis and evaluation, in groups or alone, integrating internal and external expertise, welcoming end-users as active participants to the creative process while still expecting team leaders to be the advocates and owners of a clear and well-communicated holistic vision.

Positing that the intuition of a visionary genius or the introduction of a disruptive technology are best poised to lead to radical innovation is simply a misleading construct, if postulated in absolute terms.

Maybe Jobs or Wozniak were such visionary geniuses working in uninterrupted solitary isolation … when they weren't busy working crazy-long hours with the rest of their über-talented crews, in a part of the world that's still today considered the cultural cradle of high-tech innovation.

The answer lies in harnessing the positive tensions that naturally build when any existing social or cultural paradigm can be challenged by the introduction of innovative ideas, products, or services. Without a profound understanding of what people will be ready and willing to introduce into their lives, even brilliant products have regularly failed on markets not mature enough to digest their full potential. Harnessing these tensions is in itself an art that only a group of talented individuals have proven to be capable of mastering.

Occupy Your (Open Source) Education

Kristina Loring — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 14:51:57 -0600

Student loan debt, a burden for the majority of young Americans who pursued higher education, was brought to the forefront when it became a tangible demand of the Occupy Wall Street Movement this fall. And it’s not wonder students are furious: According to the Wall Street Journal, in June 2010, total student-loan debt exceeded total credit-card debt for the first time, so it is no wonder the movement urged students to refuse to pay their loans.

So what can students do who are looking for a meaningful and engaging education, without forking over all that cash? Luckily, thanks to open source innovations and alternative learning platforms on the Internet, people are beginning to find new means to get their information, connect with experts and mentors to support their career path, and learn valuable skills, all while avoiding the expensive route of higher education. No longer are universities and colleges the gatekeepers of knowledge, but how does one go about parsing through all these new digital resources and personalizing them?

Fast Company writer and author of DIY U, Anya Kamentz, is an expert in the growing open source technology movement and it’s influence on the shifting paradigm of education in the U.S. In 2011, the Gates Foundation turned to Anya to write a free ebook follow up to DIY U. The Edupunks’ Guide, is a guidebook for independent learners that shares new methods of content delivery, new platforms and new forms of accreditation that harness technology for an alternative type of curriculum.

Today, Anya will launch her other ebook, Learning, Freedom, and the Web, in collaboration with the Mozilla Foundation. I sat down to chat about how infonauts or aspiring students can play in the open world, the truth behind “digital distraction,” and the role of creative professionals in reinventing the crumbling American education system.

Sciences, Humanities, and ... Design? The Case for a Third Pillar of Education

Jon Freach — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 12:42:45 -0600

During course reviews with students at the Austin Center for Design, where I am a professor, our faculty saw a concerning pattern. Many of our students were inhibited, some even fearful, of actually making things. Luckily, they were seeking advice and direction on how to use their hands and actually experiment.

But the problematic part was that they were students at a design school. We actively recruit and accept those without deep design backgrounds because of the other skills and experience they bring to our program like business, science, engineering, education, social work, or simply their intellectual curiosity and adeptness. We do this with full confidence that we can leverage our own design training to help them along. The expectation at our school is that students won't be creating just beautiful objects; they'll create beautifully smart and socially impactful ones.

But, the fear of literally making these designs was a bright red flag for our faculty.

Students often traced their inhibitions back to childhood when they first grew conscious of their teacher and peers' judgment. One student vividly recalled what it was like to have a teacher title his drawing for him to avoid inevitable confusion from grown-ups. His "making trauma" was intensified when he was in fourth grade and one of his paintings mistakenly got put into a first grad art show. He didn't win.

This condition is even more widespread the higher you go up the corporate ladder. At frog, we often engage our clients in visually creative exercises to tap their knowledge about a domain and strengthen our partnership in the design process. But, in three different collaborative work sessions that I've facilitated with clients in the past year, I've been told outright at the beginning: "I'm not good at this, so don't expect much."

In a 1979 research project at the Royal College of Art, Professor Bruce Archer referred to design as the missing "third area" of education; the first two areas were considered the sciences and the humanities. Later, in a small book, Designerly Ways of Knowing, educator Nigel Cross made a formal case for the addition of design to our general education, namely the K-12 curriculum. But, he was careful to point out the tricky nature of such a proposition. Cross argued that design, as an area of study, suffered from a legacy of being a technical vocation, where one is "trained" to be a designer, often through an apprenticeship of some sort. Its aims are extrinsic, meaning a student is equipped to perform in a specific social role such as an architect capable of competently designing a building. But general education, in addition to being non-technical, consists of intrinsic goals which contribute to an individual's self-realization and basic life skills. For instance, many of us learned the principles of math and use them to pay our taxes, but didn't become mathematicians. And, we read Shakespeare to learn about comedies and tragedies and the use of language, but didn't become playwrights.

In this context, theoretical understanding takes priority over "the how." But, to be a designer you need both forms of knowledge. With this in mind, Cross called for a "fundamental change of perspective" regarding design, if it were to be a part of general education. He asserts that an education in design must have value in and of itself and not just be influenced by extrinsic motivating factors such as getting a job.

If our students (and our clients for that matter) had benefited from a general education in design, would they be so apprehensive about the act of making things? What if that student's teacher had used a different tactic to present his work to the public, one that didn't lead to a crippling self-consciousness about making his visualizations real?

It's not for lack of talent that he and others don't naturally draw or make something. In fact, they're often really good at it when they try. Would a general education in design have relaxed his inhibitions and taught him to love what he makes no matter what? Perhaps this kind of education, with its intrinsic values, can develop "designerly" qualities and knowledge in people over the course of their formative years: help them develop an understanding and ease with the fundamentals of image and form, give them the skills to spot a wicked problem and the desire to tackle it, provide them with confidence in expressing their ideas, and instill the conviction to see their inventions to fruition. After all, we may be afraid to do our taxes, procrastinate paying our bills, or dread writing that email to a co-worker, but we do them anyway because of our lifetime of knowledge and experience with such social and cultural norms.

This article originally appeared on The Atlantic.