Design Thinking

Discover the world's best design practices—DesignBetter.Co

2021-04-04T12:47:42.113000Z

Discover the world's best design practices—DesignBetter.Co

https://www.designbetter.co/

Elevate your work with the best design practices, stories, and ideas from leading design experts—all on Design Better

Google Design

2021-04-04T12:47:53.687000Z

Google Design

https://design.google/

At Google we say, "Focus on the user and all else will follow." With this in mind, we seek to design experiences that inspire and enlighten our users.

Laws of Design

2021-04-04T12:47:57.400000Z

Laws of Design

http://lawsof.design/

Welcome to the new LawsOf.Design site ... that is clearly under construction . I’m in the process of writing a new book that will attempt to synthesize all of my links/thoughts/ideas out there into one coherent expression of what I think the "Laws of Design" for business are all about. —@johnmaeda Design in Tech Report Design and Venture Capital What is Design? Creative Leadership Laws of Simplicity Old Work by John Maeda Design.Co / @designdotco (under construction too) Copyright 2016, John Maeda

Muda (Japanese term) - Wikipedia

2022-03-28T17:14:09.516000Z

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muda_(Japanese_term)

Muda (Japanese term)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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For other uses, see Muda (disambiguation).

This article is written like a personal reflection or opinion essay that states a Wikipedia editor's personal feelings about a topic. Please help improve it by rewriting it in an encyclopedic style. (January 2008) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

Muda (無駄) is a Japanese word meaning "futility; uselessness; wastefulness",^[1] and is a key concept in lean process thinking, like the Toyota Production System (TPS) as one of the three types of deviation from optimal allocation of resources (the others being mura and muri).^[2] Waste reduction is an effective way to increase profitability.

From an end-customer's point of view, value-added work is any activity that produces goods or provides a service for which a customer is willing to pay; muda is any constraint or impediment that causes waste to occur.^[3]

There are two types of muda:^[4]

Muda Type I: non value-adding, but necessary for end-customers. These are usually harder to eliminate because while classified as non-value adding, they may still be necessary. For example, while an end-customer might not view quality inspection in car assembly as value-adding, it is necessary to ensure the car meets safety standards.
Muda Type II: non value-adding and unnecessary for end-customers. These contribute to waste, incur hidden costs, and should be eliminated.^[5]

The seven forms of waste[]

One of the key steps in lean process and TPS is to identify which activities add value and which do not, then to progressively work to improve or eliminate them.

Taiichi Ohno, "father" of the Toyota Production System, originally identified seven forms of muda or waste:^[6]

Later, an eighth waste, unused skills, was added.^{[citation needed]}

A mnemonic may be useful for remembering the categories of waste, such as TIM WOOD or TIM WOODS:^[7]

Transportation[]

Every time a product is touched or moved unnecessarily there is a risk that it could be damaged, lost, delayed, etc. as well as being a cost for no added value. Transportation does not add value to the product, i.e. is not a transformation for which the consumer is willing to pay.

Inventory[]

Whether in the form of raw materials, work-in-progress (WIP), or finished goods, represents a capital outlay that cannot yet produce an income. The longer a product sits in one of these states, the more it contributes to waste. The smooth, continuous flow of work through each process ensures excess amounts of inventory are minimized.

Motion[]

In contrast to transportation, which refers to damage and transaction costs associated with moving the product, motion refers to the damage and costs inflicted on what creates the product. This can include wear and tear for equipment, repetitive strain injuries for workers, or unnecessary downtime.

Waiting[]

Whenever the product is not in transportation or being processed, it is waiting (typically in a queue). In traditional processes, a large part of an individual product's life is spent waiting to be worked on.

Over-production[]

Making more of a product than is required results in several forms of waste, typically caused by production in large batches. The customer's needs often change over the time it takes to produce a larger batch. Over-production has been described as the worst kind of waste.^[8]

Over-processing[]

Doing more to a product than is required by the end-customer results in it taking longer and costing more to produce. This also includes using components that are more precise, complex, expensive or higher quality than absolutely required.^{[citation needed]}

Defects[]

Having to discard or rework a product due to earlier defective work or components results in additional cost and delays.

Unused skills[]

Organizations often under-utilize the skills their workers have or permit workers to operate in silos so that knowledge is not shared. This was added to the original seven forms of waste, as resolving this waste is a key enabler to resolving the others.^[9]

Alternative forms of waste[]

The eight forms of waste were developed for Toyota specific processes. Companies have further identified such other forms of waste as:^{[citation needed]}

Confusion[]

Main article: Confusion

General uncertainty about the right thing to do, or absence of documented procedures and operating statements.

Self-doubt[]

Writer Jim Womack described "thinking you can't" as the worst form of waste, quoting Henry Ford's aphorism:

Henry Ford probably said it best when he noted, "You can think you can achieve something or you can think you can't and you will be right.^[10]

Implementation[]

Shigeo Shingo divides process related activity into Process and Operation.^[11] He distinguishes "Process", the course of material that is transformed into product, from "Operation" which are the actions performed on the material by workers and machines. This distinction is not generally recognized because most people would view the "Operations" performed on the raw materials of a product by workers and machines as the "Process" by which those raw materials are transformed into the final product. He makes this distinction because value is added to the product by the process but not by most of the operations. He states that whereas many see Process and Operations in parallel he sees them at right angles (orthogonal) (see Value Stream Mapping). This starkly throws most of the operations into the waste category.

Many of the TPS/Lean techniques work in a similar way. By planning to reduce manpower, or reduce change-over times, or reduce campaign lengths, or reduce lot sizes the question of waste comes immediately into focus upon those elements that prevent the plan being implemented. Often it is in the operations' area rather than the process area that muda can be eliminated and remove the blockage to the plan. Tools of many types and methodologies can then be employed on these wastes to reduce or eliminate them.

The plan is therefore to build a fast, flexible process where the immediate impact is to reduce waste and therefore costs. By ratcheting the process towards this aim with focused muda reduction to achieve each step, the improvements are 'locked in' and become required for the process to function. Without this intent to build a fast, flexible process there is a significant danger that any improvements achieved will not be sustained because they are just desirable and can slip back towards old behaviours without the process stopping.

The word was brought across cultures as the "catchword" of Dio Brando, a central antagonist from the popular, long running manga series JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. The word would go on to be repeated rapidly as the stand cry of Dio and later his son, Giorno Giovanna.

References[]

Jump up ^ Kenkyusha's New Japanese-English Dictionary, 5th edition, 2003, Tokyo: Kenkyusha, p. 2530.
Jump up ^ Emiliani, Bob; Stec, David; Grasso, Lawrence; Stodder, James (2007). Better thinking, better results: case study and analysis of an enterprise-wide lean transformation (2nd ed.). Kensington, Conn: Center for Lean Business Management. ISBN 978-0-9722591-2-5.
Jump up ^ Kato, Isao; Smalley, Art (2011). Toyota Kaizen Methods: Six Steps to Improvement.
Jump up ^ Lean Enterprise Institute, Waste, accessed 3 February 2018
Jump up ^ Sayer, Natalie; Williams, Bruce (2012). Lean For Dummies 2nd Edition.
Jump up ^ Ohno, T. (1988), Toyota Production System: Beyond Large Scale Production, Productivity Press, Portland, Oregon
Jump up ^ Phillips Healthcare Ultrasound Division. "Gemba Tour: Come and see for yourself." 2016. Pamphlet distributed by Philips Ultrasound Factory in Bothell, WA.
Jump up ^ "Why is Overproduction the Worst Muda?". Le BLOG. XP Consulting. 4 January 2015. Retrieved 2016-03-29.
Jump up ^ Liker (2004) - The Toyota Way (p.28)
Jump up ^ Womack, J., The Worst Form of Muda, published 14 August 2008, accessed 3 February 2018
Jump up ^ A study of the Toyota Production System, Shigeo Shingo, Productivity Press, 1989, p xxxi

External links[]

"The 7 Manufacturing Wastes"

Measure

Product Design Sprint

2021-04-04T12:48:07.095000Z

Product Design Sprint (invented by Google Ventures) is a 5 days process for Ideation and Validation of a new product or new features through Design Thinking.

Integrating design sprints makes sure your product development is aligned with the right goals, and contributes to ensure your money is being invested wisely.

It helps everyone develops customer empathy and insights, while guaranteing you're building the right things, the right way.

During 5 days each one dedicated to a specific goal, a team formed by a Designer, Developer, and Product Manager join you for this productive journey. Start with your ideas, and end up with the roadmap, user flow, creative solutions, and many other important aspects of your new product (or its new version) defined.

DAY 01

Understand

Identify your target audience and its pain. Come to a common understanding of the goal and business opportunity for the sprint.

DAY 02

Diverge

Through interactive sketching activities, as mind mapping and storyboards, the team explores the many possible solutions to address the problem at hand, regardless of how feasible or realistic they may be. The goal is to have as many creative options as possible.

DAY 03

Converge

Identify the best assumptions based on the business model, user’s motivations, and ability to implement solution within budget. Draw a storyboard for each prototype, comic book style. The goal is to define the Minimum Viable Product, what needs to be tested with users, what needs to be prototyped.

DAY 04

Prototype

Build a prototype to test with existing and/or potential users. Keep it simple - make use of rapid prototyping tools to build only what needs to be tested. Also, create a user testing script to be sure that all your questions are answered during the process.

DAY 05

Test & Learn

Get the raw designing from of a small group of existing and/or potential users to identify what's working as intended and what isn't. Identify the best prototype and define what requires deeper thought and attention. Debrief team on findings and recommendations.

Design Sprint Kit by Google

2021-04-04T12:48:07.598000Z

What’s a Design Sprint? A design sprint is a five-phase framework that helps answer critical business questions through rapid prototyping and user testing. Sprints let your team reach clearly defined goals and deliverables and gain key learnings, quickly. The process helps spark innovation, encourage user-centered thinking, align your team under a shared vision, and get you to product launch faster. The Sprint Framework: Where Does It Come From? The Google design sprint framework began when sev…

designsprintkit.withgoogle.com

Estudios Culturales

2021-04-04T12:48:29.895000Z

Estudios culturales: contexto, métodos y teorías

Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 2000-2002

Contexto de nacimiento y desarrollo de los estudios culturales.

El Centro de Birmingham

Entendemos por estudios culturales una tradición de estudios, focalizados en la relación entre medios de comunicación y cultura popular, que surge a mediados de los 60 en Inglaterra como reacción, por una lado, al conservadurismo del funcionalismo y, por otro, al exceso de determinismo economicista de la economía política basada en el marxismo. Los estudios culturales no son una teoría, sino más bien un campo de estudios de temáticas similares.

La sociedad europea de posguerra y en especial la inglesa, se caracteriza por un elevado nivel de consenso social: había que reconstruir el país tras los estragos de la guerra, construyendo un sistema de bienestar. Pero a mediados de los 60 este consenso empieza a romperse, debido en buena medida a una generación que no había vivido la guerra. Era una generación que había comenzado a romper las rígidas barreras entre clases de antes de la guerra, con cierto poder económico y con referentes culturales muy diferentes a los de sus padres (tras la llegada de la televisión y del rock'n'roll de la mano de las tropas americanas).

Por otra parte Inglaterra había perdido el Imperio y muchos antiguos habitantes de las colonias estaban llegando a las islas justo en el momento en que la etapa de prosperidad empezaba a decaer.

El paradigma dominante en el campo de los estudios de comunicación era el funcionalismo. Tomando como punto de partida la armónica democracia estadounidense, el funcionalismo concibe los medios como elementos neutrales dentro de un sistema que funciona como un organismo en el que cada parte tiene su función. De esta forma, la función de los medios sería la de asegurar el consenso social. Sin embargo, los estudios de esta corriente están lejos de ser neutrales desde el momento en el que sus financiadores son las compañías e instituciones que buscan las mejoras maneras de llegar al público, bien para vender productos o para lograr votos.

La cuestión de la propiedad de los medios es precisamente la preocupación central de la economía política, basada en el marxismo. Para Marx, la base económica de una sociedad determina todo lo demás, por lo tanto la investigación en comunicación se centra en estudiar qué intereses están detrás de los mensajes de los medios. También desde la izquierda estaba todavía latente la Escuela de Frankfurt, que insistía en que las industrias culturales son instrumentos del capitalismo cuya función principal es alienar al proletariado.

Los estudios culturales surgen como reacción a todas estas ideas. Sus iniciadores eran personas de orígenes obreros que habían logrado acceder a la universidad gracias a los procesos de movilidad social de los años de después de la guerra y que se habían dedicado a la educación de adultos. Por lo tanto, por sus posiciones políticas de izquierda no aceptaban la visión armónica de la sociedad que ofrecía el funcionalismo, y por su cultura de clase trabajadora no podían estar de acuerdo con el elitismo de la Escuela de Frankfurt. Su contexto vital y el saberse privilegiados entre su clase por haber alcanzado la universidad les hace adquirir una especie de compromiso político para con sus investigaciones.

Muchos llegaban desde el campo de la literatura, pero querían aplicar sus métodos de estudio a otros tipos de manifestaciones culturales, como los textos de medios de comunicación. Entre los textos que anteceden al surgimiento de los estudios culturales están los siguientes:

- Richard Hoggart: The Uses of Literacy (1958). Hoggart estudia cómo las relaciones entre vida cotidiana y cultura pública de la clase obrera inglesa, observando cómo las nuevas prácticas —el rock'n'roll, la televisión, las máquinas de discos, las novelas negras y románticas— han desplazado el sentimiento de comunidad que era fundamental en la cultura de clase obrera.

- Raymond Williams: Cultura y sociedad. En este libro Williams empieza a reelaborar el concepto de cultura como "la forma en la que hombres y mujeres dan significado a su experiencia". En The Long Revolution (1961) acuña el concepto de estructura de sentimiento, identificándola con la cultura de un periodo.

- E. P. Thompson:The Making of the English Working Class (1963). Ataca la construcción triunfal de la historia de la clase obrera que enfatiza los logros, mientras que Thompson se centra en las batallas perdidas. Estos tres autores desarrollan sus estudios en medio de un debate nacional sobre el modelo educativo: entre los alumnos y sus profesores había un tremendo abismo cultural, ya que la escuela rechazaba la cultura popular y sólo consideraba como cultura cierto tipo de manifestaciones. La conferencia de 1960 de la National Union of Teachers, titulada "Cultura popular y responsabilidad personal", reunió a buena parte de los que trabajaban para abolir las fronteras entre alta y baja cultura. En 1964 se creó el CCCS (Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies) en la Universidad de Birmingham bajo la dirección de Hoggart, y evoluciona hacia el interés por los medios de comunicación y su papel como fuerza ideológica a la hora de definir los problemas políticos y las relaciones sociales. Los cursos de la Open University y la labor de la editorial Methuen (ahora Routledge) contribuyeron a insertar los estudios culturales en el campo académico. Sin embargo, la propuesta inicial de los estudios culturales, basada en la lucha ideológica y la toma de partido por las clases populares, fue evolucionando y perdiendo su componente contestatario en paralelo a la aceptación de sus postulados y la institucionalización en universidades y departamentos. En los años 80 una parte de los estudios culturales se sitúan del lado del posmodernismo, en el que la ideología tiene un papel muy secundario. Es además el momento en el que los estudios en este campo llegan a EE.UU. y Australia, países que no tenían ni la tradición de lucha de clases inglesa ni los problemas sociales a los que Inglaterra hacía frente en aquel momento.

Aunque en España los estudios culturales no han tenido un calado comparable al resto de Europa —no existen departamentos, ni cursos, la mayoría de los libros fundamentalmente no se han traducido— sí ha tenido repercusión en Latinoamérica, de la mano en especial de Jesús Martín Barbero en Colombia y Néstor García Canclini en México.

Métodos de investigación

Los estudios culturales critican los métodos de investigación cuantitativos que habían dominado la investigación funcionalista, denunciando su empirismo y su pretensión de objetividad. Las investigaciones en este campo van a venir fundamentalmente de la mano de dos métodos cualitativos: el análisis textual y la etnografía:

1. El análisis textual era una vía lógica de investigación porque los iniciadores de los estudios culturales llegaron a este campo desde los estudios literarios. Ya desde principios de siglo se había ido desarrollando la semiótica, disciplina que estudia los signos (descrita por Saussure desde la lingüística y por Peirce desde la lógica). Del interés por los signos y los códigos, la semiótica evolucionó hacia el estudio de la combinación de éstos en textos. La propuesta fundamental de la semiótica aplicada a este campo es que toda manifestación cultural (un cuadro, música, un edificio, un tipo de ropa) puede ser leído como un texto. El libro de Hebdige Subculture. The Meaning of Style responde a este método de "lectura": es un estudio de las culturas juveniles británicas, en especial el punk, buscando cuáles son sus elementos significativos y cómo se combinan para producir significados.

2. La etnografía había sido ampliamente utilizada por los antropólogos, que basaban sus investigaciones en integrarse en las comunidades, entrevistar a sus miembros y realizar una observación participante. Los estudios culturales llegan a la etnografía porque el momento de la comunicación que más interesa es el de la recepción de los mensajes y su uso como parte de una cultura. David Morley, en sus estudios sobre el programa "Nationwide" ha utilizado esta metodología, en especial en su libro Family Television, para investigar desde dentro cómo los distintos miembros de la familia usan la televisión y cómo ésta estructura las relaciones familiares.

Conceptos clave: ideología y hegemonía

Los conceptos de hegemonía e ideología son fundamentales en los primeros estudios culturales, porque permiten conectar las prácticas culturales con la preocupación militante sobre el poder y sus formas de actuar.

Para Marx, la ideología es una conciencia falsa que aparece cuando las clases dominadas explican las circunstancias sociales e individuales en las que viven con los argumentos que les suministra la ideología dominante en lugar de atender a sus propios intereses de clase. Ideología, por tanto, es la producción y distribución de ideas que defienden los intereses de la clase dominante de manera que ocupa todos los campos de la actividad social. En este proceso se naturaliza la ideología de las clases dominantes para que la dominación sea aceptada como inevitable, legítima y obligatoria (es la visión "natural" del mundo tal y como debe ser: no hay otras alternativas).

Los estudios culturales utilizan la noción de ideología a partir de la reelaboración del francés Louis Althusser, para quien la ideología es una representación de la relación imaginaria de los individuos con sus condiciones reales de existencia, cuya construcción está a cargo de los aparatos ideológicos del Estado (Iglesias, sindicatos, escuela, familia, jueces y medios de comunicación).

Sin embargo, el concepto más influyente será el de hegemonía, acuñado por el italiano Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci, uno de los fundadores del partido comunista italiano, pasó buena parte de su vida en la cárcel escribiendo sus cuadernos de manera desorganizada, en precario estado de salud (se fue literalmente pudriendo en la cárcel durante el régimen de Mussolini). Esto es importante para entender que Gramsci no desarrolla una teoría, sino que apunta ideas y define conceptos —que luego serán recogidos y sistematizados por otros—.

Para Gramsci, el poder se logra a través de la construcción de la hegemonía de un grupo sobre todos los demás. Esta dominación no se logra por la fuerza, sino por la construcción de un ámbito simbólico, un discurso socialmente compartido en el que los distintos grupos se reconocen. Ésta no es una situación estática, sino que los grupos dominantes reconstruyen la hegemonía constantemente para que las demandas de los grupos subordinados aparezcan representadas (cambio producido en lo que se supone es el papel y la imagen de la mujer desde principios de siglo por las luchas feministas: se han dado grandes avances y parece que la igualdad es un hecho, pero la apariencia esconde la realidad aún desigual en el trabajo, los salarios...). Esta visión explica el alto grado de consenso que las sociedades occidentales han alcanzado aunque pervivan desigualdades básicas, consenso ligado a la eficacia de la acción de los medios de comunicación de masas.

La ideología se construye a través de:

- Temáticas de preocupación colectivas (tematización).

- Metáforas, símbolos y actos rituales que construyen identidades y son referencias comunes para una comunidad (la construcción del "nosotros" depende de un "ellos").

- Conocimientos sociales capaces de comunicar la intersubjetividad. La ideología aparece como el sentido común, hace olvidar que la sociedad, y por tanto el poder, no tienen nada de natural, sino que son construcciones sociales y, por lo tanto, existe una mano, un grupo social, que define los términos de esa construcción. R. Williams había definido la cultura como "la forma en la que hombres y mujeres dan significado a su experiencia". Por tanto la hegemonía está inserta en la cultura, en sus valores, significados y prácticas. El interés de los estudios culturales se centra en ver cómo opera la hegemonía en las distintas prácticas culturales y cómo puede ser resistida para crear nuevos significados no dominados por los intereses de las clases dominantes. Stuart Hall, figura importantísima para los estudios culturales (y director en su momento del Centro de Birmingham) publica en 1973 una obra fundamental: Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse. En ella entiende que hay tres modos de leer los discursos de los medios de comunicación:

1. Lectura preferente: implica que el mensaje se decodifica exactamente en los mismos términos en los que ha sido codificado.

2. Lectura oposicional: el receptor, comprendiendo la lectura preferida que el texto propone, contextualiza el discurso en un marco de referencia alternativo.

3. Lectura negociada: reconoce la legitimidad de las definiciones hegemónicas para fijar los grandes significados, mientras que, en un nivel más restringido, situacional, crea sus propias reglas, opera con excepciones a la regla.

Los estudios culturales van a centrar su atención en cómo se producen las lecturas negociadas y cómo los medios de comunicación intentan producir lecturas preferentes para mantener la hegemonía. A este segundo caso pertenecen los estudios sobre el pánico moral, como Policing the Crisis. Policing the Crisis es un estudio sobre la campaña que los medios de comunicación británicos lanzan a partir del robo con violencia que un pensionista sufre a manos de tres jóvenes negros. A partir de este hecho puntual, los medios definen el atraco con violencia como un problema nacional, algo que sucede habitualmente todos los días, iniciando un circuito en el que las acciones de la policía, jueces y periodistas logran crear un clamor popular a favor del endurecimiento de las penas y la percepción de los jóvenes negros como potenciales delincuentes y símbolo de todo lo que va mal en Inglaterra.

Se produce un pánico moral cuando un suceso significativo sirve para mostrar cómo un hecho, una persona o un grupo de personas, se presentan como una amenaza a los valores e intereses sociales. Los medios amplifican el suceso y comienzan una labor de vigilancia de manera que cualquier hecho similar que se produzca pueda ser codificado en los mismos términos, al tiempo que emprenden un análisis social más amplio sobre las causas del problema, dando espacio a los expertos y a los líderes morales. A la larga, el suceso que inicia la campaña se muestra como la punta del iceberg de un problema amplio que debe solucionarse con urgencia. El resultado suele ser la respuesta del Estado a través de los castigos legislativos y judiciales (en el caso descrito en Policing the Crisis se terminaron endureciendo las penas y los inmigrantes negros aparecieron como los causantes de todos los males del país).

Fuente: Fouce.net la página web de Héctor Fouce

7 actitudes claves para la correcta implementación de Design Thinking y Human Center Design

2021-04-04T12:47:34.814000Z

Por Maximiliano Yakin Bozek

Aprendiendo del Fracaso (Learn from Failure)

No se trata de ver un resultado no esperado como si eso fuera un fracaso. Es posible entender la experiencia entera como un proceso abierto a la posibilidad de aprender algo nuevo e inesperado. En este sentido, la idea de éxito o fracaso no debería ser lo primordial en el proceso de diseño, sino el hecho de dejarnos sorprender por las circunstancias inesperadas y poder aprender de ellas algo nuevo. Diseñar experimentos en los cuales voy a disfrutar del proceso y a la vez salir enriquecido más allá del resultado.

Daniel Melero una vez me dijo que para alguna vez hacer algo con relativo éxito, primero es necesario no temerle al fracaso y más aún, es una buena práctica "el salir a fracasar".

Hacerlo (Make It)

La importancia del hacer prototipos rápidos de las ideas, aunque sea en poco tiempo y en baja resolución. Lo importante es llevar a cabo la idea de la manera mínima que se pueda comunicar el concepto con el que queremos trabajar. La ventaja del prototipado veloz es el nulo o bajo factor de riesgo. Y si no hubo demasiada inversión de tiempo, esfuerzo y dinero, tampoco hay expectativas de excelencia, con lo cual permite una mayor libertad a la hora de probar, modificar y experimentar sin ningún tipo de riesgo. Sin embargo la concreción del prototipo permite obtener devoluciones mucho más comprometidas y concisas que al comunicar la idea verbalmente. Baja resolución en este sentido es sinónimo de mayor libertad, mayor velocidad de acción y reducción absoluta del riesgo en el caso que la idea resulte no ser viable.

Confianza en la Creatividad (Creative Confidence)

La confianza de que uno puede tener ideas geniales y la capacidad para llevarlas a cabo.

La gente que cree no ser creativa es porque no ha desarrollado el hábito de pensar creativamente y porque tiene miedo. La creatividad se puede entrenar como cualquier disciplina. Una técnica posible para enfrentar el miedo es darle a las personas actividades creativas mínimas (baby steps), muy pequeños pasos que en la medida que se van logrando, la capacidad de confianza en la propia creatividad se van expandiendo y agrandando hasta superar el miedo al fracaso.

Empatía (Empathy)

Sumergirse en la experiencia del otro para el cual de diseña. Es necesario ponerse de lleno en los zapatos ajenos como si uno estuviese interpretando el papel de un actor, para entender a fondo no sólo lo que el otro nos dice, sino sus emociones y sus verdaderas intenciones detrás de las palabras.

Comprender en detalle los requerimientos individuales de las personas tanto como el entorno cultural y el contexto social para el cual estamos diseñando no es simple observación y entrevistas. Muchas veces el usuario no muestra lo que realmente hace o haría cuando está en privado, a veces ni siquera imagina el producto que necesita, o no tiene el vocabulario o la claridad conceptual para expresarlo. Por eso es primordial adentrarse con compromiso en la cotidianeidad de los usuarios, relacionarse humanamente con ellos y así ir completando un mapa de necesidades (expresadas y potenciales), sensaciones, inspiraciones, modelos, pensamientos, relaciones, ideas, etc. En este sentido, empatía es la idea de extenderse más allá de los límites de uno mismo y ser permeable a la percepción del mundo que tiene el otro. Como ejercicio subyacente, también es un excelente desafío para disminuir el tan característico ego del diseñado-autor.

Abrazar la Ambigüedad (Embrace Ambiguity)

Diseñar implica poner en práctica una metodología para llegar a un resultado que aún desconocemos. Este desconocimiento previo de los resultados en cualquier proceso de diseño genera una sensación de incertidumbre que suele provocar ansiedad o angustia. Para sobreponerse a esta problemática esencial del diseño sin que el desconcierto genere la consecuente parálisis, es necesario que el diseñador sea capaz de aceptar y absorber la ambigüedad; que pueda transitar el terreno desconocido con el asombro de un explorador y la percepción atenta a toda posibilidad que asome o se perciba. Pero esto implica tomar un camino con la tranquilidad de no saber si es el correcto y a la vez estar abierto a la posibilidad que el camino opuesto funcione mejor que el elegido. Abrazar la posibilidad de la contradicción, del retroceso y del cambio rotundo. Dar lugar a todas estas circunstancias y al cotejo con la intuición y la experimentación constante, Esto es lo que al final del proceso va a posibilitar una solución óptima y certera para cada desafío que abordemos.

Optimismo (Optimismo)

El optimismo es una característica sin la cual ningún proceso de diseño puede dar resultados. Diseñar implica llegar a una solución que antes era inexistente. A diferencia de los problemas de lógica y la matemática, donde aplicando reglas eficientes se puede llegar a descubrir la solución faltante, e incluso llegar a conocer el valor de una variable equis despejándola correctamente, el diseño está en musca de una equis que todavía ni siquiera existe, y de la cual desconocemos su forma al punto que no sabemos siquiera si la x que buscamos es un número. El diseñador debe convivir siempre con al abismo de la ausencia y la incertidumbre. ¿Cómo comenzar entonces un proyecto de diseño, por más ambicioso que fuera, sin el optimismo que nos permita creer en que lograrlo va a ser posible? El resultado de un proyecto de diseño efectivo siempre es la creación de un-algo nuevo cuya eminente existencia ayudará a solucionar el problema inicialmente planteado. Y cuanto mayor es el problema, y más dificultades ofrece, el optimismo para salir adelante se convierte en un valor clave para el desarrollo de todo emprendimiento.

Iteraración (Iterate, iterate, iterate)

El proceso de iteración como si se fuera un ida y vuelta permanente con los actuales, futuros y anteriores usuarios del proyecto es lo que permite una constante verificación de las hipótesis y los conceptos. Estar abiertos a esta iteración también otorga una flexibilidad al proceso de diseño que nos permite no aferremos neciamente a una idea que tal vez consuma demasiados recursos (infraestructura, tiempo, peronal, capital) y termine siendo inapropiada o impertinente. Incluso cuando el diseño es exitoso, en el mundo actual donde la tecnología progresa a diario, la única posiblidad de poder sostener una posición de vanguardia con el entorno es mediante la iteración constante para implementar nuevos cambios que generen nuevas oportunidades de optimización de lo ya probado. Si la innovación no es constante, tarde o temprano el resultado dejará de ser óptimo y perderá su liderasgo en el segmento.

Por Maximiliano Yakin Bozek. www.yakinbozek.com

Texto escrito en Diciembre 2013 / Actualizado en Julio 2017

Una reflexión sobre Design Thinking

2021-04-04T12:47:35.210000Z

Por Maximiliano Yakin Bozek

Durante los últimos 20 años de mi vida estuve abocado al diseño, y dentro de esta inmensa disciplina diseñé de todo, imágenes, productos, esquemas, artefactos, sistemas pequeños, grandes y medianos, etc. Diseñe desde la identidad global de marcas multinacionales hasta libros de artistas independientes, pasando por muestras multidisciplinarias, sitios web, interiores de comercios, etc. Pero no sólo eso, sino que también trabajé en el diseño de experiencias emocionales, y los últimos 5 años cada vez más involucrado en behaviour design.

Durante todo este tiempo siempre entendí que si bien la forma y los tipos de objetos a los cuales me aboco pueden ser complatamente diferentes uno de otros; por detrás de todas esas construcciones particulares, lo que se afirma por debajo es una metodología de abordaje que es prácticamente la misma para cada desafío por más diferente que parezca.

Pero fue recién cuando tuve la posibilidad de estudiar Design Thinking en un curso de la Universidad de Stanford, que pude trazar la línea que unía todos estos proyectos disímiles en los que estuve abocado durante los últimos 20 años, ya sea como diseñador, editor, entrepreneur y artista multidisciplinario.

Luego del curso de Standford encontré posibilidad que brindaba el reconocido estudio IDEO para trabajar en proyectos de Human Center Design (IDEO), Completé también dicho curso introductorio y luego terminé trabajando para una empresa norteamericana de Behavior Design. El diseño y los productos que a través del éste construyo se van volviendo cada vez más intangibles y conceptuales, cada vez diseño menos objetos y más servicios, y más sistemas, más experiencias centradas en el ser humano.

Así es como hoy siento la necesidad de entender el diseño desde un punto de vista diferente. "Diseño" como una actitud, "diseño" como un tipo especial de lentes para ver el mundo, para entender la vida, y para comprendernos a nosotros mismos. Más académicamente expresado sería Diseño como un patrón cognitivo generador de nuevos significados y nuevas relaciones entre significados existentes; un mecanismo capaz de modificar nuestra percepción y comprehensión.

Siempre, desde el inicio de la profesión, estuvo la idea del diseñador como autor, como gestor y editor cultural, pero este alcance conceptual al que todo gran diseñador puede aspirar se concretaba mediante los objetos de producción. Es decir, el diseñador genera objetos y estos generan significados y modifican la trama semántica de la sociedad, etc. Lo particularmente nuevo en este enfoque de Design Thinking entonces, no es la conciencia humana y social en la práctica del diseño.

William Morris ya tenía esta concepción del diseño muy bien fundamentada mediante sus Arts and Crafts en inglaterra siglo XIX. A comienzos del siglo XX, tanto los Constructivistas rusos como los Futuristas italianos consideraban que toda acciónutilitaria y comunicacional del diseño debía estar siempre a disposición de los compromisos humanos. Más tarde en alemania, la escuela de la Bauhaus desarrollaría aún más esta visión del diseño como pilar para el desarrollo de una sociedad más justa e igualitaria.

Lo que es distinto ahora, entonces, no es el objetivo idealista y humanitario del diseño sino la forma en el que éste puede alcanzar dichos objetivos. Ya no sólo es posible diseñar los artefactos, los objetos y los dispositivos materiales del cambio, sino también diseñar sistemas emocionales y las experiencias dónde dichos objetos serán utilizados, Y yendo incluso un poco más lejos, también incluso cuando ni siquera haga falta diseñar objetos, sino que todo el modelo proyectual está al servicio de generar un concepto que mejore la vida de todos los humanos, a nivel comunicacional, servicial, de experiencia y de comportamiento.

Por Maximiliano Yakin Bozek - www.yakinbozek.com

Escrito en Diciembre 2015 / Actualizado en Agosto 2017

Transdisciplinariedad vs Multidisciplinarieadad vs Interdisciplinariedad

2021-04-04T12:48:35.591000Z

Sistema Formal: Un sistema formal es un tipo de sistema lógico-deductivo constituido por un lenguaje formal, una gramática formal que restringe cuales son las expresiones correctamente formadas de dicho lenguaje y las reglas de inferencia y un conjunto de axiomas que permite encontrar las proposiciones derivables de dichos axiomas.

Proposición: (formal) <— Reveer

Realidad: Aquello que resiste nuestras experiencias, representaciones, descripciones, imágenes o formalizaciones matemáticas.

Disciplinariedad: La disciplinariedad es mono disciplina, que representa especialización en aislamiento. Una persona puede estudiar, por ejemplo, biología y entenderla bien, sin necesidad de conocimientos acabados de física o de psicología.

Multidisciplinarieadad: Involucra el conocimiento varias disciplinas, cada una aportando desde su espacio al tema en cuestión. Una persona puede estudiar simultáneamente o secuencialmente más de un área del conocimiento, pero sin hacer conexiones entre ellas. Se puede llegar a ser competente en química, por ejemplo, sin que por ello se genere cooperación entre las disciplinas.

Pluridisciplinariedad: Se genera cuando más de una disciplina comparten áreas comunes del conocimiento. Dichas disciplinas pueden cooperar entre sí pero sin estar coordinandas. Normalmente se da entre áreas del conocimiento compatibles enrte sí, y de un mismo nivel jerárquico. Ejemplo serían las áreas comunes que comparten la física con la química, o la historia con la sociología.

Interdisciplinariedad: Los participantes pertenecen a diferentes disciplinas, pero la integración comienza ya en el mismo proceso, en la formulación del plan de acción. Cada miembro aportará el conocimiento de su especificidad teniendo en cuenta los procedimientos y trabajo del otro en vista a una "meta común". La interdisciplinariedad tiene por objetivo transferir métodos de una disciplina a otra. Por ejemplo, los métodos de la física nuclear transferidos a la medicina conducen a la aparición de muevos tratamientos contra el cáncer. La interdisciplinariedad desborda a las disciplinas e incluso contribuye al nacimiento de nuevas disciplinas, pero sigue inscribiéndose dentro de los marcos y los objetivos de la investigación disciplinaria. Ejemplo: La transferencia de los métodos matemáticos al estudio de los fenómenos meteorológicos engendra una nueva disciplina: la Teoría del Caos.

Transdiciplinariedad: Tiene por finalidad la comprensión del mundo presente desde el imperativo de la unidad del conocimiento. Se fundamenta en la noción de ir más allá de las disciplinas y aporta una metodología de la indagación transdisciplinaria. Está constituída por una compeeta integración teorética y práctica. La transdisciplinariedad no rechaza la disciplinariedad sino que considera el enfoque transdisciplinario; cada disciplina aporta elementos para la comprensión de la realidad. La Transdisciplinariedad hace emerger de las confrontación de las disciplinas nuevos datos que las articulan entre sí y nos ofrece una nueva visión de la naturaleza y de la realidad. / La TD se diferencia de la multidisciplinariedad y la Interdisciplinariedad por su carácter multireferencial y multidimensional; su ejercicio se caracteriza por la flexibilidad y la apertura. Y por el esfuerzo de acceder a una visión de la realidad a través y más allá de las disciplinas. / Para la Transdisciplinaiedad, las leyes de un determinado nivel de realidad no son autosuficientes para describir la totalidad de los fenómenos que ocurren en ese mismo nivel. Toda teoría a un determinado nivel de realidad, es teoría transitoria ya que, inevitablemente, lleva al descubrimiento de nuevos niveles de conocimiento situados en nuevos niveles de realidad.

Transdisciplinario: que abarca varias disciplinas en forma transversal y que está por sobre todas estas. vale decir su ámbito de acción es superior al de cada una de las disciplinas.

Bibliografía:

BATALLOSO, Juan M. Docencia transdisciplinar. Algunas contribuciones. Notas de trabalho. 2009.

HERRÁN, Agustín de la; HASHIMOTO, Ernesto & MACHADO, Evélio. Investigar en educación: fundamentos, aplicación y nuevas perspectivas. Madrid: Editorial Diles, 2005.

MANCIPAS, A. Elementos para una didáctica de la transdisciplinariedad y pensamiento complejo. En documentos de Multiversidad Mundo Real Edgar Morin, Sonora, México, 2006.

MATURANA, Humberto & VARELA, Francisco. A árvore do conhecimento. Campinas/SP: Psy, 1995.

MIGUÉLEZ, Miguel Martínez. Transdisciplinariedad. Un enfoque para la complejidad en el mundo actual

MORAES, Maria Cândida. Ecologia dos Saberes: Complexidade, transdisciplinaridade e educação. São Paulo: Antakarana/PróLibera, 2008.

MORIN, Edgar. Introdução ao pensamento complexo. Lisboa: Instituto Piaget, 1995.

MORIN, Edgar. Epistemologia da complexidade. In: (org.) SCHNITMAN, Dora F. Novos paradigmas, cultura e subjetividade. Porto Alegre: Artes Médicas, 1996.

MORIN, Edgar. (2006) Articular los saberes, ¿Qué saberes enseñar en las escuelas? impreso en la Escuela de Graduados de la Normal Superior "Profr. Moisés Sáenz Garza"

NEEF, Manfred A. Max. Fundamentos de la Transdisciplinariedad

NICOLESCU, Basarab. O manifesto da transdisciplinaridade.São Paulo: Triom, 1999.

NICOLESCU, Basarab & cols. Educação e Transdisciplinaridade. Brasília: UNESCO, 2002

Otras fuentes: Basarab Nicolescu, Edgar Morín, Paulo Freire, María Cándida Moraes,

Haisenberg: 3 Niveles de realidad. 1942

Contraria sunt complementa. Niels Bohr

Treinta rayos comparten una rueda;

es el hueco del centro el que la hace útil.

Amasa la arcilla para convertirla eu un vaso;

Es el espacio interior que lo hace útil.

Corta puertas u ventanas para un cuarto;

Son los huecos que las hacen útiles.

Por lo tanto, la ganancia proviene de lo que está;

Y la utilidad de lo que no está".

Lao Tsu.

How Diversity Makes Us Smarter

2020-05-02T18:58:35.146000Z

Being around people who are different from us makes us more creative, more diligent and harder-working

Credit: Edel Rodriguez

In Brief

Decades of research by organizational scientists, psychologists, sociologists, economists and demographers show that socially diverse groups (that is, those with a diversity of race, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation) are more innovative than homogeneous groups.
It seems obvious that a group of people with diverse individual expertise would be better than a homogeneous group at solving complex, nonroutine problems. It is less obvious that social diversity should work in the same way—yet the science shows that it does.
This is not only because people with different backgrounds bring new information. Simply interacting with individuals who are different forces group members to prepare better, to anticipate alternative viewpoints and to expect that reaching consensus will take effort.

(Editor’s note (1/30/17): In response to President Donald Trump’s immigration order to close U.S. borders to refugees and visitors from seven predominantly Muslim countries, which has impacted scientists and students, we are republishing the following article from our 2014 special report on how diversity powers science and innovation.)

The first thing to acknowledge about diversity is that it can be difficult. In the U.S., where the dialogue of inclusion is relatively advanced, even the mention of the word "diversity" can lead to anxiety and conflict. Supreme Court justices disagree on the virtues of diversity and the means for achieving it. Corporations spend billions of dollars to attract and manage diversity both internally and externally, yet they still face discrimination lawsuits, and the leadership ranks of the business world remain predominantly white and male.

It is reasonable to ask what good diversity does us. Diversity of expertise confers benefits that are obvious—you would not think of building a new car without engineers, designers and quality-control experts—but what about social diversity? What good comes from diversity of race, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation? Research has shown that social diversity in a group can cause discomfort, rougher interactions, a lack of trust, greater perceived interpersonal conflict, lower communication, less cohesion, more concern about disrespect, and other problems. So what is the upside?

The fact is that if you want to build teams or organizations capable of innovating, you need diversity. Diversity enhances creativity. It encourages the search for novel information and perspectives, leading to better decision making and problem solving. Diversity can improve the bottom line of companies and lead to unfettered discoveries and breakthrough innovations. Even simply being exposed to diversity can change the way you think. This is not just wishful thinking: it is the conclusion I draw from decades of research from organizational scientists, psychologists, sociologists, economists and demographers.

Information and Innovation

The key to understanding the positive influence of diversity is the concept of informational diversity. When people are brought together to solve problems in groups, they bring different information, opinions and perspectives. This makes obvious sense when we talk about diversity of disciplinary backgrounds—think again of the interdisciplinary team building a car. The same logic applies to social diversity. People who are different from one another in race, gender and other dimensions bring unique information and experiences to bear on the task at hand. A male and a female engineer might have perspectives as different from one another as an engineer and a physicist—and that is a good thing.

Research on large, innovative organizations has shown repeatedly that this is the case. For example, business professors Cristian Deszö of the University of Maryland and David Ross of Columbia University studied the effect of gender diversity on the top firms in Standard & Poor's Composite 1500 list, a group designed to reflect the overall U.S. equity market. First, they examined the size and gender composition of firms' top management teams from 1992 through 2006. Then they looked at the financial performance of the firms. In their words, they found that, on average, "female representation in top management leads to an increase of $42 million in firm value." They also measured the firms' "innovation intensity" through the ratio of research and development expenses to assets. They found that companies that prioritized innovation saw greater financial gains when women were part of the top leadership ranks.

Racial diversity can deliver the same kinds of benefits. In a study conducted in 2003, Orlando Richard, a professor of management at the University of Texas at Dallas, and his colleagues surveyed executives at 177 national banks in the U.S., then put together a database comparing financial performance, racial diversity and the emphasis the bank presidents put on innovation. For innovation-focused banks, increases in racial diversity were clearly related to enhanced financial performance.

Evidence for the benefits of diversity can be found well beyond the U.S. In August 2012 a team of researchers at the Credit Suisse Research Institute issued a report in which they examined 2,360 companies globally from 2005 to 2011, looking for a relationship between gender diversity on corporate management boards and financial performance. Sure enough, the researchers found that companies with one or more women on the board delivered higher average returns on equity, lower gearing (that is, net debt to equity) and better average growth.

How Diversity Provokes Thought

Large data-set studies have an obvious limitation: they only show that diversity is correlated with better performance, not that it causes better performance. Research on racial diversity in small groups, however, makes it possible to draw some causal conclusions. Again, the findings are clear: for groups that value innovation and new ideas, diversity helps.

In 2006 Margaret Neale of Stanford University, Gregory Northcraft of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and I set out to examine the impact of racial diversity on small decision-making groups in an experiment where sharing information was a requirement for success. Our subjects were undergraduate students taking business courses at the University of Illinois. We put together three-person groups—some consisting of all white members, others with two whites and one nonwhite member—and had them perform a murder mystery exercise. We made sure that all group members shared a common set of information, but we also gave each member important clues that only he or she knew. To find out who committed the murder, the group members would have to share all the information they collectively possessed during discussion. The groups with racial diversity significantly outperformed the groups with no racial diversity. Being with similar others leads us to think we all hold the same information and share the same perspective. This perspective, which stopped the all-white groups from effectively processing the information, is what hinders creativity and innovation.

Other researchers have found similar results. In 2004 Anthony Lising Antonio, a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, collaborated with five colleagues from the University of California, Los Angeles, and other institutions to examine the influence of racial and opinion composition in small group discussions. More than 350 students from three universities participated in the study. Group members were asked to discuss a prevailing social issue (either child labor practices or the death penalty) for 15 minutes. The researchers wrote dissenting opinions and had both black and white members deliver them to their groups. When a black person presented a dissenting perspective to a group of whites, the perspective was perceived as more novel and led to broader thinking and consideration of alternatives than when a white person introduced that same dissenting perspective. The lesson: when we hear dissent from someone who is different from us, it provokes more thought than when it comes from someone who looks like us.

This effect is not limited to race. For example, last year professors of management Denise Lewin Loyd of the University of Illinois, Cynthia Wang of Oklahoma State University, Robert B. Lount, Jr., of Ohio State University and I asked 186 people whether they identified as a Democrat or a Republican, then had them read a murder mystery and decide who they thought committed the crime. Next, we asked the subjects to prepare for a meeting with another group member by writing an essay communicating their perspective. More important, in all cases, we told the participants that their partner disagreed with their opinion but that they would need to come to an agreement with the other person. Everyone was told to prepare to convince their meeting partner to come around to their side; half of the subjects, however, were told to prepare to make their case to a member of the opposing political party, and half were told to make their case to a member of their own party.

The result: Democrats who were told that a fellow Democrat disagreed with them prepared less well for the discussion than Democrats who were told that a Republican disagreed with them. Republicans showed the same pattern. When disagreement comes from a socially different person, we are prompted to work harder. Diversity jolts us into cognitive action in ways that homogeneity simply does not.

For this reason, diversity appears to lead to higher-quality scientific research. This year Richard Freeman, an economics professor at Harvard University and director of the Science and Engineering Workforce Project at the National Bureau of Economic Research, along with Wei Huang, a Harvard economics Ph.D. candidate, examined the ethnic identity of the authors of 1.5 million scientific papers written between 1985 and 2008 using Thomson Reuters's Web of Science, a comprehensive database of published research. They found that papers written by diverse groups receive more citations and have higher impact factors than papers written by people from the same ethnic group. Moreover, they found that stronger papers were associated with a greater number of author addresses; geographical diversity, and a larger number of references, is a reflection of more intellectual diversity.

The Power of Anticipation

Diversity is not only about bringing different perspectives to the table. Simply adding social diversity to a group makes people believe that differences of perspective might exist among them and that belief makes people change their behavior.

Members of a homogeneous group rest somewhat assured that they will agree with one another; that they will understand one another's perspectives and beliefs; that they will be able to easily come to a consensus. But when members of a group notice that they are socially different from one another, they change their expectations. They anticipate differences of opinion and perspective. They assume they will need to work harder to come to a consensus. This logic helps to explain both the upside and the downside of social diversity: people work harder in diverse environments both cognitively and socially. They might not like it, but the hard work can lead to better outcomes.

In a 2006 study of jury decision making, social psychologist Samuel Sommers of Tufts University found that racially diverse groups exchanged a wider range of information during deliberation about a sexual assault case than all-white groups did. In collaboration with judges and jury administrators in a Michigan courtroom, Sommers conducted mock jury trials with a group of real selected jurors. Although the participants knew the mock jury was a court-sponsored experiment, they did not know that the true purpose of the research was to study the impact of racial diversity on jury decision making.

Sommers composed the six-person juries with either all white jurors or four white and two black jurors. As you might expect, the diverse juries were better at considering case facts, made fewer errors recalling relevant information and displayed a greater openness to discussing the role of race in the case. These improvements did not necessarily happen because the black jurors brought new information to the group—they happened because white jurors changed their behavior in the presence of the black jurors. In the presence of diversity, they were more diligent and open-minded.

Group Exercise

Consider the following scenario: You are writing up a section of a paper for presentation at an upcoming conference. You are anticipating some disagreement and potential difficulty communicating because your collaborator is American and you are Chinese. Because of one social distinction, you may focus on other differences between yourself and that person, such as her or his culture, upbringing and experiences—differences that you would not expect from another Chinese collaborator. How do you prepare for the meeting? In all likelihood, you will work harder on explaining your rationale and anticipating alternatives than you would have otherwise.

This is how diversity works: by promoting hard work and creativity; by encouraging the consideration of alternatives even before any interpersonal interaction takes place. The pain associated with diversity can be thought of as the pain of exercise. You have to push yourself to grow your muscles. The pain, as the old saw goes, produces the gain. In just the same way, we need diversity—in teams, organizations and society as a whole—if we are to change, grow and innovate.

This article was originally published with the title "How Diversity Works" by Katherine W. Phillips is Paul Calello Professor of Leadership and Ethics and senior vice dean at Columbia Business School.

5 Stages in the Design Thinking Process

2020-05-02T18:57:45.267000Z

Design Thinking is a design methodology that provides a solution-based approach to solving problems. It’s extremely useful in tackling complex problems that are ill-defined or unknown, by understanding the human needs involved, by re-framing the problem in human-centric ways, by creating many ideas in brainstorming sessions, and by adopting a hands-on approach in prototyping and testing. Understanding these five stages of Design Thinking will empower anyone to apply the Design Thinking methods in order to solve complex problems that occur around us — in our companies, our countries, and even our planet.

In his 1969 seminal text on design methods, "The Sciences of the Artificial," Nobel Prize laureate Herbert Simon outlined one of the first formal models of the Design Thinking process. Simon's model consists of seven major stages, each with component stages and activities, and was largely influential in shaping some of the most widely used Design Thinking process models today. There are many variants of the Design Thinking process in use today, and while they may have different numbers of stages ranging from three to seven, they are all based upon the same principles featured in Simon’s 1969 model.

We will focus on the five-stage model proposed by the Hasso-Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford (d.school). d.school is the leading university when it comes to teaching Design Thinking. The five stages of Design Thinking, according to d.school, are as follows: Empathise, Define (the problem), Ideate, Prototype, and Test. Let’s take a closer look at the five different stages of Design Thinking.

1. Empathise

Author/Copyright holder: Teo Yu Siang and Interaction Design Foundation. Copyright licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

The first stage of the Design Thinking process is to gain an empathic understanding of the problem you are trying to solve. This involves consulting experts to find out more about the area of concern through observing, engaging and empathizing with people to understand their experiences and motivations, as well as immersing yourself in the physical environment to have a deeper personal understanding of the issues involved. Empathy is crucial to a human-centred design process such as Design Thinking, and empathy allows design thinkers to set aside his or her own assumptions about the world in order to gain insight into users and their needs.

Depending on time constraints, a substantial amount of information is gathered at this stage to use during the next stage and to develop the best possible understanding of the users, their needs, and the problems that underlie the development of that particular product.

2. Define (the Problem)

Author/Copyright holder: Teo Yu Siang and Interaction Design Foundation. Copyright licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

During the Define stage, you put together the information you have created and gathered during the Empathise stage. You will analyse your observations and synthesise them in order to define the core problems that you and your team have identified up to this point. You should seek to define the problem as a problem statement in a human-centred manner.

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To illustrate, instead of defining the problem as your own wish or a need of the company such as, "We need to increase our food-product market share among young teenage girls by 5%," a much better way to define the problem would be, "Teenage girls need to eat nutritious food in order to thrive, be healthy and grow."

The Define stage will help the designers in your team gather great ideas to establish features, functions, and any other elements that will allow them to solve the problems or, at the very least, allow users to resolve issues themselves with the minimum of difficulty. In the Define stage you will start to progress to the third stage, Ideate, by asking questions which can help you look for ideas for solutions by asking: "How might we… encourage teenage girls to perform an action that benefits them and also involves your company’s food-product or service?"

3. Ideate

Author/Copyright holder: Teo Yu Siang and Interaction Design Foundation. Copyright licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

During the third stage of the Design Thinking process, designers are ready to start generating ideas. You’ve grown to understand your users and their needs in the Empathise stage, and you’ve analysed and synthesised your observations in the Define stage, and ended up with a human-centered problem statement. With this solid background yourself and your team members can start to 'think outside the box' to identify new solutions to the problem statement you’ve created, and you can start to look for alternative ways of viewing the problem. There are hundreds of Ideation techniques such as Brainstorm, Brainwrite, Worst Possible Idea, and SCAMPER. Brainstorm and Worst Possible Idea sessions are typically used to stimulate free thinking and to expand the problem space. It is important to get as many ideas or problem solutions as possible at the beginning of the Ideation phase. You should pick some other Ideation techniques by the end of the Ideation phase to help you investigate and test your ideas to find the best way to either solve a problem, or provide the elements required to circumvent the problem.

4. Prototype

Author/Copyright holder: Teo Yu Siang and Interaction Design Foundation. Copyright licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

The design team will now produce a number of inexpensive, scaled down versions of the product or specific features found within the product, so they can investigate the problem solutions generated in the previous stage. Prototypes may be shared and tested within the team itself, in other departments, or on a small group of people outside the design team. This is an experimental phase, and the aim is to identify the best possible solution for each of the problems identified during the first three stages. The solutions are implemented within the prototypes and, one-by-one, they are investigated and either accepted, improved and re-examined, or rejected on the basis of the users’ experiences. By the end of this stage, the design team will have a better idea of the constraints inherent within the product, the problems that are present, and have a better/more informed perspective of how real users would behave, think, and feel when interacting with the end product.

5. Test

Author/Copyright holder: Teo Yu Siang and Interaction Design Foundation. Copyright licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

Designers or evaluators rigorously test the complete product using the best solutions identified during the prototyping phase. This is the final stage of the 5 stage-model, but in an iterative process, the results generated during the testing phase are often used to redefine one or more problems and inform the understanding of the users, the conditions of use, how people think, behave, and feel, and to empathise. Even during this phase, alterations and refinements are made in order to rule out problem solutions and derive as deep an understanding of the product and its users as possible.

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The Non-Linear Nature of Design Thinking

We may have outlined a direct and linear Design Thinking process in which one stage seemingly leads to the next with a logical conclusion at user testing. However, in practice, the process is carried out in a more flexible and non-linear fashion. For example, more than one stage may be conducted concurrently by different groups within the design team, or the designers may collect information and prototype during the entire project so as to enable them to bring their ideas to life and visualise the problem solutions. Also, results from the testing phase may reveal some insights about users, which in turn may lead to another brainstorming session (ideation) or the development of new prototypes.

Author/Copyright holder: Teo Yu Siang and Interaction Design Foundation. Copyright licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

It is important to note that the five stages are not always sequential — they do not have to follow any specific order and they can often occur in parallel and be repeated iteratively. As such, the stages should be understood as different modes that contribute to a project, rather than sequential steps. However, the amazing thing about the five-stage Design Thinking model is that it systematises and identifies the 5 stages/modes you would expect to carry out in a design project – and in any innovative problem solving project. Every project will involve activities specific to the product under development, but the central idea behind each stage remains the same.

Design Thinking should not be seen as a concrete and inflexible approach to design; the component stages identified in the image above serve as a guide to the activities that you would typically find. In order to gain the purest and most informative insights for your particular project, these stages might be switched, conducted concurrently and repeated several times in order to expand the solution space, and narrow down on the best possible solutions.

As you will note from the image above, one of the main benefits of the five-stage model is the way in which knowledge acquired at the later stages can feedback to earlier stages. Information is continually used to both inform the understanding of the problem and solution spaces, and to redefine the problem(s). This creates a perpetual loop, in which the designers continue to gain new insights, develop new ways of viewing the product and its possible uses, and develop a greater understanding of the users and the problems they face.

The Take Away

In essence, the Design Thinking process is iterative, flexible and focused on collaboration between designers and users, with an emphasis on bringing ideas to life based on how real users think, feel and behave.

Design thinking tackles complex problem by:

Empathising: Understanding the human needs involved.
Defining: Re-framing and defining the problem in human-centric ways.
Ideating: Creating many ideas in ideation sessions.
Prototyping: Adopting a hands-on approach in prototyping.
Testing: Developing a prototype/solution to the problem.

References & Where to Learn More

Herbert Simon, Sciences of the Artificial (3rd Edition), 1996: https://monoskop.org/images/9/9c/Simon_Herbert_A_The_Sciences_of_the_Artificial_3rd_ed.pdf

Gerd Waloszek, Introduction to Design Thinking, 2012: https://experience.sap.com/skillup/introduction-to-design-thinking/

How to build your creative confidence

2021-04-04T12:48:39.694000Z

How to build your creative confidence

https://www.ted.com/talks/david_kelley_how_to_build_your_creative_confidence

Is your school or workplace divided into "creatives" versus practical people? Yet surely, David Kelley suggests, creativity is not the domain of only a chosen few. Telling stories from his legendary design career and his own life, he offers ways to build the confidence to create... (From The Design Studio session at TED2012, guest-curated by Chee Pearlman and David Rockwell.)

Inside the 21st-Century Craze for Redesigning Everything

2021-04-04T12:48:48.583000Z

Makeover Mania

Inside the 21st-Century Craze for Redesigning Everything

By ROB WALKER NOV. 10, 2016

Credit Wheel by Pink Sparrow, based on a concept by Pablo Delcan. Photograph by Henry Leutwyler for The New York Times.

1. The Problem

In theory, the redesign begins with a problem. The problem might be specific or systemic or subjective. A logo makes a company’s image feel out of date. A familiar household object has been overtaken by new technology. A service has become too confusing for new users. And so on. The world is, after all, full of problems.

The human desire to solve problems fuels brand-new inventions too: The wheel, for example, eased conveyance significantly. But the redesign tends to address problems with, or caused by, dimensions of the human-designed world, and identifying such problems may be the designer’s most crucial skill. Redesigns fail when they address the wrong problem — or something that really wasn’t a problem in the first place. While progress may entail change, change does not necessarily guarantee progress. But a clever redesign, one that addresses the right problem in an intelligent fashion, improves the world, if just by a bit.

Read an editor's letter by Jake Silverstein about the Design Issue.

As an example in miniature of how the redesign is supposed to work, consider New York’s bike-share program. In 2014, Dani Simons, then the director of marketing for Citi Bike, visited a School of Visual Arts interaction-design class and presented it with a problem to solve. Citi Bike was selling plenty of annual memberships, but it was failing to attract enough "casual" riders, the sorts of one-off users who might rent a bike for just a day or a week. The class went into the field, observing and interviewing people at Citi Bike stations, and at their final meeting, the students presented Simons with their findings — and potential solutions.

Simons was so impressed that she signed two students, Amy Wu and Luke Stern, to a three-month contract that summer. The two of them soon zeroed in on a particularly thorny design problem: the big, instructional decal on Citi Bike’s kiosks. Annual members used a key fob and had no reason to interact with the decal, but it was the gateway for casual users. Consisting mostly of text, the decals were dense and off-putting, especially to tourists uncomfortable with English. Some failed to understand that they were supposed to type in a code from a printed receipt to unlock a bike; instead, they tried to figure out how to insert the receipt itself into a slot on the docking station.

There was another, more prosaic reason that Stern and Wu focused on the decal: It was something they could actually change. Citi Bike is operated by a private firm, but New York’s Transportation Department oversees it, too, and the technology involves an external vendor. The decal, however, was produced in-house. So Stern and Wu proposed refashioning it, using a set of instructional pictograms loosely inspired by Ikea booklets. They tested several prototypes and endured baffled responses from Citi Bike users until eventually landing on a gridlike arrangement of visuals that people found intuitive. Simons and the Transportation Department signed off on a final version, and it was installed on the city’s 300-plus Citi Bike stations. Wu checked the service’s publicly available user data a month later and discovered that casual ridership had increased about 14 percent. "It was a little bit surreal," Stern recalls. "We can actually make a difference."

Indeed, this is the platonic ideal of the redesign: A designer sees a problem, proposes a solution, makes a difference. Such tidy narratives fuel a reigning ideology in which every object, symbol or pool of information is just another design problem awaiting some solution. The thermostat, the fire extinguisher, the toothbrush, the car dashboard — all have been redesigned, whether anybody was clamoring for their alteration or not.

This hunger for change has been a boon for firms like IDEO. Tim Brown, the company’s president and chief executive, has overseen IDEO’s steady expansion from product design to interactive and service design for businesses like Bank of America and Microsoft, and in more recent years even for municipalities and governments. He has been a vocal proponent of the idea that "design thinking" can be applied to just about any problem. "There are two takes on the redesign," Brown says. "The glass-half-empty take on redesign is, ‘Oh, we’re unnecessarily redesigning a chair,’ or a lamp, or whatever."

Citi Bike Kiosk Decal

Problem: not enough casual users. Solution: reworking the instructions for newcomers from a text-heavy approach to something more pictorial, reminiscent of Ikea instructions.

Credit Motivate

The glass-half-full take requires a broader perspective: "The need to redesign is really dependent on how fit for purpose the thing in question is," Brown says. In his thinking, much of our world is built around systems designed to respond to the social structures and technologies of the industrial age. Everything from systems of education and health care to the design of cities and modes of transportation, he says, all trace their roots to a drastically different era and ought to be fundamentally rethought for the one we live in now. "I think we’ve potentially never been in a period of history where there are so many things that are no longer fit for purpose," he says. "And therefore the idea of redesign is entirely appropriate, I think — even though it’s extremely difficult."

2. What to Change

You don’t have to listen to Karim Rashid for very long to get a sense that he thinks pretty much every single manifestation of the built environment needs to be redesigned. Known for his colorful personal and professional style, he has had a long run as one of the most famous industrial designers in America. He believes design is a fundamentally social act that makes the world a better place. But it is also, he points out, a business. So in practice, most redesigns begin with a client; without one, not much happens. He has worked with many of them — on furniture, packaging, gadgets, housewares, luxury goods, even condos and hotels. But he has learned that even having a client does not guarantee that any given redesign will ever make it out of renderings and prototypes and into the real world. "People say I’m prolific," he says. "Can you imagine if all the other stuff got to go to market?"

As Rashid sees it, so many of the things that surround us bear cumbersome vestiges of the past. "The world is full of this kind of kitsch history — history that has nothing to do with the world we live in now," he says. He points to a redesign project of his that fizzled, a complete rethinking of the business-class tableware for Delta Air Lines. His proposal was bold: His bowls had sharp angles that echoed Delta’s triangular logo, his trays had subtle recesses that anchored dishes in place and his wineglasses skipped the stem in favor of a tapered shape with a wide base.

"The stem on a wineglass is meaningless," Rashid says. He dismisses the conventional argument that it prevents the drinker’s hand from interfering with wine’s ideal temperature; to have the slightest such effect, he claims, you’d have to wrap your palm around the bowl for 20 straight minutes. The stem is actually a leftover artifact, he says, from centuries ago, when goblets made of metal had high stems to signal status and wealth. This design quirk remained after we switched to glass, Rashid says. Making wineglasses look a certain way because that’s how they have always looked is a classic example of privileging form over function. "I’m sitting in first class or business class on an airplane with turbulence," Rashid says, "with a wineglass with a stem on it — do you understand? It’s so stupid, isn’t it?"

His proposed redesigns were striking, but they had to pass muster with the service-item maker, the flight attendants’ union and Delta itself — which ultimately declined to move forward with the concepts Rashid proposed. "It was all rejected," he tells me, with a sigh. "Because it doesn’t look like domestic tableware."

Rashid loves to "break archetypes," in effect redesigning a whole object category. But the hurdles to doing so involve practicality as well as taste. More recently, he designed the Solarin mobile phone for Sirin Labs. It is equipped with extreme encryption capabilities and made with wealthy, privacy-obsessed customers in mind. It costs an eye-popping $12,000 and up. The client had a sky’s-the-limit attitude about imbuing the phone with a truly distinct form.

Rashid proposed an oval shape. "It would fit perfectly in your hand," he says. His concept made it to prototype, and "everybody loved the oval phone." But it turned out that only a handful of factories do smartphone glass assembly, and none were willing to retool an entire production line to accommodate a relatively small client. Moreover, existing operating systems are all designed to work in a grid format. The phone ended up with pronounced beveling at the edges, but was still fundamentally a rectangle. "I was so, so disappointed," Rashid says. "I tried every trick." Sounding almost wistful, he recalls a similar misadventure: an oval-shaped television set he designed for Samsung. "They showed it in some focus group, and it bombed," he says, laughing. "People didn’t like the idea of an oval television. I have no idea why."

Mastercard Logo

The payment giant’s top priority in revisiting its logo for the first time in decades: Don’t mess it up. The result, released earlier this year, is a version of the familiar interlocked-circles symbol streamlined for the digital era.

Credit

3. What to Keep

I know why. And really, so does Rashid. As much as we are attracted to the new, we simultaneously cling to the familiar. This tension means that some redesigns — particularly in the realm of graphic design — can inspire surprisingly visceral public backlash. Earlier this year, for instance, Instagram updated its logo and app icon, simplifying the design and making it more colorful. The chorus of online moaning and mockery that followed grew so loud that it was actually reported on by The Times, which called it a "freak out." Instagram didn’t budge, but a similar backlash in 2010 caused the Gap to retract plans for a new logo it had floated online. The University of California pulled back key elements of a redesign that met with a similarly furious response.

Probably the most notorious and consequential example involved Tropicana. In 2009, the brand rolled out a new look that included a full redesign of its familiar packaging and visual identity, dropping its orange-with-a-straw-in it logo — corny, perhaps, but very familiar — for a more stylish icon and a sans-serif type treatment. Fans howled online, but that probably mattered less than the reported 20 percent drop in retail sales. The redesign was withdrawn, and the brand went back to its old look.

Situations like this can unnerve clients, and this knowledge was certainly relevant to Mastercard when it decided this year to update its logo for the first time in more than 20 years. Raja Rajamannar, the global chief marketing and communications officer, says that the first parameter he gave his designer, Michael Bierut at Pentagram, "was not to mess things up." The online crowd can get "pretty nasty," he explains. "We don’t want to get mired in unnecessary controversy and negativity."

This conservatism among clients can frustrate designers. "I was kind of brought up in this tradition that, you know, there’s nothing more inspiring than the blank slate, the open brief," Bierut says. But over the years he has come to appreciate the challenge of "starting with a given," particularly now.

"The last big period of redesign was the postwar era," Bierut says. "There was this mania to make older companies look new and modern." As a more corporate world emerged, the visual vernacular of mom-and-pop businesses looked quaint, and so design shifted from an emphasis on manufacturing things to selling more abstract forms of value. A railroad doesn’t run trains, the thinking went; it provides transportation — so instead of a representation of a locomotive, its more modern logo might rely on arrows and italic typography. More broadly, idiosyncratic or hand-drawn lettering gave way to stylized and minimal iconography and type treatments that projected far-flung and trustworthy power. "Corporate design was done as a command-and-control exercise," he says, resulting in a master solution laid out in "a thick binder" prescribing how every branding element would appear.

By the ’80s and ’90s, that approach started to feel dated, suspicious and at odds with a vogue for more agile management theories. So in the last two decades, there has been a fresh wave of redesigns as companies have repositioned themselves in a more globalized, technologized marketplace. Mastercard is one of many examples of a company looking to update visual strategies designed with billboards and brick-and-mortar stores in mind for the age of social media and a transnational customer base.

Nevertheless, the specific dimensions of Mastercard’s "don’t mess it up" parameter included keeping the interlocking circles — one red, one yellow — that the brand has used for more than half a century. Bierut believes that this was wise: Unlike a book cover or a poster, a brand mark is "more like a building," he says. "You don’t unveil it thinking it’s going to work once and then be on its way. It’s supposed to accrue value the longer it’s invested in." The raw familiarity that builds up over years, which marketers refer to as "equity," probably plays a bigger factor in our assessment of a supposedly great logo design than we realize. Bierut is tickled, for instance, by how many people seem to admire Target’s logo. "I can’t imagine if you went to your client whose name was Target and said, ‘I’ve got an idea,’ then you went away for a few weeks and came back with a circle with a dot in the middle, and an invoice," he says. "The client would be skeptical — and the world at large would destroy you."

Do Over

IOS 7

Apple’s 2013 mobile operating system did away with ‘skeuomorphs’ — visual echoes of physical-world objects like wooden bookshelves and green gaming tables, long a bugbear among some digital designers.

AirBNB Logo

In 2014 the home-sharing platform adopted a stylized A as its logo — which was instantly mocked by those who thought it resembled certain parts of the human anatomy. The company stuck with it anyway.

$100 Bill

It took more than a decade to develop the more colorful version of the Benjamin that began circulating in 2013. Its look was largely shaped by functional considerations aimed at thwarting counterfeiters, like a blue strip that seems to show movement when tilted.

Whitney Museum Visual Identity

In preparation for its move to a new space in 2015, the museum switched its logo to a minimal, ‘responsive’ W that’s rendered at various angles depending on the imagery with which it’s paired. Some complained, but design geeks loved the variety.

linknyc

An attempt to update the pay-phone concept for a smartphone world is adding Wi-Fi connectivity, shiny obelisks and ad-bearing screens to New York sidewalks. After complaints, however, it cut off the kiosks’ built-in browsers when some users started to hang around watching pornography.

The Wheelchair Symbol

Technically known as the International Symbol of Access, this icon was targeted by a campaign called the Accessible Icon Project. Its more active-looking alternative has joined the Museum of Modern Art’s permanent collection and was officially approved for use in New York State in 2014.

Trump-Pence Logo

The initial version featured a symbol with a T and P interlocking in a manner that many online observers considered ... suggestive. It was quietly and almost instantly replaced with a text-only version.

Quirky Pivot Power

This redesign of the power strip emerged from Quirky, a V.C.-backed start-up that did collaborative product design. Quirky declared bankruptcy last year, but its ‘community’ produced a hit with this object, which has sold more than 1.5 million units.

Yahoo Logo

A 2013 modernization of the company’s Web 1.0 logo was poorly received — not least because Marissa Mayer, the company’s C.E.O., announced that she and a small internal design team had knocked it out ‘one weekend this summer.’

Nest Thermostat

With a modern look and high-tech capabilities (control from a smartphone, data collection and a promise to ‘learn’ from usage patterns), the Nest jolted a long-sleepy category in 2011 — and became an early icon of the ‘smart object’ phenomenon.

Ford Smartgauge

With LCD screens on the dashboard allowing digital instruments to replace mechanical ones, Ford offered owners of hybrids new forms of driving feedback to coach them toward better mileage.

Bullet Journal

One designer’s personal mission to stay organized evolved from a custom system of productivity-tracking into a hit product on Kickstarter that effectively redesigned the to-do list.

Metropolitan Museum of Art Logo

Dropping its venerable grid-based mark for bright red smushed-together letters this year, the Met took a lot of heat — and not just from the online mob. New York Magazine’s architecture critic called it ‘a typographic bus crash.’

The Fiat Chrysler Monostable Gear Shift

A new take on the automatic shifting mechanism confused some drivers who thought their vehicle was in park when it wasn’t. The unfamiliar design was blamed for injuries and sparked a huge recall.

Army Camouflage

A pixelated pattern introduced about a decade ago was criticized for being insufficiently concealing (a pretty big flaw in this context). That was revised after five years, and that redesign has now been replaced by a more traditional-looking pattern.

American Airlines Visual Identity

In 2013, before emerging from a Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the airline replaced the logo and plane livery it had used since the 1960s with a more abstract image scheme. ‘It has no sense of permanence,’ declared Massimo Vignelli, creator of the discarded look.

Facebook Timeline

The social-media giant always seems to be fiddling with the algorithms that guide what users see. In 2013, it revised how users display what they’re willing to share about themselves. For Facebook’s ad-driven business model, the more we share, the better.

Sonos

Founded in 2002, Sonos took years to redesign home listening into its current product line: a range of streamlined, Wi-Fi-compatible objects controlled by an app. The only tangible element of the old-school hi-fi system you still need may be the speaker.

For Mastercard, Pentagram got as creative as the brief allowed, offering dozens of yellow-and-red-circle variations — adding additional colors to suggest inclusivity, or a superminimal take presenting only the outlines of the interlocked rings. Rajamannar (and others at Mastercard, crosschecked by multiple rounds of market research) passed on those, opting for a treatment that amounted to a kind of reiteration of the existing mark. The colors became a little brighter, a set of stripes in their overlap was eliminated in favor of a single orange-y color and the name moved below the circles. Ultimately, in fact, the new symbol is designed to be able to stand alone, with no name at all; Rajamannar says testing conducted across 11 countries found 81 percent of respondents recognized the wordless version of the logo as Mastercard’s.

In short, the not-messing-it-up mission was deemed a success — and there was no notable backlash. "This kind of brand mark has become more ubiquitous than the designers of the ’60s and ’70s ever would have dreamed," Bierut says, and that may explain a public interest in design that would have been a shock in that era. It should not be so surprising today; the design profession has been on a decades-long mission to have its work taken seriously across the culture. But now, having achieved what they wanted, many designers seem to wish the public would be more deferential — something Bierut finds amusing. "If designers claim to want people to be interested and invested in and care about design," he says, "they sort of have to accept that interest on the terms of, you know, the audience."

4. Where to Compromise

In 2011, Jamie Siminoff had just sold a start-up and was spending most of his days in his garage in Pacific Palisades, Calif., determined to come up with a new business concept. Tinkering with ideas including a gardening business and new conference-call technology, he soon became annoyed, because he could never hear his doorbell, and he kept missing visitors. So he "hacked together" a system that linked the bell to his phone. His wife told him that it was far more useful than the notions he was chasing in the garage. The idea evolved to include a camera and a motion detector — and thus the ability to monitor your front door from anywhere, with a smartphone, making the object as much about security as convenience.

The product he ended up with, Ring, is a good example of a broader phenomenon in the world of industrial design. The technology shifts that Brown and Rashid cite have quickened the pace of redesigns in more mundane, less grandiose ways. Thanks to the proliferation of cheap sensors, circuit boards, cameras and other components, practically every consumer good now seems susceptible to reinvention as a "smart object." Even the path Siminoff traveled from concept to design was made easier by technology and start-up mania, first with the aid of a crowdfunding campaign, then with an unsuccessful but profile-raising appearance on "Shark Tank."

Sometimes such a path results in a version of what the tech critic Evgeny Morozov calls "solutionism" — starting with a supposed breakthrough and then seeking out a supposed problem that it can hypothetically solve. And at times the presumed innovations in these tech-centric redesigns seem to run well ahead of their potential privacy and security pitfalls. ("Yes," the tech site Motherboard reported last year, "your smart dildo can be hacked.") But sometimes it results in a hit, like the widely celebrated update of the thermostat in internet-connected, app-controlled form created by the start-up Nest, which was ultimately bought by Google for $3.2 billion.

By his own account, Siminoff’s first stab at the product was a bit off. He called it Doorbot, and its look matched the geeky name: a vaguely sci-fi, curved object with a camera concealed by a spooky, bulbous protrusion. "That was the pride of the design," Siminoff says now, laughing. He prototyped it in his garage with a couple of recent college graduates; none of them had a design background. The marketplace set him straight, he says: "No one wanted this big HAL 9000 thing on the front door." He still believed in the object’s utility, but he realized he would need to redesign his redesign.

Siminoff found his way to Chris Loew, an industrial designer in Silicon Valley, with a long record in technology hardware; he worked on early versions of tablet products and spent 16 years at IDEO helping clients including Samsung and Oral-B. In more recent years he has been hired by a number of start-ups. Impressed by Siminoff, Loew also recognized the issues with Doorbot. "It was very gadgety," he says, wryly. "You didn’t know if you were being shot with radiation or — you know, it’s not offensive, but you didn’t know what it was." In short, it didn’t look like a doorbell, and even the most impressive technical capabilities have to be presented in a form that makes sense to the consumer.

Ring Doorbell

The original version of this reimagined doorbell (equipped with a camera and intercom) had such a sci-fi look that visitors often didn’t know what it was. A redesign of that redesign has placed it in the realm of functional home décor — and it has been installed in hundreds of thousands of homes.

Credit Gear Shift

In this case, that meant a design that resonated with basic home architecture. There were already serious technologized constraints: It had to accommodate a fairly large battery, a camera, a circuit board and a motion detector that required an opening of a specific size. And from a purely aesthetic perspective, the architectural setting imposed limits that might not apply to a free-standing product: Nobody really wants to tack a wild experiment in product design to a front door. Loew settled on a rectangular shape that would visually echo molding. "Everybody’s house is really just extruded shapes and planar shapes," says Loew, who is now Ring’s lead product designer. The product comes in various finishes informed by classic door hardware, and is meant to be notable but not flashy.

The company has grown to 500 employees, with hundreds of thousands of installations already done. The only holdover from Doorbot is a circle around the button that glows blue when pressed.

5. When to Start Over

Sometimes the route to a successful redesign leads directly through a decision about what problem not to solve. A few years ago, for instance, an entrepreneur named Richard Smiedt approached Karim Rashid with an idea for a set of travel bags and cases that could be used individually or fit together, according to the needs of any given trip. Recently, in a conference room in Rashid’s Manhattan offices, Smiedt clicked through a set of slides depicting the various ideas the designer had come up with over the course of their many collaborations.

"A lot of what you get with Karim," he said, gesturing at a shelf full of Rashid-designed products and their curves and skewed lines and loud colors, "is this, reinvented." He paused to clarify his point: "I totally want what he’s done. I just don’t want it to look like any specific thing that he’s done."

Smiedt paused on one image of a carry-on bag with a side pocket containing a flask-shaped plastic bottle outfitted with a strong microfilter. This accessory popped up during the luggage-design process as a useful alternative to buying bottled water after every airport security check. "So no matter what country," Rashid explained, "I go across and to the bathroom and fill it up with clean water. Because it’s absurd, this idea of drinking bottled water — the landfill is enormous, 18 million bottles are thrown away a day in America." Both men immediately saw its appeal. Smiedt promptly "disappeared," Rashid continued, "and six months later came back and said: ‘You know, forget the luggage. We’re doing the water bottle.’ "

On its own, the flasklike form seemed off, so Smiedt pushed for alternatives, something more like what was on Rashid’s product shelf — but not exactly. An hourglass-like, squeezable shape that Rashid eventually dreamed up was perfect. But it required making a lengthy search to find a capable manufacturer — "Nobody had made a blow-molded bottle that was thinner in the middle," Smiedt said — and committing to a huge production order for the product, which they called Bobble.

"Companies are often risk-averse," Smiedt continued, "and don’t get design’s possibilities. But designers do what they want to design, and it often doesn’t connect with the consumer," at least not the mass scale he had in mind. "For me," he concluded, "the key to design is that it can’t polarize." Many designers would recoil from that assertion, but as a mass-market-oriented entrepreneur, Smiedt’s goals are different. He thinks a lot about who is not going to like a new take on a useful object, as a way to "get to something that’s really understood."

Bobble Bottle

This new take on the reusable water bottle started out as an accessory to a luggage redesign. The luggage was scuttled — but Bobble, with a distinct shape and a strong microfilter, has sold millions.

Credit Karim Rashia

The Bobble bottle sold 15 million units in its first three years on the market. Smiedt sold Bobble to Seventh Generation and has gone back into business with Rashid, this time in a partnership. They want to redesign more travel-related accessories, so they started by dumping their luggage onto a table and talking about what they carried, and what they needed. Their first idea involved finding a way to keep smeary touch-controlled gadgets clean. Rashid designed a travel-size spray bottle, arriving at an elliptical form, more like a worry stone than a bottle. They both loved the object’s shape and feel but wondered about the breadth of its appeal. Ultimately, they shelved it, though not entirely.

They went back to the results of the bag-dump experiment and zeroed in on the most bothersome objects: the dull-colored, blocky, careless-looking power adapters and portable chargers and their various entangled wires. What if you combined a wall charger and mobile battery in a single object? What if it had a more appealing aesthetic? Smiedt sourced the technology, and Rashid designed around it to create an object they called Bump. Sifting through a box of prototypes, Smiedt pointed out that this completely different product has almost the same elliptical shape as the discarded cleaner idea. This "fun" form (it comes in magenta, red, black and blue) will carry through the entire product line, he explained. Rashid also devised a matching cable, and a clever silicone sleeve that is used both to store the cable and to protect Bump when it’s tossed into a bag.

Of course, there was a hitch. Market testing found that consumers were often happy to use Bump with the (less attractive) power cable they already owned, and didn’t bother with the sleeve. So as Bump goes on sale online and rolls out across big retailers, starting with the Container Store in late October, the cord is now sold separately. And that clever silicone sleeve may also be sold separately — or it may be on its way to a prototype box somewhere.

6. The Solution

All redesigns have something in common: They end. This does not happen at the moment the redesigned symbol, object or interface is implemented. It happens when that redesign is replaced. Maybe that’s the lofty logic of progress, or just the workaday logic of capitalism. But it’s certainly the logic of the redesign, and perhaps design in general, in the early 21st century. When IDEO’s Tim Brown talks about updating all that is not "fit for purpose" today, he’s talking about entire systems, not just their individual and tangible components and manifestations.

IDEO started out as an industrial-design firm working on consumer products; it expanded further into interaction design as the digital world took hold, and then it went into services. Now its projects include "redesigning" such abstractions as the school lunch (for the city of San Francisco) or the vote (for Los Angeles County), experimenting with how to lace in 21st-century technology elements and shed out-of-date practices. These are incremental efforts that play out over years. There is no momentous before-and-after unveiling, just a continuous process of researching, trying and replacing ideas. This, after all, is how designers work: in an ongoing system of study, hunches, prototypes, tests and do-overs.

The inevitability of re-redesign is something that Amy Wu (now part of a Microsoft design team in San Francisco) and Luke Stern (now a designer for Intersection, a firm focused on civic spaces) encountered in their work for Citi Bike. A few months after the triumphant installation of their redesigned kiosk decals, the company that operated Citi Bike was bought by another bike-share operator, Motivate, which runs similar programs for several other cities. They got an email from Citi Bike saying they might be needed again, but then never heard back.

The new owner promptly set about a broader upgrade of Citi Bike’s system involving new software and changes to the hardware in those kiosks. This meant that the decals needed to be redesigned yet again. The new ones incorporated some of Wu and Stern’s thinking, but in a new look that, among other things, visually announced to the world that Citi Bike had been updated.

Stern and Wu are philosophical about this turn. "The logistics had changed," Stern says. "They had to update the system. Our design wasn’t actually relevant any more. That’s reality, right?" Right. And it was certainly a useful final lesson for an effort that started out as a student project: All redesigns end, but the redesign never does. ♦

Rob Walker writes the Workologist column for The Times.

The Unnecessary Fragmentation of Design Jobs – Signal v. Noise

2021-04-04T12:48:44.798000Z

Source: http://m.signalvnoise.stfi.re/the-unnecessary-fragmentation-of-design-jobs-d5b9c8621082?sf=nxnyejr

The Unnecessary Fragmentation of Design Jobs

Hey there, tech designer person. Have you noticed the increasing number of vague specializations we’ve invented for ourselves?

Here are a few I grabbed from a job board 10 minutes ago.

UX Designer
UX/UI Designer
UI Designer
Graphic Designer (UX & UI focus)
Visual Designer
Digital Designer
Product Designer
Presentation Designer
Front End Designer
Web Designer

Bleh. What’s the difference between UX and UX/UI and UI? Isn’t Product also UX/UI? Isn’t a Front End a UI? What’s a Graphic Designer with UX & UI Focus? And isn’t all of this Visual/Digital design?

For an outsider, the differences are extremely subtle. I’ve been talking to a lot of industry newcomers lately, and they’re almost unanimously confused. They’re struggling to gain the right experience and make portfolios to match our foggy job definitions.

Even worse, the companies hiring seem equally puzzled. One designer told me he took a UX job at a startup, and then his new boss asked him to explain what UX is about — after he had already been hired to do it!

UX AND UI, WHY OH WHY

This must be happening because everyone can barely keep up with the demand for design work. Companies are racing to fill seats and execute hastily-defined design processes without bothering to question if it’s all necessary for their particular business.

If your company does that, you might find yourself in a game of Designer Hot Potato like this one:

Bob’s good at customer research, so he’s on UX. He’ll make some personas and get a bunch of post-it notes on the wall right away.
Then we’ll get everyone together to look at the post-its and move them around.
Then we’ll write down ideas and ask Natalie to make wireframes. She’s our UX/UI person.
Then she’ll hand those over to Beth, our UI designer, who’s good at turning wireframes into a high fidelity UI mockup.
Then Beth will hand that over to Steven, our Front End person, to make a prototype.
Then we’ll try it to figure out what we did wrong, and check back with Bob on the post-its again. TO THE POST-ITS!!!

This is surely good for 3M’s office supplies revenue, but as a creative process it sounds painful to me.

I’ve never had a job quite like that.

Before I joined Basecamp, I was always a lone wolf — the only designery person at a small business or government org—so I had to figure everything out myself. I had to talk to people, learn about the problems they were having, come up with ideas, create a good-looking solution, write words, and build the UI piece of the final product.

It was tough, and it took years of practice to become competent at any of it. But I loved the diversity of the work and the exciting potential for new discoveries.

Recently John Maeda’s Design in Tech Report for 2017 suggested a name for my kind of role: Computational Designer.

These computational designers exist in a hazy middle ground — not quite pure engineers, not quite pure designers — but their hybrid status is increasingly attractive to technology companies. …The most successful designers will be those who can work with intangible materials — code, words, and voice.
(via WIRED)

I dig this idea, but I don’t think we even need the word "Computational." I think the software industry has been overthinking this, and what John describes is just Design.

Design (with a capital D)

I believe Design requires a holistic grasp of problems, potential, and materials.

If you’re only focused on examining problems, you’re not empowered to dream up the proper solutions.

If you’re only dreaming up what you could do, you’re not close enough to the ground-level truth.

If you’re only working on the nitty gritty implementation, you know about the what but not a lot about the why.

A capital-D Designer is comfortable working organically across all of that, without needing to slice it up into separate little steps and responsibilities.

This is possible in the real world

That’s exactly how we work at Basecamp. We skip most of the formal process stuff, and our Designers do everything: writing, visuals, code, project management, whatever it takes.

We’re living proof that this approach works well. We support hundreds of thousands of customers, plus multiple platforms and products, with a design team of 10 people.

We pull that off specifically because we don’t assign one designer to UX, and another to UI, and another to writing, and another to code.

Think this sounds too hard? Like there’s no way you could possibly be good at all of that?

Take a step back for a second. We’re only talking about making software.

Yes it’s hard…but in the grand scheme of things it’s not THAThard.

If you’re not convinced, take a look at Art. Lebedev Studio:

Founded in Moscow in 1995, Art. Lebedev Studio is the only design company in the world offering product design, city and environmental design, graphic design, websites, interfaces, packaging, typeface design, custom patterns and book publishing under one roof.

Damn, that’s a lot of stuff! Projects across mediums, genres, industries, you name it. No artificial limits on anything. Inventing things using whatever materials and means necessary.

Some of Art Lebedev’s recent work

And that’s not even a new idea. Now look at master Designer Raymond Loewy, born in 1893:

Raymond Loewy (November 5, 1893 —July 14, 1986) was an industrial designer who achieved fame for the magnitude of his design efforts across a variety of industries.

Among his designs were the Shell, Exxon, TWA and BP logos, the Greyhound bus, the Coca-Cola bottle, the Lucky Strike package, Coldspot refrigerators, Studebaker cars, and the Air Force One airplane. He was involved with numerous railroad and locomotive designs. His career spanned seven decades.

Some of Raymond’s logos

A seven decade career making not just logos and products, but planes, trains, and automobiles too! Here’s Raymond, by the way:

Raymond Loewy, one hell of a cool Designer.

So if Art Lebedev’s shop can do all that, and Raymond Loewy could do what he did, why are we so insufferably particular about boxing ourselves into tiny little specialties just to make websites and apps?

Imagine if we stopped doing that, and tossed out our process assumptions and self-defeating arguments about what should be one person’s responsibility versus someone else’s.

Maybe we could all gain that magical holistic understanding, and grow to become Computational Designers. Or even just Designers.

You can make it happen

If you like this notion, try treating your career like your most important project. Be curious and restless. Aim to be constantly learning and trying new stuff without limits. Find a company or a work environment that lets you take a shot at everything you want to do (they’re out there!)…or invent your own little niche if you can’t find that.

This may not be the easiest career path to travel. It’s almost certainly not. But I guarantee you’ll enjoy the ride—especially since you’ve designed it yourself.

Hat tip to Jason Fried for turning me on to Raymond Loewy’s work. And a second hat tip to Dustin Senos’ Out of Office Hours project—such a fantastic idea that’s connected me with many wonderful young designers.

If you liked this post, hit the ❤️ below or let me know on Twitter.

6 Ways to Kick Off Creative Meetings

2021-04-04T12:48:06.399000Z

In the age of Slack, Asana, and other tools for collaboration, in-person meetings are losing ground. It’s true that having a great meeting isn't easy, and too often we fall into dull routines. But it’s also true that real magic can happen when people are face-to-face in a room together. To get people to be fully present and spark creative ideas, try these meeting warmups.

1. Sketch Your Neighbor

Most people default to verbal/analytical mode, so getting people to use their hands and get involved with pen and paper can prove to be a very refreshing gear shift. As the name suggests, Sketch Your Neighbor requires everyone to draw the person next to them. Set a timer for a minute or two and let loose. For the majority of people who claim that they can't draw, this exercise involves a certain amount of vulnerability—and that's the point. If everyone is used to failing in front of each other, the group dynamic is going to be more open, generous, and positive.

2. The Name Game

When you're dealing with strangers, learning everyone's name can be a significant challenge. The improv legends at Second City use a game to get past this. Everyone stands in a circle and takes turns saying their name while making a gesture. Everyone else repeats the name, while copying the gesture. They go around the circle doing the same thing one more time, and then everyone has to do the whole thing from memory. The association of movement with the name is a shortcut to embedding it in long-term memory. That, plus that fact that everyone has made themselves look ridiculous, leads to an open and fun meeting.

3. The Stretch

Sitting hunched in a chair while someone drones on and on feels like going through a slow death. Getting people out of their chairs is a quick way to perk up energy levels and set the stage for collaboration. The Stretch is a very simple exercise: A facilitator asks everyone to stretch their arms up to the ceiling, tilt them to the left and the right, and then shake them out. It takes less than a minute, and allows the meeting leader to take control of the room and wakes people up.

4. Last Word, First Word

One problem with meetings is that we aren't great at listening to each other. This is even more of a problem if people are glued to their phones and laptops. We cribbed this game from Second City, too. Everyone pairs up and has a conversation. The rule is that the first word of your sentence must be the same as the last word of the sentence your partner just said. This requires listening to their entire sentence before beginning to frame your reply. Sadly, for most of us, this is an unusual behavior.

5. The Story Opener

One of the keys to a good creative meeting is to have everyone show up as their whole, human self, rather than their "work self." A quick way to get there to have everyone tell a quick personal story. For example, ask your colleagues to talk about a youthful hobby. If possible, connect the story topic to the purpose of the meeting. Talking about ways to motivate a team? Ask them to tell a story about the moment in their life when they felt most excited. The main benefit comes from having each person tell a story from the heart, which will bond everyone for the rest of the meeting.

6. Dance Lesson

If you're ready for an added level of risk, get people to do rhythmic movement in unison. This requires a charismatic (i.e. shameless) facilitator or a very willing group of participants—or, ideally, both. The facilitator takes the group through a set of dance moves, and then everyone performs them together to music. If you start a meeting like this, nothing that happens afterwards will faze anybody.

Txt by Neil Stevenson. Illustrations by Steve Har.

Design for Emergence: From Newton's Blueprint to Darwin's DNA

2021-04-04T12:48:53.593000Z

CEO at IDEO

Like most designers, I am quite comfortable with the notion of designing simple things. I can pick up just about any object and tell you how it was made, and I could probably have a reasonable crack at designing an equivalent of it, even though I’m not a particularly technical person. That’s because it's possible to definitively know everything important about a simple object: its form, the market for it, and the best method of manufacturing it. The traditional design process entails figuring all of this out beforehand and ‘making it so’ in the world. The essence of this Newtonian model of design, which personifies control and defining every outcome, is the blueprint.

As designers and leaders in increasingly complex systems, we need to go beyond designing blueprints. Like Darwin, we need to consider a future of constant evolution and emergent change. We need to design for human needs amid unpredictability on a global scale. But how? We can start by working with a design model beyond the blueprint: our own DNA.

At one level, genetic code represents a biological view of design, because it is an ‘instruction set’ for biological behavior. On another level, it represents the idea that code is only the beginning of something: it sets off a series of behaviors. While most of us don’t understand how to work with genetic code, many of us do understand how to work with software code. The digital design revolution—more open-ended than ever—points the way. How might we go beyond Newton's blueprint in other areas to design for emergence?

¿Qué es la simplicidad?

2023-03-17T20:49:00.396000Z

Se puede considerar la simplicidad como la eliminación de elementos innecesarios, es decir, reducir algo a su mínima expresión —lo que muchos llaman esencia—. Por consiguiente, no es un estilo de diseño, de crear, de pintar, etc. sino una forma de abordarlo. De aquí que muchos diseñadores la consideren como la representación final de la complejidad. "La simplicidad es la máxima sofisticación" (Leonardo da Vinci)

¿Por qué debemos priorizar la simplicidad por encima de la complejidad en los sistemas de diseño?

En la sociedad de la información en la que nos encontramos inmersos, lo complejo crea aún más ruido y confusión. La comunicación tiene que ser simple, clara, sintética y funcional; todos ellas características que se relacionan con la simplicidad.

Pero alcanzar el suman la simplicidad no es únicamente un trabajo de reducción, no basta con suprimir partes de un todo. "El proceso consiste en eliminar lo obvio y destacar lo significativo" (John Maeda).

Se debe discernir lo prescindible de lo imprescindible mediante un proceso de comprensión, reducción y conceptualización. "Para realmente entender el objeto y llegar a una simplificación inteligente es preciso primero indagar en las profundidades de la complejidad" — Jony Ive

Por eso es imprescindible profundizar y entender toda la compleja naturaleza del objeto en cuestión, ya que será ese conocimiento el que permitirá llegar a la posterior simplicidad. De aquí la paradoja de que es más simple crear algo complejo que simplificar la complejidad. "Las cosas se deben hacer más simples pero no más sencillas" (Albert Einstein). La clave quizás está en que la complejidad debería ser afrontada en el backstage, en la cocina del diseño, debe ser desplazada bien lejos del usuario y desenvolverse en el proceso de desarrollo y creación.

Por tanto, no es posible acceder a la simplicidad sin pasar por la complejidad. No es de extrañar que las personas que aplican la simplicidad suelen ser los que también crean productos más atractivos visualmente. Son accesibles, no presentan ninguna complicación a la hora de decodificarlos y, por lo tanto, no son vistos como una amenaza. Un gran ejemplo de ello lo encontramos en los íconos, ya que son unidades de representación gráfica que responden a una convención y representan de forma inequívoca una idea concreta con los mínimos elementos esenciales para permitir su comprensión

10 leyes de la simplicidad

John Maeda, en su libro Las leyes de la simplicidad, traza una lista de las 10 leyes básicas que uno debería seguir para llegar a la máxima simplicidad posible cuando se está trabajando en un producto. Los 10 puntos son los siguientes:

Reduce: como ya se ha comentado, la simplicidad es el resultado de un proceso de reducción.
Organiza: un todo caótico se percibe más complejo que un todo organizado.
Tiempo: ahorrar tiempo da la sensación de simplicidad.
Aprende: cuanto más se sepa sobre un campo, con mayor facilidad será llegar a la simplicidad.
Diferencia: sin complejidad no hay simplicidad.
Contexto: lo que rodea la simplicidad sigue siendo simplicidad.
Emoción: más emociones es mejor que menos.
Confianza: la simplicidad es una cuestión de creer.
Fracaso: Hay cosas que no se pueden simplificar con los conocimiento y capacidades que tenemos.
La única: la simplicidad consiste en eliminar lo obvio y añadir lo significativo.

Pero sobre todas las cosas, lo que hace significativa a una innovación es que dé respuesta a un problema existente. Una solución innovadora en muchos casos ofrece respuestas obvias — pero se convierten en obvias a posteriori—. La simplicidad puede ser una forma de alcanzar este objetivo.

por Max Yakin Bozek

Design Thinking and Empathy

2021-04-04T12:48:56.313000Z

Fueled Problem Solving: One Place to Start

Photo by Edgaras Maselskis for Unsplash

No big secret: design thinking has forever changed teaching and learning in my classroom. By fueling problem solving with empathy, and putting human experience at the center of intention, my project-based learning approach to English language arts found the soul I didn’t even realize it was missing.

Yes, we made some very cool things before DT and students certainly demonstrated their understanding in rich, powerful, compelling ways. There were soundtracks mixed and digital museum boxes curated, sitcoms scripted and multigenre papers crafted. Though I required students reflect on their work and document their process of creation, content largely remained king from the beginning to the end of the process: Did you include X, Y, Z in your project? Did you complete this form before moving to this step? To what extent does it look like a finished product? The process was defined by chronological steps and order, far more than exploring possibilities, defining user and intention, practicing ideation and experimentation and on-going reflection.

With a single evening on Twitter and the discovery of #DTK12chat, a community of design thinking in the K-12 classroom practitioners, advocates and enthusiasts, the notion of employing empathy as the driving agent for understanding left me gobsmacked. I had espoused the importance of audience when students wrote, attempted to plan authentic assessment experiences for learning, and pontificated at length on tolerance for multiple points of view during discussions. Yet that evening, and in the days and weeks and years that have followed, I realized something.

I realized the reader is a user and the author, poet, playwright, essayist — a designer.
I realized that empathy extends to understanding a character’s motivations and a creator’s choices just as well as it does building a healthy learning environment.
I realized understanding and comprehending literature can be the catalyst for solving problems in our communities and that prototyping solutions can have just as much impact as implementing them.

And I realized that a focus on intentions leads to a focus on the user, and if a project has a user it is far less likely to end up in the trash at the end of the year. Thus, we practice the mantra, "No Dumpster Projects," in my classes.

I’m hopeful my collection on BloomBoard can provide a launching pad for others to adopt a design thinking lens to their impact areas. Like the other curated BloomBoard collections, there’s a variety of resources in both content and format, ranging from the profoundly philosophical to the hyper-practical. I’d draw visitors’ attention to three items in particular.

Mary Cantwell’s site, DEEP Design Thinking, features the DT process she’s used with populations kindergarten through professional. Examples, protocols and organizers abound and one will find Mary’s infinite enthusiasm matched only by her approachability.

DEEPdt is the design thinking process I use with my students, as illustrated by the link to my classroom blog, Flight 307. There you’ll see our Design a Band process ostensibly created for my Pop Culture course, but often put to work elsewhere. What was once an quick little change of pace activity found at a long forgotten online source despite valiant efforts at proper attribution, has now become a vehicle for students to start exploring the relationship between empathy and intention, user and design.

One of the best ways to get familiar with design thinking is to practice it early and surrounded by others at varying degrees of familiarity. The aforementioned #DTK12Chat community on Twitter is one such place. Another is IDEO’s Teachers Guild, a platform for educators to grow more accustomed to using DT to solve problems and make meaning while collaborating on authentic challenges facing education. Past collaborations include growing cultures of innovation and fostering curiosity. The current collaboration is an ambitious partnership involving The White House and others around college aspirations and support for students facing barriers to postsecondary success. It’s rather exciting to be using design thinking to prototype solutions to those problems while also refining my skills to use in my impact areas. (I design coach for the Teachers Guild, as well, so who knows? Maybe we’ll be collaborating together soon.)

If these particular resources inspire you, consider going after the micro-credentials available on BloomBoard from Digital Promise. My collection relates to both the "Design Thinking and Doing" and "Collaborative Problem Solving" credentials offered.

This particular post was written in collaboration with BloomBoard as a way to introduce my collection as well as to the other features on the site. I’m a big fan of highly curated content and I was thrilled by the opportunity to craft some of these initial collections for the platform. It’s shaping up to be a welcome alternative to scrolling through my social media feeds, tip toeing around the promotions and clickbait, hoping I stumble upon something decent.

BloomBoard asked a handful of edu-bloggers to share a little about our collections and/or impressions of the platform. So over the next several weeks, you’ll be hearing from a bunch of folks including Jenn Adams who has a fantastic blog, Teach.Love.Autism. She’s a middle school autistic support teacher with tremendous insights into working with students across the autism spectrum, particularly those with moderate to severe disabilities. However, the strategies and tools she’s made available on her blog seem well suited to any classroom hoping to become more universally designed. What student wouldn’t benefit from more visual cues and focus strategies? Jenn also has a lot to say about balancing the teaching life and the rest of life. Well worth the read and the sharing and the bookmarking on the top of the browser bar. Take a look around her space and look for a blog post from her regarding BloomBoard.

Source:

http://wickeddecentlearning.com/design-thinking-and-empathy-fueled-problem-solving-one-place-to-start/

10 Essential Characteristics of a 21st Century Educator

2021-04-04T12:48:54.202000Z

This is a first draft and I am trying to learn through reflection. Would love your thoughts on the ideas below.

People have come to loathe the term "21st Century Education", or "21st Century Teacher". The argument is that "we are 16 years into the 21st century!", yet I would argue, we have 84 years to go! I could have not predicted the iPad, Chromebooks, Pokemon Go, or anything else like this. Yet, as I was thinking about that very idea, it is why I believe there are some very important traits that educators need right now. We are in the 21st century, we are educators, so what does that mean and look like in our world and for education?

It is not technology that is having the biggest influence on what we do; it is the speed of change being thrust upon us.11 We also have more access to information and ideas, so we can do better. If you know better, you have to do better.

Here are ten characteristics that I am exploring and starting to see as crucial for educators in the 21st century and beyond, as we continue to live in a world that is continuously changing, and moving at tremendously fast speeds.

Relationship Builder

50 years ago, relationships were the most important thing in education, and 50 years from now it will be more so. Do our students feel valued when they come to school? Do we seek to simply engage them in content, or do we seek to empower them to create? I have argued for years that we need school teachers, not just classroom teachers. Every child in the school is all of our responsibilities. In a world that is becoming more and more complex, students need to know that they can trust the educators to see them as individuals, and that they are valued. None of the other strategies or approaches will matter without this foundation.

Learner/Adapter

The only constant that we can count on education is change. We know that this is true. You could have been an amazing educator 10 years ago, but if you have changed nothing since then, you could become irrelevant. As the world continuously moves forward, if you stand still, you are ultimately falling behind. This doesn’t mean that some things in education don’t stay true forever. We do not have to change everything, but we need to continuously evaluate our practices and the impact on students to grow and get better. New resources and initiatives will always be part of education, and we need to critically think about them, and ask questions to move forward, but we need to model the same openness to learning and change that we expect from our students.

"If we create a culture where every teacher believes they need to improve, not because they are not good enough but because they can be even better, there is no limit to what we can achieve." —Dylan Wiliam11

Inclusive

Do we want everyone to think the same by the time to walk out of our classrooms or schools? If we do, it is not really thinking; it is compliance. Our classrooms are becoming so much more diverse in so many aspects, and this is something we need to embrace. Every single individual has different experiences and strengths that they bring to the classroom, and we are all better if we look to tap into those strengths and build a community around them.

Reflective

Information is coming our way faster than ever. If anything, we need to slow down and critically analyze it, not simply accept everything that we hear. Reflection becomes essential in this process. This is crucial that we embed time in our days and the days of our students to not only reflect, but make their own connections to learning.

How could you possibly move forward without looking back?

"We do not learn from experience, we learn from reflecting on experience." John Dewey14

Networked/Collaborative

When you hire anyone for a job, you do not just hire them, you hire their entire network. Networks consist of both "online spaces" and face to face collaboration. Creating diverse networks in and out of education is crucial, understanding we can learn a great deal from the person across the hallway, as we can from the person on the other side of the world. To create the best experiences for students, you need access to the best ideas; this can come from anyone and anywhere. When you are networked, great ideas often find you, not the other way around.

As David Weinberger states, "The smartest person in the room is the room." If that is true, how big is your room? How do you access this "room" to be better for your students?

Innovator

We do not only need to embrace meaningful change, but we need to create it. Innovation is about creating "new and better" things; it can be iteration (a remix of something) or invention (something totally new), but it has to be better. As the skills that students need in our evolving world become increasingly complex, we have to be in the mindset where innovation in the norm, not the exception. How do we look at what our students need and create opportunities for them to learn in deeper and meaningful ways? How do our students become these same innovators? They will need to become this in their world, and hopefully it is because of us, not in spite of us.

Remember…innovation is probably not in your curriculum, but neither are worksheets.12

Leader

The notion that "everyone is a leader" is something that has been challenged a great deal over the years, yet what does being a "leader" mean? It is not being a boss. There are some principals who are not leaders, and some teachers who are amazing leaders. What is crucial to think about is whether or not you have the ability to influence others to positively move forward in specific areas. In our schools we have leaders in curriculum, technology, community building, and so many other areas. We not only empower people to lead, but give them the opportunities to lead from where they are. If only a few people are "allowed" to lead, meaningful change will happen at a much slower pace.

Storyteller

"If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten." ― Rudyard Kipling

"Lecture" has become a bad word in many education circles, while Ted Talks have exploded. Many see this as irony, but what I see is that these aren’t lectures as much as they are stories.

If we want meaningful change, we have to make a connection to the heart before we make a connection to the mind. People have to feel something. Simply sharing information is not a way to create this connection, but we have to think about how we create this connection. Telling stories helps people create their own connections and meaning, and in a world that is information rich, we are vying for the attention of our students. These stories we tell are the ones that stick with our students longer than simply sharing ideas. We need to look at not simply sharing ideas, but helping share information in different ways that are memorable and compelling. Your story and stories matter, and will resonate long after our time with our students.

You might not feel you have anything meaningful to share, but we all have a story to tell.

"The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think, but to give you questions to think upon." ― Brandon Sanderson

Designer

The learning environment matters. How does the space make people feel? Do they have options to learn in a variety of ways to suit their needs? I talk a lot about the Starbucks; many people do not go there for the coffee, but spend time there for the feel of the space. The notion of the "designer" is not only in how we create our spaces, but the experiences that are created for learning as well. I often ask, "would you want to spend the whole day learning in your own classroom?" The point of this is to think about learning from the viewpoint of those you serve, not simply your own. We have to understand what possibilities exist in our world today, and be extremely thoughtful in how we design learning experiences to maximize space, resources, and access for all learners.

Are your learning experiences designed to meet the needs the of the unique learners in your context? How do you ensure that you are building on the strengths and passions of all learners? How does the space and environment you create factor into the learning experiences? These are all important considerations for how we designing learning experiences today.

Artist

I have been thinking about the idea of "educator as artist" a lot more recently, and love this quote from John Steinbeck;

"I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit."

When you see what you do as an art, and you realize that the minds you help shape are a beautiful canvas, teaching is more than a job, it’s an art. Small details matter more. Access to tools become crucial. Great educators are artists, plain and simple. We need to embrace this thinking and empower teachers to hone their craft and allow them the resources and space to do what’s best for the learners in their classrooms.

My hope is that I have shared characteristics that are timeless and will be still relevant and crucial 84 years now in the year 2100, and beyond. We know that information will continue to be thrown at us in rates that we can’t comprehend. We also understand that change is something that will continuously happen, and that we will have to not only deal with, but understand and create ourselves. As educators, we need to constantly think about the world that we live in, and how important it is to capture and develop the hearts and minds of the learners we serve. The characteristics that I have listed above should be timeless, and are crucial to ensuring schools are not only relevant, but leaders in our global communities.

Source:

http://georgecouros.ca/blog/archives/6783

http://georgecouros.ca/Century Educator

Outline (list)

2021-04-04T12:48:52.387000Z

An outline, also called a hierarchical outline, is a list arranged to show hierarchical relationships and is a type of tree structure. It is used^[1] to present the main points or topics of a given subject, often used as a rough draft or summary of the content of a document.^[2] Preparation of an outline is an intermediate step in the process of writing a scholarly research paper, literature review, thesis or dissertation. A special kind of outline (integrated outline) incorporates scholarly sources into the outline before the writing begins. ^[3]

Writers of fiction and creative nonfiction, such as Jon Franklin,^[4] may use outlines to establish plot sequence, character development and dramatic flow of a story, sometimes in conjunction with free writing.

Merriam-Webster's manual for writers and editors (1998, p. 290) recommends that the section headings of an article should when read in isolation, combine to form an outline of the article content. Garson (2002) distinguishes a 'standard outline', presented as a regular table of contents from a refined tree-like 'hierarchical outline', stating that "such an outline might be appropriate, for instance, when the purpose is taxonomic (placing observed phenomena into an exhaustive set of categories). ... hierarchical outlines are rare in quantitative writing, and the researcher is well advised to stick to the standard outline unless there are compelling reasons not to."^[5]

An outline is a list of items, organized according to some consistent principle.^[1] Each item may be divided into additional sub-items. Each organizational level in an outline has at least two subcategories as advised by major style manuals in current use.^[6]

Types of outlines

Outline styles

Sentence outline

A sentence outline is a hierarchical outline composed of sentences. Each includes a heading or single sentence of a planned document about the subject of the outline. It is the type of outline typically used to plan the composition of books, stories, and essays. It can also be used as a publishing format, in which the outline itself is the end product.

Topic outline[]

A topic outline is a hierarchical outline composed of topics. Each entry is a subtopic of the subject of the outline. One application of topic outlines is the college course overview, provided by professors to their students, to describe the scope of the course. Another application is as a subject outline, such as for an encyclopedia.

A sample topic outline application: An outline of human knowledge[]

Propædia is the historical attempt of the Encyclopædia Britannica of presenting a hierarchical "Outline of Knowledge" in a separate volume in the 15th edition of 1974. The "Outline of Knowledge" was a project by Mortimer Adler. Propædia had three levels, 10 "Parts" at the top level, 41 "Divisions" at the middle level and 167 "Sections" at the bottom level, numbered, for example, "1. Matter and Energy", "1.1 Atoms", "1.1.1. Structure and Properties of Atoms".

Outlines with prefixes

A feature included in many outlines is prefixing. Similar to section numbers, an outline prefix is a label (usually alphanumeric or numeric) placed at the beginning of an outline entry to assist in referring to it.

Bare outlines

Bare outlines include no prefix.

Alphanumeric outline

An alphanumeric outline includes a prefix at the beginning of each topic as a reference aid. The prefix is in the form of Roman numerals for the top level, upper-case letters (in the alphabet of the language being used) for the next level, Arabic numerals for the next level, and then lowercase letters for the next level. For further levels, the order is started over again. Each numeral or letter is followed by a period, and each item is capitalized, as in the following sample:

Thesis statement: E-mail and internet monitoring, as currently practiced, is an invasion of employees' rights in the workplace.

I. The situation: Over 80% of today's companies monitor their employees.

A. To prevent fraudulent activities, theft, and other workplace related violations.

B. To more efficiently monitor employee productivity.

C. To prevent any legal liabilities due to harassing or offensive communications.

II. What are employees' privacy rights when it comes to electronic monitoring and surveillance in the workplace?

A. American employees have basically no legal protection from mean and snooping bosses.

1. There are no federal or State laws protecting employees.

2. Employees may assert privacy protection for their own personal effects.

B. Most managers believe that there is no right to privacy in the workplace.

1. Workplace communications should be about work; anything else is a misuse of company equipment and company time

2. Employers have a right to prevent misuse by monitoring employee communications

Some call the Roman numerals "A-heads" (for "A-level headings"), the upper-case letters, "B-heads", and so on. Some writers also prefer to insert a blank line between the A-heads and B-heads, while often keeping the B-heads and C-heads together.

If more levels of outline are needed, lower-case Roman numerals and numbers and lower-case letters, sometimes with single and double parenthesis can be used, although the exact order is not well defined, and usage varies widely.

The scheme recommended by the MLA Handbook,^[7] and the Purdue Online Writing Lab,^[8] among others, uses the usual five levels, as described above, then repeats the Arabic numerals and lower-case letter surrounded by parentheses (round brackets) – I. A. 1. a. i. (1) (a) – and does not specify any lower levels,^[7]^[8] though "(i)" is usually next. In common practice, lower levels yet are usually Arabic numerals and lowercase letters again, and sometimes lower-case Roman again, with single parentheses – 1) a) i) – but usage varies. MLA style is sometimes incorrectly referred to as APA style,^[9] but the APA Publication Manual does not address outline formatting at all.

A very different style recommended by The Chicago Manual of Style,^[1]^[10] based on the practice of the United States Congress in drafting legislation, suggests the following sequence, from the top to the seventh level (the only ones specified): I. A. 1. a) (1) (a) i) – capital Roman numerals with a period, capital letters with a period, Arabic numerals with a period, italic lowercase letters with a single parenthesis, Arabic numerals with a double parenthesis, italic lowercase letters with a double parenthesis, and italic lowercase Roman numerals with a single parentheses, though the italics are not required). Because of its use in the US Code and other US law books, Many American lawyers consequently use this outline format.

Another alternative scheme repeats all five levels with a single parenthesis for the second five – I) A) 1) a) i) – and then again with a double parenthesis for the third five – (I) (A) (1) (a) (i).^{[citation needed]}

Many oft-cited style guides besides the APA Publication Manual, including the AP Stylebook, the NYT Manual, Fowler, The Guardian Style Guide, and Strunk & White, are curiously silent on the topic.

One side effect of the use of both Roman numerals and uppercase letters in all of these styles of outlining is that in most alphabets, "I." may be an item at both the top (A-head) and second (B-head) levels. This is usually not problematic because lower level items are usually referred to hierarchically. For example, the third sub-sub-item of the fourth sub-item of the second item is item II. D. 3. So, the ninth sub-item (letter-I) of the first item (Roman-I) is item I. I., and only the top level one is item I.

Decimal outline

The decimal outline format has the advantage of showing how every item at every level relates to the whole, as shown in the following sample outline:

Thesis statement: ---

1.0 Introduction

1.1 Brief history of Liz Claiborne

1.2 Corporate environment

2.0 Career opportunities

2.1 Operations management

2.1.1 Traffic

2.1.2 International trade and corporate customs

2.1.3 Distribution

2.2 Product development

Integrated Outline

An integrated outline is a helpful step in the process of organizing and writing a scholarly paper (literature review, research paper, thesis or dissertation). When completed the integrated outline contains the relevant scholarly sources (author's last name, publication year, page number if quote) for each section in the outline. An integrated outline is generally prepared after the scholar has collected, read and mastered the literature that will be used in the research paper. Shields and Rangarajan (2013) recommend that new scholars develop a system to do this. Part of the system should contain a systematic way to take notes on the scholarly sources.^[11] These notes can then be tied to the paper through the integrated outline. This way the scholar reviews all of the literature before the writing begins.

An integrated outline can be a helpful tool for people with writer's block because the content of the paper is organized and identified prior to writing. The structure and content is combined and the author can write a small section at a time. The process is less overwhelming because it can be separated into manageable chunks. The first draft can be written using smaller blocks of time. ^[12]

Notes

^ Jump up to: ^a ^b ^c "Lists and Outlines (6.121–126)". Chicago Manual of Style (16th ed.). Chicago: U. of Chicago Press. 2010. |access-date= requires |url= (help)
Jump up ^ OED: "outline n.3.a. In pl. The main features or general principles of a subject, proposal, etc. 3.b. A brief verbal or written description of something, giving a general idea of the whole but leaving details to be filled in; a rough draft, a summary. Also: a précis of a proposed article, novel, scenario, etc."
Jump up ^ Shields, Patricia M. 2004.Step by Step: Building a Research Paper. Stillwater OK: New Forums Press. ISBN 1-58107-117-5
Jump up ^ Writing for Story, Penguin, 1994
Jump up ^ G. David Garson, Guide to writing empirical papers, theses, and dissertations. CRC Press, 2002, ISBN 978-0-8247-0605-0, chapter "Typical Outlines", pp. 23-34.
Jump up ^ The following is certainly not an exhaustive list of relevant style guides:
- Turabian, K. L (2003). A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations (7th ed.). Chicago: U. of Chicago Press. pp. 63–64. You should have at least two items to list at each level; if you do not, reconsider the structure of the outline.
- Gibaldi, J (2003). MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (6th ed.). New York: Modern Language Association of America. p. 53. Logic requires that there be a II to complement a I, a B to complement an A, and so on.
- Tardiff, Elyssa; Brizee, Allen (2010-01-08). "Four Main Components for Effective Outlines". Retrieved 2010-04-02. Division - How do I accomplish this? Each heading should be divided into 2 or more parts.
- "How to Make an Outline" (PDF). Psychology Writing Center, U. of Washington. Retrieved 2010-04-02. Both topic and sentence outlines follow rigid formats... By convention, each category consists of a minimum of two entries.
- "How to Write an Outline". Los Angeles City College Library Online. Retrieved 2010-04-02. Each heading and subheading must have at least two parts.
^ Jump up to: ^a ^b "1.8.3: Final Outline". MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (Seventh ed.). New York, NY: Modern Language Association of America. 2009. p. 45. ISBN 978-1-60329-024-1.
^ Jump up to: ^a ^b "Developing an Outline". Purdue Online Writing Lab. Purdue University. 2011. Retrieved 2011-10-20.
Jump up ^ For example: "APA Outline Format Examples". YourDictionary.com. 2011. Retrieved 20 October 2011.
Jump up ^ "Lists and Outline Style (6.124–130)". Chicago Manual of Style (15th ed.). Chicago, IL: U. of Chicago Press. 2003. pp. 270–275. ISBN 0-226-10403-6.
Jump up ^ Shields, Patricia and Rangarjan, N. 2013. A Playbook for Research Methods: Integrating Conceptual Frameworks and Project Management. [1]. Stillwater, OK: New Forums Press. See Chapter 8 for a detailed discussion of an integrated outline with examples.
Jump up ^ Shields, Patricia. 2014. Tools for Excellent Papers: 2014 ASPA Student Summit. Presentation at the American Society for Public Administration annual conference, Washington DC March 15, This powerpoint describes a system for writing paper that contains an integrated outline. Slides 37 - 46 examine the components of an integrated outline with an example.

References

Mary Ellen Guffey, "Organizing and Writing Business Messages," Business Communication: Process and Product, p. 160-161.
"Numbers: Lists and Outlines," Manual for Writers and Editors (Merriam-Webster, Incorporated: 1998), p. 103.
White, Basil (1996) Developing Products and Their Rhetoric from a Single Hierarchical Model, 1996 Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Society for Technical Communication, 43, 223-224. [2]
OWL: Online Writing Lab, Purdue University
"Report writing," Britannica Student Encyclopedia, Encyclopædia Britannica Online (Accessed January 5, 2006)
William E. Coles, Jr. "Outline," World Book Online (Accessed January 5, 2006)
Ted Goranson's About this Particular Outliner 'Outlining and Styles'
Jon Franklin "Writing for Story", Penguin 1994.

Source:

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the Wikipedia template named Outlines, see Template:Outlines

For the category of outlines in Wikipedia, see Category:Wikipedia outlines

Superintelligence

2021-04-04T12:48:52.995000Z

Download PDF

source: www.nickbostrom.com

Bowie, Barnbrook and the Blackstar artwork

2021-04-04T12:48:53.192000Z

As the artwork for David Bowie’s new album Blackstar – or ★ – emerges on billboards and social media, its designer Jonathan Barnbrook talks us through his latest collaboration with the singer and musician. In an in-depth interview, he considers his approach to creating a visual language for the album and what designing for music means in 2015.

While more than happy to discuss his work with David Bowie, designer Jonathan Barnbrook is wary of attempts to tie down specific meanings within it. He’s also keen to stress that, in regards the concept and subject matter of a new Bowie album, it’s the artist’s prerogative to expand upon its themes, or not.

In fact, looking back at his cover for Bowie’s 2013 record, The Next Day, Barnbrook says that it was his own over-explanation of the project that perhaps got the better of him (he was quoted in Private Eye’s ‘Pseud’s Corner’ column – and found this very funny). And at the time, while the sleeve looked like nothing else around and posited some interesting ideas about identity and how we engage with music these days, lots of people were quick to say that they didn’t like it.

"The point behind the lengthy explanation then was just to put into context what was quite a difficult cover for many people to accept," says Barnbrook of the record that marked Bowie’s return to releasing music after ten years. "Also, I wanted do graphic design a bit of a wider service by showing that design is very much a conceptual process, not just a commercial one. There isn’t enough clear explanation of work by designers, not about why they did such a nice branding job, but the larger cultural and conceptual issues that designers do face when sitting down to do their work."

For the new Bowie record, Barnbrook has once again taken an unusual path. There’s no image of the artist, no immediately recognisable name or title – instead a star shape is used as a flat graphic symbol and also a cut-out. The work has its roots in the Barnbrook’s previous work with Bowie and also shows how his own approach to design has changed – these days it is stripped back, with simplicity at its core.

"It’s interesting for me to see how my work has progressed and I do think if your work is the same at 40 as it is at 20 then you’re not being honest with your soul," he says. "My work used to be very complex – in a world of Modernism that I was reacting to. Modernism for me, at that time, was not sleek European airports but the grim local dole office, or the dirty British Rail train station. It didn’t work so I needed to create design that was a proper human response to the world I hoped to create.

"Nowadays, however, we are assaulted by thousands of images of different ideologies everyday – and the only way to break through this is with simplicity and clarity. I don’t mean ‘simple’ as in ‘legible’ – because something simple can still be open to interpretation – but an aesthetic that is very bold and without decoration."

CR: Going back to 2013, how do you see your work for The Next Day fitting into this way of designing? Even among those who didn’t respond to it, the cover certainly made people consider what it was they were looking at.

JB: I think what The Next Day design did is make people think about the role of the album cover design. My interest in design when I was young was from seeing the record covers of Neville Brody, Peter Saville, Malcolm Garrett and Vaughan Oliver. I didn’t understand how someone could represent music so well, visualising the beauty and the belief that I had in the music. It also made the music better.

When I got to college, and was told about the logic behind logos and corporate identities, I just found record covers far more visceral and exciting. Although, of course, I now understand that problem-solving and other elements used in both areas are quite similar. With a few exceptions, since those golden days of covers, it has become the domain of the marketing department – to the point where often the most people will say about an album cover is, ‘Well that’s nice’.

There will be less direct explanation for ★ as it is much more within the tone of the music to leave it open. Bowie also taught me a very good lesson when he saw that I had put the roughs of The Next Day covers in the V&A’s David Bowie Is… exhibition. He asked me to be careful because these change the final design – I think it was a lesson that he had learned through making music. Roughs are not just roughs, they can dilute the concept of what you are trying to say with the final work.

CR: How did your ongoing working relationship with Bowie affect how this new project developed? And what’s that relationship like?

JB: Working on this job can be terrifying but you need to be equal to that. I know it’s an album cover and it is not helping people who are facing real social problems, but I don’t know any good creative person who doesn’t re-examine everything they have done in a project at some point to see if it is any good.

So there is the pressure of doing something which will be the face of an album which will become part of popular culture now and for the future; there is a pressure of doing something that is worthy to be shown to the super-intelligent God that is David Bowie; there is the pressure also of the thousands of people who follow him not to disappoint them; there is also the pressure of doing something that, in your own terms, moves forward design-wise in some way. I do think this design is a lot less controversial then The Next Day, but then I think it is a lot easier to get than that sleeve.

As for Bowie’s involvement in the process, again, without being too specific – he is very closely involved, there is a lot of discussion about the concepts behind the songs and the artwork. In this instance we met and listened to the album together in New York and started to bounce ideas off each other, and it developed from that. This process takes about three months of intense emailing. There is – I hope I am not saying without being too presumptuous – a trust between us. I will get what he wants to do and respond in a way that I’ll know he will find engaging.

I also know he, like everybody creative he works with, wants you to push yourself and rethink entirely what you are doing. It is such a refreshing attitude. The record company get involved only when the idea is fully formulated, so there is a clear direction to follow – and they cant change it!

CR: In terms of the actual artwork, people have probably seen by now what looks to be a vinyl sleeve (all black, cut-out), but also a white sleeve design with the black star. Can you tell me what we’re looking at here, and how these differ?

JB: Well, firstly, what I am trying to get over with this design is the album cover in isolation – this something I started with The Next Day and is further developed here. Yes, the design has to exist as the album cover, but it is also all of the other stuff that happens around the release of the album these days, the reviews in the press, the pre-order and also social media interaction. So what we have is ‘a visual language’.

Now, of course, you have to be careful with that, because as well as expressing the philosophy of the cover you need to make it clear for people to identify it. So the actual covers are very simple and clear but there is quite a bit of additional visual language around the ideas, concepts and atmosphere of the music. I had it pointed out to me that it was the first cover for full a solo album by Bowie which doesn’t have a picture of him on it but then the situation is different now. There are plenty of new images of him circulating as part of this, too.

The black design is the vinyl release [cover shown, top of post]. I wanted to make it very much a physical object – vinyl is in an interesting place at the moment, similar to letterpress where the craft and tactile quality of it is everything. So that’s why the cover is cut away and you can see the physical record – the opposite of the digital download, I wanted to give it the feeling that it contained something quite threatening. The label here is part of the design – it is just black, too. In some senses I’ve done the perfect Spinal Tap cover – in the film they receive their newly-pressed album and it is just shiny black with nothing else on it, but the subtleties are what makes the design in this.

The white design is the CD cover. There are other stars that are being used but we are centring on just the five-pointed one for the main releases. You will see the other stars around which I think push the concept of Blackstar more. We have the grid also [shown above], which is about how matter affects space-time.

CR: How does your approach to the typography differ with this record, as opposed to The Next Day? Are you planning to take the treatment used on this release any further?

JB: The Next Day’s typography was very restrained. It was fake-Modernist, disconnected but also with a twist, if that makes sense. Doctrine, the font which was used and released to coincide with the album coming out, was a faux corporate font. It was developed from typography from North Korean Airlines so there was a twisting of the meaning of what something ‘looking corporate’ means. The reason we released it at the same time was because releasing a new font is similar to releasing a new album, they are both ‘new voices’ in the world.

The typography for the new album I hope is elegant, but is big, bold and direct. I do think sensitive use of typography is at the heart of creating an album cover which is a good representation of the music. It is the tone of voice in the music. The font is also open source as one of the things at the heart of this album’s graphics is that they are open to being used and reinterpreted by people who listen to the music.

A special edition of the font – Virus Deja Vu will be released with all the logos etc in for people to use as they wish. This is something I learned on The Next Day when people started to use the white square as a meme. It was planned that we would do a lot of intervention with it, but I didn’t expect people to take it up on Twitter which was amazing. So for this one the system is available to everybody because I do want people to feel included and to be able to use the elements without worry in the way they want to.

CR: Over the last few months there was a lot of Blackstar-related talk on the internet and the star icon was beginning to crop up alongside imablackstar.com. Then earlier this week there was the release of the single with the accompanying film. How easy is it to keep this kind of work secret?

JB: Well, I have to sign a legal secrecy agreement, so although I saw the rumours I couldn’t comment in any way about it! It is very difficult to keep anything like this secret these days. I’m just amazed we did it for The Next Day. For that, Bowie hadn’t been in the press for ten years, and it was wonderful to suddenly put up the website the night before the release of the single and just hit people with it. Silence for ten years is the perfect anti-PR move to make people curious. I woke up quite tired the next morning to hear it as headline news on BBC Radio 4. It was so gratifying that we had managed to do that and that there was no leak.

Here, the circumstances are very different, partly because there isn’t quite the same element of surprise; but it was still nice to keep it quiet, until, well, because there were so many rumours that something had to be said.

CR: Can you tell me about the thinking behind using the star? I was reminded of your Clockwork Orange ‘circle’ cover for Penguin. Here, the shape also informs the ‘logotype’ used on the cover – can you tell me about that?

JB: We are, wherever possible, using the ★ for the title. The original idea came out of discussions with Bowie about ways of representing the album, so this is very much his creativity and his direction. But the discussion was partly prompted by a conversation I had with William Burroughs when I met him, which I have told a thousand times for namedrop effect, but did actually finally give me something usable for this project 25 years later.

I asked him about the future of typography and he said that letterforms would go back to hieroglyphs, similar to the ancient Egyptians. You can actually see it happening with the emoji, they are becoming very common with people creating whole narratives out of them, as well as using them in everyday communication. Will there be a time when we use only these to express thought?

Back to this album though – it was a way of being as minimal with the title as we were with the design and in doing so making it stand out from all of the other stuff you see around you. It was also calculated to work in all different kinds of technologies as it is a recognised Unicode character.

We also have the logo of his name which is an extension of this. There were one or two people at the record company who were nervous about this but I do believe legibility is about familiarity – and once you get used to it you can only read it as ‘Bowie’. This was a painful many hours of working to try to get his name to be legible enough, but not too legible, to read it straight away. I tried many different stars and endless combinations for this one, but I think this has the right balance. There is a hint of the glam David Bowie here. I know it’s just a logo of bits of stars, but I think it is important to have a little of Bowie’s past in it.

In terms of my own work, there has been a playing out of the absolute forms: square – The Next Day; circle – Clockwork Orange cover; and now the star for this album. It wasn’t planned but I think there is something about basic shapes and the way they resonate in the subconscious. If somebody has any projects that need a triangle on up front, I would be very happy to hear from them.

CR: The Blackstar single is out now, along with a ten-minute film by Johan Renck. What kinds of other things might we expect to see prior to the album’s actual release in January?

JB: Well, even I don’t know, because it is part of the openness of the project. I have some stuff in place but I will create more as the project develops. Also it would take away a lot of that mystery if we saw everything straight away wouldn’t it? So the stuff shown here is mainly that which has been seen – although probably not in one place. Let’s leave the rest open, like the music.

★ was released on January 8 2016. More at davidbowie.com/blackstar. See also barnbrook.net and virusfonts.com

Why Higher Education Needs Design Thinking

2020-05-02T18:45:18.545000Z

Research professor Kate Canales believes design is crucial to disrupting higher education, and the timing has never been better.

Doreen Lorenzo: How did you end up where you are today? Did you go directly to academia or did you jump into design first?

Kate Canales: I started my early professional career at Ideo, right out of college. I grew up there over eight years. As a designer, Ideo is my hometown. Then after a couple of years working freelance, I joined frog design in Austin as a principal designer and then a creative director. In 2012 I joined SMU. Although that turn looks a little abrupt, in my heart it really made sense. I had been evolving to support work that did not just deliver great design to clients, but helped clients become more design-led. When SMU called and asked me to help them develop a design program, it was something that made a lot of sense to me. It felt like a natural progression.

[Photo: Jessica Garmon]

Did you go to school for design?

My degree is in mechanical engineering, but I pursued a minor in studio art. Truly, I didn’t feel stirred by either one of those independently, but in the place where those two things overlapped I found a lot of fulfillment. That was design.

As an industry, higher education is going to shift, and design will play a major role in that shift.

Let’s talk about this phenomenon that’s called design thinking. Why is it so important?

In our program at SMU, we’ve chosen to use the term human-centered design, which overlaps dramatically with what people mean when they say design thinking.

Design thinking emerged as a topic when we all started applying design methodology to problems that hadn’t traditionally presented themselves as design problems. For instance, using design as a problem-solving framework to understand how students might interact more effectively with online courses. That kind of problem might not have looked like a design problem previously. What we’ve learned is that design pairs really well with other ways of working.

So how do we keep design thinking from becoming a fad?

Because the fundamentals of design thinking are so straightforward and intuitive, I worry that we may have miscommunicated how simple it is. In fact, it is much more nuanced in practice. This is especially true if you’re trying to adjust an entire organizational culture to work in these new ways.

What I see happening is people taking a weekend class in design thinking and then believing that’s all they need. They go back to their organizations and are under-supported. If their initiative with design thinking fails, they think that design on the whole failed. I love these quick courses because they are good for inspiring people, but they aren’t enough to build expertise.

This is a huge part of why we started MADI, the Masters degree in Design and Innovation at SMU. We’re trying to produce masters, so employers can use real expertise to lead and extend the work they’ve begun with short courses and other design thinking catalysts.

[Photo: Eva Cruz]

I want to talk about how design thinking is being applied to higher ed. Why is it happening now and how do you think it’s working?

Design is poised to make a huge impact in higher ed. There are two ways this can happen—first, as a tool for students’ learning. There’s so much talk about preparing students to solve problems that the world can’t yet imagine, but how are we going to do that? Design is a wonderful framework for promoting the skills that leaders and innovators need, including things like empathy, collaboration, persisting through failure, and comfort with ambiguity. So that’s one way.

The second way is as a disruptive force. To me, an industry is ready to be disrupted when one of three things happens: it outgrows its business model; its offer is no longer appealing to its customer base; or technology has pushed it out of relevance. All three of those things are happening in higher ed right now.

As an industry, higher ed is going to shift, either from the inside or the outside. Probably both. I believe design will play a major role in that shift.

The thing that’s most exciting is that design, in particular human-centered design, is an amazing framework for learning and guiding problem-solving.

But let’s face it, this is a big change in education. It’s bringing people from private industry like you into a university setting. Do you think we’ll see more of that happening in higher ed?

I think that we will have to if there is further commitment to design. As higher ed tries to innovate, it will have to look at how people who acquired their expertise outside of the academic system might provide value inside of it.

I think most designers are going to fall into that category. We’re seeing this at every school currently pursuing this trend, from SMU to Stanford, from University of Vermont to the Claremont Colleges. The people leading those learning experiences—including me—are not traditional academics. If higher ed is going to embrace design, it’s going to simultaneously embrace a new way of looking at who guides the learning experiences.

I agree. Talk a little bit about the program. What was it like starting it from scratch and what advice would you give to someone starting a similar program?

I think because I’m a designer I approached the whole thing as a design problem. Like when you’re a hammer, everything’s a nail. I just walked in and said, 'Oh, it’s a design problem.'

I’d recommend doing that, which means going through multiple cycles of learning about the people in the system that you’re designing for, and then building prototypes for them to try. I started by co-teaching a couple of existing courses in the engineering school. That helped me get to know the student base and faculty members and start to understand some of the norms. Then I started designing my own courses. Then those eventually became the basis of the degree.

[Photo: SMU]

So what did you learn? What were some of the assumptions you had starting your program versus what ended up working?

The big thing that I’ve learned is about scaffolding. It isn’t enough to show a bunch of case studies of great work, and then say, 'Okay, go do that.' I’m learning how to scaffold the steps so that students aren’t daunted by the openendedness of what we’re trying to do. That has been my number one tool that I’ve developed as an educator.

The other main thing that has aided me is having a wide berth in which to make mistakes and learn. That is one of the conditions that innovation requires — you have to expect that you’re going to get things wrong, and that you’re going to iterate on those things. That’s a kind of mantra at SMU Lyle, and I’m lucky that I’m operating under leadership that understands that we’ve got to learn our way into the right solution, just like any design problem.

People often think that design thinking itself is a career. How do you think about design thinking as a profession?

I don’t think that human-centered design or design thinking is a standalone profession. What we’re trying to emphasize is human-centered design as an additional skill set you can bring to the table in conjunction with what you’re already good at.

The process of human-centered design itself allows people to modulate their thinking in a way that’s really powerful. The process ensures that you’re both making and understanding, and in fact, that you are making in order to understand, and understanding in order to make. Those are two things that feed off of each other. But what you make is beautifully open for interpretation. You can use human-centered design to make furniture or buildings, sure. But you can also use it to make policy or curricula or systems or services—which is why it doesn’t stand alone.

So what does design mean to you and how do you think it’s changed over time?

Design is the lens that I use for looking at the world. And it’s really my core way of working. When I took my first class in visual thinking in college, I collided with a way of being in the world that was like the first pair of glasses I ever got. Everything was clear. One of the things that’s been so delightful over time, and that really fires me up about the work I’m doing now, is facilitating that same collision for other people.

Are you a hugger?

Absolutely.

Source: Co.Design. Fast Company

Kate Canales is a research professor and Director of Design and Innovation Programs at the Lyle School of Engineering at SMU in Dallas. She spoke to Doreen Lorenzo as part of Co.Design's Designing Women, a series of interviews with inspiring women in the design industry.

Definición de Heurística

2021-04-04T12:48:52.702000Z

La Heurística es la capacidad que ostenta un sistema determinado para realizar de manera inmediata innovaciones positivas para sí mismo y sus propósitos.

Esta capacidad es una característica inherente a los seres humanos, ya que a través de esta los individuos podemos descubrir cosas, inventar otras tantas, resolver problemas mediante la creatividad o el pensamiento lateral, entre otras alternativas.

La enorme popularidad del término se le debe al matemático George Pólya, quien a través de varias propuestas heurísticas que volcó en su libro Cómo Resolverlo, se convirtió en una invalorable ayuda para sus alumnos a la hora de las tareas matemáticas.Entre otras cosas, Pólva, allí les aconsejaba, que en el caso de no comprender un problema, lo mejor sería dibujar un esquema sobre el, si el problema en cuestión es abstracto, probar de pasarlo a un tema concreto, sin dudas, ejemplos, que ilustran mejor que nada el concepto de heurística.

Como buena disciplina científica, la Heurística es plausible de ser aplicada a cualquier ciencia, incluyendo la elaboración de medios auxiliares, reglas, principios, estrategias, programas, entre otros, que faciliten distintas alternativas para la solución de los problemas.

El método Heurístico, entonces, está compuesto por los siguientes elementos: principios (sugerencias para hallar la solución: analogía y reducción); reglas (ayudan a encontrar los medios para resolver los problemas, entre las más empleadas se cuentan: separar lo dado de aquello buscado, confección de mapas, esquemas, utilización de números, reformulación de problemas) y estrategias (recursos organizativos funcionales al proceso de resolución, pueden ser de dos tipos: el trabajo hacia delante o el trabajo hacia atrás).

En el ámbito de la Psicología, la heurística se encuentra estrictamente relacionada a la creatividad y se dice que la misma es fundamental a la hora de orientar en la toma de decisiones y para explicar cómo se llega a un juicio o a la solución de un problema determinado. Suele estar asociada a lo que en este contexto se denomina atajo mental. Uno de los tipos de atajo más comunes es el del estereotipo, se juzga a un individuo en relación, por ejemplo, del grupo social al cual pertenece, aunque claro, esta cuestión puede hacernos incurrir en errores o interpretaciones incorrectas.

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Temas en Heurística

Heurística

2021-04-04T12:48:56.492000Z

Significado de Heurística

Qué es Heurística:

Se conoce como heurística al conjunto de técnicas o métodos para resolver un problema. La palabra heurística es de origen griego "εὑρίσκειν" que significa "hallar, inventar".

La heurística es vista como el arte de inventar por parte de los seres humanos, con la intención de procurar estrategias, métodos, criterios, que permitan resolver problemas a través de la creatividad, pensamiento divergente o lateral. También, se afirma que la heurística se basa en la experiencia propia del individuo, y en el de los demás para encontrar la solución más viable al problema.

La heurística, como disciplina científica, y en su sentido amplio puede ser aplicada a cualquier ciencia con la finalidad de elaborar medios, principios, reglas, estrategias como ayuda para lograr encontrar la solución más eficaz y eficiente al problema que analiza el individuo.

Los procedimientos heurísticos, se dividen en:

Principios heurístico, establece sugerencias para encontrar la solución idónea al problema.
Reglas heurística, señalan los medios para resolver el problema.
Estrategias heurísticas, son aquellas que permiten organizar los materiales o recursos compilados que contribuyen a la búsqueda de la solución del problema.

Como tal, el término heurístico se puede emplear como sustantivo y adjetivo. Como sustantivo, alude a la ciencia o arte del descubrimiento, considerada como una disciplina que posee el carácter de ser investigada. Ahora bien, en el caso de ser utilizada como adjetivo señala los principios, las reglas, y las estrategias idóneas para encontrar la solución al problema.

La heurística fue un término utilizado por Albert Einstein en la publicación sobre el efecto fotoeléctrico, en el artículo que lleva por título traducido al español "Sobre un punto de vista heurístico concerniente a la producción y transformación de la luz", cuya publicación le otorgo un premio Nobel de la Física, en el año 1921.

La heurística existe desde la Antigua Grecia, pero fue un término popularizado por el matemático George Pólya, en su libro "Cómo resolverlo", en el cual explica el método heurístico a sus alumnos de matemáticas, y a todos aquellos que desean aprender de la disciplina, citando cuatro ejemplos:

Si no consigues entender un problema, dibuja un esquema.
Si no encuentras la solución, haz como si ya la tuvieras y mira qué puedes deducir de ella (razonando a la inversa).
Si el problema es abstracto, prueba a examinar un ejemplo concreto.
Intenta abordar primero un problema más general.

Por su parte, el filósofo y matemático Lakato, estableció que la heurística es un conjunto de métodos o reglas que pueden ser positivos o negativos, que indican cuales son las acciones idóneas que pueden generar soluciones al problema. En su trabajo de programa científico de investigación, indico que todo programa contempla una estructura que puede servir de guía de modo positivo o negativo.

En relación a lo anterior, la heurística positiva es aquella que establece directrices de cómo desarrollar un programa de investigación, en cambio, la heurística negativa de un programa señala lo que no se puede cambiar, ni modificar, conocido como el núcleo central.

Heurística en informática

Para la informática, la heurística consiste en encontrar o construir algoritmos con buena velocidad para ser ejecutados. Ejemplos claros de la definición proporcionada son los juegos informáticos, o programas que detectan si un correo electrónico es un spam o no.

Heurística en psicología

La heurística, puede ser vista como una teoría, que estimula el pensamiento del individuo encargado de analizar todos los materiales recopilados durante la investigación. En este sentido, se puede afirmar que la heurística está relacionada con la creación en determinado campo, la cual le presta una ayuda al individuo en tomar una decisión para solucionar el problema, sin que le asegure que sea la más idónea.

Heurística en historia

La heurística en historia, es el conjunto de técnicas, métodos y procedimientos usados por los historiadores para analizar las fuentes documentales y otros materiales recopilados, con el objetivo de proporcionar información relevante a la sociedad sobre acontecimientos pasados.

Design Thinking is the new core

2021-04-04T12:48:52.701000Z

There has been an absolute flurry of excitement lately within the industry, with regards to the advent of Design Thinking. From its origins back in the day as a new means of collaboratively extending design to other areas of practice, to the innovation-driven iterative problem solving tool that it is today, design thinking as both a philosophy and method has evolved tremendously.

Design Thinking is rather interesting in itself, as it is the quintessential combination of both creative and critical thinking. Focused on solutions instead of just the problem on hand, design thinking utilises the principles of divergent thinking, which really is about brainstorming ideas with minimal restrictions. In other words, design thinking involves a lot of ideation, collaboration and participation — very much a solutions-oriented approach. It is also known as the ‘human-centered design process’, which starts with the people you’re designing for, and ends with new solutions that are targeted at meeting the needs of these people.

So, why do I think that it is the new core?

It is an undeniable fact that for many companies, as they increase in size and scale, employees start to become more accustomed and comfortable as company processes start to become cast in stone. What follows soon after is a widespread habit of just going through the motions, day in and day out. Ultimately, the particular company starts to experience organisational slack and exhibits signs of inefficiency.

Consider a typical scenario often witnessed behind closed doors in large corporations: members of a steering committee for the latest construction project congregate for the third meeting thus far, but after laborious rounds of discussion, it is clear that nothing much has been accomplished. All talk, little action and absolutely no thinking.

Sounds familiar?

Design Thinking, on the other hand, can allow companies to truly walk the talk, and bring about real change with real benefits. Businesses, both big and small alike, should embrace design thinking and place it at the core of all that they do, giving birth to company cultures that are solutions-focused.

For those doubting the credibility and viability of design thinking, just note that hugely successful brands such as Apple, Google, Samsung and 3M have famously espoused the virtues of applying design thinking to their processes, products and services. I mean, 3M even has a ‘15 Percent Time’ program, which allows employees to use a portion of their paid time to pursue their own ideas — this creates an environment that values trial, improvement and iteration, and helps to decrease the fear of failure amongst employees.

Credits: 3M — The Innovative Culture of 3M

What is shown below is a typical design thinking process, which involves a six-step methodology — from empathising to implementing.

Credits: Nielsen Norman Group — Phases of the Design Thinking Process

So yes, Design Thinking is indeed revolutionary in its own right, for it represents the future of innovation and creation. However, companies must keep in mind the principles of what constitutes true Design Thinking. I have heard of many companies who are all too ready to jump onto the Design Thinking bandwagon, without actually stopping to first figure out what it truly entails. Design Thinking is not just something you can pick up from a government-subsidised one-day workshop. Design Thinking is not just a process — it is a type of mindset that places strong belief in the value of design in solving real-world problems.

More than just empty hype, Design Thinking is synonymous with the future, and brands need to sit up and recognise that.

Using Multidisciplinary Thinking to Approach Problems in a Complex World

2021-04-04T12:48:49.291000Z

Complex outcomes in human systems are a tough nut to crack when it comes to deciding what’s really true. Any phenomena we might try to explain will have a host of competing theories, many of them seemingly plausible.

So how do we know what to go with?

One idea is to take a nod from the best. One of the most successful "explainers" of human behavior has been the cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker. His books have been massively influential, in part because they combine scientific rigor, explanatory power, and plainly excellent writing.

What’s unique about Pinker is the range of sources he draws on. His book The Better Angels of Our Nature, a cogitation on the decline in relative violence in recent human history, draws on ideas from evolutionary psychology, forensic anthropology, statistics, social history, criminology, and a host of other fields. Pinker, like Vaclav Smil and Jared Diamond, is the opposite of the man with a hammer, ranging over much material to come to his conclusions.

In fact, when asked about the progress of social science as an explanatory arena over time, Pinker credited this cross-disciplinary focus:

Because of the unification with the sciences, there are more genuinely explanatory theories, and there’s a sense of progress, with more non-obvious things being discovered that have profound implications.

But, even better, Pinker gives out an outline for how a multidisciplinary thinker should approach problems in a complex world.

***

Here’s the issue at stake: When we’re viewing a complex phenomena—say, the decline in certain forms of violence in human history—it can be hard to come with up a rigorous explanation. We can’t just set up repeated lab experiments and vary the conditions of human history to see what pops out, as with physics or chemistry.

So out of necessity, we must approach the problem in a different way.

In the above referenced interview, Pinker gives a wonderful example how to do it: Note how he carefully "cross-checks" from a variety of sources of data, developing a 3D view of the landscape he’s trying to assess:

Pinker: Absolutely, I think most philosophers of science would say that all scientific generalizations are probabilistic rather than logically certain, more so for the social sciences because the systems you are studying are more complex than, say, molecules, and because there are fewer opportunities to intervene experimentally and to control every variable. But the existence of the social sciences, including psychology, to the extent that they have discovered anything, shows that, despite the uncontrollability of human behavior, you can make some progress: you can do your best to control the nuisance variables that are not literally in your control; you can have analogues in a laboratory that simulate what you’re interested in and impose an experimental manipulation.

You can be clever about squeezing the last drop of causal information out of a correlational data set, and you can use converging evidence, the qualitative narratives of traditional history in combination with quantitative data sets and regression analyses that try to find patterns in them. But I also go to traditional historical narratives, partly as a sanity check. If you’re just manipulating numbers, you never know whether you’ve wandered into some preposterous conclusion by taking numbers too seriously that couldn’t possibly reflect reality. Also, it’s the narrative history that provides hypotheses that can then be tested. Very often a historian comes up with some plausible causal story, and that gives the social scientists something to do in squeezing a story out of the numbers.

Warburton: I wonder if you’ve got an example of just that, where you’ve combined the history and the social science?

Pinker: One example is the hypothesis that the Humanitarian Revolution during the Enlightenment, that is, the abolition of slavery, torture, cruel punishments, religious persecution, and so on, was a product of an expansion of empathy, which in turn was fueled by literacy and the consumption of novels and journalistic accounts. People read what life was like in other times and places, and then applied their sense of empathy more broadly, which gave them second thoughts about whether it’s a good idea to disembowel someone as a form of criminal punishment. So that’s a historical hypothesis. Lynn Hunt, a historian at the University of California–Berkeley, proposed it, and there are some psychological studies that show that, indeed, if people read a first-person account by someone unlike them, they will become more sympathetic to that individual, and also to the category of people that that individual represents.

So now we have a bit of experimental psychology supporting the historical qualitative narrative. And, in addition, one can go to economic historians and see that, indeed, there was first a massive increase in the economic efficiency of manufacturing a book, then there was a massive increase in the number of books published, and finally there was a massive increase in the rate of literacy. So you’ve got a story that has at least three vertices: the historian’s hypothesis; the economic historians identifying exogenous variables that changed prior to the phenomenon we’re trying to explain, so the putative cause occurs before the putative effect; and then you have the experimental manipulation in a laboratory, showing that the intervening link is indeed plausible.

Pinker is saying, Look we can’t justrely on "plausible narratives" generated by folks like the historians. There are too many possibilities that could be correct.

Nor can we rely purely on correlations (i.e., the rise in literacy statistically tracking the decline in violence) — they don’t necessarily offer us a causative explanation. (Does the rise in literacy cause less violence, or is it vice versa? Or, does a third factor cause both?)

However, if we layer in some other known facts from areas we canexperiment on — say, psychology or cognitive neuroscience — we can sometimes establish the causal link we need or, at worst, a better hypothesis of reality.

In this case, it would be thefinding from psychology that certain forms of literacy do indeed increase empathy (for logical reasons).

Does this method give us absolute proof? No. However, it does allow us to propose and then test, re-test, alter, and strengthen or ultimately reject a hypothesis. (In other words, rigorous thinking.)

We can’t stop here though. We have to take time to examine competing hypotheses — there may be a better fit. The interviewer continues on asking Pinker about this methodology:

Warburton: And so you conclude that the de-centering that occurs through novel-reading and first-person accounts probably did have a causal impact on the willingness of people to be violent to their peers?

Pinker: That’s right. And, of course, one has to rule out alternative hypotheses. One of them could be the growth of affluence: perhaps it’s simply a question of how pleasant your life is. If you live a longer and healthier and more enjoyable life, maybe you place a higher value on life in general, and, by extension, the lives of others. That would be an alternative hypothesis to the idea that there was an expansion of empathy fueled by greater literacy. But that can be ruled out by data from economic historians that show there was little increase in affluence during the time of the Humanitarian Revolution. The increase in affluence really came later, in the 19th century, with the advent of the Industrial Revolution.

***

Let’s review the process that Pinker has laid out, one that we might think about emulating as we examine the causes of complex phenomena in human systems:

We observe an interesting phenomenon in need of explanation, one we feel capable of exploring.
We propose and examine competing hypotheses that would explain the phenomena (set up in a falsifiable way, in harmony with the divide between science and pseudoscience laid out for us by the great Karl Popper).
We examine a cross-section of: Empirical data relating to the phenomena; sensible qualitative inference (from multiple fields/disciplines, the more fundamental the better), and finally; "Demonstrable" aspects of nature we are nearly certain about, arising from controlled experiment or other rigorous sources of knowledge ranging from engineering to biology to cognitive neuroscience.

What we end up with is not necessarily a bulletproof explanation, but probably the best we can do if we think carefully. A good cross-disciplinary examination with quantitative and qualitative sources coming into equal play, and a good dose of judgment, can be far more rigorous than the gut instinct or plausible nonsense type stories that many of us lazily spout.

A Word of Caution

Although Pinker’s "multiple vertices" approach to problem solving in complex domains can be powerful, we always have to be on guard for phenomena that we simply cannot explain at our current level of competence: We must have a "too hard" pile when competing explanations come out "too close to call" or we otherwise feel we’re outside of our circle of competence. Always tread carefully and be sure to follow Darwin’s Golden Rule: Contrary facts are more important than confirming ones. Be ready to change your mind, like Darwin, when the facts don’t go your way.

***

Still Interested? For some more Pinker goodness check out our prior posts on his work, or check out a few of his books like How the Mind Works or The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature.

Date: November 8, 2016
Filed Under: Complex Systems, Mental Models, Social Science, Steven Pinker

Hacia una proyectualidad crítica: Prólogo

2021-04-04T12:48:30.701000Z

ARTE, DISEÑO Y MEDIAS TECNOLÓGICAS

Hacia una proyectualidad crítica. [Prólogo]

Rosa Chalkho *

^(*) Profesora de Artes en Música (IUNA). Magister en Diseño (Universidad de Palermo). Docente de grado y posgrado de la Facultad de Diseño y Comunicación de la Universidad de Palermo. Docente de la Facultad de Arquitectura, Diseño y Urbanismo de la Universidad de Buenos Aires.

Fecha de aceptación: abril 2011
Fecha de recepción: diciembre 2010
Versión final: junio 2012

Resumen: Este ensayo prologa la compilación del presente cuaderno, cuyas temáticas generales giran en torno al Arte, el Diseño y las nuevas tecnologías. A través del planteo de problemáticas y de la introducción de algunas categorías teóricas construye un enlace particular entre las ideas y los autores contenidos en la publicación. El texto avanza sobre la consideración de la tecnología como fenómeno cultural, social y económico; y a partir de este lugar analiza su incidencia sobre las prácticas de arte y diseño tomando tanto algunos elementos históricos como actuales. Como conclusión introduce la expresión proyectualidad crítica para dar cuenta de los procesos creativos en el arte actual.

Palabras clave: Arte; Diseño; Proyectualidad; Tecnologías.

Summary: This essay precedes the compilation of this very book, wich general topics go around Art, Design and new technologies. By setting forth different problems and introducing some new thoretical categories, it builds a particular link between the ideas and the authors in this issue. The text goes foward about technology as a cultural, social and ecomomic phenomenon and from that place it analyzes the incidence of the former over the arts and design, taking in consideration some historical and contemporary elements. As a final note, the expression crtitical projectuality is introduced to take consideration about the creative processes in todays art.

Key words: Art; Design; Projects; Technologies.

Resumo: Este ensaio introduz a compilação deste caderno, cuias temáticas gerais giram em torno à Arte, o Design e as novas tecnologias. Através da exposição de problemas e da introdução de algumas categorias teóricas construi um enlace particular entre as ideias e os autores que se apresentam nesta publicação. O texto avança sobre a consideração da tecnologia como fenómeno cultural, social e económico; para analisar sua incidência sobre as práticas de arte e design tomando elementos históricos e atuais. Para concluir introduz a expresão proyectualidad crítica para dar conta dos processos creativos na arte atual.

Palavras chave: Arte; Design; Proyectualidad; Tecnologias.

El cielo por asalto en clave hip hop

En julio de 1977 un masivo apagón eléctrico deja a la mayor parte de Nueva York a oscuras. La crisis económica del momento sumada al descontento popular en los barrios más pobres son las principales causas de toda una noche de saqueos, vandalismos y enfrentamientos con la policía. El saldo, además de muertos y heridos, consiste en un botín fabuloso de electrodomésticos, y una gran parte de ellos son equipos de sonido y música: tocadiscos, mezcladores, altavoces, amplificadores, micrófonos, etc. Esta inyección de tecnología de origen ilegítimo, revendida entre los edificios del Bronx fomenta (o al menos las leyendas así lo relatan) una expansión exponencial del hip hop aún embrionario. No suena casual que este movimiento musical sea representativo de la crítica social popular en los Estados Unidos y que su origen fundacional legendario sea una suerte de cielo por asalto por parte de sectores afroamericanos e hispanos. El acceso a los bienes tecnológicos se rige (al igual que otros productos) por las desiguales reglas del capitalismo; pero en muchas casos, estos objetos son bienes de consumo y también bienes de producción. La misma computadora es centro de entretenimiento y herramienta de trabajo; la bandeja gira discos es simplemente para escuchar música, pero también es el dispositivo con el que se inventa el famoso scratch de los Disc Jockeys.

La circulación de los bienes tecnológicos está casi siempre en una zona de tensión: entre el repudio y la codicia, entre el poder y la carencia, entre lo hegemónico y lo emergente. La aceleración de cambio en el campo tecnológico es uno de los factores de esta de tensión, probablemente no haya otro rubro más sensible que este al deseo por la novedad, por lo último o por lo nuevo. En tanto que las transformaciones vaticinadas por los gurúes de las nuevas tecnologías¹ en términos de conectividad, sofisticación y comunicaciones parecen cumplirse y hasta superarse, las grandes problemáticas del orden mundial permanecen y se acentúan. Arlindo Machado enuncia lo siguiente al respecto:

Pero las nuevas tecnologías no promueven ese avance democratizando el acceso, universalizando las riquezas producidas, generando el crecimiento material y cultural de todo el planeta alcanzado por su influencia. Avanzan fuertemente ancladas en instrumentos políticos y jurídicos autoritarios, como la propiedad privada, las patentes y el copyright, la hegemonía del capital global, la división del planeta en estratos sociales, clases, razas, etnias y géneros diferenciados, desigualmente beneficiados por el acceso a los bienes producidos. (Machado, 2010).

Los avances tecnológicos que prometían bienestar a la humanidad no han resuelto la pobreza, ni el hambre ni los confictos bélicos, aunque la hiperconectividad y la información sí exhiben las problemáticas en bruto.

Manifestaciones organizadas en redes sociales, cadenas de hoaxes bien intencionadas o cadenas de mensajes de texto para protestar por las tarifas de alguna empresa parecen pálidos intentos que poco castigan la estructura macroeconómica. Es más probable que se tambalee por su propio peso, como en la última crisis, que por voluntad de cambio político - social. De todas maneras, la discursividad social se percibe así misma con profundos cambios en relación con las medias tecnológicas. Tanto en el campo del trabajo como en las relaciones sociales el pasado sin Internet y sin celulares pertenece a un imaginario lejano; y, aunque persiste una sensación de mejora, conviene analizar cuáles son los beneficiarios de esta eficiencia. Las fantasías futurísticas en las que las máquinas trabajarían por nosotros parecen alejadas, y al parecer sus consecuencias son el desempleo por un lado y la suba de los estándares productivos por otro, como manera de aprovechar el tiempo de trabajo. Aún en situaciones que a simple vista aparecen como una mejoría en la calidad del trabajo gracias a la conectividad tecnológica (horarios flexibles, trabajo desde el hogar, etc.) también pueden ser leídos como una disolución negativa de la frontera "tiempo laboral" y "tiempo de ocio".

Esta dimensión social y cultural de la cuestión tecnológica se constituye en algo interesante para ser estudiado, es decir, los usos, circulaciones, mutaciones y discursividades que anidan en el entramado cultural.

En este contexto ¿qué relaciones mantienen, entonces las prácticas artísticas con las medias tecnológicas? O mejor expresado, ¿las artes simplemente usufructúan herramientas tecnológicas como medio para la concreción del artificio? ¿o su interacción con la tecnología conduce, además, a su cuestionamiento? Si bien las dos posturas artísticas coexisten pareciera que la crítica a lo tecnomedial predomina por sobre lo neutro o lo estético formalista. Así lo reafirma Rodigo Alonso en su texto Tecno-Imagen: encuentros y desencuentros entre el arte y la tecnología:

Contrariamente a lo que se cree no hay necesariamente un optimismo utópico en el artista que decide utilizar las posibilidades de la técnica y de los medios no tradicionales para la realización de sus obras. Nam June Paik decía: "utilizo la tecnología para odiarla adecuadamente", y ciertamente muchas de las mejores reflexiones y de los más agudos cuestionamientos al discurso omnipresente de la tecnología han sido realizados desde su propio seno. (Alonso, 1999:79).

Efectivamente, Paik y también los primeros videoartistas del grupo Fluxus no utilizaron los dispositivos tecnológicos televisivos como un simple soporte, como pretensión estética o como novedad; sino que es ése soporte el que transforma el discurso artístico y al mismo tiempo provoca crítica al dispositivo del cual se sirve. ¿Qué aporta esta media tecnológica a diferencia de otras herramientas? Pues sus múltiples dimensiones y por consecuencia, su complejidad se constituye en dispositivo y media comunicacional; su sistema incluye las gramáticas de producción, circulación y recepción.

En este sentido quizás no sea casual el descubrimiento, como mecanismo de producción en varias piezas de videoarte de esta época, del efecto de feedback, o retroalimentación visual. Esto consiste en grabar o transmitir con dos cámaras enfrentadas obteniendo imágenes multiplicadas al infinito, constituyéndose en una perfecta metáfora del bucle entre producción, circulación y recepción de la semiosis social. "Efectivamente, hasta mediados de la década del 70, los incipientes videastas se dedicaron a denunciar el dispositivo televisivo, alterando o ridiculizando sus contenidos." (Fenández Irusta, 2007).

En los '90, una nueva plataforma tecnológica, otra generación de artistas y un similar espíritu de crítica gestan el llamado Net Art. Este arte que forma su cuerpo (o ausencia de cuerpo) en la propia topología de la red cuestiona los circuitos de legitimación y mercadeo en el campo del arte. La Internet les permite crear un bypass que a priori eliminaría del circuito a instituciones, premios, curadores y demás estamentos de legitimación y valoración de artistas y obras, constituyendo un circuito propio, un canal de exhibición alternativo y en relación directa con los públicos. Sylvia Valdés en su ensayo Poéticas de la Imagen digital en la presente compilación explicita la función jerarquizadora de la tecnología en el imaginario social, que como hija dilecta de lo científico imprime a lo artístico. Por otra parte, Valdés avanza sobre la cuestión del arte y la tecnología desde la relación con el lenguaje proponiendo una nueva categorización de la función poética a la cual extrae del campo de estudio de la comunicación para contrastarla con lo filosófico y lo psicoanalítico y concluir en una poética cuya función no es comunicacional sino transformadora. En este sentido, el arte a partir de las vanguardias comienza a adquirir facetas críticas y cuestionadoras, de denuncia y compromiso que ocupaban hasta entonces un segundo plano. El señalamiento sobre la celebración promisoria del avance tecnológico podría ser una variante más de la mirada alerta del artista actual. La diferencia, tal vez, con otras temáticas es que la tecnología no es un concepto ajeno sino que participa como cuerpo, herramienta o circuito de la propia obra. El artista señala es una obra (instalación - performance) de la artista cordobesa Dolores Cáceres presentada en la I Bienal del Fin del Mundo en Ushuaia en 2007. Cáceres intervino una playa del Canal Beagle con la leyenda "El Artista Señala" en letras gigantes de material combustible a las que prendió fuego. En esta obra, como lo explica la artista, el señalamiento consiste en un homenaje a los pueblos originarios extinguidos de la región, los Yámanas y al nombre de la isla, Tierra del Fuego llamada así por los "fuegos" que se veían en la tierra desde el canal provenientes de las hogueras yámanas. Más allá de la temática particular de esta intervención podemos advertir una intención general: el artista siempre señala; y no es casualidad que esta frase haya sido tomada para el título de la muestra itinerante exhibida en varios museos del país El arte señala integrada por obras de la Bienal de Ushuaia

Pero, ¿qué se señala? ¿consiste todo esto en una simple protesta estetizada? Y por otro lado ¿hasta donde es necesario para el arte medir su eficacia en términos de transformación del contexto? Aunque es complicado generalizar, se puede inferir a través de las obras y los artistas que la mirada crítica sobre lo tecnológico atraviesa e incide sobre el campo de lo social y económico. Los dispositivos tecnológicos en sí mismos carecen de moral, nuevamente es su manipulación lo que los hace funcionar como discriminadores sociales, benefactores de la humanidad o instrumentos de coacción.

Probablemente, la relación entre arte y tecnología sea una relación emergente de otra mucho más profunda y determinante, no sólo en la actualidad sino a través de la historia: la relación entre Arte y producción, es decir arte y sistema económico. Esta cuestión, evidentemente, no es una novedad, pero las interpretaciones y reinterpretaciones marxistas al respecto en el campo del arte han sumado voces encontradas. Si para Bertolt Brecht la modelización de la estructura compositiva y formal en el arte es la confirmación antiburguesa de una producción artística de una era industrial y proletaria, para Adorno arte e industria son irreconciliables. El concepto de industria cultural acuñado por Theodor Adorno encarna todo lo negativo de la ideología burguesa con un gran poder de penetración en las masas.

Cuál es la estética de la revolución o del socialismo ha tenido respuestas, no sólo distintas sino totalmente opuestas como el realismo socialista o el muralismo mexicano como ejemplos de una cercanía con lo figurativo o la representación de lo popular a diferencia de las ideas de revolución en el arte como motor movilizador de la revolución social sostenidas por vanguardias como los grupos MaDi y Arte Concreto Invención en Argentina.²

Otra mirada en retrospectiva de esta relación crítica entre arte y producción es expresada por Nicolas Bourriaud cuando establece un lazo entre el pop y el minimalismo de los sesenta como expresión de la producción industrial y el consumo masivo respectivamente. Bourriaud establece esta ligadura a partir del análisis de los materiales:

Los materiales utilizados en la escultura minimalista (aluminio anodizado, acero, chapa galvanizada, plexiglás, neón) remiten a la tecnología industrial y más particularmente a la estructura de las fábricas y grandes depósitos. Por su parte, la iconografía pop art remite a la era del consumo, a la aparición del supermercado y de las nuevas formas de marketing que están ligadas a ello: la frontalidad visual, la serialidad, la abundancia. (Bourrieaud, 2007:109).

Por otra parte, para Bourrieaud el arte conceptual está vinculado a la predominancia de la economía terciaria partir de los setenta, al surgimiento de la informática y el comienzo de las bases de datos como organización de la información: "Empresa huidiza (IBM) su aparato productivo es literalmente ilocalizable a la manera de una obra conceptual cuya apariencia física importa poco y puede materializarse en cualquier parte" (Bourrieaud, 2007:110).

Una nueva relación podría ser establecida a partir de los noventa entre el arte digital, el Net Art y la multimedia con la condición de labilidad, fujo e inmaterialidad del capitalismo financiero. Los movimientos caprichosos del capital, la condición de virtual del dinero y la ausencia de un capitalista ³ visible encuentran su correlato artístico (y crítico) en creaciones que utilizan el devenir mutante de la obra en un tiempo, las redes comunicacionales, el arte generativo, la interacción en la web2.0 entre otros.

Esta relación entre Arte y compromiso, o Arte y política es analizada por Florencia Battiti en El arte ante las paradojas de la representacióntomando como un estudio de caso la creación del Parque de la Memoria-Monumento a las Víctimas del Terrorismo de Estado en la Argentina. Nuevamente surge en el texto un análisis sobre la tensión entre comunicación y poética o entre formalismo estético y sentido, planteados ahora como desafíos para la curaduría, la gestión y la selección de las obras. La pregunta vuelve a girar acerca de la representabilidad del horror, y si esto es posible; qué puede decir el arte al respecto: ¿ofrecer una versión estetizada? ¿traicionar la metáfora en pos del mensaje? Las antinomias simplificadoras se diluyen al recorrer el análisis de las obras realizado por Battiti y encontrar resueltas las tensiones éticas en el seno mismo de la piezas; y no sólo como soluciones tangenciales sino como un concentrado de gran poder expresivo, cuya pregnancia en el espectador reifica y trasciende el concepto de memoria.

Música, industria y reproductibilidad

En el campo de la música, una nueva combinación entre rock y experimentalismo se fusionan en el movimiento llamado rock industrial de la década del ochenta. Lo industrial aquí no alude a los mecanismos fordistas de las industrias culturales (discográfica en este caso) que tanto critica Adorno sino más bien a todo lo contrario, es un movimiento que encuentra cobijo en sellos independientes, levemente descentrado del foco anglosajón predominante ya que surge en Alemania con Einstürzende Neubauten como una de las cabezas de fila. ¿Cuál es el aspecto industrial? Nuevamente la utilización de los materiales, en este caso sonoros que construyen una sonoridad de "fábrica" a partir de elementos, objetos, metales, caños, tuberías, etc. con sonidos sintetizados sobre bases de rock. Se puede pensar en este caso que la relación con lo industrial en los ochenta sería un tanto tardía o al menos extemporánea, no podemos olvidar que la utilización de estos sonidos no es una novedad: Pierre Schaeffer, John Cage y Karleinz Stockhausen ya habían transitado por estas búsquedas tímbricas desde mediados del siglo XX sin dejar de mencionar las improntas futurísticas de principios del siglo XX de Luigi Russolo y sus máquinas intonarumori o la incidencia de los objetos sonoros en las obras de Edgar Varése como las sugerentes sirenas fabriles de Ionisation (1929).

Postproducción es el título del libro de Nicolas Bourrieaud al que hacemos referencia y es la palabra con la que va a caracterizar los modos de realización artística y cultural de los últimos tiempos. Con el término postproducción se denomina a una serie de procesos de acabado de productos para el campo de las industrias culturales (cine, música, TV, etc.) y esta idea sirve como concepto para representar un nuevo modo de producción artística basado en la manipulación de contenidos previos (los ready made de Duchamp son los antecedentes fundacionales de estas estéticas).

Para Bourrieaud la quintaesencia de este paradigma es la cultura deejaying:

Durante los años ochenta, la democratización de la informática y la aparición del sampling ⁴ permitieron el surgimiento de un paisaje cultural cuyas figuras emblemáticas son los Djs y los programadores. El remixador se ha vuelto más importante que el instrumentista (...). Mientras que las recientes tendencias musicales han banalizado el desvío, las obras de arte ya no se perciben como obstáculos, sino como materiales de construcción. Cualquier DJ trabaja hoy a partir de principios heredados de las vanguardias artísticas: desvío, ready-mades recíprocos o asistidos, desmaterialización de la actividad. ⁵ (Bourrieaud, 2007:39, 42).

Si bien la cultura deejaying aparece como la punta más masiva, cercana a la cultura consumista o en otros casos popular; existe otro ejemplo de apropiación crítica en el campo de lo musical: Plunderphonics es un concepto acuñado por John Oswald en 1985 pero que a diferencia de la espontaneidad y la diversidad variopinta de la cultura DJ esgrime un sostén político e ideológico a lo que literalmente puede traducirse como "saqueo sónico"

Desde que el collage aparece en el mundo de las artes a principios del siglo XX (y, en las artes sonoras, a mitad del siglo), los cimientos sobre los que se sostiene el concepto de autoría están cada vez más resquebrajados. Cuando en 1985 el canadiense John Oswald acuña el término plunderphonics para referirse al apropiacionismo musical, nos está señalando el cisma entre creación e industria que se está produciendo en el mundo de la música. Para acabar de complicar la situación, en los últimos 15 años la herramienta de transmisión de la cultura es digital, y el cut & paste se ha convertido en el pan nuestro de cada día." (Toner, s/f).

A diferencia de la función predominante de la producción deejaying, el entretenimiento, la socialización, la danza; el movimiento Plunderphonics no tiene un resultado musical necesariamente agradable o funcional a lo festivo, sino que entre otros conceptos pretende poner el dedo en la llaga en el negocio (últimamente también tambaleante pero por otros motivos) de la música: la cuestión de la autoría y de los consecuentes dividendos económicos que reporta. El apropiacionismo como discurso crítico en el arte también aparece en otros soportes como el caso particular del llamado Game art donde justamente también se ve ejemplificado el concepto de desvío de Debord. La artista Mónica Jacobo analiza en su ensayo Videojuegos y arte. Primeras manifestaciones de Game Art en Argentina la constitución de este soporte - género y en especial su devenir en la Argentina y Uruguay. Las transformaciones artísticas a partir de plataformas de juegos conocidos trabajan justamente con la transfiguración de su sentido original, en algunos casos eliminando el objetivo y produciendo desconcierto sobre el resultado "perder o ganar" o en otros casos convirtiendo los escenarios en entornos locales y resignificando la idea de "lucha" (cuando por ejemplo el héroe es un cartonero atravesando toda clase de vicisitudes). Como explica Jacobo, la industria del video juego se está consolidando como una de las más poderosas del campo del entretenimiento, superando al cine en muchos casos; y es allí donde la apropiación y manipulación en este "género" artístico anidan para producir su crítica y reformular la cuestión lúdica.

Retomando lo anterior, probablemente la música sea la disciplina que más evidencia la compleja relación con la tecnología a partir del surgimiento de las técnicas de fijación y reproductibilidad del sonido. Volviendo a la Escuela de Frankfurt, Benjamin plasma esta problemática en su famoso texto La obra de arte en la época de su reproductibilidad técnica y por otro lado Adorno cuestiona fuertemente la "industrialización" de la música excluyendo de manera radical del campo de lo artístico cualquier música popular devenida en cultura de masas por efecto justamente de esta industrialización, lo que hoy llamamos "música enlatada" En la discursividad social y en el campo del arte en especial resuena fuerte la antítesis entre industria y cultura, en el caso de la música, las compañías discográficas aparecen como las enemigas necesarias de los músicos. La llamada democratización de la tecnología ha producido un gran impacto en la manera de producir música. Un estudio de grabación hogareño semiprofesional hoy puede alcanzar mejores estándares en algunos aspectos de la grabación que estudio básico de hace 30 años, y en la actualidad se producen y graban cantidades de material sonoro como nunca hasta ahora, que además se difunde por canales alternativos a bajo o ningún coste (my space, etc.). A pesar de esto, las nuevas posibilidades tecnológicas no han modificado la estructura del star system, la voracidad por el recambio, la moda y los acuerdos comerciales de las compañías con las radio emisoras.

Las discográficas se enfrentan a un desgaste de ideas probablemente producto de la cristalización de un modus operandi industrializado que se evidencia en la división de la producción musical en "carteras" u áreas separadas de acuerdo a los géneros (rock, country, jazz, latino, etc.) y en la articulación productiva en una suerte de "cadena de montaje fordista" un tanto sui generis. (Negus, 2005). El primer eslabón de esta cadena es el cool hunting o proceso de captación de materias primas, y es el que probablemente lleva a una cristalización prematura de los posibles emergentes musicales; en otras palabras se produce una maduración artificial (directores musicales, productores y arreglistas mediante) de músicas surgidas, por ejemplo, de las entrañas de lo popular, el suburbio o emergentes urbanos que rápidamente son expuestos al mercado. Estas operaciones en manos del negocio no sólo son cuestionadas por traicionar la autenticidad de origen, sino que además solidifican movimientos musicales incipientes convirtiéndolos en productos, antes de que podamos darnos cuenta si su proceso (los procesos sociales y artísticos populares son más lentos que las voracidades industriales) será algo que valga la pena. La cumbia villera no es muy diferente en origen al tango primigenio de la última década del siglo XIX (barrios bajos o marginales, vulgaridad en las letras, poca elaboración musical en arreglos, etc.) sin embargo, cuesta pensar en una evolución de la cumbia a largo plazo. Una de las hipótesis que podemos aventurar al respecto es la manera en que la industria coagula una incipiente tendencia convirtiéndola en un producto sellado y arquetípico impidiendo de esta manera su cocción a fuego lento, condición necesaria de los procesos artísticos de extracción popular. La relación entre arte y tecnología en el campo de la música no siempre funcionó de esta manera. A comienzos del siglo XX cuando la industria discográfica daba sus primeros pasos tuvo un crecimiento en paralelo con los grandes géneros populares del siglo XX. La historia del jazz o del tango es indisoluble de su relación con el disco. El tango se eleva por encima de sus orígenes bajos cuando comienza su grabación y edición fonográfica. Las tecnologías de grabación de principio del siglo XX eran costosas y precarias comparadas con las actuales, el registro debía realizarse en a lo sumo tres tomas y con todos los instrumentos en simultáneo. Estas condiciones generaron una elevación en la calidad de ejecución de los músicos ya que se debía llegar al estudio con una gran perfección, el error de ejecución no era posible de enmendar. En la actualidad el fenómeno parece revertirse, volviendo a la idea de Bourrieaud, el proceso central del momento es la postproducción mediante el cual casi todo puede enmendarse, corregirse, inventarse y hasta reinventarse.

Parafraseando a Roland barthes, al igual que con la fotografía, la grabación analógica lleva implícito en sí al "documento", es lo que verdaderamente "ha sido" o "ha sucedido" (Barthes, 2006).⁶; en tanto que la manipulación digital del sonido instala una nueva percepción en la realización de un fonograma: la idea de un producto como objeto de diseño ideado, producido y postproducido, es decir delineado mediante un procedimiento proyectual. El producto no necesariamente es el resultado de la grabación real de un músico que ha tocado de manera única e irrepetible su instrumento, como fijación de un espacio temporal real de lo que ha existido. Esta distinción no lleva implícita una añoranza, sino un análisis acerca de una construcción musical que ha rotado el paradigma, de la mano de la aparición del audio digital. Así como el tango crece y se retroalimenta en forma paralela con la industria del disco, unos años después en Jamaica se construye un particular y único fenómeno que relaciona la música y la tecnología electroacústica: la creación del reagge como herencia de un proceso que comienza en el nacimiento del sound system.

Un caso particular: el sound system de Jamaica

Su historia hunde raíces en anécdotas políticas, bélicas, económicas y culturales de un modo que la constituyen en un observatorio privilegiado de análisis de procesos culturales y artísticos. En primer término ¿qué es el sound system? Surge en Jamaica alrededor de 1950 y consiste en un equipo de audio lo suficientemente potente como para sonar al aire libre montado en un pequeño camión que se trasladaba desde los barrios de Kingston hasta los pueblos del interior (muchos sin luz eléctrica) generando una fiesta popular al ritmo de discos de Rhythm and Blues (R&B) traídos, en un comienzo, de Estados Unidos. Durante una década este fenómeno prospera convirtiendo a los DJ's en estrellas que compiten entre sí de un sound system a otro, ya sea por el sonido más potente, los discos más raros y nuevos y las combinaciones más creativas añadiendo scratchings y voces de arenga que luego devendrán en estribillos cantados en las partes instrumentales. (Poschardt, 1998).

Pisando la década del sesenta la demanda del público por novedades sumado a un cierto abaratamiento de las tecnologías de grabación llevan a Coxsone, titular y DJ de uno de los más afamados sound systems a la fundación de Studio One, la primera discográfica de Jamaica. Su método era simple: grababa algún grupo o solista en un disco simple, inmediatamente lo "testeaba" al público en su sound system y si gustaba hacía una pequeña edición; y, si se vendía bien producía una edición a mayor escala.

Los músicos que empiezan a crear avant la lettre los géneros jamaiquinos hoy reconocidos (rocksteady, ska, reagge, dub) no surgen ex nihilo sino que arrastran toda una tradición de ritmos propios caribeños como el calypso o el mento que habían quedado relegados a la recreación edulcorada para el turismo, mayormente norteamericano, que comienza a visitar la isla al terminar la Segunda Guerra. Una fuerte tradición musical popular con una combinación muy particular de tecnologías e influencias incuba estos géneros únicos que alcanzan proyección internacional en la década del setenta.

Algunos datos sobre su historia a continuación ayudan a hilvanar una crónica de cuya herencia serán deudores en todo el mundo las raves, los Disc Jockeys y los sellos independientes entre otros legados. Cualquier mirada sobre la historia de los avances tecnológicos devela su relación con con los inventos bélicos, las crisis económicas, las contingencias políticas, migraciones e intercambios y un cruce de casualidades. El caso jamaiquino se nos aparece, entonces, como una receta que usa todos los ingredientes.

Al comenzar la guerra en 1939, se prohíbe la actividad de los radio aficionados; a raíz de esto el gobierno de Jamaica recibe la donación de un equipo que se convierte en la primera estación radial de la isla. (Walters, 2010). Anteriormente la radio ya era un factor importante, se sintonizaban eventualmente y con dificultad radios de Miami en las cuales el jazz y el swing comienzan a sonar en Kingston como una primera influencia, que también es traída en discos por los marines norteamericanos que se instalan en una base durante la segunda guerra. La escasez económica impulsa la escucha comunitaria: al haber muy pocos equipos, la gente sacaba la radio a la calle subiendo el volumen para que los vecinos también puedan escuchar. Hacia fines de la Segunda Guerra Horace Leslie Galbraith, un joven técnico jamaiquino, es reclutado junto con otros 30 por la Royal Brittish Air Force para capacitarse y servir al ejército en el área de las comunicaciones. Galbraith estudia en Inglaterra (Glasgow University) y de regreso a Jamaica al terminar la guerra comienza a fabricar equipos de audio importando componentes y realizando ensamblajes con más ingenio que posibilidades industriales. Los primeros sound systems fueron unos pequeños equipos solicitados para mitines políticos callejeros por los candidatos a elecciones, como consecuencia de la muy reciente universalización del voto.⁷ Poco a poco los parlantes y amplificadores crecen en potencia a fin de satisfacer la "guerra de sound systems" entre uno u otro DJ apostados a una o dos cuadras disputándose el favor del público.

Además de esto, el invento más curioso de Galbraith fue una adaptación entre una radio y un tocadiscos, de manera de utilizar el parlante y amplificador de la radio para escuchar discos con un apreciable bajo coste.

La reproductibilidad del sonido como punto de infexión

La reproductibilidad técnica (para continuar con el hilo de Benjamin) lleva implícita la fijación del sonido en un soporte (grabación). Esta invención ⁸ no sólo produce un cambio en las maneras de circulación de la música sino que sus procesos derivativos van a incidir por un lado en la estética musical de vanguardia con la transformación profunda de conceptos musicales de Pierre Schaeffer, y por otro lado en la relación del sonido con la imagen en el cine, tanto en la sincronización como en la construcción de un poderoso espacio simbólico, estético y expresivo que es el fuera de campo.

En los dos casos la condición necesaria es la acusmática, y no sólo como la idea pitagórica originaria, sino que con la grabación aparecen las facultades de lo diferido como aquello que puede escucharse y re-escucharse luego de haber acontecido; y de lo permanente como aquello que puede perdurar en el tiempo a manera del spectrum que describe Roland Barthes para la fotografía. (Barthes, 2006)

Los ensayos de Carmelo Saitta y de Claudio Eiriz avanzan en el estudio de estas dos dimensiones de la acusmática, Saitta en el sonido para audiovisuales y Eiriz en la revolución conceptual producida por Pierre Schaeffer. Es interesante hacer notar, como se desprende en estos ensayos, de que manera el análisis del sonido audiovisual toma como marco teórico la actualización de Schaeffer de la idea de acusmática de Pitágoras.

En la banda sonora, su unidad de sentido, Saitta retoma la crítica sobre el relegamiento del sonido en el cine, dado a veces en el plano de lo teórico (críticos o teóricos del cine que lo ignoran o eluden) como muchas veces en el ámbito de la realización donde se repiten clichés tanto sonoros como musicales si una mayor puesta en crítica al respecto. ¿Podría volver la discusión de Adorno en este punto? Es decir, músicas para cine conservadoras y reiterativas, sin innovación ni riesgo perpetuadas por la maquinaria industrial versus cine de autor con un tratamiento artístico del diseño sonoro y la música. Evidentemente esta antinomia maniquea encuentra excepciones a cada paso, pero también son muchas, la mayor parte, de las producciones de la industria que confirman la modelización, el estereotipo y la reiteración arquetípica (y no sólo en el sonido). En El oído tiene razones que la física no conoce, Claudio Eiriz profundiza en un análisis sobre la transformación schaefferiana y la cuestión de la percepción. De la misma manera que Duchamp sentencia que son los espectadores los que concluyen las obras y que la percepción es la percepción completa el proceso del hecho artístico, Schaeffer sienta su tratado en un giro copernicano hacia el sujeto, pero esta subjetividad no es anodina, personal o caprichosa de acuerdo a estados de ánimo o caracteres heredados del Romanticismo, sino que su solfeo es un estudio desnaturalizador del sentido común (o la escucha en común) sobre los sonidos. Resulta revelador, como lo detalla Eiriz, de que manera es lo tecnológico, las manipulaciones sobre la grabación y sus "accidentes" o hallazgos como la campana cortada los que fomentan el cambio de paradigma.

Proyectualidad crítica

La afirmación que el Diseño abreva sus aspectos creativos del campo del Arte funciona aún como un supuesto bastante extendido. De hecho, gran parte de sus esfuerzos disciplinares estuvieron enfocados en establecer su fisión con el campo del Arte a fin de constituir su delimitación disciplinar. Probablemente esta herencia ha quedado como supuesto residual porque las primeras conformaciones institucionalizadas del Diseño como Bauhaus y Vchutemas tienen una impronta artística en su origen en parte por la extracción de los profesores y fundadores y en parte por la idea presente de las artes aplicadas o el "arte útil", en una estrecha relación con las vanguardias artísticas históricas y con una interpretación marxista ad hoc. En el caso de Vchutemas (Talleres Superiores Artísticos y Técnicos del Estado, creada en 1920 en la naciente URSS) su fundación justamente surge de la reconversión de las antiguas escuelas de arte en un programa de escuelas y talleres con el objetivo de formar "artistas para la industria". Es justamente el aspecto industrialista, junto a la sistematicidad propia de la razón instrumental en un contexto de herencia de la Modernidad los que construyeron el hilo que cose aquello que tienen en común en la actualidad los distintos diseños: la proyectualidad.

Verónica Devalle en su libro La travesía de la forma estudia en profundidad el derrotero del Diseño Gráfico en la Argentina y, vinculado a este estudio, produce un nuevo análisis justamente sobre la cuestión de la proyectualidad, que en el caso de los diseños no es solamente la conceptualización procedimental de las prácticas sino que se constituye en su matriz ideológica, con herencia en la Arquitectura.

Una de las caracterizaciones de lo proyectual discutidas es la definición de lo proyectual como pasaje del problema a la solución: existe un problema (o necesidad) a ser resuelto y por medio de operaciones que involucran lo técnico y lo creativo se producen una o varias soluciones posibles, y uno de los primeros cuestionamientos que podemos oponer a esta visión es acerca de la constitución del "problema". El concepto de producción de bienes de la Modernidad era el de la producción acorde a la satisfacción de necesidades en una economía articulada en pos de la demanda; en tanto que en una característica postmoderna es una rotación hacia la generación de necesidades y demandas a partir de la variedad y atracción de la oferta: el motor de la producción es la oferta y el consumo alentados por la tentación y el deseo. Es en este contexto que el diseño ya no sólo resuelve aquellos "problemas" definidos por la modernidad y basados en una ética de mejora y bienestar público presentes en el origen de Bauhaus, sino que también en algunos casos sus saberes se ven involucrados al servicio de una perversa maquinaria de producción cuyas características son el permanente recambio tecnológico (gadgets, teléfonos celulares, computadoras, etc.) la fecha de caducidad planificada, la sobre-producción de lo inútil y el impacto sobre el medio ambiente entre otras.

Así como casi todas las ciencias actuales, el diseño también desciende del Proyecto Moderno, pero como lo expresa Devalle, en tanto que las ciencias sociales han producido, y hasta podríamos decir que se sustentan en la crítica, pareciera que el Diseño aún no ha amasado en sus prácticas y reflexiones esta cuestión:

Si lo proyectual es esto mismo,⁹ sería en definitiva otra forma de manifestación de la lógica moderna y sólo sería comprensible cabalmente en el marco de la secularización, la escisión de esferas, la instrumentalidad en los procesos y la ética como un acompañante (externo) a la orientación intrínseca de la lógica en juego. Características todas de las prácticas sociales modernas, que incluyen -desde ya- a las ciencias exactas y las sociales. Sólo que en el caso de las ciencias sociales en particular, el despliegue de la crítica como operación de revelación del sentido común, como intersticio que da cuenta de la imposible equiparación entre el todo y las partes, del conficto entre lo particular y lo universal, permite sino generar un antídoto, por lo menos no ser celebratorio de los demonios de la Razón, particularmente presentes en las acciones regidas bajo la lógica instrumental. (Devalle, 2009:385).

Devalle continúa planteando de que manera la crítica ha sido considerada en general en el campo del Diseño como algo paralizante de la acción y al mismo tiempo expone la necesidad de la crítica negativa como contrapeso de la praxis.

Parándonos en un extremo demoledor, podríamos decir que el diseño ha perpetuado matrices ideológicas y procedimentales de la Modernidad sin cuestionamientos críticos (en general) convirtiéndose así en las décadas del ochenta y noventa en espada de alquiler al servicio de la última reinvención capitalista.

Planteado semejante panorama desolador, resulta necesario expresar como contrapeso aquellas prácticas emergentes del diseño que proponen una crítica mordaz situándose en un polo contrahegemónico del hacer.

Este es uno de los argumento del ensayo de María Cecilia Guerra Redes imaginarias y ciudades globales. El caso del stencil en Buenos Aires (2000-2007), en el cual estudia el devenir del stencil como actividad de diseño y de intervención artística del espacio público. En este punto se desprenden dos líneas de análisis: la cuestión de los productores y la cuestión de los territorios. Los productores, como lo expresa Guerra, provienen en general de las carreras de diseño de las universidades públicas (UBA, UNLP) y alternan su vida laboral al servicio de grandes empresas con esta práctica realizada casi como un oxígeno ético frente un sentimiento de mercenarización laboral. Respecto a la territorialidad, si bien en un a priori pareciera que el stencil tiene un fuerte anclaje geográfico ya que su soporte son los muros de una ciudad con sus particularidades barriales, ahondando en la cuestión se advierte que existe una red trasnacional que teje este tipo de representaciones. Los sitios en Internet de los propios diseñadores y grupos comparten las plantillas de stencils que otros grupos o público pueden bajar y reproducir en su ciudad aún realizando adaptaciones locales.

Un territorio puede ser considerado como una variable mucho más amplia que la determinación geográfica, está relacionado con la idea de red e implica también lugares no físicos como sitios de Internet, blogs o en definitiva la red misma y su imbricada articulación y topología como el territorio a considerar.

Territorio es el espacio simbólico habitado sujetos, acciones, fujos de información, circuitos sociales y por supuesto involucra a las representaciones: las piezas de arte y diseño. El territorio es el resultado de la acción de los diversos agentes, trasciende el espacio geográfico creando redes que atraviesan los límites políticos entre países. El habitat por excelencia de estos territorios es Internet, pero sus acciones atraviesan la virtualidad para ocupar discursividades tangibles en el espacio urbano, como el caso del arte grafiti y el stencil.

Esta mirada amplia e inclusiva sobre el territorio es la que expresa José Llano en La notación del intérprete. La construcción de un paisaje cultural a modo de huella material sobre Valparaíso. Su ensayo se implica en un análisis expandido y polifacético de la cuestión arquitectónica y urbanística donde el concepto del territorio asume nuevamente al dimensión material como huella de la expresión cultural en tanto que la mirada se configura una interpretación del topos. Llano trae de nuevo al debate la sentencia duchampiana sobre el protagonismo del espectador al terreno de lo urbanístico en tanto que asume esta subjetividad activa aplicada a las acciones de habilitabildad urbana y de percepción de este espacio es decir acción y percepción como síntesis de constitución del sujeto.

El texto de María Ledesma profundiza sobre la cuestión tipográfica en el Diseño gráfico, remontándose a los comienzos de la Modernidad para dar cuenta del devenir de la escritura tipográfica que en Occidente decide anular la connotación semántica del grafismo en pos de una universalización supuestamente objetiva y limpia de la semántica verbal. Ledesma enuncia diversos ejemplos que en Oriente se contraponen al logocentrismo occidental, en este caso abocado a la racionalización tipográfica, en tanto que avizora una apertura en la actualidad a la que llama "tensión gráfica". Resulta interesante a partir de aquí inferir algunos interrogantes: ¿resulta esta "tensión gráfica", como energía potencial de reformulaciones futuras, una consecuencia de las tecnologías tanto de producción como de la comunicación? ¿Pueden ser considerados estas incursiones gráficas como un diálogo con las experimentaciones artísticas cuya herencia remite a las vanguardias? Relacionando esta cuestión con el texto de Guerra ¿podemos considerar estas innovaciones como productos contra-hegemónicos plasmados tanto más en las paredes de las ciudades que en los resultados de la industria editorial?

Arte y proyectualidad crítica

Como enunciamos anteriormente, la proyectualidad es la matriz conceptual e ideológica del diseño y es además el procedimiento en común que une a los distintos diseños aún con materialidades, funciones y aplicaciones absolutamente diferentes ¿Qué tienen en común el diseño de una silla con el de una prenda? Que los dos han sido estudiados en su tipología, luego dibujados, diagramados y prototipados; en los dos se han contrastado sus materialidades y sus modos de producción, y en los dos diseños se han evaluado sus connotaciones culturales y comunicacionales. Ahora, estos procedimientos ¿son exclusivos del diseño? ¿No existen acaso otras disciplinas que no son consideradas Diseño que utilizan la proyectualidad? Evidentemente sí, como dijimos anteriormente es el sistema proyectual el que surge de la contigencia histórica moderna, y su sistematización ha desbordado hacia otros campos, en muchos casos sin la variable de la creatividad presente en el Diseño.

La Modernidad positivista en el siglo XIX, y su autoridad de aplicación, la razón instrumental se despliegan en todas direcciones, pero hay un campo en que sus dictámenes son rechazados: el Arte. El Romanticismo decimonónico ya sea en las letras, la poesía o la música se rebela contracultural a la diosa Razón esgrimiendo como paradigma estético todo aquello que la contradiga: el imperio de los sentidos, las emociones y los sentimientos, la locura, la sinrazón, la noche, la oscuridad, etc. Hasta la escuela de Viena y el dodecafonismo de Arnold Schönberg que construyen una super intelectualización del sistema compositivo se constituyen al mismo tiempo en un epítome de lo romántico; sus obras (en términos de carácter, rítmicas y timbres) remiten en verdad, y especialmente en su audición, al gen del Romanticismo. Este rasgo anti racional es también el que va a emerger con las vanguardias; con el surrealismo, por ejemplo, al descubrir al automatismo psíquico como método (o antimétodo).

Jorge Kleiman en su ensayo Automatismo e Imago. Aportes a la Investigación de la Imagen Inconsciente en las Artes Plásticas reformula la impronta surrealista trayéndola a las condiciones actuales y organizando sus herramientas casi en un compendio de entrenamiento de lo sensible y de construcción de la inspiración, Kleiman lo sintetiza de manera cabal con la frase "El automatismo el la sistematización de la inspiración". Esta fusión entre lo sistemático y lo sensible es la que permite el advenimiento de lo nuevo, amalgamando aquello que el siglo XIX había escindido: razón y expresión.

En una conversación personal con el artista Santiago Iturralde tocamos el tema de los proyectos artísticos. Iturralde comenta su irritación frente a la exigencia de tener que explicar, fundamentar, conceptualizar y bocetar una obra en un proyecto, sobre todo con el fin de su presentación para becas, concursos, exposiciones y demás circuitos de legitimación. ¿Es que no puede haber una obra sin proyecto? Simplemente plantarse frente a la tela y los materiales y desarrollar la actividad sensible e intelectiva en la propia praxis artística, sin tener la obligación de describir el proceso, su correlato teórico y hasta sus objetivos!

Por diversas razones, la mayoría de ellas ligadas al campo curatorial, el arte se ha vuelto una actividad proyectual. El proceso de idea - proyecto - materialización es el denominador común desde la formación en las escuelas de arte hasta la consideración de las exposiciones y muestras también como proyectos.

Anteriormente enunciamos lo que el Diseño tiene de artístico tanto en sus orígenes como en la manera en que se nutre de las tendencias del Arte; pero, en este punto estamos en condiciones de afirmar que el Arte actual ha asumido para sus prácticas la cualidad distintiva del diseño: lo proyectual. Esta tendencia probablemente tiene raíces en el arte conceptual, en donde comienza a evidenciarse la cuestión de la "idea" por encima de los formalismos estéticos de la realización. Así como le reclamamos crítica al diseño, la proyectualidad artística está basada en la crítica. En tanto que en el proyecto de Diseño subsiste la noción de solución o resolución de problemas en el proyecto artístico predomina la idea crítica, o al menos, la cuestión de una mirada crítica. Nuevamente, el artista señala.

El artículo de Gustavo Kortzarz aporta una verdadera bocanada de aire fresco desde la mirada del artista sobre esta tiranía discursiva del campo curatorial. Korzatz se coloca él mismo en el centro de su observación sin temor a exponerse al ridículo relatando anécdotas que van desde confundir un rascador de gatos, imaginar una fotocopiadora intervenida o un artefacto de calefacción como objetos que pueden habitar cualquier galería o museo; eso sí, en cualquier caso sostenidos por una sólida fundamentación capaz de volver interesante cualquier futilidad, y cuyo proyecto carga con el poder de diluir y anteponerse a la obra misma. Este chispeante recorrido le permite cuestionar el avance de una espiral retórica en la que muchos artistas (quizás en parte impelidos por teóricos, críticos y curadores) sienten que deben "ir a por más" a partir de los quiebres de Duchamp.

La reproductibilidad en la época digital

La reproductibilidad en la época de Benjamin tenía implícito la idea de original y copia (Bunz, 2007). El original existe como matriz primaria (el negativo, la grabación magnética, etc.) y las copias son sus derivados, se reproduce algo que es preexistente. La reproductibilidad analógica articula el debate fundamentalmente en las gramáticas de circulación y si bien la industrialización cultural cambia los modos de producción su infexión fundamental radica en la manera en que los discos y películas se distribuyen y comercializan de manera masiva. La copia digital o electrónica no reconoce ninguna distinción entre original y copia, o son todas copias o son camadas de originales gemelos. La industria debe aguzar el ingenio para "materializar" los productos a fin de combatir la piratería: packagings y booklets con diseños sofisticados, accesorios, regalos y beneficios a quien compra el "original". Lo que es interesante destacar es que las materializaciones son extra digitales, la mayoría en papel y basados en la reproductibilidad más antigua de la historia: la impresión de libros. Los disco-libros resultan una nueva denominación para estas ediciones cuidadas en las que el valor añadido no es un agregado sino su constitución primaria. Ejemplos de estos formatos aparecen citados en el presente texto: Plunderphonics (Oswald, 2001) o Treasure Isle (Steinbach & Ignaczak, 2007). El original sobrevive como concepto por su envoltorio, accesorios y agregados, pero su contenido digital sigue estando en un lugar ya muy distinto a la dualidad original y copia. Mercedes Bunz reifica esta nueva articulación de la reproductibilidad:

El fantasma de la copia: sabemos con certeza que la reproductibilidad, es decir la copia, ha sido siempre una técnica que ha sacudido el orden cultural. Y esto de dos maneras: por un lado, las distintas técnicas de copia han determinado las posibilidades de una cultura y, por otro, el valor mismo que se le atribuye a la copia en un orden cultural ha ido mutando. La copia digital se encuentra, dentro de ese orden, en un punto sobresaliente: no sólo vuelve a perfeccionarse una vez más, no sólo alcanza un nuevo nivel, sino que se transforma a sí misma hasta alterar su propia definición: se vuelve 'copia idéntica'.

La reproductibilidad moderna no sólo implica una transformación en el campo del arte o las industrias culturales sino que su concepción está enraizada en la Revolución industrial misma y en especial en su segunda articulación con la producción serial y la cadena de montaje fordista. Estas prácticas que aparecen a nuestros ojos como naturalizadas produjeron históricamente un extrañamiento perceptual quizás poco estudiado aún, la sorpresa de encontrarse por ejemplo con una serie de productos idénticos exhibidos. Quizás para atenuar en parte este desconcierto es que la industria copia en una primera instancia las formas del artesanado precedente y que recién serán reformuladas por Bauhaus.

Probablemente asistimos a un nuevo extrañamiento perceptual como correlato de la tecnología digital. Mariano Dagatti profundiza en este sentido sobre la relación entre la producción y la mirada ahondando en una de las fibras más sensibles de esta hipotética mutación perceptual: la exhibición - mirada de lo íntimo. En El voyerismo virtual. Aportes a una experiencia de la intimidad Dagatti revisita la inagotable cuestión en el campo del arte acerca de la mirada. Desde que Duchamp rota la subjetividad al ubicar la obra de arte en los ojos del espectador es que la concepción de la mirada se ha vuelto interés y objeto de estudio. Intimidad es una obra de Leonardo Solaás (en la categoría denominada arte digital) que se constituye en el hilo conductor del análisis de Dagatti a través de una mutación de lo escópico signada por las nuevas tecnologías. Como conclusión dejamos abierto un interrogante planteado por Bourrieaud que condensa algunos de los temas que tratamos en este texto: "¿Por qué el sentido de una obra no provendría del uso que se hace de ella tanto como del sentido que le da el artista?" (2007: 17). La palabra "uso" aplicada al arte juega nuevamente con lo que aventuramos, es el campo del Diseño el que avanza sobre el Arte, proponiendo usuarios en vez de espectadores, interacción o uso en lugar de expectación, y proyecto como sinónimo de obra.

Notas

1. Nicholas Negroponte es quizás la figura más representativa de esta visión acerca de la tecnología que, desde una perspectiva integrada y acrítica auguran porvenires tecnológicos promisorios.

2. Acerca de la discusión surgida en el seno de la escuela de Frankfurt particularmente entre T. Adorno y W. Benjamin sobre arte y estética, puede consultarse en el Nº 24 de la presente colección el ensayo de Máximo Eseverri La batalla por la forma (Eseverri, 2007).

3. Las figuras del "dueño" o "patrón" como cabezas visibles aparecen cada vez más ausentes y reemplazadas por un aparato de gestión con toda una gama de ejecutivos a sueldo con la misión de llevar a cabo la obtención de utilidades. Este aparato funciona con altos grado de inconciencia o desconocimiento sobre los impactos en las economías reales que pueden producir los fujos de capital que manejan. Un ejemplo crítico de este sistema fue evidenciado recientemente con la llamada crisis de las hipotecas subprime.

4. El sampling puede traducirse como muestreo y consiste básicamente en la digitalización una muestra de sonido que luego puede ser manipulada por diversos procesos. Cuando surge a fines de los ochenta se utilizó principalmente para enriquecer los bancos de sonidos de los sintetizadores con presets digitales más feles al instrumento original.

5. El concepto de desvío o détournement es acuñado por el movimiento Situacionista y teorizado por Guy Debord y se refiere la posibilidad artística y política de tomar algún objeto creado por el capitalismo y el sistema politico hegemónico y distorsionar su significado y uso original para producir un efecto crítico.

6. Estos tópicos son desarrollados primero por Roland Barthes en La cámara lúcida. Nota sobre la fotografía (2006) y luego retomados por Bernard Stiegler quien confronta las categorías barthesianas frente al advenimiento de la imagen digital. (1998).

7. En una entrevista publicada en el Sunday Observer Gilbraih dice al respecto "What really kicked-started the sound system as we know it was politics" (Walters, 2010). (Lo que realmente dio el puntapié inicial al sound system tal como lo conocemos fue la política).

8. Para ahondar sobre la historia de los equipos y tecnologías de grabación del sonido ver el estudio de Jonathan Sterne The Audible Past. Cultural origins of Sound reproduction en el cual el autor profundiza acerca de los aportes de la comunicación, la medicina, la antropología entre otros en el devenir del desarrollo tecnológico del sonido.

9. Se refiere a lo proyectual como tránsito del problema a la solución, o como lo expresa Max Weber "acción racional con arreglo a fines".

Referencias Bibliográficas

1. AAVV. (2006). 'Big Apple Rappin'. The early days of Hip Hop Culture in New York City 1979-1982. London: Soul Jazz Records. [fonograma - libro]. [ Links ]

2. Adorno, T. y Horkheimer, M. (1998). Dialéctica de la ilustración: fragmentos filosóficos. Madrid: Trotta. Colección Estructuras y Procesos. Serie Filosofía. [ Links ]

3. Alonso, R. (1999). Tecno-Imagen: encuentros y desencuentros entre el arte y la tecnología. En: Sagaseta, Julia Elena. (comp.). Cuadernos de Teatro Nº 13. Teatro y Artes II. Buenos Aires: Instituto de Artes del Espectáculo. Facultad de Filosofía y Letras. UBA. [ Links ]

4. Barthes, R. (2006). La cámara lúcida: nota sobre la fotografía. Buenos Aires: Paidós. [ Links ]

5. Benjamin, W. (1989). La obra de arte en la época de su reproductibilidad técnica. En: Discursos Interrumpidos I. Buenos Aires. Taurus. [ Links ]

6. Bourrieaud, N. (2007). Postproducción. Buenos Aires: Adriana Hidalgo editora. [ Links ]

7. Brecht, B. (1973). Escritos sobre teatro. Buenos Aires: Nueva Visión. [ Links ]

8. Bunz, M. (2007). La utopía de la copia. El pop como irritación. Buenos Aires: Interzona. [ Links ]

9. Derrida, J. y Stiegler, B. (1998). Ecografías de la televisión. Entrevistas filmadas. Buenos Aires: Eudeba. [ Links ]

10. Devalle, V. (2009). La travesía de la forma. Emergencia y consolidación del Diseño Gráfico (1948-1984). Buenos Aires: Paidós. [ Links ]

11. Eseverri, M. (2007). La batalla por la forma. En: Cuadernos del Centro de Estudios en Diseño y Comunicación Nº 24. Buenos Aires: Facultad de Diseño y Comunicación, Universidad de Palermo. [ Links ]

12. Negus, K. (2005). Los géneros musicales y la cultura de las multinacionales. Barcelona: Paidós. [ Links ]

13. Oswald, J. (2001). Plunderphonics 69/96. Entrevista. Seeland Records [fonograma - libro]. [ Links ]

14. Poschardt, U. (1998). DJ Culture. London: Quartet books. [ Links ]

15. Steinbach, F. & Ignaczak, A. (2007). Treasure Isle. The true Story of ska, rocksteady, dub and reggae. Paris: Jah Slams. M&A. [fonograma - libro]. [ Links ]

16. Sterne, J. (2006). The Audible Past. Cultural origins of sound reproduction. Durham: Duke University Press. [ Links ]

17. Verón, E. (1998). La semiosis social. Barcelona: Gedisa. [ Links ]

Recursos Electrónicos

18. Fernandez Irusta, D. (2007). ¿Qué es el arte multimedia? Revista La Nación. Buenos Aires. Disponible en: http://www.lanacion.com.ar/nota.asp?nota_id=924566 [ Links ]

19. Machado, A. (2010). Tecnología y arte: cómo politizar el debate. En: Cibertronic Revista de Artes Mediáticas. Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero. [Revista electrónica]. Disponible en: http://www.untref.edu.ar/cibertronic/tecnologias/nota3/nota3.html [ Links ]

20. Toner, A. (s/f). Plunderphonics: reciclaje sonoro. Disponible en: http://www.ankitoner.com/plun derphonics/plunderphonics.htm [ Links ]

21. Walters, B. (2010). Galbraith - The "Radio Man" and sound system innovator. Jamaica Observer [Periódico on line]. Disponible en: http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/entertainment/Galbraith_7681311 [ Links ]

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2021-04-04T12:48:46.914000Z

Organization design – the attempt to structure systems to produce the outcomes we want – has been an established field for decades. But if you step back a bit, putting the two words "organization" and "design" next to each other is actually quite contradictory — the historical rigidity of a typical organization, next to the inherent complexity of the humans in that system, combined with the fluidity of design.

My career has always been characterized by juxtaposing two concepts that live uncomfortably together, and exploring the fertile ground for innovation that could result. A psychology major obsessed with why people behave the way they do, my interest was first piqued by the idea of "Change Management": Can change really be managed? "Research Strategy" at the MIT Media Lab followed later: Can research truly be strategized, or is it better left to serendipity? Similarly, "Media + Partners" at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD): What can businesses learn from what goes on at an art school? And how can an insular academic institution open itself up to the world?

Like "organization design," each coupling reveals a tension between chaos and structure; linearity and the non-linear; closed and open systems. I’ve come to see that innovation needs a bit of both.

As an organization designer at IDEO, much of what I’ve been asked to do is not just design organizations, but teach and coach our clients to work more innovatively. To that end, IDEO’s CEO Tim Brown recently launched an IDEO U course, "Leading for Creativity," designed to help leaders enable creativity throughout their organizations.

A little more than a year into my journey at IDEO, here are some things that have struck me about what can be taught and to whom:

1/ Design Thinking can be taught to business people; learning Design is harder.

Design Thinking, as practiced at IDEO, strikes a wonderful balance between structure and chaos – it’s a messy process, but it’s also broken down into a set of linear, repeatable, and now well-known steps: Research, Synthesis, Design, Communication. In IDEO’s Cambridge studio, we’ve noticed a difference, however, between teaching this process to business people, and teaching them classical, or what we call "big D" Design; fields like graphic, interaction, or industrial design. The former is now taught in business schools the world over; the latter is the domain of art school.

As we have worked with clients who are increasingly "embedding" with design teams to learn our process, it’s more difficult to integrate them into the parts where more classical design takes hold. Yet just because it can’t be taught to all doesn’t diminish its value; to truly create something new, you need both Design Thinking and Design.

2/ All leaders can strive for a new set of creative mindsets.

Underlying the design thinking process is a set of mindsets that enable it, which can be embodied no matter the task at hand. John Maeda and I articulated these mindsets long ago as a way of understanding the leadership style he embodied as an artist and designer when president of RISD. Things like making ideas tangible quickly, learning from mistakes, being comfortable with ambiguity – when I arrived at IDEO, these mindsets were on full display.

Having worked in both traditionally run large corporations, and creatively run businesses like IDEO, the things people feel motivated by seem to be very different. Recognition fuels both worlds, but comes in different forms: climbing the ladder versus celebrated work. The two aren’t mutually exclusive, of course, but I’ve seen organizations differently optimized for each.

3/ Equally, creative people also need to lead.

Those who embody creative mindsets most naturally — artists and designers — bring important values to leadership. Witness the success of this generation of designer founders at companies like Airbnb, Etsy, and Kickstarter.

In my work with students at RISD, and with the Berklee College of Music at IDEO, I’ve seen firsthand how a creative education prepares graduates to chart unknown territory and create something new. What was most interesting to me about that work is that it wasn’t just employers that needed convincing of these students’ leadership abilities, it was the students themselves. I believe there is much to be gained by encouraging those who consider themselves "creatives" to inhabit the practice of leadership in a way that’s authentic to them — inspiring the next generation of designers who work alongside them.

I see the push and pull of navigating between structure and chaos in my work with organizations looking to be more innovative; I feel it myself in my own work. We all have moments where we want to retreat into the mode that’s most comfortable for us; it’s our collective challenge to push through that into the new.

Becky Bermont is a Senior Organization Design Lead at IDEO Cambridge. She is passionate about the intersection of creativity and leadership, and how design-led approaches can help organizations thrive in a highly dynamic world. Prior to IDEO, Becky spent six years at the Rhode Island School of Design, leading the marketing and communications group and serving on the leadership team for the College. She has built out an organizational design strategy to advance innovation at eBay Inc., and has also lead innovation partnership programs between academia and corporations at the MIT Media Lab and RISD, and started a quantitative market research consulting practice at Forrester Research. Her obsession with understanding how people and organizations respond to change has motivated all of her work. Becky has an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a BA in Psychology from Wesleyan University. She co-authored the book Redesigning Leadership with John Maeda. She enjoys creative direction in the kitchen (though her husband does the cooking), and her weekly religion is yoga.

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The Vignelli Canon → Manifesto ProjectManifesto Project

2021-04-04T12:48:56.882000Z

The Vignelli Canon

Vignelli Associates

Semantics.
I have always said that there are three aspects in Design that are important to me: Semantic, Syntactic and Pragmatic.

Let’s examine them one at the time. Semantics, for me, is the search of the meaning of whatever we have to design. The very first thing that I do whenever I start a new assignment in any form of design, graphic, product, exhibition or interior is to search for the meaning of it. That may start with research on the history of the subject to better understand the nature of the project and to find the most appropriate direction for the development of a new design.

Depending on the subject the search can take many directions. It could be a search for more information about the Company, the Product, the Market Position of the subject, the Competition, its Destination, the final user, or indeed, about the real meaning of the subject and its semantic roots.

It is extremely important for a satisfactory result of any design to spend time on the search of the accurate and essential meanings, investigate their complexities, learn about their ambiguities, understand the context of use to better define the parameters within which we will have to operate. In addition to that it is useful to follow our intuition and our diagnostic ability to funnel the research and arrive to a rather conscious definition of the problem at hand.

Semantics are what will provide the real bases for a correct inception of projects, regardless of what they may be. Semantics eventually become an essential part of the designer’s being, a crucial component of the natural process of design, and the obvious point of departure for designing. Semantics will also indicate the most appropriate form for that particular subject that we can interpret or transform according to our intentions. However, it is important to distill the essence of the semantic search through a complex process, most of which is intuitive, to infuse the design with all the required cognitive inputs, effortlessly and in the most natural way possible. It is as in music, when we hear the final sound, without knowing all the processes through which the composer has gone before reaching the final result. Design without semantics is shallow and meaningless but, unfortunately it is also ubiquitous, and that is why it is so important that young designers train themselves to start the design process in the correct way—the only way that can most enrich their design.

Semantics, in design, means to understand the subject in all its aspects; to relate the subject to the sender and the receiver in such a way that it makes sense to both. It means to design something that has a meaning, that is not arbitrary, that has a reason for being, something in which every detail carries the meaning or has a precise purpose aimed at a precise target. How often we see design that has no meaning: stripes and swash of color splashed across pages for no reason whatsoever. Well, they are either meaningless or incredibly vulgar or criminal when done on purpose.

Unfortunately, there are designers and marketing people who intentionally look down on the consumer with the notion that vulgarity has a definite appeal to the masses, and therefore they supply the market with a continuos flow of crude and vulgar design. I consider this action criminal since it is producing visual pollution that is degrading our environment just like all other types of pollution. Not all forms of vernacular communication are necessarily vulgar, although very often that is the case. Vulgarity implies a blatant intention of a form of expression that purposely ignores and bypasses any form of established culture. In our contemporary world it becomes increasingly more difficult to find honest forms of vernacular communication as once existed in the pre–industrial world.

Syntactics.
Mies, my great mentor said: "God is in the details." That is the essence of syntax: the discipline that controls the proper use of grammar in the construction of phrases and the articulation of a language, Design. The syntax of design is provided by many components in the nature of the project. In graphic design, for instance, they are the overall structure, the grid, the typefaces, the text and headlines, the illustrations, etc. The consistency of a design is provided by the appropriate relationship of the various syntactical elements of the project: how type relates to grids and images from page to page throughout the whole project. Or, how type sizes relate to each other. Or, how pictures relate to each other and how the parts relate to the whole. There are ways to achieve all this that are correct, as there are others that are incorrect, and should be avoided.

Syntactic consistency is of paramount importance in graphic design as it is in all human endeavors. Grids are one of the several tools helping designers to achieve syntactical consistency in graphic design.

Pragmatics.
Whatever we do, if not understood, fails to communicate and is wasted effort.

We design things which we think are semantically correct and syntactically consistent but if, at the point of fruition, no one understands the result, or the meaning of all that effort, the entire work is useless. Sometimes it may need some explanation but it is better when not necessary. Any artifact should stand by itself in all its clarity. Otherwise, something really important has been missed. The final look of anything is the by–product of the clarity (or lack of it) during its design phase. It is important to understand the starting point and all assumptions of any project to fully comprehend the final result and measure its efficiency. Clarity of intent will translate in to clarity of result and that is of paramount importance in Design. Confused, complicated designs reveal an equally confused and complicated mind. We love complexities but hate complications!

Having said this, I must add that we like Design to be forceful. We do not like limpy design. We like Design to be intellectually elegant—that means elegance of the mind, not one of manners, elegance that is the opposite of vulgarity. We like Design to be beyond fashionable modes and temporary fads. We like Design to be as timeless as possible.

We despise the culture of obsolescence. We feel the moral imperative of designing things that will last for a long time.

It is with this set of values that we approach Design everyday, regardless of what it may be: two or three dimensional, large or small, rich or poor. Design is One!

Discipline.
The attention to details requires discipline. There is no room for sloppiness, for carelessness, for procrastination. Every detail is important because the end result is the sum of all the details involved in the creative process no matter what we are doing. There are no hierarchies when it comes to quality. Quality is there or is not there, and if is not there we have lost our time. It is a commitment and a continuously painstaking effort of the creative process to which we should abide. That is Discipline and without it there is no good design, regardless of its style.

Discipline is a set of self imposed rules, parameters within which we operate. It is a bag of tools that allows us to design in a consistent manner from beginning to end. Discipline is also an attitude that provides us with the capacity of controlling our creative work so that it has continuity of intent throughout rather than fragmentation. Design without discipline is anarchy, an exercise of irresponsibility.

Appropriateness.
The notion of appropriateness is consequent to what I have expressed. Once we search the roots of whatever we have to design we are also defining the area of possible solutions that are appropriate—specific to that particular problem. Actually, we can say that appropriateness is the search for the specific of any given problem. To define that prevents us from taking wrong directions, or alternative routes that lead to nowhere or even worse, to wrong solutions.

Appropriateness directs us to the right kind of media, the right kind of materials, the right kind of scale, the right kind of expression, color and texture. Appropriateness elicits the enthusiastic approval of the client seeing the solution to his problem. Appropriateness transcends any issue of style—there are many ways of solving a problem, many ways of doing, but the relevant thing is that, no matter what, the solution must be appropriate. I think that we have to listen to what a thing wants to be, rather then contrive it in to an arbitrary confinement. However, sometimes there may be other rules that one must follow to achieve the correct level of continuity.

At least for me, this is a relevant issue which very often determines the look of the project to be designed. This issue is one of the fundamental principles of our Canon. During the post–modern time, the verb ‘to be appropriate’ assumed the meaning of borrowing something and transforming it by placing it in a different context. We could say that this kind of ‘appropriation’ when appropriate, could be done—just another way of solving a problem or expressing creativity.

Ambiguity.
Rather than the negative connotation of ambiguity as a form of vagueness, I have a positive interpretation of ambiguity, intended as a plurality of meanings, or the ability of conferring to an object or a design, the possibility of being read in different ways—each one complementary to the other to enrich the subject and give more depth. We often use this device to enhance the expression of the design and we treasure the end results. However, one has to be cautious in playing with ambiguity because if not well measured it can backfire with unpleasant results. Contradiction can sometimes reinforce ambiguity, but more often it is a sign of discontinuity and lack of control. Ambiguity and contradiction can enrich a project but can equally sink the end results.

Therefore, great caution is recommended in using these spices.

Design Is One.
The office of the Castiglioni Architects in Milano was the first place, where at the age of 16, I went to work as a draftsman. They were active in the whole field of Design and Architecture following the Adolph Loos dictum that an Architect should be able to design everything "from the spoon to the city." They had already designed a very iconic radio, beautiful silver flatware, camping furniture, witty stools, industrial bookshelves, nice houses and an incredible museum. Later they designed restaurants, trade shows, exhibitions, furniture and much more. They became the icons of Italian Design. I strongly recommend to all designers to investigate and study their work. I was tremendously impressed by the diversity of projects and immediately fascinated by the Architect’s possibility of working in so many different areas. I discovered that what is important is to master a design discipline to be able to design anything, because that is what is essential and needed on every project.

Design is one—it is not many different ones. The discipline of Design is one and can be applied to many different subjects, regardless of style. Design discipline is above and beyond any style. All style requires discipline in order to be expressed. Very often people think that Design is a particular style. Nothing could be more wrong! Design is a discipline, a creative process with its own rules, controlling the consistency of its output toward its objective in the most direct and expressive way.

Throughout my life I have hunted opportunities to diversify my design practice: from glass to metal, from wood to pottery to plastics, from printing to packaging, from furniture to interiors, from clothing to costumes, from exhibitions to stage design and more. Everything was, and still is, a tempting challenge to test the interaction between intuition and knowledge, between passion and curiosity, between desire and success.

Visual Power.
We say all the time that we like Design to be visually powerful. We cannot stand Design that is weak in concept, form, color, texture or any or all of them. We think good Design is always an expression of creative strength bringing forward clear concepts expressed in beautiful form and color, where every element expresses the content in the most forceful way. There are infinite possibilities to achieve a powerful expression. In graphic design, for instance, difference of scale within the same page can give a very strong impact. Bold type contrasting with light type creates visually dynamic impressions. We have used this approach successfully in our graphic design.

In three dimensional design, manipulating light through different textures and materials gives infinite and effective results. Changing scale and contrasting sizes provide an impressive array of possibilities.

It is essential that a design is imbued with visual strength and unique presence to achieve its purpose. Visual strength can be achieved also by using delicate layouts or materials. Visual strength is an expression of intellectual elegance and should never be confused with just visual impact—which, most of the time, is just an expression of visual vulgarity and obtrusiveness.

Visual power is, in any event, a subject which deserves great attention to achieve effective design.

Intellectual Elegance. We often talk

about Intellectual Elegance, not to be confused with the elegance of manners and mores. For me, intellectual elegance is the sublime level of intelligence which has produced all the masterpieces in the history

of mankind.

It is the elegance we find in Greek statues, in Renaissance paintings, in the sublime writings of Goethe, and many great creative minds.

It is the elegance of Architecture of any period, the Music of all times, the clarity of Science through the ages. It is the thread that guides us to the best solution of whatever we do. It is the definitive goal of our minds—the one beyond compromises.

It elevates the most humble artifact to a noble stand. Intellectual elegance is also our civic consciousness, our social responsibility, our sense of decency, our way of conceiving Design, our moral imperative. Again, it is not a design style, but the deepest meaning and the essence of Design.

Timelessness.
We are definitively against any fashion of design and any design fashion. We despise the culture of obsolescence, the culture of waste, the cult of the ephemeral. We detest the demand of temporary solutions, the waste of energies and capital for the sake of novelty.

We are for a Design that lasts, that responds to people’s needs and to people’s wants. We are for a Design that is committed to a society that demands long lasting values. A society that earns the benefit of commodities and deserves respect and integrity.

We like the use of primary shapes and primary colors because their formal values are timeless. We like a typography that transcends subjectivity and searches for objective values, a typography that is beyond times—that doesn’t follow trends, that reflects its content in an appropriate manner. We like economy of design because it avoids wasteful exercises, it respects investment and lasts longer. We strive for a Design that is centered on the message rather than visual titillation. We like Design that is clear, simple and enduring. And that is what timelessness means in Design.

Responsibility.
In graphic design the issue of responsibility assumes particular importance as a form of economic awareness toward the most appropriate solution to a given problem.

Too often we see printed works produced in a lavish manner just to satisfy the ego of designers or clients. It is important that an economically appropriate solution is used and is one that takes in proper consideration all the facets of the problem.

As much as this may seem obvious it is one of the most overlooked issues by both designers and clients. Responsibility is another form of discipline. As designers, we have three levels of responsibility:

One—to ourselves, the integrity of the project and all its components.
Two—to the Client, to solve the problem in a way that is economically sound and efficient.
Three—to the public at large, the consumer, the user of the final design.

On each one of these levels we should be ready to commit ourselves to reach the most appropriate solution, the one that solves the problem without compromises for the benefit of everyone.

In the end, a design should stand by itself, without excuses, explanations, apologies. It should represent the fulfillment of a successful process in all its beauty. A responsible solution.

Equity.
Many times we have been asked to design a logo or a symbol for a Company—often at the request of the marketing department to refresh the Company’s position in the marketplace.

Although this may be a legitimate request, very often, it is motivated by the desire of change merely for the sake of change, and that is a very wrong motivation.

A real Corporate Identity is based on an overall system approach, not just a logo.

A logo gradually becomes part of our collective culture; in its modest way it becomes part of all of us. Think of Coca Cola, think of Shell, or, why not, AmericanAirlines. When a logo has been in the public domain for more than fifty years it becomes a classic, a landmark, a respectable entity and there is no reason to throw it away and substitute it with a new concoction, regardless of how well it has been designed.

Perhaps, because I grew up in a country where history and vernacular architecture were part of culture of the territory and was protected, I considered established logos something to be equally protected.

The notion of a logo equity has been with us from the very beginning of time. When we were asked to design a new logo for the FORD Motor Company, we proposed a light retouch of the old one which could be adjusted for contemporary applications. We did the same for Ciga Hotels, Cinzano, Lancia Cars and others. There was no reason to dispose of logos that had seventy years of exposure, and were rooted in people’s consciousness with a set of respectable connotations.

What is new is not a graphic form but a way of thinking, a way of showing respect for history in a context that usually has zero understanding for these values.

Seeking Wisdom, Mental Models, and Learning

2021-04-04T12:48:45.094000Z

One of the most impactful books we’ve ever come across is the wonderful Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin to Munger, written by the Swedish investor Peter Bevelin. In the spirit of multidisciplinary learning, Seeking Wisdom is a compendium of ideas from biology, psychology, statistics, physics, economics, and human behavior.

Mr. Bevelin is out with a new book full of wisdom from Warren Buffett & Charlie Munger: All I Want to Know is Where I’m Going to Die So I Never Go There. We were fortunate enough to have a chance to interview Peter recently, and the result is the wonderful discussion below.

What was the original impetus for writing these books?

The short answer: To improve my thinking. And when I started writing on what later became Seeking Wisdom I can express it even simpler: "I was dumb and wanted to be less dumb." As Munger says: "It’s ignorance removal…It’s dishonorable to stay stupider than you have to be." And I had done some stupid things and I had seen a lot of stupidity being done by people in life and in business.

A seed was first planted when I read Charlie Munger’s worldly wisdom speech and another one where he referred to Darwin as a great thinker. So I said to myself: I am 42 now. Why not take some time off business and spend a year learning, reflecting and write about the subject Munger introduced to me – human behavior and judgments.

None of my writings started out as a book project. I wrote my first book – Seeking Wisdom – as a memorandum for myself with the expectation that I could transfer some of its essentials to my children. I learn and write because I want to be a little wiser day by day. I don’t want to be a great-problem-solver. I want to avoid problems – prevent them from happening and doing right from the beginning. And I focus on consequential decisions. To paraphrase Buffett and Munger – decision-making is not about making brilliant decisions, but avoiding terrible ones. Mistakes and dumb decisions are a fact of life and I’m going to make more, but as long as I can avoid the big or "fatal" ones I’m fine.

So I started to read and write to learn what works and not and why. And I liked Munger’s "All I want to know is where I’m going to die so I’ll never go there" approach. And as he said, "You understand it better if you go at it the way we do, which is to identify the main stupidities that do bright people in and then organize your patterns for thinking and developments, so you don’t stumble into those stupidities." Then I "only" had to a) understand the central "concept" and its derivatives and describe it in as simple way as possible for me and b) organize what I learnt in a way that was logical and useful for me.

And what better way was there to learn this from those who already knew this?

After I learnt some things about our brain, I understood that thinking doesn’t come naturally to us humans – most is just unconscious automatic reactions. Therefore I needed to set up the environment and design a system that helped me make it easier to know what to do and prevent and avoid harm. Things like simple rules of thumbs, tricks and filters. Of course, I could only do that if I first had the foundation. And as the years have passed, I’ve found that filters are a great way to save time and misery. As Buffett says, "I process information very quickly since I have filters in my mind." And they have to be simple – as the proverb says, "Beware of the door that has too many keys." The more complicated a process is, the less effective it is.

Why do I write? Because it helps me understand and learn better. And if I can’t write something down clearly, then I have not really understood it. As Buffett says, "I learn while I think when I write it out. Some of the things, I think I think, I find don’t make any sense when I start trying to write them down and explain them to people … And if it can’t stand applying pencil to paper, you’d better think it through some more."

My own test is one that a physicist friend of mine told me many years ago, ‘You haven’t really understood an idea if you can’t in a simple way describe it to almost anyone.’ Luckily, I don’t have to understand zillion of things to function well.

And even if some of mine and others thoughts ended up as books, they are all living documents and new starting points for further, learning, un-learning and simplifying/clarifying. To quote Feynman, "A great deal of formulation work is done in writing the paper, organizational work, organization. I think of a better way, a better way, a better way of getting there, of proving it. I never do much — I mean, it’s just cleaner, cleaner and cleaner. It’s like polishing a rough-cut vase. The shape, you know what you want and you know what it is. It’s just polishing it. Get it shined, get it clean, and everything else."

Which book did you learn the most from the experience of writing/collecting?

Seeking Wisdom because I had to do a lot of research – reading, talking to people etc. Especially in the field of biology and brain science since I wanted to first understand what influences our behavior. I also spent some time at a Neurosciences Institute to get a better understanding of how our anatomy, physiology and biochemistry constrained our behavior.

And I had to work it out my own way and write it down in my own words so I really could understand it. It took a lot of time but it was a lot of fun to figure it out and I learnt much more and it stuck better than if I just had tried to memorize what somebody else had already written. I may not have gotten everything letter perfect but good enough to be useful for me.

As I said, the expectation wasn’t to create a book. In fact, that would have removed a lot of my motivation. I did it because I had an interest in becoming better. It goes back to the importance of intrinsic motivation. As I wrote in Seeking Wisdom: "If we reward people for doing what they like to do anyway, we sometimes turn what they enjoy doing into work. The reward changes their perception. Instead of doing something because they enjoy doing it, they now do it because they are being paid. The key is what a reward implies. A reward for our achievements makes us feel that we are good at something thereby increasing our motivation. But a reward that feels controlling and makes us feel that we are only doing it because we’re paid to do it, decreases the appeal."

It may sound like a cliché but the joy was in the journey – reading, learning and writing – not the destination – the finished book. Has the book made a difference for some people? Yes, I hope so but often people revert to their old behavior. Some of them are the same people who – to paraphrase something that is attributed to Churchill – occasionally should check their intentions and strategies against their results. But reality is what Munger once said, "Everyone’s experience is that you teach only what a reader almost knows, and that seldom." But I am happy that my books had an impact and made a difference to a few people. That’s enough.

Why did the new book (All I Want To Know Is Where I’m Going To Die So I’ll Never Go There) have a vastly different format?

It was more fun to write about what works and not in a dialogue format. But also because vivid and hopefully entertaining "lessons" are easier to remember and recall. And you will find a lot of quotes in there that most people haven’t read before.

I wanted to write a book like this to reinforce a couple of concepts in my head. So even if some of the text sometimes comes out like advice to the reader, I always think about what the mathematician Gian-Carlo Rota once said, "The advice we give others is the advice that we ourselves need."

How do you define Mental Models?

Some kind of representation that describes how reality is (as it is known today) – a principle, an idea, basic concepts, something that works or not – that I have in my head that helps me know what to do or not. Something that has stood the test of time.

For example some timeless truths are:

Reality is that complete competitors – same product/niche/territory – cannot coexist (Competitive exclusion principle). What works is going where there is no or very weak competition + differentiation/advantages that others can’t copy (assuming of course we have something that is needed/wanted now and in the future)
Reality is that we get what we reward for. What works is making sure we reward for what we want to achieve.

I favor underlying principles and notions that I can apply broadly to different and relevant situations. Since some models don’t resemble reality, the word "model" for me is more of an illustration/story of an underlying concept, trick, method, what works etc. that agrees with reality (as Munger once said, "Models which underlie reality") and help me remember and more easily make associations.

But I don’t judge or care how others label it or do it – models, concepts, default positions … The important thing is that whatever we use, it reflects and agrees with reality and that it works for us to help us understand or explain a situation or know what to do or not do. Useful and good enough guide me. I am pretty pragmatic – whatever works is fine. I follow Deng Xiaoping, "I don’t care whether the cat is black or white as long as it catches mice." As Feynman said, "What is the best method to obtain the solution to a problem? The answer is, any way that works."

I’ll tell you about a thing Feynman said on education which I remind myself of from time to time in order not to complicate things (from Richard P. Feynman, Michael A. Gottlieb, Ralph Leighton, Feynman’s Tips on Physics: A Problem-Solving Supplement to the Feynman Lectures on Physics):

"There’s a round table on three legs. Where should you lean on it, so the table will be the most unstable?"
The student’s solution was, "Probably on top of one of the legs, but let me see: I’ll calculate how much force will produce what lift, and so on, at different places."
Then I said, "Never mind calculating. Can you imagine a real table?"
"But that’s not the way you’re supposed to do it!"
"Never mind how you’re supposed to do it; you’ve got a real table here with the various legs, you see? Now, where do you think you’d lean? What would happen if you pushed down directly over a leg?"
"Nothin’!"
I say, "That’s right; and what happens if you push down near the edge, halfway between two of the legs?"
"It flips over!"
I say, "OK! That’s better!"
The point is that the student had not realized that these were not just mathematical problems; they described a real table with legs. Actually, it wasn’t a real table, because it was perfectly circular, the legs were straight up and down, and so on. But it nearly described, roughly speaking, a real table, and from knowing what a real table does, you can get a very good idea of what this table does without having to calculate anything – you know darn well where you have to lean to make the table flip over. So, how to explain that, I don’t know! But once you get the idea that the problems are not mathematical problems but physical problems, it helps a lot.
Anyway, that’s just two ways of solving this problem. There’s no unique way of doing any specific problem. By greater and greater ingenuity, you can find ways that require less and less work, but that takes experience.

Which mental models "carry the most freight?" (Related follow up: Which concepts from Buffett/Munger/Mental Models do you find yourself referring to or appreciating most frequently?)

Ideas from biology and psychology since many stupidities are caused by not understanding human nature (and you get illustrations of this nearly every day). And most of our tendencies were already known by the classic writers (Publilius Syrus, Seneca, Aesop, Cicero etc.)

Others that I find very useful both in business and private is the ideas of Quantification (without the fancy math), Margin of safety, Backups, Trust, Constraints/Weakest link, Good or Bad Economics slash Competitive advantage, Opportunity cost, Scale effects. I also think Keynes idea of changing your mind when you get new facts or information is very useful.

But since reality isn’t divided into different categories but involves a lot of factors interacting, I need to synthesize many ideas and concepts.

Are there any areas of the mental models approach you feel are misunderstood or misapplied?

I don’t know about that but what I often see among many smart people agrees with Munger’s comment: "All this stuff is really quite obvious and yet most people don’t really know it in a way where they can use it."

Anyway, I believe if you really understand an idea and what it means – not only memorizing it – you should be able to work out its different applications and functional equivalents. Take a simple big idea – think on it – and after a while you see its wider applications. To use Feynman’s advice, "It is therefore of first-rate importance that you know how to "triangulate" – that is, to know how to figure something out from what you already know." As a good friend says, "Learn the basic ideas, and the rest will fill itself in. Either you get it or you don’t."

Most of us learn and memorize a specific concept or method etc. and learn about its application in one situation. But when the circumstances change we don’t know what to do and we don’t see that the concept may have a wider application and can be used in many situations.

Take for example one big and useful idea – Scale effects. That the scale of size, time and outcomes changes things – characteristics, proportions, effects, behavior…and what is good or not must be tied to scale. This is a very fundamental idea from math. Munger described some of this idea’s usefulness in his worldly wisdom speech. One effect from this idea I often see people miss and I believe is important is group size and behavior. That trust, feeling of affection and altruistic actions breaks down as group size increases, which of course is important to know in business settings. I wrote about this in Seeking Wisdom (you can read more if you type in Dunbar Number on Google search). I know of some businesses that understand the importance of this and split up companies into smaller ones when they get too big (one example is Semco).

Another general idea is "Gresham’s Law" that can be generalized to any process or system where the bad drives out the good. Like natural selection or "We get what we select for" (and as Garrett Hardin writes, "The more general principle is: We get whatever we reward for).

While we are on the subject of mental models etc., let me bring up another thing that distinguishes the great thinkers from us ordinary mortals. Their ability to quickly assess and see the essence of a situation – the critical things that really matter and what can be ignored. They have a clear notion of what they want to achieve or avoid and then they have this ability to zoom in on the key factor(s) involved.

One reason to why they can do that is because they have a large repertoire of stored personal and vicarious experiences and concepts in their heads. They are masters at pattern recognition and connection. Some call it intuition but as Herbert Simon once said, "The situation has provided a cue; this cue has given the expert access to information stored in memory, and the information provides the answer. Intuition is nothing more and nothing less than recognition."

It is about making associations. For example, roughly like this:
Situation X Association (what does this remind me of?) to experience, concept, metaphor, analogy, trick, filter… (Assuming of course we are able to see the essence of the situation) What counts and what doesn’t? What works/not? What to do or what to explain?

Let’s take employing someone as an example (or looking at a business proposal). This reminds me of one key factor – trustworthiness and Buffett’s story, "If you’re looking for a manager, find someone who is intelligent, energetic and has integrity. If he doesn’t have the last, make sure he lacks the first two."

I believe Buffett and Munger excel at this – they have seen and experienced so much about what works and not in business and behavior.

Buffett referred to the issue of trust, chain letters and pattern recognition at the latest annual meeting:

You can get into a lot of trouble with management that lacks integrity… If you’ve got an intelligent, energetic guy or woman who is pursuing a course of action, which gets put on the front page it could make you very unhappy. You can get into a lot of trouble. ..We’ve seen patterns…Pattern recognition is very important in evaluating humans and businesses. Pattern recognition isn’t one hundred percent and none of the patterns exactly repeat themselves, but there are certain things in business and securities markets that we’ve seen over and over and frequently come to a bad end but frequently look extremely good in the short run. One which I talked about last year was the chain letter scheme. You’re going to see chain letters for the rest of your life. Nobody calls them chain letters because that’s a connotation that will scare you off but they’re disguised as chain letters and many of the schemes on Wall Street, which are designed to fool people, have that particular aspect to it…There were patterns at Valeant certainly…if you go and watch the Senate hearings, you will see there are patterns that should have been picked up on.

This is what he wrote on chain letters in the 2014 annual report:

In the late 1960s, I attended a meeting at which an acquisitive CEO bragged of his "bold, imaginative accounting." Most of the analysts listening responded with approving nods, seeing themselves as having found a manager whose forecasts were certain to be met, whatever the business results might be. Eventually, however, the clock struck twelve, and everything turned to pumpkins and mice. Once again, it became evident that business models based on the serial issuances of overpriced shares – just like chain-letter models – most assuredly redistribute wealth, but in no way create it. Both phenomena, nevertheless, periodically blossom in our country – they are every promoter’s dream – though often they appear in a carefully-crafted disguise. The ending is always the same: Money flows from the gullible to the fraudster. And with stocks, unlike chain letters, the sums hijacked can be staggering.

And of course, the more prepared we are or the more relevant concepts and "experiences" we have in our heads, the better we all will be at this. How do we get there? Reading, learning and practice so we know it "fluently." There are no shortcuts. We have to work at it and apply it to the real world.

As a reminder to myself so I understand my limitation and "circle", I keep a paragraph from Munger’s USC Gould School of Law Commencement Address handy so when I deal with certain issues, I don’t fool myself into believing I am Max Planck when I’m really the Chauffeur:

In this world I think we have two kinds of knowledge: One is Planck knowledge, that of the people who really know. They’ve paid the dues, they have the aptitude. Then we’ve got chauffeur knowledge. They have learned to prattle the talk. They may have a big head of hair. They often have fine timbre in their voices. They make a big impression. But in the end what they’ve got is chauffeur knowledge masquerading as real knowledge.

Which concepts from Buffett/Munger/Mental Models do you find most counterintuitive?

One trick or notion I see many of us struggling with because it goes against our intuition is the concept of inversion – to learn to think "in negatives" which goes against our normal tendency to concentrate on for example, what we want to achieve or confirmations instead of what we want to avoid and disconfirmations. Another example of this is the importance of missing confirming evidence (I call it the "Sherlock trick") – that negative evidence and events that don’t happen, matter when something implies they should be present or happen.

Another example that is counterintuitive is Newton’s 3d law that forces work in pairs. One object exerts a force on a second object, but the second object also exerts a force equal and opposite in direction to the force acting on it – the first object. As Newton wrote, "If you press a stone with your finger, the finger is also pressed by the stone." Same as revenge (reciprocation).

Who are some of the non-obvious, or under-the-radar thinkers that you greatly admire?

One that immediately comes to mind is one I have mentioned in the introduction in two of my books is someone I am fortunate to have as a friend – Peter Kaufman. An outstanding thinker and a great businessman and human being. On a scale of 1 to 10, he is a 15.

What have you come to appreciate more with Buffett/Munger’s lessons as you’ve studied them over the years?

Their ethics and their ethos of clarity, simplicity and common sense. These two gentlemen are outstanding in their instant ability to exclude bad ideas, what doesn’t work, bad people, scenarios that don’t matter, etc. so they can focus on what matters. Also my amazement that their ethics and ideas haven’t been more replicated. But I assume the answer lies in what Munger once said, "The reason our ideas haven’t spread faster is they’re too simple."

This reminds me something my father-in-law once told me (a man I learnt a lot from) – the curse of knowledge and the curse of academic title. My now deceased father-in-law was an inventor and manager. He did not have any formal education but was largely self-taught. Once a big corporation asked for his services to solve a problem their 60 highly educated engineers could not solve. He solved the problem. The engineers said, "It can’t be that simple." It was like they were saying that, "Here we have 6 years of school, an academic title, lots of follow up education. Therefore an engineering problem must be complicated". Like Buffett once said of Ben Graham’s ideas, "I think that it comes down to those ideas – although they sound so simple and commonplace that it kind of seems like a waste to go to school and get a PhD in Economics and have it all come back to that. It’s a little like spending eight years in divinity school and having somebody tell you that the 10 commandments were all that counted. There is a certain natural tendency to overlook anything that simple and important."

(I must admit that in the past I had a tendency to be extra drawn to elegant concepts and distracting me from the simple truths.)

What things have you come to understand more deeply in the past few years?

That I don’t need hundreds of concepts, methods or tricks in my head – there are a few basic, time-filtered fundamental ones that are good enough. As Munger says, "The more basic knowledge you have the less new knowledge you have to get." And when I look at something "new", I try to connect it to something I already understand and if possible get a wider application of an already existing basic concept that I already have in my head.
Neither do I have to learn everything to cover every single possibility – not only is it impossible but the big reason is well explained by the British statistician George Box. He said that we shouldn’t be preoccupied with optimal or best procedures but good enough over a range of possibilities likely to happen in practice – circumstances which the world really present to us.
The importance of "Picking my battles" and focus on the long-term consequences of my actions. As Munger said, "A majority of life’s errors are caused by forgetting what one is really trying to do."
How quick most of us are in drawing conclusions. For example, I am often too quick in being judgmental and forget how I myself behaved or would have behaved if put in another person’s shoes (and the importance of seeing things from many views).
That I have to "pick my poison" since there is always a set of problems attached with any system or approach – it can’t be perfect. The key is try to move to a better set of problems one can accept after comparing what appear to be the consequences of each.
How efficient and simplified life is when you deal with people you can trust. This includes the importance of the right culture.
The extreme importance of the right CEO – a good operator, business person and investor.
That luck plays a big role in life.
That most predictions are wrong and that prevention, robustness and adaptability is way more important. I can’t help myself – I have to add one thing about the people who give out predictions on all kinds of things. Often these are the people who live in a world where their actions have no consequences and where their ideas and theories don’t have to agree with reality.
That people or businesses that are foolish in one setting often are foolish in another one ("The way you do anything, is the way you do everything").
Buffett’s advice that "A checklist is no substitute for thinking." And that sometimes it is easy to overestimate one’s competency in a) identifying or picking what the dominant or key factors are and b) evaluating them including their predictability. That I believe I need to know factor A when I really need to know B – the critical knowledge that counts in the situation with regards to what I want to achieve.
Close to this is that I sometimes get too involved in details and can’t see the forest for the trees and I get sent up too many blind alleys. Just as in medicine where a whole body scan sees too much and sends the doctor up blind alleys.
The wisdom in Buffett’s advice that "You only have to be right on a very, very few things in your lifetime as long as you never make any big mistakes…An investor needs to do very few things right as long as he or she avoids big mistakes."

What’s the best investment of time/effort/money that you’ve ever made?

The best thing I have done is marrying my wife. As Buffett says and it is so so true, "Choosing a spouse is the most important decision in your life…You need everything to be stable, and if that decision isn’t good, it may affect every other decision in life, including your business decisions…If you are lucky on health and…on your spouse, you are a long way home."

A good "investment" is taking the time to continuously improve. It just takes curiosity and a desire to know and understand – real interest. And for me this is fun.

What does your typical day look like? (How much time do you spend reading… and when?)

Every day is a little different but I read every day.

What book has most impacted your life?

There is not one single book or one single idea that has done it. I have picked up things from different books (still do). And there are different books and articles that made a difference during different periods of my life. Meeting and learning from certain people and my own practical experiences has been more important in my development. As an example – When I was in my 30s a good friend told me something that has been very useful in looking at products and businesses. He said I should always ask who the real customer is: "Who ultimately decides what to buy and what are their decision criteria and how are they measured and rewarded and who pays?"

But looking back, if I have had a book like Poor Charlie’s Almanack when I was younger I would have saved myself some misery. And of course, when it comes to business, managing and investing, nothing beats learning from Warren Buffett’s Letters to Berkshire Hathaway Shareholders.

Another thing I have found is that it is way better to read and reread fewer books but good and timeless ones and then think. Unfortunately many people absorb too many new books and information without thinking.

Let me finish this with some quotes from my new book that I believe we all can learn from:

"There’s no magic to it…We haven’t succeeded because we have some great, complicated systems or magic formulas we apply or anything of the sort. What we have is just simplicity itself." – Buffett
"Our ideas are so simple that people keep asking us for mysteries when all we have are the most elementary ideas…There’s nothing remarkable about it. I don’t have any wonderful insights that other people don’t have. Just slightly more consistently than others, I’ve avoided idiocy…It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent." – Munger
"It really is simple – just avoid doing the dumb things. Avoiding the dumb things is the most important." – Buffett

Finally, I wish you and your readers an excellent day – Everyday!

By Peter Bevelin

Date: October 17, 2016
Filed Under: Interview Investing Peter Bevelin Peter Kaufman

Creating a Latticework of Mental Models: An Introduction

2021-04-04T12:48:45.202000Z

Acquiring knowledge may seem like a daunting task. There is so much to know and time is precious. Luckily, we don’t have to master everything.

To get the biggest bang for our buck we can study the big ideas from the big disciplines: physics, biology, psychology, philosophy, literature, sociology, history, and a few others. We call these big ideas mental models.

Our aim is not to remember facts and try to repeat them when asked, the way you studied for your high school history exams. We’re going to try and hang these ideas on a latticework of mental models, with vivid examples in our head to help us remember and apply them.

The latticework of mental models puts them in a useable form to analyze a wide variety of situations and enables us to make better decisions. And when big ideas from multiple disciplines all point towards the same conclusion, we can begin to conclude that we’ve hit on an important truth.

The idea for building such a latticework comes from Charlie Munger, Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway and one of the finest cross-disciplinary thinkers in the world.

Here, Charlie Munger explains his approach to worldly wisdom:

Well, the first rule is that you can’t really know anything if you just remember isolated facts and try and bang ’em back. If the facts don’t hang together on a latticework of theory, you don’t have them in a usable form.

You’ve got to have models in your head. And you’ve got to array your experience both vicarious and direct on this latticework of models. You may have noticed students who just try to remember and pound back what is remembered. Well, they fail in school and in life. You’ve got to hang experience on a latticework of models in your head.

What are the models? Well, the first rule is that you’ve got to have multiple models because if you just have one or two that you’re using, the nature of human psychology is such that you’ll torture reality so that it fits your models, or at least you’ll think it does…

It’s like the old saying, "To the man with only a hammer, every problem looks like a nail." And of course, that’s the way the chiropractor goes about practicing medicine. But that’s a perfectly disastrous way to think and a perfectly disastrous way to operate in the world. So you’ve got to have multiple models.

And the models have to come from multiple disciplines because all the wisdom of the world is not to be found in one little academic department. That’s why poetry professors, by and large, are so unwise in a worldly sense. They don’t have enough models in their heads. So you’ve got to have models across a fair array of disciplines.

You may say, "My God, this is already getting way too tough." But, fortunately, it isn’t that tough because 80 or 90 important models will carry about 90% of the freight in making you a worldly wise person. And, of those, only a mere handful really carry very heavy freight.(1)

John T. Reed, author of Succeeding offers an important additional insight:

When you first start to study a field, it seems like you have to memorize a zillion things. You don’t. What you need is to identify the core principles – generally three to twelve of them – that govern the field. The million things you thought you had to memorize are simply various combinations of the core principles.

Mental Models

The central principle of the mental model approach is that you must have many of them. Ideally, all the ones you need to solve the problem at hand. As with physical tools, lacking a mental tool at the crucial moment can lead to a bad result.

This seems self-evident, but it’s an unnatural way to think. Without the right training, your brain takes the other approach, which is to say: Which models do I already know and love, and how can I apply them here? Munger’s analogy for this is the man with a hammer, to whom everything looks a bit like a nail. Such narrow-minded thinking feels entirely natural to us, but it leads to far too many misjudgments.

As an example, Tim Wu writes about Chris Anderson, who wrote The Long Tail, a popular 21st century business book. Here is what happens when you rely on one (powerful) mental model to solve everything.

Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail does something that only the best books do—uncovers a phenomenon that’s undeniably going on and makes clear sense of it. Anderson, the Wired editor-in-chief who first wrote about the Long Tail concept in 2004, had two moments of genius: He visualized the demand for certain products as a "power curve," and he came up with a catchy phrase to go with his observation. Like most good ideas, the Long Tail attaches to your mind and gets stuck there. Everything you take in—cult blogs, alternative music, festival films—starts looking like the Long Tail in action. But that’s also the problem. The Long Tail theory is so catchy it can overgrow its useful boundaries. Unfortunately, Anderson’s book exacerbates this problem. When you put it down, there’s one question you won’t be able to answer: When, exactly, doesn’t the Long Tail matter?

This insight goes only so far, but like many business books, The Long Tail commits the sin of overreaching. The tagline on the book’s cover reads, "Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More," which is certainly wrong or at least exaggerated. Inside we learn about "the Long Tail of Everything." Anderson’s book, unlike his original Wired article, threatens to turn a great theory of inventory economics into a bad theory of life and the universe. He writes that "there are now Long Tail markets practically everywhere you look," calling offshoring the "Long Tail of labor," and online universities "the Long Tail of education." He quotes approvingly an analysis that claims, improbably, that there’s a "Long Tail of national security" in which al-Qaida is a "supercharged niche supplier." At times, the Long Tail becomes the proverbial theory hammer looking for nails to pound.

What the book doesn’t get at is the relationship between these standards-driven industries where the Long Tail doesn’t matter, and the content industries where it does. There aren’t Long Tails everywhere.

The truth is that the good ideas are just as dangerous as the bad ones. Warren Buffett’s mentor, Ben Graham, used to put it as such:

You can get in way more trouble with a good idea than a bad idea, because you forget that the good idea has limits.

The best antidote to this sort of overreaching is to add more colors to your mental palette; to expand your repertoire of ideas, make them vivid and available, and watch your mind grow.

You’ll know you’re on to something when the ideas start to compete with one another. At first, this is mildly uncomfortable. One idea says X and the other idea says the reverse of X: How do I decide which is right?

This process of letting the models compete and fight for superiority and greater fundamentalness is called thinking! It’s a little like learning to walk or ride a bike; at first you can’t believe all that you’re supposed to do at once, but eventually you wonder how you ever got along without it. As Charlie likes to say, going back to any other method would feel like cutting off your hands.

Good luck, and let’s explore the models.

The Farnam Street Latticework of Mental Models

Human Psychology

Biases emanating from the Availability Heuristic:
– Ease of Recall
– Retrievability

Biases emanating from the Representativeness Heuristic
– Bias from insensitivity to base rates
– Bias from insensitivity to sample size
– Misconceptions of chance
– Regression to the mean
– Bias from conjunction fallacy

Biases emanating from the Confirmation Heuristic
– Confirmation bias
– Bias from anchoring
– Conjunctive and disjunctive-events bias
– Bias from over-confidence
– Hindsight Bias

Others
– Bias from incentives and reinforcement
– Bias from self-interest
– Bias from association
– Bias from liking/loving
– Bias from disliking/hating
– Commitment and Consistency Bias
– Bias from excessive fairness
– Bias from envy and jealousy
– Reciprocation bias
– Over-influence from authority
– Deprival Super-Reaction Bias
– Bias from contrast
– Bias from stress-influence
– Bias from emotional arousal
– Bias from physical or psychological pain
– Fundamental Attribution Error
– Bias from the status quo
– Do something tendency
– Do nothing tendency
– Over-influence from precision/models
– Uncertainty avoidance
– Not invented here bias
– Short-term bias
– Tendency to avoid extremes
– Man with a Hammer Tendency
– Bias from social proof
– Over-influence from framing effects
– Lollapalooza

Business
– Price Sensitivity
– Scale
– Distribution
– Cost
– Brand
– Improving Returns
– Porters 5 Forces
– Decision Trees
– Diminishing Returns
– Double Entry Accounting

Investing
– Mr. Market
– Circle of competence

Ecology
– Complex adaptive systems
– Systems Thinking

Economics
– Utility
– Diminishing Utility
– Supply and Demand
– Scarcity
– Elasticity
– Economies of Scale
– Opportunity Cost
– Marginal Cost
– Comparative Advantage
– Trade-offs
– Price Discrimination
– Positive and Negative Externalities
– Sunk Costs
– Moral Hazard
– Game Theory
– Prisoners’ Dilemma
– Tragedy of the Commons
– Bottlenecks
– Time value of Money

Engineering
– Feedback loops
– Redundancy
– Margin of Safety
– Tight coupling
– Breakpoints

Mathematics
– Bayes Theorem
– Power Law
– Law of large numbers
– Compounding
– Probability Theory
– Permutations
– Combinations
– Variability
– Standard Deviation and normal distribution
– Regression to the mean
– Inversion
– Multiplicative Systems

Statistics
– Outliers and self fulfilling prophecy
– Correlation versus Causation
– Mean, Median, Mode
– Distribution

Chemistry
– Thermodynamics
– Kinetics
– Autocatalysis

Physics
– Newton’s Laws
– Momentum
– Quantum Mechanics
– Critical Mass
– Equilibrium

Biology
– Natural Selection

More Models:
– Asymmetric Information
– Occam’s Razor
– Deduction and Induction
– Basic Decision Making Process
– Scientific Method
– Process versus Outcome
– And then what?
– The Agency Problem
– 7 Deadly Sins
– Network Effect
– Gresham’s Law
– The Red Queen Effect

Remember, the above list is always subject to growing and changing. We’re always trying to find better ways to organize our knowledge.

Sources:
1. Charlie Munger, Poor Charlie’s Almanack
2. John T. Reed, Succeeding
3. Alice Schroeder, The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life

The Future of Design (and how to prepare for it)

2021-04-04T12:48:44.901000Z

A handy guide to navigating what's coming up next in the design world.

In trying to figure out what the future of design will look like, we’re at a bit of a loss.

Technology is changing at a rapid pace. In five years, mobile platforms have gone from being an emerging part of a company’s strategy to the focal point of its future. So who’s to say when virtual reality and automation become more prominent? Quickly-evolving tools like these and a shifting playing field make it almost impossible to predict the future, because the gadget that will drive our lives in 10 years probably hasn’t even been invented yet. And then there is the matter of divergent career paths. The age-old standard of working your way up the ladder at a single company for the duration of your life has been disrupted by career professionals blending skills that were once thought to be mutually exclusive — like design and computer programming — to make entirely new hybrid careers in anticipation of the market needs of tomorrow.

So that is why we’ve reached out to visionaries and experts across the design world to get their take on what the field will look like in the next 10 years when the very definition of the designer will begin to loosen up and designers will soon be called on by companies to re-think the entire way businesses function, from how teams collaborate to how corporations are structured.

It’s setting up to be a golden age, one filled with wonderfully-wild new possibilities (full-body virtual reality suits that generate real-life senses, anyone?) and career opportunities. Worried? Don’t be. We asked each participant to give us a glimpse into how we can prepare for the world ahead.

The definition of "design" will loosen up.

"Historically, you would study graphic design, industrial design, or interaction design and there were a finite number of crafts out in the world. Now we’re starting to see that design and creativity can be brought to bear on a greater number of things. One is organizational design, thinking about anything from the design of culture within an organization to how those organizations are designed themselves in terms of the structure and roles. Another is business design, the idea of bringing a creative lens to anything from business models to venture funding."

— Duane Bray, Partner and Head of Talent, IDEO

"Creativity" will become a coveted corporate leadership trait.

"We’re seeing teams of people from different disciplines spending time together from start to finish on a project. How do you maximize their creative potential? The core skill is unlocking collaboration between teams."

— Duane Bray, Partner and Head of Talent, IDEO

The line between design and business will continue to blur.

"The more a designer understands how the business works, the more valuable they will be to employers. Designers who understand a company’s value proposition and mission can help them thrive and grow. They just need to learn the language that someone who is running a company actually speaks. When they can articulate exactly what they bring to the table, executives will realize that they didn’t just hire a designer — they also hired a strategist!"

— Shana Dressler, Executive Director of 30 Weeks

Crooked career paths will be the norm.

"More and more I am seeing people who haven’t followed the traditional career path. When hiring, I look for the narrative that stitches the person’s career together: Why did they make the decisions that they did? What was the trajectory that they found themselves on? I don’t really care that much anymore if you went to a pedigree design school or started at a prestigious company. What I care about is that you learned and grew and there was an intent behind what you were building towards."

— Duane Bray, Partner and Head of Global Talent, IDEO

3D printing will bring more one-off design challenges…and opportunities.

"I think that product is going to be less static in the future. If you have 3D printing in a retail store, customers could customize their products to whatever size they want, such as an oversize version. There are so many ways that things are going to be designed just for you, as opposed to designed for set sizes."

— Georgianna Stout, Founding Partner and Creative Director, 2×4

Data and design will make life trippy.

"Designers are typically experts in things you can touch, see and act upon. Now with software eating the world, a lot of the manifest expressions of the design world are giving way to things that are not as see-able, like personalization data that remember who we are. Designers are going to have to think about how a human and a machine will interact. For example, if a smart home artificial intelligence system sensor sees a home door unlock and then recognizes the face of the person entering, should it be able to look up that person’s data about what that person likes and turn on a certain light for them? Or you have to decide if, every time you show up at your home, if you want your smart home system to turn the lights for you versus you doing it yourself. Or, do you develop a smart home system that interacts with you on a decision-by-decision basis? In most of what I’m talking about, there are no switches to turn on the light or system interfaces to tap. It’s artificial intelligence and all of these decisions are being made using personal data. That is the new kind of design problem."

— Mark Rolston, Founder and Chief Creative, argodesign

Cross disciplinary teams will thrive.

"We have a lot of doctors and nurses on staff here at NBBJ and it dramatically impacts our work. I love the idea of walking into a room where I have a badass technical architect, a nurse, and me and my background in fine art, and we’re going to go tackle an urban design problem for a civic project. You get really interesting outcomes that will be really different than if you had three people who studied similar architecture and graduated from similar schools. You have little or no chance of getting something really wild out of that group. It will get done, probably faster, probably easier, but it’s rare that you get something that is phenomenally different."

— Sam Stubblefield, Principal, NBBJ

Designers who are entrepreneurial will become more important.

"As executives from companies start to become educated about the value that designers bring to the table, I imagine that more and more, designers will be invited to early meetings when products and services are first conceived of. They will also be able to command higher salaries and consulting fees. The three pillars for success are a great idea, great execution, and great design. When you can make a case for why your contribution to a company is directly tied to profits, that is when upper management will perk up."

— Shana Dressler, Executive Director of 30 Weeks

Digital art will rival the real thing.

"Will a 3D-printed sculpture have the same value as a sculpture made by someone 50 years ago with their hands? People sometimes see digital art as a lesser form of art. Oh, that is done by computer, not hand! Then people think it should be cheaper. I worry that consumers will see 3D art as something cheap — not the real thing. But once you can print a masterpiece from an artist and have it as your own, people will think differently. I am pretty sure that if Michelangelo had a computer, he would have used it."

— Daniel Aristizábal, Colombian Illustrator

Experience design will become increasingly important.

"Retail shopping is not solely about the transactional experience any more. It’s about going into a store, feeling the vibe of that brand and getting that bigger lifestyle out of it. Right now that’s very much an urban, high-end experience, so how do we do that in a more populous way? We are looking a lot at the mall K11 in Hong Kong, and how they have incorporated so many different things in their experience, from having art everywhere to farms that are growing mushrooms that you can pick and have incorporated into your meal to programs for kids. And it’s all very-well curated, so there are always new exhibitions and programs."

— Georgianna Stout, Founding Partner and Creative Director, 2×4

Storytelling will have no clear narrative arc.

"The amount of investment/heat around virtual and augmented reality will be the next big challenge for creative professionals, and understanding the self-navigating narrative like that is not a part of most creative disciplines. Traditionally, we’ve always told linear stories. I think the biggest nut to crack will be how creatives design story games that the users can tell themselves."

— Paul Matthaeus, Founder and Chairman, Digital Kitchen

As the creative world fragments, pricing your work will only get tougher.

"It’s easy to price when you’re looking in the rearview mirror, but when you’re looking at something that hasn’t been defined yet, it’s really hard for businesses to value that in a particular sort of way. I think it ends up having to be done in small incremental steps, like serial content."

— Paul Matthaeus, Founder and Chairman, Digital Kitchen

You’ll have to broaden your skill set.

"You can have a great design, but if you can’t communicate the story behind it, it will be the downfall of the greatest designers. It’s important to learn the ‘soft skills’ which are learning how to speak publicly to grab attention, keep attention, and clearly articulate your ideas. You should learn to negotiate your prices, as well as know how to read a room and when you should disappear. The other side is the psychology of the business upfront, the questions of: Why am I building this? Why is it important? Or what impact am I going to have on the world? It’s important to answer before you design. Having the business and designer mindset is important."

— Mona Patel, CEO and Founder, Motivate Design

Visual VR is just the start.

"There really is a lot of opportunities and means for expression inside VR. For example, Axon VR is developing full body virtual reality, both the software and hardware. The apparatus is somewhat imposing, and the leap to a first-person experience is astounding when you add visual, sound, and the sense of touch. The visual power of the experiences has sky-rocketed as a result. When you put that in the hands of creative people, there’s a real opportunity for the experiences that come out of it to be completely, utterly fantastic."

— Paul Matthaeus, Founder and Chairman, Digital Kitchen

Specialization + communication = a career win.

"Instead of trying to become a jack-of-all-trades, young designers should be trained in one specific design discipline, communication design, product design, interior design, fashion design, or digital media design. The design student should develop an understanding of how the respective design discipline interfaces with technology and business. Students should work in projects together with students from other design disciplines and preferably also with students from engineering and business. This is training for young designers and a time to nurture communication skills."

— Cees de Bont, Dean of School of Design, Hong Kong Polytechnic University

3D printing will continue to grow in importance.

"As creatives, it’s our duty to incorporate 3D printing into our work. When you have the possibility to make your work tangible, that gives it more richness. I hope 3D printing allows people to fully customize their lives. One day if we need shoes or more silverware, we can just print them in our home. I think this will be true for all of our household basics. We’re going to have more creatives in the world because things that have traditionally been done on an industrial scale will be able to be done by anyone with 3D printing."

— Daniel Aristizábal, Colombian Illustrator

You will be required to think more deeply about your design as a brand.

"If you’re doing UX design and you want to build as many products as you can, stay freelance, you’ll make much more money that way and have the thing you want. But if you start thinking you want to build teams or a culture, that’s the right time to start thinking about building a company. One thing you’ll have to do is step away from doing the design work and step into the business development (operations, HR) and begin to create the structure for someone to be able to buy the visual design work from your brand. The mindset shift is from: ‘I am the designer and there are people here that work for me’ to ‘I am the engine that creates a brand that people will work at and people will hire the brand to deliver higher level of quality that they can’t get anywhere else.’ Your job is to create that environment and that system."

— Mona Patel, CEO and Founder, Motivate Design

The public sector will need more problem solvers and thus, ahem, designers.

"In the coming 5 to 10 years, designers will become more dominate in public service design. This is a relatively new design field and designers can work in many different fields with clear growth in the public sector that has growing problems, because of aging, pollution, congestion, etc. These problem areas require a lot of creativity and design expertise."

— Cees de Bont, Dean of School of Design, Hong Kong Polytechnic University

By Matt McCue and Kiana St. Louis

The top 10 design-related movies

2021-04-04T12:48:42.705000Z

Got some spare time over the holidays? Then catch up on these brilliant movies, covering everything from typography to urban art.

Need some design inspiration this holiday season? Well, rather than tune into the latest by-the-numbers action film or romcom, why not take a look at some of the many awesome design documentaries? There’s nothing better than seeing what some of the great designers have done to help boost your creative ideas and spur you on. So in no particular order, here’s a rundown of 10 of the best design documentaries covering everything from typography to street art.

01. Why Man Creates

Seminal artist Saul Bass and Mayo Simon created animated short documentary Why Man Creates in 1968. An early classic, the film discusses the nature of creativity and is as much inspiring today as it was 50 years ago.

02. Helvetica

American director Gary Hustwit celebrates 50 years of the typeface with a feature-length documentary focusing on the wider conversation about how type affects our culture. Released in 2007, the documentary has received widespread recognition and been shown at over 200 film festivals, museums, design conferences, and cinemas worldwide.

03. Design and Thinking

Directed by Mu-Ming Tsai, Design and Thinking examines how design can influence the world of business and social change and calls on creative minds to work together to change the world. Interviewees David Kelley, Bill Moggridge and Tim Brown put forward the idea that attempting to ask the right question is more important than providing firm answers.

04. Objectified

Following on from Helvetica, Gary Hustwit’s second film looks at the world of design engineering and the creative concepts behind everyday objects such as toothbrushes to tech gadgets. He also completed a trilogy with his third film, Urbanized, which looks at the design of cities.

05. Milton Glaser: To Inform and Delight

Wendy Keys’ debut documentary offers a glimpse into the brain behind the iconic I ♥ NY logo and New York Magazine. Released in 2008, the film illustrates the full-breadth of Glaser’s artistic work and has become a design docu classic.

06. PressPausePlay

Directed by David Dworsky and Victor Köhler, PressPausePlay interviews with some of the world's most influential creators of the digital era to ask: Does democratized culture mean better art or is true talent instead drowned out?

07. The Universe of Keith Haring

Christina Clausen plays homage to Haring’s iconic career, told through archive footage and a series of interviews from the likes of Jeffrey Deitch to David LaChapelle to Yoko Ono.

08. Sign Painters

Soon to be released, this documentary from Faythe Levine and Sam Macon depicts the stories of more than two dozen sign painters working in cities throughout the US, attempting to save this dying art.

09. The Cool School

A documentary depicting the art scene of 1940s America, The Cool School tells the story of how a small group of creatives gave birth to the LA art scene. Walter Hopps and Irving Blum, owners of the Ferus Gallery, painters Ed Ruscha and John Altoon, and architect Frank Gehry are just some of those featured.

10. Beautiful losers

Directed by Aaron Rose, founder of the now-closed Alleged Gallery in New York City, Beautiful Losers depicts the work of a 1990s collective that championed a 'do-it-yourself' style - influenced by skateboarding, graffiti and hip hop.

Words: Natalie Brandweiner

Natalie Brandweiner is an online journalist for MyCustomer.com, covering social media and marketing, and has a keen interest in design.

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By December 24, 2013 Web design

Dieter Rams: If I Could Do It Again, "I Would Not Want To Be A Designer"

2021-04-04T12:48:57.116000Z

The lauded Braun designer reveals how architecture has influenced his work, what Apple gets right, and the kind of design he truly hates.

[Top Photo: Abisag Tüllmann]

This is the first of three excerpts from Helvetica/ Objectified/ Urbanized: The Complete Interviews by filmmaker Gary Hustwit.—Eds

Gary Hustwit: How did you get started as a designer? What was your training?
Dieter Rams: I began my studies in architecture at the Wiesbaden School of Art in 1947. I was interested in interior design, but always the emphasis was on architecture. After I finished school, I joined an architectural firm in Germany, Apel, which was doing work with Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, so I came into contact with what was happening in architecture in the U.S. It was a very interesting time after the war; it was like a new beginning in Germany.

606 Universal Shelving System by Dieter Rams for VitsœAirside

One day a colleague of mine saw an advertisement that Braun was looking to hire an architect. He said, 'Why don’t you write them? Maybe you’ll get the job.' I wasn’t interested at the time, but he kept pressing me, so I wrote them. I met with the Braun brothers, and I got the job. Later, in 1956, I became more involved with the industrial design there. I never lost my connection to architecture, in spite of the design work I did for Braun and other companies.

Can you talk about how architecture influenced your design work?
Without a doubt, architecture did influence it. Especially architecture by the people who’d been chased to America by the fascists: Mies van der Rohe, Walter Gropius; these were very influential architects for me. Then and now, I consider their work remarkable—in Chicago, in New York.

But it also influenced me in other ways, like the procedural methods. The principal architects of Apel and the Skidmore people, they studied every detail. It was all clarified in advance. That influenced me a lot when I got into the industrial design sector. In industrial design, everything for the production has to be clarified in advance with models and prototypes, all the details, for multiple parts. Otherwise you don’t proceed to the production stage. You have to think carefully in advance about what you’re making and how you will make it, because for both architecture and industrial design, the cost of changing things afterward is much higher than the cost of better preparation. So I learned a lot from architecture.

We have too many unnecessary things everywhere. I would describe this as inhumane.

How would you characterize your design philosophy?
I always strove for things to be sustainable. By that I mean the development of long-lasting products, products that don’t age prematurely, which won’t become out of style. Products that will remain neutral, that you can live with longer. I summarized my philosophy in 10 points, and I’m actually very surprised that people today, especially students, still accept them. I didn’t intend these 10 points to be set in stone forever. They were actually meant to mutate with time and to change. But apparently things have not changed greatly in the past 50 years. So even nowadays, they are still accepted.

Control TS45, Reel to Reel Tape Recorder TG60, Slim Speakers L450 by Dieter Rams for Braun

Can you tell me those 10 points?
Good design is innovative. Good design must be useful. Good design is aesthetic design. Good design makes a product understandable. Good design is honest. Good design is unobtrusive. Good design is long-lasting. Good design is consistent in every detail. Good design is environmentally friendly. And last but not least, good design is as little design as possible.

How has design changed in the last 50 years?
What I am especially bothered by today is that, particularly in the media, design is being used as a 'lifestyle asset.' I’m bothered by the arbitrariness and the thoughtlessness with which many things are produced and brought to the market. There are so many unnecessary things we produce, not only in the sector of consumer goods, but also in architecture, in advertising. We have too many unnecessary things everywhere. And I would even go as far as to describe this as inhumane. That is the situation today. But actually, it has always been a problem.

I didn’t intend the 10 principles of good design to be set in stone forever.

We need to deal with our resources differently, in terms of how we waste things. We have to move away from the throwaway habit. Things can, and must, last longer. They must be designed so that they can be reused. We need to take more care of our environment. That means not only our personal environment but also our cities and our resources. That is the future of design, to take more care of these basic elements. Otherwise I’m not sure what the future of our planet will be. So designers have to take on that responsibility, and to do so we need more support from government. We need political support to solve the problems with our environment and how we should shape our cities. As designers, we shouldn’t be doing this for ourselves, but for our community. And the community needs support, not only to interact with each other democratically, but it also needs support to live democratically.

That is something I learned very early on, by the way. The Ulm School—founded as a successor to the Bauhaus, with American help, with the Marshall Plan in the '50s—was founded with the intent that people interact more democratically with each other with the help of design. And I still find that idea very, very interesting and important, and it needs to be rediscovered today.

Vitsœ furniture and Braun electronics on display at London's Design Museum in 2009

If you were to design a computer now, what would it look like?
It would look like one of Apple’s products. In many magazines, or on the Internet, people compare Apple products to things which I designed, with this or that transistor radio from 1965 or 1955. In terms of aesthetics, I think their designs are brilliant. I don’t consider it an imitation. I take it as a compliment.

What’s your reaction when you see objects that have been poorly designed?
It angers me. What winds me up most is the modern kitsch. Older things make me less angry; they are the past. But I’m angry at the many bad, false things of which there are still too many of in this world. Unnecessary, false, dishonest products; these are the things that make me angry.

Of course I’m also angry that there isn’t more design happening in the environmental area. For example, I think solar technology has to be integrated much more into new architecture. We need renewable energy in the future, and it has to be a.) integrated into existing structures and b.) articulated more clearly in new structures. We are guests on this planet, and we have to do more to keep it healthy in the future.

Innovation has to come from the inside and then influence the outside.

I wonder if you could talk about how the process of design has changed, in terms of new technologies.
I’ve always been of the opinion that new technologies—for example, when I said in the first of my 10 principles that innovation is an important aspect, I meant that technical innovation will get us further, not innovation in terms of appearances. Innovation has to come from the inside and then influence the outside. That’s what I understand as innovation.

That’s why new technologies are extremely important. We should not condemn them or detest them. We have to live with new technologies. But, please, they shouldn’t be wasted or used to kill one another. Instead, they should be used to improve our lives on this planet. I don’t know, in 10 or 20 years we’ll fight about whether we even have enough water on this planet. Or whether we are wasting the little that we have. So there will be different challenges and priorities, which we will only master with new technologies.

Is there anything else you’d like to talk about that we haven’t covered so far?
Well, I’m not very active in the design field anymore. I have only a few things to do, mainly in the furniture sector, because I have certain commitments. But I am still very interested in what’s happening, and it is my wish that we really do deal with our surroundings more consciously in the future. That is really my wish, because I believe it contributes to living with one another more peacefully. That’s why, if I had something to do in this world again, I would not want to be a designer. Because I believe, in the future, it will be less important to have many things and more important to exercise care about where and how we live.

This interview was condensed and edited with the author's permission. For more of Rams's interview and interviews with 70 other designers, buy Helvetica/Objectified/Urbanized: The Complete Interviews here.

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How to apply a design thinking, HCD, UX or any creative process from scratc

2021-04-04T12:48:17.686000Z

This how-to article aims at providing designers, creative thinkers or even project managers with a tool to set up, frame, organise, structure, run or manage design challenges, and projects: The Double Diamond revamped.

The Double Diamond revamped

In order to do so, I have come up with an own and a revamped version of the Double Diamond process. In case, you are familiar with the British Design Council’s Double Diamond, IDEO’s human centred design ideology or @d.school’s Design Thinking process you might be familiar with the majority of approaches, steps and tools in the following paragraphs of this article.

Design Council’s Double Diamond, img source: http://static1.squarespace.com/static/55fa0341e4b06660c65bd4f0/t/5642c682e4b0b633d4fcc1fd/1447216776499/

IDEO HCD process, img source: https://cdn.evbuc.com/eventlogos/160332149/designthinkingphases.png

Stanford d.school Design Thinking process, img source: http://dschool.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/steps-730x345.png

Understanding people

According to Don Norman, the human centred design process starts with a good understanding of people and the needs that the design is intended to meet. Various companies, organisations and educational institutions have taken on this challenge and have therefore come up with models in order to provide structure to the process of human centred design or design thinking.

Chilli Con Carne and the Double Diamond

When you cook a chilli con carne for the first time, you might start off with a recipe that appeals to you. Once you have burned your tongue a couple of times, you either go easy on the spices, or you even spice it up as you can’t get enough of the burning. Generally speaking, you tweak the original recipe to your own needs and taste.

…tweak the original recipe to your own needs and taste…

That’s what I have done to the design process during my previous months trying to master Digital Experience Design at Hyper Island.

As a starting point for my dish, I am using the Double Diamond process, originally released by the British Design Council. I like this framework for its structure, clarity and dynamic.

Point of departure and basics

The core question in almost any creative or design project is how to get from point A – "Don’t know" or "Could be" – to point B – "Do know" or "Should be". This process might seem finite and straightforward at first sight.

In reality, it is a never ending process, as creativity is the habit of continually doing things in new ways to make a positive difference to our life (Hyper Island, 2016).

…creativity is the habit of continually doing things in new ways to make a positive difference to our life (Hyper Island, 2016).

The Double Diamond is a structured design approach to tackle challenges in four phases:

Discover /Research— insight into the problem (diverging)
Define/Synthesis — the area to focus upon (converging)
Develop/ Ideation— potential solutions (diverging)
Deliver /Implementation— solutions that work (converging)

Phases of this process are either diverging or converging. During a diverging phase, you try to open up as much as possible without limiting yourself, whereas a converging phase focuses on condensing and narrowing your findings or ideas.

If you google the Double Diamond you are bound to find various interpretations and also varying wordings. I am going to stick to the version above as its wording allows flexibility and agility in its application in my opinion. Or in other words, it is the most appealing recipe to me.

The four phases of the Double Diamond may be simplified and merged into two main stages of the process.

Stage 1 — Doing the right thing (Diamond 1 — Discover and Define)
Whatever you do, you ought to look for the right problem to solve or the right question to ask before you try to do so. This is all about what you do.
Stage 2 — Doing things right (Diamond 2 — Develop and Deliver)
Once you have found the right question to answer or the right problem to solve, you want to make sure that you do this the right way. This is all about how you do it.

The following paragraphs provide you with a step-to-step approach for each phase.

Stage 1 — Doing the right thing (Diamond 1 — Discover and Define)

This phase is split into Discover/Research and Define/Synthesis.

Discover / Research

Rip the brief (the usual starting point of your challenge) — Try to question the brief or your initial question by challenging every part of it and evaluating fields of interests.
List as many elements as you can, find characteristics, define areas of interest and extremes, list places, people (personas), experiences that are related and can be explored.
Before you dive into your research, cluster your findings into topics to get an overview and you might have to limit yourself in terms of the scope you want to research.
Dive into your research. Apply primary (field) and secondary (desk) research methods. Here is an extensive list of research methods by ideo.org.

As a result, you ought to end up with a huge pile of unstructured research findings.

Define / Synthesis

In order to make sense of your findings, you want to synthesise your research by applying the following steps:

Download (summarise your raw findings and share them with your team) all your research.
Cluster learnings and similarities to themes.
Find insights (insights are the dormant truth about the consumer’s motivations, wishes or frustrations regarding a specific topic)
build opportunity areas (a phrasing of the potential area of action).
Create HMW questions (A so called "how might we..." question that makes a tangible statement of what is to be done or solved within the area of action).

As a result, you ought to come up with a revamped brief (final brief, HMW-question) that either clarifies or details the initial brief challenge or even contradicts it.

Stage 2 — Doing things right (Diamond 2 — Develop and Deliver)

This phase is split into Develop/Ideation and Deliver/Implementation.

Develop / Ideation

As you have deduced the actual question to solve or challenge, you start ideating.

Ideation
This is the fun part and as it is part of a diverging phase. You should restrain from limiting yourself and approach ideation with an open mind. Do not judge during ideation. Apply a "yes, and…" rather than a "no…" or "yes, but…" mentality. Let anything happen at this point and build upon each other’s ideas. There are tonnes of creative ideation tools and methods out there. I am not going into detail here.
Evaluation
Towards the end of an ideation phase, evaluate your ideas and select your favourite ones. Two tools you that come in handy are dot-votings (each team member votes for ideas) or impact/feasibility matrixes (a matrix that puts feasibility in relation to a potential impact of an idea).

As a result, you ought to end up with one or a small number of ideas you want to later prototype and test, in order to find the best answer or solution to your initial question or problem.

Deliver / Implementation

Once you have come up with potential solutions (set of ideas), you want to evaluate the final one and the way it needs to be implemented or executed. In order to so, you may apply an agile approach consisting of three steps:

Build/Prototype
Test/Analyse
Iterate/Repeat

Aim for MVPs — minimum viable products/prototypes, that offer enough tangibility to find out whether they solve the initial problem or answers the initial question.

As a result, you ought to be able to go "out" with your final proposal, product, answer or solution.

Once you have done so you might go back to start and do it all over again because there are always things to be improved.

Remember: Creativity is the habit of continually doing things in new ways to make a positive difference to our life (Hyper Island, 2016).

One more… wait… two, three more things

This article or guide is by no means concluding and doesn’t claim to be the one and only approach or way to do it.

This revamped Double Diamond is just ONE and my personal approach. It’s not the ONE AND ONLY approach and it is here to be challenged, questioned and iterated upon.

Depending on your role and a project, the size of the diamonds may also vary. Meaning that there might be challenges or projects, in which you solely focus or emphasis on one part of the Double Diamond. Furthermore, this process is not linear. In reality, you need to be prepared to be agile and go back and forth at any point.

This article also focuses on the general structure of the process rather than all the individual tools and methods that may be applied to it.

In the end, it is a framework anyone may or may not apply. It has helped me and guided me through the design process.

Nevertheless and at some point you will be stuck in the fog, and you will feel lost in the process. It’s normal, deal with it and trust the process.

Source: Digital Experience Design (Medium) — http://www.dannessler.com

A Brief History of Design Thinking

2021-04-04T12:49:05.509000Z

I stumbled across this *terrific* sum-up of how ‘Design Thinking’ came to be over the past few decades, from Swiburne Univesrity School of Design PhD candidate Stefanie Di Russo. Please check out her blog I think – I design for more writings on the design process and evolution of designers.

These passages are great, illustrated, lively & grounding. Anyone interested in practicing design, or in using design thinking approaches to innovation must read them. The theorists and the history provide a depth and context to the design thinking formulas that have been traded around over the past decade.

Here is the amalgam of Russo’s 2 posts on A Brief History of Design, from the 1960s to the present:

Part 1:

A Brief History of Design Thinking: How Design Thinking Came to ‘Be’

… Design thinking was a realisation through the evolution of different (collaborative) design process methods that were developed to improve and extend design to other areas of practice.

From where we left off…

What happened from the mid 1980′s to date was a race to discover new methods for improving business, service and design. Each methodology can be traced through history and analysed independently should you wish to interpret historical readings in context of the method under investigation. I will highlight an example of what I mean as we move along.

The purpose of analysing this period was to understand the evolution of major design process methods and to discover from this evolution the moment when design thinking was realised as a new approach and a way of thinking that underlined all other methods before it. It must be noted that through this development there was no clear linear progression of methodologies that arose, as many were developed at the same time in different faculties and industries. I have taken through much reading a very generalised approach at attempting to create a chronological understanding of the evolution of major design process trends. The purpose of doing this is to objectively clarify the history and evolution of design thinking which has been muddy and conflicting to date.

And it all started with….Participatory Design

In the early days, participatory methodology was seen most commonly in urban planning until recent developments in design gave this method its name. As i stated earlier, one could very easily trace the history and development of participatory design in and of itself- independent from design thinking. For example; If you want to get nit picky about history, participatory design can be traced all the way back to Plato’s Republic.

Plato was known to seek advice from his people

Grass roots democracy was once the heart of participatory methodology and is an established method used for centuries for the development of a harmonious society. But i am here to discuss how this and other methods (each with their own unique history) have come together to form the evolution of design thinking.

Back to the Future

Fast forward from Plato to the 1960s. During the design methods movement, participatory design was gaining momentum through research. Dubbed the Scandinavian approach, participatory design was about integrating end-users into the development (prototyping) phase of projects. Technological developments during the end of this decade saw participatory design shift from a social method to a technological one. Prior to the adoption of PD in technology, systems design was the go-to for engineers prototyping within an iterative framework.

The timeline of Participatory Design

As PD progressed into the 1980s, it became synonymous with the emerging field of interaction design. Many of the techniques used in PD were borrowed from science, such as usability testing. Others included mock-ups, prototyping and even role playing.

The Pitfalls of Participatory Design

One of the main disadvantages of participatory design is its negligence towards user experience and stakeholder input. Usability was king, but emotional response to gadgetry was largely ignored. In many instances user testing was abandoned, when users decisions conflicted with those of the stakeholders and the designers.

The pitfalls of participatory design

In response to this end-user dilemma, discussions surrounding co-design (co-operative design) or collaborative design began to take place. This alternative method aimed to transform passive users into co-operative designers.

User-Centered Design

The most significant contribution to the transformation of user development in design was introduced by design theorist Donald Norman. Donald re-defined participatory design into what he coined as user-centered design. User testing became less about usability and more about a users interests and needs. Norman favoured user-control and humanised participatory and system design by "making things visible". This was to ensure users could discover errors and have control over resolving them.

Donald Norman aka The Godfather of User-Centered Design

Another significant shift in ideology from participatory to user-centered design was the placement of user at the center of the development process. It highlighted the benefits of understanding user experience over user testing. Owing some of its methodology to behavioural sciences, user-centered design emphasised experience over efficiency and adopted a more humanistic approach with the involvement of the user throughout the development of a product or system.

The differences between PD and UCD

User-centered design grew out of speculations towards elevating users from guinea-pigs to co-developers of systems during the participatory trend. This new methodology incidentally spread into broader areas of industry and practice.

Service Design

On the design methodology timeline, service design broke out into the design discipline as a new practice a few years after the turn of the millennium. We can see now that developments through participatory design to user-centered design and the evolution of customer experiences has shaped much of the methodology behind service design. Lucy Kimbell best sums up the development of service design as:

‘[it] Draws on several traditions including product, environment, experience and interaction design" (Kimbell 2009, p. 250).

Kimbell and a few other scholars discuss a new perspective rising in business; from a closed value chain (i.e: we punched out a product we tested on some monkeys and know it works so we can forget about it) to understanding how and what the user **does** with a product (or service); including their journey and experience. This perspective is another step forward in the evolution of design methodology, for rather than thinking about end user experience of a product or service (user-centered design) attention has shifted to understanding the use, interaction and journey of that product/service after it has left the hands of the provider.

So now we find ourselves labelling all products and systems as one service unit. Kimbell argues that the distinction between a service and product becomes irrelevant, for everything is a type of service that plays a role in ‘value creation’ (Kimbell 2010, p.3). Furthermore, service design extended the definition of the ‘user’ to include all stakeholders and individuals affected or interacting with the service system.

It was with this new approach to product/service systems that the idea of a holistic mindset was made evident. And the holistic mindset behind service design owed much of its development to Ezio Manzini through his research in service marketing and meta-design. Additionally, many of the methods used in service design today have been borrowed and adapted from anthropology and marketing.

Most importantly, it is the holistic perspective of service design that distinguishes itself from all previous design methodologies. Rather than focusing on the ‘end user’ (the customer: marketing/user centered and participatory design), service design seeks to collaborate with all users of a service; building relationships between stakeholders to open up communication for the exchange and development of value and knowledge.

Human-Centered Design

Since the early 1990s, human-centered design and user-centered design were often interchangeable terms regarding the integration of end users within a design process. Like many other design methodologies, human-centered design first began within technological and product system industries and was growing under human centered interaction (a method that is still in use). Human-centered design only started to evolve around the late 1990s, when the development of methods described above shifted from a techno-driven focus to a humanised one.

It was also at this point that we found ourselves with a design methodology that was manifested as more of a mindset than a physical set of tools. William B. Rouse discusses the ideology of the mindest behind HCD in his book, Design for Success: A Human-Centered Approach to Designing Successful Products and Systems. His definition of HCD is philosophical:

"Roles of humans in complex systems, enhancing human abilities, aid to overcome human
limitations and foster user acceptance" (Rouse, 1991 pp.6-123).

Despite contextualising his defintiion within the field of systems and product engineering, Rouse introduces a broader perspective of the ‘user’- one that is closely related to service design but situated in a broader, more socially conscious arena. In its final (and current) phase of evolution, HCD is seen to hold potential for resolving wider societal issues.

HCD is a mix of meta design and service design but closely related to anthropology. It is used more generally in social development than service development.

The broad holistic perspective introduced in service design allowed for human-centered design to redefine its meaning. Coupled with significant social and environmental disasters, it was appropriate after the turn of the millenium that HCD transformed from a method to a mindset, aiming to humanize the design process and empathize with stakeholders. The mindset approach of human centered design re-introduced design thinking, but this time as a mindset used a method for interpreting wicked problems.

Outer circle (blue) signifies the shifts in design theory along the timeline. The inner circle (pink) signifies the methodological shifts in design practice over time

It is interesting to note that the shifts in design theory and practice that have occured since the methods movement in the 1960s have mirrored one another. Design-as-science trend of the 60s and 70s sit opposite and reflect the methodical inquiry into process methods of the 1990s. Similarly, cognitive reflections in design theory during the 1980s reflect (and sit opposite) the mindset movement we are moving through now. Though this may not have been the best way to depict the timeline of design theory and thinking (infodesign nerds get off my back), I chose a circle to deliberately highlight these reflections and the very fact that we have almost come full circle. If this pattern is correct, we should find ourselves moving back into a scientification (did i make that word up?) of design, and it seems to me that we are already beginning to shift into it; as developments in neuroscience turn attention to design thinking for study.

And, Part 2:

A Brief History of Design Thinking: The Theory [P2]

The Second Wave (1980s-1990s)

After its initial breakthrough on the academia scene, design theory shifted into a somewhat soul searching phase that saw many scholars reflecting on the cognitive aspects of design; what it means to be creative, how much relies on intuition and how personal is the process.

Design theorists that emerged during this period remain household names today. This is potentially due to the fact that design theory has not undergone much of a revolution since this reflective phase. In fact, we (academics and practitioners) are currently in the midst of shaping the early stages of a new wave of design as we speak. More will be explained in a separate post at a later date. For now, we continue our academic journey through the theoretical landmarks that were developed during the mid 1980′s to the mid 1990′s.

Nigel Cross: The instinctive one

Nigel Cross

If you replaced ‘design’ with ‘spirit’ you could easily mistake Nigel as one of the few hippies left standing. His work surrounds the investigation of intuition in design- but not just IN design, UNIQUE to design. Nigel believed that the design process was special due to tacit knowledge and instinctive process, arguing that design can stand alone as a craft independent from other disciplines- especially science.

We have come to realize that we do not have to turn design into an
imitation of science, nor do we have to treat design as a mysterious,
ineffable art. We recognize that design has its own distinct intellectual
culture; its own designerly ‘things to know, ways of knowing them, and
ways of finding out about them’ (Cross 1999, p. 7)

Yup. We designers are a unique breed. We have our own way of knowing, sensing and… thinking. Thinking? Thinking! OH SNAP! What Nigel’s describing here is design thinking!

Nigel favoured the designer in the design process so much that he described the designer as the core of the process. The privileged mind of the designer was central to the process and relied heavily on his or her intuition.

Business, engineering and all other non design folk: you can stop rolling your eyes. Whether it be called intuition, instinct or design thinking, this issue of what makes a designer a ***DeSigNeR*** compared to mortals is still a hot topic of debate. But it might cool your blood to know that Nigel also realised that the ‘creative leap’; the spontaneous burst of creativity scholars previously defined as central to the design process, was not so elusive after all.

anyone can build a bridge

It appeared through Nigel’s investigations that creativity (design thinking) was more about building ‘creative bridges’ than it was about being touched by the inspirational light from the design Gods. Creative bridges was more about analogical thinking and abductive leaps. Where Papanek described bisociation as a process tool to inspire creative ideas, Nigel thought that this was a natural thought process unique to a designer.

Richard Buchanan: He who popularised "wicked problems"

Richard Buchanan

Pretty much anyone who is familiar with design or better yet design theory would’ve heard of the term ‘wicked problems’ being ~~abused~~ thrown around. Buchanan’s widely influential paper published in 1992 titled, Wicked Problems in Design Thinking, busted out ‘wicked’ and ‘design thinking’ into mainstream design culture. Now is time to spare a thought for poor ol Rittel and Webber who not only coined the term ‘wicked’ but also (in their own way) described design thinking. But it so happens Buchanan’s paper was in the right place at the right time to make the right impact. However, Buchanan like most of his peers during this period rejected the notion of design as a science. He describes design thinking as a ‘liberal art’ reflecting contemporary culture and used by professionals as ‘insight’ into resolving (Rittel’s) wicked problems.

Im going to have to remind you readers that this period was a pretty self indulgent time for designers and design theorists. The following quote might make you gag/be filled with pride depending on your stance or experience on the matter:

[design thinking is] Mastered by a few people who practice the discipline with distinctive insight and sometimes advance it to new areas of innovative application (Buchanan 1998, p. 8).

But perhaps one of the main reasons why this paper was so influential is it explicitly connects design thinking to innovation. For Buchanan, this was largely attributed to the fact that he realised design thinking is a multidisciplinary mindset and discovered four primary disciplines where it could be found- regardless of whether design is directly involved or not:

1. Symbolic and visual communication

2. The design of material objects

3. Activities and organized services

4. The design of complex systems or environments for living, working, playing and learning

(Buchanan 1998, p. 9)

Buchanan predicted much about the nature of design thinking today, however one idea has fallen short of hitting the big time and that is the collaboration between research and practice. Buchanan’s idea of innovation was not exclusively multidisciplinary in practice, but multidisciplinary across practice and research. I know I harp on about this a lot, but this is one area where design practice falls short and the collaboration between design industries and research is only vaguely implemented in very specific areas of industrial development. Anyhow, to reflect on Buchanan’s characteristics in context of design today we could interpret the previous points as follows:

1. graphic design

2. product design

3. service design

4. policy/urban planning/ design

Furthermore, if you have heard about the design industry described as stages/phases/levels/etc, this would have to be the source of such interpretations which is helping us define new heights in design practice and research.

Donald Schön: Caught in his own reflection

Donald Schon

This man is a favorite amongst design researchers. Schön was the ultimate of thinkers. He reflected so much about the process of design its any wonder he didnt get caught in an existentialist thought loop. But alas, he emerged with his thoughts in a book titled, The Reflective Practitioner.

Schön aggressively refuted the idea that design needs to ground itself in science to be taken seriously. Like his peers, he made an attempt to individualise design as a unique practice through cognitive reflections and explanations on its process.

Look at the frame, not the painting

Schön’s main shtick on design practice was not focused on analysing the process but rather framing and contextualizing it. He describes the idea of ‘problem setting’ as a crucial component that holds together the entire process. The point of focusing on this was to allow designers to best understand how to approach the problem before they go about processing how to solve it.

Side note: Much of my theory (and inspiration for the Sustainability Jam Toolkit) comes from Schön’s theory of design process methods. A quote from his book explains this philosophy:

"When ends are fixed and clear, then the decision to act can present itself as an instrumental problem. But when ends are confused and conflicting, there is yet no ‘problem’ to solve"

And what do we call problems that are confusing, conflicting with no clear problem to solve? Altogether now: WICKED PROBLEMS!

If you read Schön’s book, you will notice he rephrases wicked problems as ‘swampy lowlands’. It is exactly the same concept. BUT! Where analytical design theorists love to dissect the process, Schön believes in preserving the mysterious and intuitive aspect of design, another reason why he focuses on just ‘framing’ the problem and not examining how to solve it.

Let us search, instead, for an epistemology of practice implicit in
the artistic, intuitive processes which some practitioners do bring to
situations of uncertainty, instability, uniqueness and value conflict
(Schön 1982, p. 49)

This might sound a bit airy-fairy, but in the thick of countless debates in design, the issue of intuition vs science still has scholars throwing punches. For certain areas within design such as graphic design, the intuitive argument Schön likes to put forth is appropriate. But for areas containing wicked problems with results which could affect people, intuition just isnt going to cut it.

What now?

As for my two cents, I personally believe that design can ground itself within science AND art, it just needs to adapt its approach depending on the context and situation. Thanks to scholars in this period we have successfully created some kind of ground theory on design, independent from theory in art and science. The problem today is we have not fully investigated into the practicality of design, the design that does not lean towards intuition but calls for rigorous evaluation.

Hopefully i have made it blindingly obvious that through this journey of fundamental design theories design thinking isnt anything new. What we perceive as some hot new trend has been a topic of discussion for the past 50 years. Despite this fact, design thinking was not ready for our society until now, as the design industry has matured enough to bring this concept into light. As such, we find ourselves sitting on the shore, overlooking a new wave in design; the development of design thinking and its manifestation into methods, minds and all that has come before it. So how do we evolve ? We finally turn to investigating outputs rather than internal processings of the designer or team. In other words, we now evaluate the result of design thinking rather than the thinking itself. We ask ourselves if design thinking really is all it is cracked up to be, and in order to do that we must attempt to quantify its impact.

Margaret

4 Responses

Maaike

Mar 5, 2014

Very helpful! I’m writing my bachelor thesis with Design Thinking as a main topic. Do you have more resources for the above theories or literature advise, books that I absolutely have to read?
Thanks in advance!

Reply
Gavin melles

Nov 25, 2014

Quick correction as one of Stephanie’s PhD advisors
She’s at Swinburne university school of design
Gavin melles

Reply

Tim Brown about "Complexity - Impact on People and Organizations"

2021-04-04T12:48:58.897000Z

Day I PLENARY II:Tim Brown about "Complexity - Impact on People and Organizations"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaLqcmXBRnQ

Global Peter Drucker Forum

Description

Tim Brown's speech at the 5th Global Peter Drucker Forum in Vienna.

Tim Brown is CEO and president of IDEO. He frequently speaks about the value of design thinking and innovation to business people and designers around the world. He participates in the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and his talks Serious Play and Change by Design appear on TED.com.

More information can be found at: http://druckerforum.org/

Stanford Webinar - Design Thinking vs. The Lean Startup

2021-04-04T12:49:00.095000Z

Stanford Webinar - Design Thinking vs. The Lean Startup

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snxicC5cI9A

stanfordonline

Description

Both design thinking and the lean startup methodology describe a robust, creative and dynamic way of creating customer-driven value to achieve pretty remarkable results. However, there are significant philosophical and practical differences.

This webinar shares insights and perspectives every innovator and entrepreneur should consider when organizing teams to create breakthrough products and services. Bill Burnett, consulting assistant professor and master in design thinking at Stanford University, takes you through the basic ideas of both methodologies and a comparison of their differences and limitations.

Learn more about the Innovation Masters Series: http://scpd.stanford.edu/design

Design Thinking Can Help Improve Care for the Elderly

2021-04-04T12:49:00.793000Z

By 2050, the number of Americans over age 65 will more than double. Our current health care system is ill equipped to accommodate their growing needs. The challenge for health providers, payers, business, and government is to redesign services to address those needs.

In response, the tech community is creating an abundance of devices to monitor and motivate an older population to exercise, eat well, take their medications, and live more engaged lives. But to make a difference, these products must be integrated into the daily lives of the population and the daily workflow of health care providers. Design thinking — which one HBR author describes as "an essential tool for simplifying and humanizing" — can help do this. A case in point is using technology to assist the elderly in adhering to their medication regimens.

Adherence is one of the most intriguing and complex dynamics in health care. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 40% of people over 65 take five or more medications per day. There is ample opportunity for them to be confused and overwhelmed. Researchers have shown even e-prescriptions do not fix this issue: Meta-analysis has revealed that more than 20% of first-time prescriptions for chronic conditions such as hypertension, hyperlipidemia, and diabetes are never filled. Medication nonadherence undermines even the best cost-saving and clinical intentions of evidence-based care.

Insight Center

Leading Change in Health Care

Sponsored by Optum
A collaboration of the editors of Harvard Business Review and NEJM Group, exploring how pioneering providers are making change happen.

Various solutions have been tried over the years, ranging from labeling the humble pillbox with the days of the week to internet-connected pill dispensers to simple reminder systems. None of these solutions is ideal since they require patients or caregivers to organize, combine, and synchronize the dispensing of numerous prescription medications.

To overcome these limitations, developers came up with software solutions. App stores have a wealth of smartphone reminders that allow users to create a daily schedule for their meds. At preset times, the app sounds an alarm. Most apps also show an image of all the pills to take at that moment, matching them to a database such as Pillbox, from the National Institutes of Health’s National Library of Medicine.

But in spite of developers’ best efforts, no app can prevent medication errors if it is physically disconnected from the dispensing mechanism. Ignoring for a moment the fact that some older adults may encounter difficulties using smartphones, reminder apps are at least two behavioral steps disconnected from medication intake. Users have to look for their pill bottles, take the right pills, and then inform the app that they have done so. Even a minor cognitive impairment makes this routine unreliable.

Internet-connected pill dispensers, which try to increase adherence by coupling reminder and dispensing actions, also have limitations. The dispensers have either cellular-connected caps that fit on a regular pill bottle or systems that replace the traditional pillbox with a dispenser that tracks the opening of the pill compartment or the amount of medication inside the bottle. While these systems represent an advance in preventing medication errors (such as an accidental overdose) and getting patients to adhere to their medication regimens, they are not without flaws. For one thing, most of them require setting up a smartphone app for communication, which makes them challenging for the elderly. Also, users are still faced with needing multiple medication trackers or needing to periodically refill pill compartments on the devices.

In our research and practice of health care for the aging population, we iterate on its design, observing patients as they consume new products to promote their health. We have observed the following requirements for improving the health status of the elderly:

Synchronization. Having multiple medications with different refill dates creates too much complexity. Patients are often tempted to wait until more than one medication needs a refill before returning to the pharmacy. Synchronizing the dispensing process requires taking into account all the various medications that the patient is taking — something that often is not done.

Personalization. Generate labels that are easy to read and understand, with larger, legible type or icons to illustrate dosing and schedules, and explicit instructions that incorporate graphics.

Reminding. Provide reminder cues that have a built-in reinforcement mechanism designed to enhance adherence.

Integration. Create a system around medications, devices, and digital reminders to help keep patients on track and engaged with their care, a system that seamlessly works with their lifestyles.

One system that meets these requirements is PillPack, a service that simplifies medication dispensing. (One of us, José, works for IDEO, the company that helped PillPack design its products, services, and communication. IDEO has a financial stake in the company, but José does not.) Users contact the service to have their prescriptions as well as supplements transferred to PillPack. Then a box with pills packaged in daily packs is delivered to users on a regular schedule. PillPack uses robotic lines to consolidate multiple medications into individual packs labeled by time of the day. It also takes care of refills by contacting prescribers before the last refill.

While PillPack was conceived as a hands-free, convenient service for patients, we think it can also increase adherence and reduce medication errors. Synchronizing the schedule for taking medication and consolidating multiple pills into single discrete packs reduces the chances of intake or dosage errors. Individual packs can be detached and carried outside home by patients according to their needs and can also function as a tangible reminder. PillPack removes most of the friction from the experience of taking medications, including picking up medicines at the pharmacy, contacting prescribers for refills, sorting medications into pill boxes, and managing multiple drug schedules. In addition, PillPack provides a free smartphone app to give users reminders that are triggered by time and location.

PillPack’s ability to consolidate patients’ medications into discrete packs with patient name, room number, and instructions could also help prevent medical errors in the hospital setting.

How do we ensure our elderly population is taking proven medications to alleviate suffering, treat disease, and promote health? By understanding end users and their environments, which is what design thinking is all about. Studying how patients consume their medications is key to generating better health outcomes. Design matters, especially for our aging population.

How Samsung Became a Design Powerhouse

2021-04-04T12:49:04.284000Z

Until 20 years ago, South Korea’s Samsung Electronics manufactured inexpensive, imitative electronics for other companies. Its leaders valued speed, scale, and reliability above all. Its marketers set prices and introduced features according to what original-equipment manufacturers wanted. Its engineers built products to meet prescribed price and performance requirements. At the end of the process designers would "skin" the product—make it look nice. The few designers working for the company were dispersed in engineering and new-product units, and individual designers followed the methods they preferred. In a company that emphasized efficiency and engineering rigor, the designers had little status or influence.

Then, in 1996, Lee Kun-Hee, the chairman of Samsung Group, grew frustrated by the company’s lack of innovation and concluded that in order to become a top brand, Samsung needed expertise in design, which he believed would become "the ultimate battleground for global competition in the 21st century." He set out to create a design-focused culture that would support world-class innovation.

By any measure, his goal was achieved. Samsung now has more than 1,600 designers. Its innovation process begins with research conducted by multidisciplinary teams of designers, engineers, marketers, ethnographers, musicians, and writers who search for users’ unmet needs and identify cultural, technological, and economic trends. The company has built an impressive record on design, garnering more awards than any other company in recent years. The bold designs of its televisions often defy conventional style. With its Galaxy Note series, Samsung introduced a new category of smartphone—the phablet—which has been widely copied by competitors. Design is now so much a part of its corporate DNA that top leaders rely on designers to help visualize the future of the entire company.

It has been a bumpy journey. Despite strong support from top management, the company’s designers continue to face constant challenges stemming from its efficiency-focused management practices, which are deep-rooted. Shifting to an innovation-focused culture without losing an engineering edge is not a simple matter. It involves managing a number of very real tensions. Engineers and designers sometimes don’t see eye-to-eye. Suppliers must be brought on board. Managers invested in the status quo must be persuaded to buy in to idealized visions of the future. A risk-averse culture must learn to accommodate experimentation and occasional failure.

Samsung’s success in making this shift can be traced back to a single early decision—to build design competency in-house rather than import it. As we’ll describe, Samsung chose to create a committed, resourceful corps of designers who figured out that they could manage the tensions and overcome internal resistance by deploying the same tools that they use in pursuing innovation—empathy, visualization, and experimentation in the marketplace. The corps has helped institute policies and structures that embed design thinking in all corporate functions and provide a framework for reevaluating products in the face of dramatic technological change.

Building an In-House Competency

One of the world’s biggest technology companies and the leading subsidiary of Samsung Group, Samsung Electronics has been much in the news ever since it branched into consumer electronics and decided to go head-to-head with Apple (whose patent-infringement lawsuits against the company are ongoing). Competition from Apple and others has been intense; in the third quarter of 2014 the company’s profits dropped 60% from the same quarter of the previous year. By the first quarter of 2015 profits were recovering but were still below prior-year levels. Nevertheless, the big picture is one of impressive innovation and marketplace success. Samsung’s mobile division is the sole survivor of the radical market revolution led by the iPhone (the mobile divisions of former competitors such as Nokia, Motorola, and Ericsson no longer exist), and smartphone sales drove record earnings for the company in 2013. Moreover, Samsung has been the leader in the global TV market since 2006, generating a series of hit models such as Bordeaux, Touch of Color, One Design, and Curved Smart.

These design leaps all began with Lee’s 1996 resolve—triggered in part by a consultant’s report on Samsung’s innovation deficiencies—to instigate a design "revolution" in the company. (This wasn’t the first major leap for Samsung. In 1993 Lee had launched an initiative to integrate Western practices on strategy, HR, merit pay, and design into the conglomerate, but he had been unsatisfied with subsequent progress.) To fuel its design revolution, the company could have sought first-rate expertise from outside. That certainly would have been the fastest approach, and a number of senior managers pushed to have an internationally known Korean designer take over the design function. But other executives persuaded Lee to nurture internal designers who would focus on the company’s long-term interests rather than just their own projects.

Bordeaux TV

Ethnographic research in 2003 revealed that TVs are off far more than they’re on in most homes, so Samsung improved the visual appeal of its TVs starting with this model. It was a huge hit.

Courtesy of Samsung

As part of its investment in developing an organization-wide design capability, Samsung brought in faculty members from a well-known art college and created three training programs. One program trained in-house designers, taking them away from their jobs for as long as two years. (The other two were a college and graduate-level school and an internship program.) Lee made the programs a personal priority, which prevented them from being derailed by the objections of business and design executives who were furious about losing their designers for so long.

Numerous Samsung executives now agree that dependence on outside expertise would have done long-term damage. Developing in-house expertise, while laborious, created a group of designers who take a holistic view. An Yong-Il, the vice president of design strategy, puts it this way: "When we had our own place in the organization, we started caring about the future of the company." The designers also developed a capacity for strategic thinking and a tenacity that enabled them to overcome resistance over the long term. It seems doubtful that any group of outside designers, no matter how brilliant, would have been able to do that—even with support from the chairman.

Empathizing with the Whole Organization

In large companies, the process of innovation is long and tortuous. Even if a design team’s new-product concept wins raves and garners executive support, it still must survive numerous downstream decisions—by engineers, programmers, user-experience experts, team leaders, managers, and even, in some cases, suppliers. Each of those decisions creates an opportunity for an idea to be hijacked by other functions’ priorities and the strong tendency to steer the process toward the safety of incremental change rather than the risky territory of radical innovation. Kang Yun-Je, a senior vice president and the creative director of Samsung TV, says that nondesign functions typically think they can make good profits simply by using existing technology to make existing products a bit better and a bit faster.

Even in a company that embraces design principles, the reality is that designers must take steps to ensure that their ideas prevail as originally conceived. To do this they need to consistently empathize with decision makers from other functions throughout the process.

Consider, for example, the attempt by Lee Min-Hyouk, Samsung Mobile’s creative director, to "sell" what was eventually nicknamed the "Benz phone" after a Norwegian newspaper likened it to the Mercedes-Benz. It was the first flip-cover mobile phone to have no external antenna. Lee, then a junior designer, knew that in order to persuade the engineers to eliminate the antenna, he’d need a better reason than to make a phone look good. To bring them on board, he reached well beyond the usual design role and took on an engineer’s mindset, coming up with a new hinge design that created an internal space for a larger and more effective antenna. He also studied different types of paints that would enhance signal reception. "I had to imagine a new design for engineers as well as users," he says. The engineers were won over, and the phone ultimately sold 10 million units.

Design must also win the support of suppliers. If parts makers are unwilling to collaborate, no new design, no matter how compelling it may be, can survive. For example, when Samsung was working on its One Design flat-panel television, it faced strong resistance from its LCD panel supplier, which was accustomed to providing panels with inner covers to protect the components. TV manufacturers would add an external cover, which typically resulted in a thick profile for the final product. Because Samsung’s designers envisioned a thin, metal-encased TV, the company wanted the supplier to omit the inner covers.

But "they didn’t listen to us," Jung Hyun-Jun, the vice president of engineering for Samsung TV, says of the supplier. "They were selling standardized LCD panels as a complete set to many other TV manufacturers, and they did not see any reason why they should do something different for just one model of one client."

So Samsung’s designers, working with its engineers, invented a supply-chain model for LCD panel systems that would radically reduce the shipping cost, because without the covers about 10 times as many LCD cells could be packed into the same space. The cost saving was shared with the supplier, and Samsung got its coverless panels.

Visualizing the Future, Reframing the Problem

Managers are trained to draw on the past and the present to project the future—that’s what budget planning is all about. Designers, by contrast, are trained to break from the past. But if they want to persuade decision makers to take a chance on their radical visions of the future, they need to adopt a managerial mindset. Visualization is a powerful tool for bridging the two ways of thinking and getting skeptics to support new ideas.

Galaxy Note

Designed in 2011 to address an unmet need for a smartphone that could handle note taking

Courtesy of Samsung

The development of the Galaxy Note provides a case in point. Soon after Samsung Electronics introduced its Galaxy S smartphone and Galaxy Tab tablet, some members of its design team noticed an unmet need in the market: In Korea and Japan many knowledge workers had a habit of jotting down notes and keep their schedules in wallet-size pocket diaries, for which neither the four-inch phone nor the nine-inch tablet provided a good substitute. Realizing that a whole new platform was needed, the design group developed the concept of a smart diary that featured a pen interface and a five-and-a-half-inch screen.

When the designers introduced the concept to management, fierce debate about the screen size ensued. At the time, the marketers firmly believed that no mobile phone should be larger than five inches. Even after the designers produced mock-ups, managers worried that users would not accept such a large smartphone.

"Although everyone is for innovation, no one wants to change when we start talking about details," says Lee Min-Hyouk, of Samsung Mobile. "People told us, ‘It won’t sell.’ ‘You cannot hold it in your hand.’ ‘How can you put that thing next to your face?’ ‘The only reason to buy this is to make your face look small.’"

It was clear that the new size would require people’s beliefs about smartphones to undergo a fundamental shift. The team was able to prevail by reframing the conversation: It prepared a mock-up of the product demonstrating what eventually became the widely imitated "smart cover," which connects with the user-experience software to display an interactive screen when the cover is closed. The mock-up looked more like a pocket diary, and those present at the design review realized that when it was thought of in that way, the new phone did not look so big. This shift in perception allowed Samsung to create the phablet category, which led to the highly successful Galaxy Note series. The company now uses the smart-cover concept for the smaller Galaxy S series as well.

Experimenting in the Marketplace

Empathy and visualization aren’t always enough to generate the internal support necessary for radical change. In some cases Samsung designers experiment and refine their ideas in the marketplace and use the market data to build support.

Around 2003, Samsung’s designers wanted to improve the aesthetics of the company’s TVs. This grew out of an initiative to question the very definition of a television. Ethnographic research revealed that in most homes, TVs are off far more hours than they’re on. In other words, much of the time they are pieces of furniture. As such, the designers felt, sets should be visually stunning. They proposed removing the speakers from their usual location, on either side of the screen, and hiding them. This radical design alteration would require a trade-off on audio quality, but the designers believed that a fundamental change had occurred in consumers’ thinking about TV sound. Because so many people were connecting their sets to home-theater systems, their thinking went, audio quality was no longer a priority and could safely be compromised. Accordingly, they hid the speakers below the screen, creating downward-facing speaker holes that would direct sound to the unit’s graceful, chevron-shaped bottom edge, where it would be reflected toward the viewer.

Many Samsung managers were skeptical. They still believed the conventional wisdom about TV design: that, in descending order, the priorities were visual quality, audio quality, usability, and physical shape. The CEO was concerned about the idea of putting speakers below the screen, says Kim Young-Jun, a design SVP. To build consensus, the design group urged the company to experiment with the idea in the European market. The model was a big hit, and the CEO and the entire TV development team, including marketers and engineers, backed the concept. Bolstered by the experiment’s success, the design group chose an even more daring design for what became the Bordeaux model, with a glossy white border and a red chevron-shaped lower edge. When the full line of products finally came out, Samsung sold a million units in six months.

Samsung has also learned to use marketplace experimentation to support forward-looking design research. After one team’s folding-screen concept generated a rapid share increase in the PC-monitor market, the team found it easier to secure funding for other long-term design initiatives. It was able to develop and launch a series of highly successful products in the TV market. All Samsung’s recent hit models have their origins in such a process.

With commercial successes like these to the designers’ credit, the value of advance design is now widely appreciated within the company, and Samsung has made substantial investments in deep-future thinking. In fact, four distinct time horizons now exist simultaneously for design within Samsung.

Creating a Sustainable—and Flexible—Design Organization

Internal resistance has been a fact of life at Samsung ever since the company started on the road to design excellence, 20 years ago. In the late 1990s An Yong-Il, the design strategy VP, met strong opposition from Samsung managers when, after studying the design organizations of companies such as IBM, Sony, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, and Phillips, he recommended adoption of a companywide design philosophy described as "Inspired by humans, creating the future." Executives made it very clear that meeting short-term profit targets by selling cheap imitations of competitors’ products was more important to them than establishing a design philosophy. Even designers gave An’s philosophy a lukewarm reception. He says, "About 20% agreed with what I said but did not want to do it. About 50% said, ‘Why bother? We just draw pretty pictures as told by others.’ It was only about 30% of designers, mostly young, who were interested."

"I had to imagine a new design for engineers as well as users."

So it’s perhaps not surprising that during the Asian financial crisis of 1997, the company cut back on its design initiatives. Discouraged, An considered leaving the company. His boss urged him to enter a PhD program instead, to study management and organizational design and to reflect on what would ensure a strong future for design thinking at Samsung.

A design review meeting

A design review meeting at Samsung’s Corporate Design Center

Courtesy of Samsung

His studies brought An to the conclusion that design philosophy and design principles must be visualized through clear organizational structures and processes and a new personnel policy. The design group should include people who understood social science, ethnography, engineering, and management. In 2000, when Samsung emerged from the financial crisis, An’s boss worked with the company’s corporate strategy office to conduct a strategic review of the design organization. The review found that Samsung needed to establish a strategic design group, later dubbed the Corporate Design Center, that would plan for the company’s future and lead the way in perpetuating its emphasis on design thinking. Today the CDC is organized around twice-yearly strategic design review meetings that involve all the company’s senior executives. The most crucial element of those meetings is visualizing Samsung’s future.

The importance of design is felt everywhere. In the TV division, for example, engineers will tell you that their primary job is to help designers realize their vision. When sales of the Galaxy S series declined recently, it was design that received the most scrutiny from corporate leaders.

Nevertheless, Samsung faces enormous challenges going forward. Its approach to design is still largely based on the development of hardware products, even though most of that hardware runs on software. As digital technology changes the business landscape—and as Samsung continues to develop its own operating system and various service platforms in transportation, health, and payments—the company will have to radically alter its design process. Designers are already experimenting with agile development for software-based user-interface designs that require frequent rapid iterations and shorter design cycles. They are trying various forms of cross-functional coordination as they deal with increasingly convergent products. Recently Samsung conducted the first companywide design-management capability review, which is being used to inform a corporate restructuring. The company’s design revolution is far from complete.

As the technological landscape continues to shift, executives of all corporations that seek an advantage through design thinking will need to constantly review their design processes, cultures, decision making, communications, and strategy. Recognizing that Lee Min-Hyouk’s comment "Although everyone is for innovation, no one wants to change when we start talking about details" applies even to design groups, companies must push the usual bounds of design thinking and create an ever more radical vision for the future.

A version of this article appeared in the September 2015 issue (pp.72–78) of Harvard Business Review.

Design as Strategy

2021-04-04T12:49:01.298000Z

Design thinking isn’t new. But many companies still aren’t sure how it can improve their business.

This month’s Spotlight should be of help, since it illustrates some of the ways design thinking is starting to power corporate strategy.

The emphasis on design clearly is moving to the C-suite, and more and more organizations are creating a chief design officer role. A notable example is PepsiCo, which poached Mauro Porcini from 3M to inject design thinking into nearly every aspect of the business. To see how that’s going, check out our interview with CEO Indra Nooyi and accompanying insights from Porcini in this issue.

How should companies think about design centricity? For Jon Kolko, vice president of design at Blackboard, design thinking can define the way an organization functions at the most basic levels—how it relates to users, how it prototypes products, how it assesses risk. In "Design Thinking Comes of Age," Kolko says that companies today must contend with unprecedented technological and business complexity and that design can help simplify and humanize complex systems.

That said, design-led strategy isn’t easy, as Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO, and Roger Martin, former dean of the Rotman School of Management, point out in "Design for Action." They describe how complex innovations often encounter stiff resistance from intended beneficiaries and those delivering the new product or service, because they jarringly disrupt existing behaviors and business models. The solution, the authors propose, is to treat the launch of a disrupter as a design challenge in itself—a process they call intervention design. What’s the ultimate place for design in an organization? Nooyi sums it up like this: "Design leads to innovation and innovation demands design."

A version of this article appeared in the September 2015 issue (p.12) of Harvard Business Review.

Better Service, Faster: A Design Thinking Case Study

2021-04-04T12:49:03.193000Z

On February 14, 2014, Stanford students Elizabeth Woodson and Saul Gurdus drove a rented Winnebago to the San Mateo office of the Golden Gate Regional Center (GGRC), where they greeted eight curious GGRC staff members.

GGRC provides services and financial support to people with developmental disabilities in the San Francisco Bay Area. But for parents of children with disabilities, navigating the long and sometimes bewildering bureaucratic process required to get such services often challenges their patience and persistence. Before GGRC can determine which services, if any, are best for a child, staffers conduct a thorough assessment that entails meetings with parents, home visits by social workers, and evaluations by medical professionals including speech pathologists, psychologists, and nurses.

Elizabeth and Saul learned that these assessments usually take three months or more and that parents have to drag their children to a daunting series of meetings and examinations in unfamiliar new places, which distresses the children and leads many parents to abandon the process. Although GGRC’s staff often develop great empathy for individual clients, going to heroic lengths to help clients navigate the administrative maze, the system was not designed to make life easy for clients or staff members.

Elizabeth and Saul pulled up in that Winnebago to invite those eight staffers to participate in an experiment. The plan was to meet with potential clients in the neighborhoods where they live. The GGRC team would assess each family’s needs and decide if they qualified for assistance right then and there.

That day, they did nine assessments in less than two hours.

The Winnebago experiment wasn’t something that GGRC was ready to sustain and scale up. It was too expensive, for one thing. But the exercise wasn’t really about the Winnebago; it was about pushing beyond what was comfortable, taking a different point of view, trying something new, experimenting, and discovering what to try next. It was part of a larger effort by GGRC staffers to rethink what was possible for their clients and themselves.

In 2013, GGRC began working with the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University (which everyone calls the "Stanford d.school") to learn the basics of design thinking, a hands-on approach that focuses on developing empathy for others, generating ideas quickly, and testing rough "prototypes" that, although always incomplete or often impractical, fuel rapid learning for teams and organizations.

Working with Elizabeth, Saul, and a former GGRC staffer who understood both the client and staff perspective because he had an autistic child, GGRC created a detailed map of the assessment process. The group used color-coded Post-its to identify each step and the emotions that clients usually felt, starting with parents’ initial contact with GGRC and ending with the day they (finally) began to receive services. Constructing this "process map" helped GGRC staffers realize that they were not attuned to numerous, unpredictable, frustrating waiting periods.

GGRC staff members also discovered that while they each knew their own responsibilities, they didn’t know much about what other colleagues did or how their work meshed with the overall process.

No single stage felt broken from the vantage point of individual staffers. But when the complete journey was framed from intertwined perspectives of the client and all GGRC staffers, it was painfully obvious that there were big opportunities for improvement.

Courtesy of Robert I. Sutton

Elizabeth and Saul facilitated GGRC brainstorming sessions about how to improve the process. At one point, Elizabeth and Saul encouraged staffers to generate a list of absurd ideas; one GGRC leader joked that it would be nice if they could all go into the community in a Winnebago to bring GGRC services to where clients live.

Design thinking entails a bias toward action. In that spirit, Elizabeth and Saul pushed forward with the Winnebago rental.

After interviewing clients in the Winnebago that day, it took staffers another week of concentrated work at the GGRC office to finish processing the assessments and begin serving these families. But that was 10 weeks faster than usual, and they had learned valuable lessons about how they could improve the process for all clients.

Courtesy of Robert I. Sutton

Bringing everyone into the same "room" led to a drastic reduction in waiting times. Families could see everyone in one session, without going to a strange environment, which eased their frustration and stress and helped disabled family members receive services much sooner. GGRC staffers learned a great deal about the work that their colleagues did, how to better support each other’s work, and how to work better as a team. The members of a complex and vital human chain could now look one another in the eye, discuss each case from different angles, and make better decisions. That opportunity had never existed before.

GGRC is now brainstorming improvement ideas and figuring out ways to prototype them on a regular basis. They’ve learned that it’s not about one idea (the Winnebago); it’s about the process of continuous improvement.

Several prototypes inspired by that day on the Winnebago have been launched or will be soon. The first created a dedicated assessment team, which focuses on redesigning numerous steps in the assessment process. The team’s goal is to process each application in no more than 45 days — a 50% reduction. A second is called "Hybrid Social Worker 2.0." This prototype untethers social workers from their desks so they can spend more time with the families they serve. The GGRC is experimenting with tablets, new software, and new procedures that will allow social workers to complete their assessments in the field, which will make the process feel better and move faster for families.

A third prototype, tested this year, focused on families that need GGRC services but have not applied for them. The idea was sparked by interviews that GGRC staff had with families who didn’t know they were eligible or were concerned the application process would be difficult and distressing. The staff realized that, as GGRC head Lisa Rosene explained, "We must meet families where they are, both physically and emotionally." The resulting prototypes were "open houses," held right in the communities where eligible families live.

We are taken with the GGRC story because beyond the improvements for clients and the pride that staff members feel about the changes they’ve made, it offers three key lessons for other leaders and teams who are determined to make their organizations "Better by Design."

First, your organization probably looks a lot different through your clients’ and customers’ eyes than it does through employees’ and leaders’. Anything you can do to gain empathy for what it feels like to deal with your practices and people can help you design a more humane, respectful, efficient organization.

Second, focus on ways that people in specialized roles and silos are blinded to how their work meshes with the larger system. Look for broken practices and bad habits that unwittingly create bottlenecks and bad handoffs between well-meaning people. And keep asking them, their colleagues, and clients whether they have key information they aren’t passing along that would speed the process and ease clients’ frustrations. Once people better understand how their learning and role fits into the big picture, it is a lot easier for them shift from being part of the problem to part of the solution.

Third, at the d.school, our goal is to teach people to "get comfortable with feeling uncomfortable." We’ve learned that enticing leaders and teams to try impractical things that make them squirm a bit, such as the day spent in the Winnebago, can help them see what they do from another vantage point. And when you can find ways to see the same old thing in a different way, you can find solutions to obstacles that once seemed insurmountable.

The fourth and final lesson is that change takes courage, and if you can give people just a bit of encouragement, it is remarkable how brave they can be.

Elizabeth and Saul’s GGRC project was completed for a d.school class called d.leadership: Design Leadership In Context, where a dozen or so pairs of Stanford students each year work with an external "client" to help them apply design thinking to solve thorny problems. The class is taught by Perry Klebahn, Kathryn Segovia, Bob Sutton, and Jeremy Utley.

Design Thinking Comes of Age

2021-04-04T12:49:00.997000Z

There’s a shift under way in large organizations, one that puts design much closer to the center of the enterprise. But the shift isn’t about aesthetics. It’s about applying the principles of design to the way people work.

This new approach is in large part a response to the increasing complexity of modern technology and modern business. That complexity takes many forms. Sometimes software is at the center of a product and needs to be integrated with hardware (itself a complex task) and made intuitive and simple from the user’s point of view (another difficult challenge). Sometimes the problem being tackled is itself multi-faceted: Think about how much tougher it is to reinvent a health care delivery system than to design a shoe. And sometimes the business environment is so volatile that a company must experiment with multiple paths in order to survive.

I could list a dozen other types of complexity that businesses grapple with every day. But here’s what they all have in common: People need help making sense of them. Specifically, people need their interactions with technologies and other complex systems to be simple, intuitive, and pleasurable.

A set of principles collectively known as design thinking—empathy with users, a discipline of prototyping, and tolerance for failure chief among them—is the best tool we have for creating those kinds of interactions and developing a responsive, flexible organizational culture.

What Is a Design-Centric Culture?

If you were around during the late-1990s dot-com craze, you may think of designers as 20-somethings shooting Nerf darts across an office that looks more like a bar. Because design has historically been equated with aesthetics and craft, designers have been celebrated as artistic savants. But a design-centric culture transcends design as a role, imparting a set of principles to all people who help bring ideas to life. Let’s consider those principles.

Focus on users’ experiences, especially their emotional ones.

To build empathy with users, a design-centric organization empowers employees to observe behavior and draw conclusions about what people want and need. Those conclusions are tremendously hard to express in quantitative language. Instead, organizations that "get" design use emotional language (words that concern desires, aspirations, engagement, and experience) to describe products and users. Team members discuss the emotional resonance of a value proposition as much as they discuss utility and product requirements.

A traditional value proposition is a promise of utility: If you buy a Lexus, the automaker promises that you will receive safe and comfortable transportation in a well-designed high-performance vehicle. An emotional value proposition is a promise of feeling: If you buy a Lexus, the automaker promises that you will feel pampered, luxurious, and affluent. In design-centric organizations, emotionally charged language isn’t denigrated as thin, silly, or biased. Strategic conversations in those companies frequently address how a business decision or a market trajectory will positively influence users’ experiences and often acknowledge only implicitly that well-designed offerings contribute to financial success.

The focus on great experiences isn’t limited to product designers, marketers, and strategists—it infuses every customer-facing function. Take finance. Typically, its only contact with users is through invoices and payment systems, which are designed for internal business optimization or predetermined "customer requirements." But those systems are touch points that shape a customer’s impression of the company. In a culture focused on customer experience, financial touch points are designed around users’ needs rather than internal operational efficiencies.

Create models to examine complex problems.

Design thinking, first used to make physical objects, is increasingly being applied to complex, intangible issues, such as how a customer experiences a service. Regardless of the context, design thinkers tend to use physical models, also known as design artifacts, to explore, define, and communicate. Those models—primarily diagrams and sketches—supplement and in some cases replace the spreadsheets, specifications, and other documents that have come to define the traditional organizational environment. They add a fluid dimension to the exploration of complexity, allowing for nonlinear thought when tackling nonlinear problems.

For example, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ Center for Innovation has used a design artifact called a customer journey map to understand veterans’ emotional highs and lows in their interactions with the VA. "This form of artifact helped us better tell a story to various stakeholders," says Melissa Chapman, a designer who worked at the Center for Innovation. Even more important, she adds, it "helped us develop a strategic way to think about changing the entire organization and to communicate that emergent strategy." The customer journey map and other design models are tools for understanding. They present alternative ways of looking at a problem.

Use prototypes to explore potential solutions.

In design-centric organizations, you’ll typically see prototypes of new ideas, new products, and new services scattered throughout offices and meeting rooms. Whereas diagrams such as customer journey maps explore the problem space, prototypes explore the solution space. They may be digital, physical, or diagrammatic, but in all cases they are a way to communicate ideas. The habit of publicly displaying rough prototypes hints at an open-minded culture, one that values exploration and experimentation over rule following. The MIT Media Lab formalizes this in its motto, "Demo or die," which recognizes that only the act of prototyping can transform an idea into something truly valuable—on their own, ideas are a dime a dozen. Design-centric companies aren’t shy about tinkering with ideas in a public forum and tend to iterate quickly on prototypes—an activity that the innovation expert Michael Schrage refers to as "serious play." In his book of that title, he writes that innovation is "more social than personal." He adds, "Prototyping is probably the single most pragmatic behavior the innovative firm can practice."

Tolerate failure.

A design culture is nurturing. It doesn’t encourage failure, but the iterative nature of the design process recognizes that it’s rare to get things right the first time. Apple is celebrated for its successes, but a little digging uncovers the Newton tablet, the Pippin gaming system, and the Copland operating system—products that didn’t fare so well. (Pippin and Copland were discontinued after only two years.) The company leverages failure as learning, viewing it as part of the cost of innovation.

Greg Petroff, the chief experience officer at GE Software, explains how the iterative process works at GE: "GE is moving away from a model of exhaustive product requirements. Teams learn what to do in the process of doing it, iterating, and pivoting." Employees in every aspect of the business must realize that they can take social risks—putting forth half-baked ideas, for instance—without losing face or experiencing punitive repercussions.

Exhibit thoughtful restraint.

Many products built on an emotional value proposition are simpler than competitors’ offerings. This restraint grows out of deliberate decisions about what the product should do and, just as important, what it should not do. By removing features, a company offers customers a clear, simple experience. The thermostat Nest—inside, a complex piece of technology—provides fewer outward-facing functions than other thermostats, thus delivering an emotional experience that reflects the design culture of the company. As CEO Tony Fadell said in an interview published in , "At the end of the day you have to espouse a feeling—in your advertisements, in your products. And that feeling comes from your gut."

Square’s mobile app Cash lets you do one thing: send money to a friend. "I think I’m just an editor, and I think every CEO is an editor," wrote Jack Dorsey, Square’s CEO. "We have all these inputs, we have all these places that we could go…but we need to present one cohesive story to the world." In organizations like Square, you’ll find product leaders saying no much more than they say yes. Rather than chase the market with follow-on features, they lead the market with a constrained focus.

What Types of Companies Are Making This Change?

As industry giants such as IBM and GE realize that software is a fundamental part of their businesses, they are also recognizing the extraordinary levels of complexity they must manage. Design thinking is an essential tool for simplifying and humanizing. It can’t be extra; it needs to be a core competence.

"There’s no longer any real distinction between business strategy and the design of the user experience," said Bridget van Kralingen, the senior vice president of IBM Global Business Services, in a statement to the press. In November 2013 IBM opened a design studio in Austin, Texas—part of the company’s $100 million investment in building a massive design organization. As Phil Gilbert, the general manager of the effort, explained in a press release, "Quite simply, our goal—on a scale unmatched in the industry—is to modernize enterprise software for today’s user, who demands great design everywhere, at home and at work." The company intends to hire 1,000 designers.

When I was at the company frog design, GE hired us to help formalize and disseminate language, tools, and success metrics to support its emergent design practice. Dave Cronin, GE’s executive design director for industrial internet applications, describes how the company came to realize that it was not just in the business of making physical products but had become one of the largest software providers in the world. The complexity of this software was overwhelming, so his team turned to design. "Our mandate was to create products, but also to enable nimble innovation," Cronin says. "That’s a pretty tall order—we were asked to perform design at scale and along the way create cultural change."

Design thinking is an essential tool for simplifying and humanizing.

IBM and GE are hardly alone. Every established company that has moved from products to services, from hardware to software, or from physical to digital products needs to focus anew on user experience. Every established company that intends to globalize its business must invent processes that can adjust to different cultural contexts. And every established company that chooses to compete on innovation rather than efficiency must be able to define problems artfully and experiment its way to solutions. (For more on the last shift, see "How Samsung Became a Design Powerhouse" in this issue.)

The pursuit of design isn’t limited to large brand-name corporations; the big strategy-consulting firms are also gearing up for this new world, often by acquiring leading providers of design services. In the past few years, Deloitte acquired Doblin, Accenture acquired Fjord, and McKinsey acquired Lunar. Olof Schybergson, the founder of Fjord, views design thinking’s empathetic stance as fundamental to business success. As he told an interviewer, "Going direct to consumers is a big disruptor….There are new opportunities to gather data and insights about consumer behavior, likes, dislikes….Those who have data and an appetite for innovation will prevail." These acquisitions suggest that design is becoming table stakes for high-value corporate consulting—an expected part of a portfolio of business services.

What Are the Challenges?

Several years ago, I consulted for a large entertainment company that had tucked design away in a select group of "creatives." The company was excited about introducing technology into its theme parks and recognized that a successful visitor experience would hinge on good design. And so it became apparent that the entire organization needed to embrace design as a core competence. This shift is never an easy one. Like many organizations with entrenched cultures that have been successful for many years, the company faced several hurdles.

Accepting more ambiguity.

The entertainment company operates globally, so it values repeatable, predictable operational efficiency in support of quarterly profit reporting. Because the introduction of technology into the parks represented a massive capital expenditure, there was pressure for a guarantee of a healthy return. Design, however, doesn’t conform easily to estimates. It’s difficult if not impossible to understand how much value will be delivered through a better experience or to calculate the return on an investment in creativity.

Embracing risk.

Transformative innovation is inherently risky. It involves inferences and leaps of faith; if something hasn’t been done before, there’s no way to guarantee its outcome. The philosopher Charles Peirce said that insights come to us "like a flash"—in an epiphany—making them difficult to rationalize or defend. Leaders need to create a culture that allows people to take chances and move forward without a complete, logical understanding of a problem. Our partners at the entertainment company were empowered to hire a design consultancy, and the organization recognized that the undertaking was no sure thing.

Resetting expectations.

As corporate leaders become aware of the power of design, many view design thinking as a solution to all their woes. Designers, enjoying their new level of strategic influence, often reinforce that impression. When I worked with the entertainment company, I was part of that problem, primarily because my livelihood depended on selling design consulting. But design doesn’t solve all problems. It helps people and organizations cut through complexity. It’s great for innovation. It works extremely well for imagining the future. But it’s not the right set of tools for optimizing, streamlining, or otherwise operating a stable business. Additionally, even if expectations are set appropriately, they must be aligned around a realistic timeline—culture changes slowly in large organizations.

An organizational focus on design offers unique opportunities for humanizing technology and for developing emotionally resonant products and services. Adopting this perspective isn’t easy. But doing so helps create a workplace where people want to be, one that responds quickly to changing business dynamics and empowers individual contributors. And because design is empathetic, it implicitly drives a more thoughtful, human approach to business.

A version of this article appeared in the September 2015 issue (pp.66–71) of Harvard Business Review.

How Indra Nooyi Turned Design Thinking Into Strategy

2021-04-04T12:49:03.314000Z

An Interview with PepsiCo’s CEO

Just a few years ago, it wasn’t clear whether Indra Nooyi would survive as PepsiCo’s CEO. Many investors saw Pepsi as a bloated giant whose top brands were losing market share. And they were critical of Nooyi’s shift toward a more health-oriented overall product line. Prominent activist investor Nelson Peltz fought hard to split the company in two.

These days Nooyi, 59, exudes confidence. The company has enjoyed steady revenue growth during her nine years in the top job, and Pepsi’s stock price is rising again after several flat years. Peltz even agreed to a truce in return for a board seat for one of his allies.

All of this frees Nooyi to focus on what she says is now driving innovation in the company: design thinking. In 2012 she brought in Mauro Porcini as Pepsi’s first-ever chief design officer. Now, Nooyi says, "design" has a voice in nearly every important decision that the company makes. (See the interview with Porcini in this issue.)

To understand Pepsi’s transformation, I spoke with Nooyi at the company’s temporary headquarters in White Plains, New York (the real one, in Purchase, is being renovated). She talked about what design means to her, the challenges in changing a culture, and her proudest achievement.
—Adi Ignatius

What problem were you trying to solve by making PepsiCo more design-driven?

Nooyi: As CEO, I visit a market every week to see what we look like on the shelves. I always ask myself—not as a CEO but as a mom—"What products really speak to me?" The shelves just seem more and more cluttered, so I thought we had to rethink our innovation process and design experiences for our consumers—from conception to what’s on the shelf.

How did you begin to drive that change?

First, I gave each of my direct reports an empty photo album and a camera. I asked them to take pictures of anything they thought represented good design.

What did you get back from them?

After six weeks, only a few people returned the albums. Some had their wives take pictures. Many did nothing at all. They didn’t know what design was. Every time I tried to talk about design within the company, people would refer to packaging: "Should we go to a different blue?" It was like putting lipstick on a pig, as opposed to redesigning the pig itself. I realized we needed to bring a designer into the company.

How easy was it to find Mauro Porcini?

We did a search, and we saw that he’d achieved this kind of success at 3M. So we brought him in to talk about our vision. He said he wanted resources, a design studio, and a seat at the table. We gave him all of that. Now our teams are pushing design through the entire system, from product creation, to packaging and labeling, to how a product looks on the shelf, to how consumers interact with it.

What’s your definition of good design?

For me, a well-designed product is one you fall in love with. Or you hate. It may be polarizing, but it has to provoke a real reaction. Ideally, it’s a product you want to engage with in the future, rather than just "Yeah, I bought it, and I ate it."

You say it’s not just about packaging, but a lot of what you’re talking about seems to be that.

It’s much more than packaging. We had to rethink the entire experience, from conception to what’s on the shelf to the postproduct experience. Let’s take Pepsi Spire, our new touchscreen fountain machine. Other companies with dispensing machines have focused on adding a few more buttons and combinations of flavors. Our design guys essentially said that we’re talking about a fundamentally different interaction between consumer and machine. We basically have a gigantic iPad on a futuristic machine that talks to you and invites you to interact with it. It tracks what you buy so that in the future, when you swipe your ID, it reminds you of the flavor combinations you tried last time and suggests new ones. It displays beautiful shots of the product, so when you add lime or cranberry, it actually shows those flavors being added—you experience the infusion of the flavor, as opposed to merely hitting a button and out comes the finished product.

Have you developed other notable design-led innovations?

We’re working on new products for women. Our old approach was "shrink it or pink it." We’d put Doritos, say, in a pink Susan G. Komen bag and say it’s for women. That’s fine, but there’s more to how women like to snack.

OK, how women like to snack?

When men finish a snack bag, they pour what’s left into their mouths. Women don’t do that. And they worry about how much the product may stain—they won’t rub it on a chair, which a lot of guys do. In China, we’ve introduced a stacked chip that comes in a plastic tray inside a canister. When a woman wants to snack, she can open her drawer and eat from the tray. When she’s done, she can push it back in. The chip is also less noisy to eat: Women don’t want people to hear them crunching away.

Basically, you’re paying a lot more attention to user experience.

Definitely. In the past, user experience wasn’t part of our lexicon. Focusing on crunch, taste, and everything else now pushes us to rethink shape, packaging, form, and function. All of that has consequences for what machinery we put in place—to produce, say, a plastic tray instead of a flex bag. We’re forcing the design thinking way back in the supply chain.

To what extent do you listen to consumers? Do they even know what they want?

I don’t know if consumers know what they want. But we can learn from them. Let’s take SunChips. The original size was one inch by one inch. When you’d bite into a chip, it would break into pieces. In focus groups consumers told us they went to another product because it was bite-size. We had to conclude that SunChips were too damn big. I don’t care if our mold can only cut one inch by one inch. We don’t sell products based on the manufacturing we have, but on how our target consumers can fall in love with them.

Launch and Failure

When I picture design thinking, I think about rapid prototyping and testing. Is that part of what you’re trying to do?

Not so much in the U.S., but China and Japan are lead horses for that process—test, prove, launch. If you launch quickly, you have more failures, but that’s OK because the cost of failure in those markets is low. In the U.S., we tend to follow very organized processes and then launch. The China-Japan model may have to come to the U.S. at some point.

Isn’t this model already established in the U.S., or at least in Silicon Valley?

Lots of small companies take this approach, and for them the cost of failure is acceptable. We’re more cautious, especially when playing with big brands. Line extensions are fine: If you launch a flavor of Doritos that doesn’t work, you just pull it. But if you launch a new product, you want to make sure you’ve tested it enough. In Japan, we launch a new version of Pepsi every three months—green, pink, blue. We just launched cucumber-flavored Pepsi. In three months it either works or we pull it and go to the next product.

Is your design approach giving Pepsi competitive advantage?

We have to do two things as a company: Keep our top line growing in the mid single digits, and grow our bottom line faster than the top. Line extensions keep the base growing. And then we’re always looking for hero products—the two or three big products that will drive the top line significantly in a particular country or segment. Mountain Dew Kickstart is one of those. It’s a completely different product: higher juice content, fewer calories, new flavors. We thought about this innovation differently. In the past we just would have created new flavors of Mountain Dew. But Kickstart comes in a slim can and doesn’t look or taste like the old Mountain Dew. It’s bringing new users into the franchise: women who say, "Hey, this is an 80 calorie product with juice in a package I can walk around with." It has generated more than $200 million in two years, which in our business is hard to do.

Is this an example of design thinking, or just part of the innovation process?

There’s a fine line between innovation and design. Ideally, design leads to innovation and innovation demands design. We’re just getting started. Innovation accounted for 9% of our net revenue last year. I’d like to raise that to the mid teens, because I think the marketplace is getting more creative. To get there, we’ll have to be willing to tolerate more failure and shorter cycles of adaptation.

"Now our teams are pushing design through the entire system."

Do you feel that companies have to reinvent themselves every few years, that competitive advantage is fleeting?

No question about it. It’s been a long time since you could talk about sustainable competitive advantage. The cycles are shortened. The rule used to be that you’d reinvent yourself once every seven to 10 years. Now it’s every two to three years. There’s constant reinvention: how you do business, how you deal with the customer.

Managing Change

How do you bring everyone in the company along with what sounds like a dramatic change in approach?

The most important thing was finding the right person in Mauro. Our beverage people immediately embraced how he could help us think about product design and development. Then retailers fell in love with him and started inviting him to their shops to talk about how to reset their shelves. Mauro’s team grew from about 10 people to almost 50, and we set him up in Soho in New York City. Now our products look like they’re tailored to the right cohort groups, and our packaging looks pretty damn good, too.

How do you push the culture change throughout the company?

In the past, being decentralized was our strength, but also our weakness. It’s a fine approach when the whole world is growing and life is peachy. But it doesn’t work when things are volatile globally and you need coordination. We’ve given our people 24 to 36 months to adapt. I told everyone that if they don’t change, I’d be happy to attend their retirement parties.

How do you measure whether or not people are making it?

We watch how they act in our global meetings and whether they include design early in the process. We see how much innovation, influenced by design, is being put into the market. We maintain an aggressive productivity program to take costs out and free up resources. You have to squeeze as much as you can out of every dollar, and we watch how many costs are coming out.

Purpose and the Portfolio

You often use the term "purpose" in talking about your business. What does that mean to you?

When I became CEO in 2006, I did a series of town hall meetings with employees. Few said they came to work for a paycheck. Most wanted to build a life, not simply gain a livelihood. And they were well aware that consumers cared about health and wellness. We realized we needed to engage our people’s heads, hearts, and hands. We had to produce more products that are good for you. We had to embrace sustainability. Purpose is not about giving money away for social responsibility. It’s about fundamentally changing how to make money in order to deliver performance—to help ensure that PepsiCo is a "good" company where young people want to work.

Would you be willing to accept lower profit margins to "do the right thing"? Surely, there have to be trade-offs.

Purpose doesn’t hurt margins. Purpose is how you drive transformation. If you don’t transform the portfolio, you’re going to stop top-line growth, and margins will decline anyway. So we don’t really invest in "purpose," but in a strategy to keep the company successful in the future. If we hadn’t tackled certain environmental issues, especially with water, we would have lost our licenses in some countries. Now, sometimes when you’re changing the culture radically, you run into problems. Transformations sometimes hit your margins or top line because things don’t always go in a straight line. But if you think in terms of the life span of the company, these are just small blips.

But aren’t you still selling a lot of unhealthy products?

We make a portfolio of products, some of which are "fun for you" and some of which are "good for you." We sell sugary beverages and chips, but we also have Quaker Oats, Tropicana, Naked Juice, and Izze. We’re reducing the salt, sugar, and fat in the core products. And we’ve dialed up the good-for-you offerings because societal needs have changed.

Would you consider stopping a popular product line because it doesn’t meet the good-for-you standard?

That wouldn’t make sense, because none of our products is bad or unsafe. We give consumers choices that reflect their lifestyles. If you want to consume Pepsi, we’ll give you Pepsi in every size possible so that on one occasion you can consume 12 ounces and on another only seven and a half. We want to make sure that both the good-for-you and the fun-for-you products are readily available, affordably priced, and great tasting. And we make sure that good-for-you tastes as good as fun-for-you. We want you to love our Quaker Oats Real Medleys as much as you love Doritos Loaded.

Do you try to push sales of the healthier products?

Yes, but we also want to preserve choice. We’ve taken lessons from Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein’s book Nudge. We try to put portion-control packages out front on the shelves. We make sure our diet products are merchandised as aspirationally as our full-sugar products are. We advertise Gatorade only with athletes in mind because it’s not intended to be a recreational beverage.

Consumers seem very demanding these days. How do you keep up with that?

PepsiCo’s Billion-Dollar Brands

Beverages
Pepsi
Mountain Dew
Gatorade
Tropicana
Diet Pepsi
7UP
Mirinda
Lipton
Aquafina
Pepsi Max
Brisk
Sierra Mist
Diet Mountain Dew

Food
Lay’s
Doritos
Quaker
Cheetos
Ruffles
Tostitos
Fritos
Walkers Crisps

Source: PepsiCo FY14 Annual Report

We have to make sure we’re engineering our portfolio for the consumer of the future. There’s nothing wrong, for example, with aspartame. But if consumers say they don’t like it, we have to give them a choice. We’ll offer a diet product that’s aspartame-free. Similarly, there’s nothing wrong with high-fructose corn syrup, but if consumers say they like real sugar, we have to offer that, too.

What’s your proudest accomplishment since becoming CEO?

I took over PepsiCo just after it had a string of successful years. Then everything changed. We faced new regulatory pressures on our fun-for-you categories, and our good-for-you business wasn’t fully developed. The North American market slowed down, and we weren’t big enough internationally. Sales through some major U.S. customers slowed down massively. Our key beverage competitor had done a big reset of its own, and it bounced back. We looked at ourselves and saw a decentralized, far-flung company that had to be knitted together. The culture needed to change. We had to eliminate redundancies. We had to slim down to reinvest in R&D, advertising and marketing, and new capabilities. I had a choice. I could have gone pedal to the metal, stripped out costs, delivered strong profit for a few years, and then said adios. But that wouldn’t have yielded long-term success. So I articulated a strategy to the board focusing on the portfolio we needed to build, the muscles we needed to strengthen, the capabilities to develop. The board said, "We know there will be hiccups along the way, but you have our support, so go make it happen." We started to implement that strategy, and we’ve delivered great shareholder value while strengthening the company for the long term.

Growing up in Madras, you seem to have broken every possible stereotypical expectation of a young girl in India. Are you still that person?

To a certain extent. When you’re a CEO, you can’t break too many stereotypical expectations. I wish you could, but you can’t. In those days, there was a well-defined conservative stereotype, so everything I did was breaking the framework. I played in a rock band. I climbed trees. I did stuff that made my parents wonder, "What the hell is she doing?" But I also was a good student and a good daughter, so I never brought shame on the family. And I was lucky that the men in my family thought the women should have an equal shot at everything. I’m still a bit of a rebel, always saying that we cannot sit still. Every morning you’ve got to wake up with a healthy fear that the world is changing, and a conviction that, to win, you have to change faster and be more agile than anyone else.

A version of this article appeared in the September 2015 issue (pp.80–85) of Harvard Business Review.

Design Thinking in Harvard Business Review (HBR)

2021-04-04T12:48:00.209000Z

In the past, design has most often occurred fairly far downstream in the development process and has focused on making new products aesthetically attractive or enhancing brand perception through smart, evocative advertising. Today, as innovation’s terrain expands to encompass human-centered processes and services as well as products, companies are asking designers to create ideas rather than to simply dress them up.

Brown, the CEO and president of the innovation and design firm IDEO, is a leading proponent of design thinking—a method of meeting people’s needs and desires in a technologically feasible and strategically viable way. In this article he offers several intriguing examples of the discipline at work. One involves a collaboration between frontline employees from health care provider Kaiser Permanente and Brown’s firm to reengineer nursing-staff shift changes at four Kaiser hospitals. Close observation of actual shift changes, combined with brainstorming and rapid prototyping, produced new procedures and software that radically streamlined information exchange between shifts. The result was more time for nursing, better-informed patient care, and a happier nursing staff.

Another involves the Japanese bicycle components manufacturer Shimano, which worked with IDEO to learn why 90% of American adults don’t ride bikes. The interdisciplinary project team discovered that intimidating retail experiences, the complexity and cost of sophisticated bikes, and the danger of cycling on heavily trafficked roads had overshadowed people’s happy memories of childhood biking. So the team created a brand concept—"Coasting"—to describe a whole new category of biking and developed new in-store retailing strategies, a public relations campaign to identify safe places to cycle, and a reference design to inspire designers at the companies that went on to manufacture Coasting bikes.

Written by Tim Brown. Tim Brown is the CEO and president of the international design consulting firm IDEO and the author of Change by Design (HarperBusiness, 2009).

Why We All Need Design Thinking

2021-04-04T12:49:06.089000Z

Ather than being a creative activity, problem-solving sessions for many businesses are nothing more than an exercise in analytics.

And far too often, these sessions happen in boardrooms, where the false consensus effect is free to take hold. In these situations, company leaders often inadvertently reject creativity and ingenuity in favor of logical models.

The unintended consequence of this is that ideas that could benefit customers and generate long-term value often fall by the wayside.

Until now, that is …

Design Thinking Grows Up

Design thinking has taken numerous leaps forward, playing a key strategic role in decision-making for companies like Apple, Whirlpool, and GE — enhancing the user experience and delivering value to all stakeholders.

Design thinking takes the approach of building ideas from the ground up, to ideate and test solutions for the best possible outcome.

And why not? Without an understanding of customer needs, most companies cease to be competitive in the marketplace.

With design thinking’s coming of age, the importance of applying its principles has become extremely clear. By meeting customer needs through creative problem solving, technological possibilities, and consumer-based strategies, it’s possible for any company in any industry to excel. Here’s why we all need design thinking.

Design Thinkers Are Problem Solvers

Design thinking is at the crux of problem solving, albeit not in a traditionally corporate sense. When presented with a mission or a goal, designers start from the bottom up, creating solutions based on learning and iteration.

A design doesn’t happen overnight; instead, much like artists, designers need time to build solutions, test them, hypothesize successful outcomes, evaluate performance, and deliver final results.

Through this process, design thinkers can provide highly efficient solutions by building and expanding on given concepts in a way traditional analytical thinkers cannot.

By contributing to organic growth via a structured framework, the use of design thinking can provide solutions to a wide range of problems and concepts. Other thinkers may be able to work in a particular problem space, but design thinking is applicable across organizations and industry verticals.

Design Thinking Leads to Innovation

As businesses mature, they can become less tolerant of risk. This isn’t always a negative. In some cases, lack of change can work. However, in other cases it can lead to stagnation.

The entire process of design thinking is focused on the creation of new, different, and innovative ideas that are novel to a situation. Much like two companies cannot have the same website, logo, or mission statement, two businesses cannot operate on the same principles and expect to differentiate.

By creating solutions, ruminating on their effectiveness, trying out possibilities, and continuing to refine execution until optimized, design thinkers create new markets and blue ocean to gain competitive advantage.

Leaders Should Be Design Thinkers

Leadership comes in many flavors, and some flavors are arguably better than others. Much of leadership requires creative thinking, rapid processing of information, and the ability to start over when things don’t work quite right.

Discipline isn’t always a good way to address failures, and standard tactics for group guidance could potentially hold back the creative process, especially when it comes to research and development of new products.

Design thinking is a beneficial skill for leaders. Using design thinking as a key driver of organizational strategy to deconstruct business problems and gain customer insights ensures that data-driven decisions override boardroom pontification.

Cross-Functional Training Leads to Design Maturity

Despite the name, design thinking is not only for designers. While some creative experience may help, even the most ardent traditionalists can benefit from design thinking with proper guidance.

Design thinking is best learned by doing rather than by observing. — Click to tweet

Many technology companies and consumer product focused industries have been able to implement cross-functional team training programs, instructing managers, development teams, and executives in the art of design thinking.

Applying the process to business issues in an expert-led workshop provides a risk-free environment to learn the necessary concepts and ideas. This type of training equips employees with the tools to make a tangible difference in various problem-solving scenarios.

Time for You to Embrace Design Thinking?

If you’ve never before put stock in design thinking, now may be the perfect opportunity to take strides forward. A few tweaks in how you approach problems as a team, structure the creative process and visualize successful outcomes can make a significant difference in how problems are approached.

Organizations that struggle to innovate have the most to gain from encouraging design maturity across departments and creating a culture that celebrates design thinking. There are many ways to make changes, but one thing is for sure: we all need design thinking to stay competitive in today’s fast-moving business climate.

By Nicholas Tenhue — ReadThink (by HubSpot)

Nicholas Tenhue is a user experience expert who currently serves as user experience and product strategy lead at Genospace. An alumnus of Microsoft Ventures, Nicholas also manages theuxblog.com, and hosts The UX Blog Podcast.

Design Thinking

Discover the world's best design practices—DesignBetter.Co

Google Design

Laws of Design

Muda (Japanese term) - Wikipedia

Muda (Japanese term)

The seven forms of waste[]

Transportation[]

Inventory[]

Motion[]

Waiting[]

Over-production[]

Over-processing[]

Defects[]

Unused skills[]

Alternative forms of waste[]

Confusion[]

Self-doubt[]

Implementation[]

See also[]

References[]

External links[]

Product Design Sprint

Design Sprint Kit by Google

Estudios Culturales

7 actitudes claves para la correcta implementación de Design Thinking y Human Center Design

Una reflexión sobre Design Thinking

Transdisciplinariedad vs Multidisciplinarieadad vs Interdisciplinariedad

How Diversity Makes Us Smarter

Information and Innovation

How Diversity Provokes Thought

The Power of Anticipation

Group Exercise

5 Stages in the Design Thinking Process

1. Empathise

2. Define (the Problem)

3. Ideate

4. Prototype

5. Test

The Non-Linear Nature of Design Thinking

The Take Away

References & Where to Learn More

How to build your creative confidence

Inside the 21st-Century Craze for Redesigning Everything

Makeover Mania

Inside the 21st-Century Craze for Redesigning Everything

IOS 7

Apple’s 2013 mobile operating system did away with ‘skeuomorphs’ — visual echoes of physical-world objects like wooden bookshelves and green gaming tables, long a bugbear among some digital designers.

AirBNB Logo

In 2014 the home-sharing platform adopted a stylized A as its logo — which was instantly mocked by those who thought it resembled certain parts of the human anatomy. The company stuck with it anyway.

$100 Bill

It took more than a decade to develop the more colorful version of the Benjamin that began circulating in 2013. Its look was largely shaped by functional considerations aimed at thwarting counterfeiters, like a blue strip that seems to show movement when tilted.

Whitney Museum Visual Identity

In preparation for its move to a new space in 2015, the museum switched its logo to a minimal, ‘responsive’ W that’s rendered at various angles depending on the imagery with which it’s paired. Some complained, but design geeks loved the variety.

linknyc

An attempt to update the pay-phone concept for a smartphone world is adding Wi-Fi connectivity, shiny obelisks and ad-bearing screens to New York sidewalks. After complaints, however, it cut off the kiosks’ built-in browsers when some users started to hang around watching pornography.

The Wheelchair Symbol

Technically known as the International Symbol of Access, this icon was targeted by a campaign called the Accessible Icon Project. Its more active-looking alternative has joined the Museum of Modern Art’s permanent collection and was officially approved for use in New York State in 2014.

Trump-Pence Logo

The initial version featured a symbol with a T and P interlocking in a manner that many online observers considered ... suggestive. It was quietly and almost instantly replaced with a text-only version.

Quirky Pivot Power

This redesign of the power strip emerged from Quirky, a V.C.-backed start-up that did collaborative product design. Quirky declared bankruptcy last year, but its ‘community’ produced a hit with this object, which has sold more than 1.5 million units.

Yahoo Logo

A 2013 modernization of the company’s Web 1.0 logo was poorly received — not least because Marissa Mayer, the company’s C.E.O., announced that she and a small internal design team had knocked it out ‘one weekend this summer.’

Nest Thermostat

With a modern look and high-tech capabilities (control from a smartphone, data collection and a promise to ‘learn’ from usage patterns), the Nest jolted a long-sleepy category in 2011 — and became an early icon of the ‘smart object’ phenomenon.

Ford Smartgauge

With LCD screens on the dashboard allowing digital instruments to replace mechanical ones, Ford offered owners of hybrids new forms of driving feedback to coach them toward better mileage.

Bullet Journal

One designer’s personal mission to stay organized evolved from a custom system of productivity-tracking into a hit product on Kickstarter that effectively redesigned the to-do list.

Metropolitan Museum of Art Logo

Dropping its venerable grid-based mark for bright red smushed-together letters this year, the Met took a lot of heat — and not just from the online mob. New York Magazine’s architecture critic called it ‘a typographic bus crash.’

The Fiat Chrysler Monostable Gear Shift

A new take on the automatic shifting mechanism confused some drivers who thought their vehicle was in park when it wasn’t. The unfamiliar design was blamed for injuries and sparked a huge recall.

Army Camouflage

A pixelated pattern introduced about a decade ago was criticized for being insufficiently concealing (a pretty big flaw in this context). That was revised after five years, and that redesign has now been replaced by a more traditional-looking pattern.

American Airlines Visual Identity

In 2013, before emerging from a Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the airline replaced the logo and plane livery it had used since the 1960s with a more abstract image scheme. ‘It has no sense of permanence,’ declared Massimo Vignelli, creator of the discarded look.

Facebook Timeline

The social-media giant always seems to be fiddling with the algorithms that guide what users see. In 2013, it revised how users display what they’re willing to share about themselves. For Facebook’s ad-driven business model, the more we share, the better.