Design Sojourn

Unless you have been living under a rock recently, I’m sure you would have heard of the Apple iPad. Pretty much everyone has. So much so that there has been a lot said about this product, both good and bad. Do a search on Google and you get 23 Million plus hits. Crazily enough, some people even claimed that it was hotter than the tablets Moses brought down from Mount Sinai.

As such I was not sure if I even wanted to write this post, or if what I am about to say has already been covered by someone else in one way or another. One thing, this post is not a rant, but I hope I can make a few educated guesses to provide some strategic clarity on Apple’s business motives.

Surprise, Surprise!

Firstly I was quite surprised that Apple went ahead with this product. I shared my thoughts in an earlier post: “Why there will be no Apple Mac tablet“. So when they did launch it, I did some further thinking on why Apple do such a thing?

I honestly don’t have a clear answer. However I did conclude that I really should not have been surprised.

You might not be surprise when I say that Apple is actually not a technology company in the true sense of the word. In fact I would rate them as technology followers, or someone that builds products with existing or matured technology. What Apple actually does is that they are in a habit of doing the hard job of turning technology into something people can use. They are in the business of making tech mainstream.

They did it with the iMacs, iPod, and the iPhone. So is there any difference with what they are doing with the iPad? I don’t think so. They sense that the ever-evolving digital medium is moving into books and as a result, are leveraging on their existing platform to make a ebook reader more mainstream and accessible than their competitors.

Will it be a success?

I honestly don’t know and I’ll bet that Apple is also not 100% sure. That is also why I believe the iPad has not evolved in terms of a design language, and has its user interface build around something many people are already familiar with, the iPhone’s UI. They are mitigating the risk of a new platform by using familiar elements to encourage a faster user adoption rate.

But, wait there’s more!

I think there is a lot more to the story. In Apple’s case its almost always true. In many ways the iPhone was more than a phone. Many people have even said that the iPhone was Apple’s answer to the Netbook. In other words Apple probably felt they never needed to create a Netbook because of the iPhone and iTouch. Besides the margins are razor thin, and Apple is not in the low margin game.

If I can extrapolate, I would say that the iPhone/iTouch was more than a phone. It is even more than a Netbook. The 2 devices has actually brought thin client computing into the mainstream. Thin client computing was made popular when IBM was big on server systems. The idea is that the majority of the software or data resides on the Server and then shared or pulled by wired LAN on to many thin clients or lightweight computers for use.

With the advancement of technology miniaturization, 3G Internet bandwidth, and cloud computing, thin client computing now sits comfortably in your pocket.

So then why the iPad proposition?

Here we have to again look back to look forward.

Image of the Audrey via Wikipedia.

We can now see that the iPhone is pretty much a perfect thin client computer, but there are inherent problems with the platform. Screen size and processing power are some examples. If we now look at examples of what we used thin clients for in the late 90’s (at the height of the dot com boom), Internet appliances, like the Audrey, were very logical applications of the technology. We dreamt of a world filled with nice little kitchen displays that allows us to jump on the Internet to download recipes for our next big cook out or perhaps even turn the TV and lights on. Sounds like something an iPad could do?

Moving forward

I think there is a lot of potential for the iPad, and Apple has a really good track record in launching radical products that everyone “poo pooed” in the beginning, and then ended up changing the entire industry. Once again Apple has taken a risk to launch a radical product people did not ask for, and is likely waiting to see how the market will respond before they take the next step.

Will it be an iPhone or an Apple TV? Only time will tell.

I like to close this post with a bonus thought. You know that thick bezel around the iPad’s screen that everyone hates? It is a perfectly acceptable and understandable design element when you consider where you would put your thumbs when you are holding the iPad’s super thin body.

I have been thinking about T-Shaped Designers for a long time now. How to be one, what does being one really mean and how effective can one be. Made popular sometime in 2005 by IDEO’s Tim Brown, T-Shape Designers are defined as:

…people who are so inquisitive about the world that they’re willing to try to do what you do. We call them “T-shaped people.” They have a principal skill that describes the vertical leg of the T — they’re mechanical engineers or industrial designers. But they are so empathetic that they can branch out into other skills, such as anthropology, and do them as well. They are able to explore insights from many different perspectives and recognize patterns of behavior that point to a universal human need. ~ Fast Company

I touch on this topic again in 2007, by calling these T-Shape Designers “Renaissance Designers” in my blog series: 7 Habits of Highly Effective Designers.

However after almost 5 years contemplating the existence of such T-Shaped designers and observing the many designers I know, I have to admit that such a personality trait is a myth. Honestly, to date I have never seen or met any designer that I would truly qualify as T-shaped, including myself.

I actually spoke to Chris Bangle about this and tried to tap into his vast experience as someone who hires talent. He agrees that while it was big in 2005, on one talks about this anymore probably because it was never true.

I postulated that such a personality trait is impossible simply because humans are just not wired to multi-task well, or to wear different hats for that matter. Even if a designer has the capability, he or she will lack the time or opportunity.

Therefore the reality is, instead of being a big “T”, you will find designers that are either a little “t” or a “T” with a short vertical stick.

Little “t-shape” designers are essentially most of who we are. Despite many of us feeling that we are “Jacks of all trades and masters of none” after our 4 years of design school. We eventually settle into a specialty of design and designing.

Stunted “T-Shaped” designers are often the senior creatives, the design managers, team leaders and entrepreneurs. Many deal with all the different touch points in the design development cycle, but do not have the opportunity to dive into detail. Some, like the entrepreneurs, may be in the position to do it all, but often will have to either accept work of lesser quality or learn to delegate and outsource.

———-

So at the end of the day, being a T-Shaped is just a nice story for designers to aspire to. While the value of a T-Shaped team is undeniable, it is probably more realistic to build a multi-disciplinary team of experts to work on complex (or wicked?) problems. Now that is something that has withstood the test of time.

What do you think? I’m looking forward to hearing your comments.

With a cheeky little link to Tom Kelly’s The Art of Innovation, Roberto Verganti (author of Design Driven Innovation) suggests in not so many words that User Centered Innovation, IDEO’s claim to fame, is dead.

While tech experts were busy commenting on the qualities of the iPad, what struck me was the level of excitement that the event created. On Tuesday, the day before the product was unveiled, a Web search for “Apple tablet” produced more than 17 million links! On Wednesday, hordes of people attended the news conference remotely. Everyone was anxiously waiting for Apple’s interpretation of what a tablet is.

This was validation of Apple’s peculiar innovation process: Insights do not move from users to Apple but the other way around. More than Apple listening to us, it’s us who listen to Apple.

This contradicts the conventional management wisdom about innovation. In fact, one of the mantras of the past decade has been user-centered innovation (cheeky link here!): Companies should start their innovation process by getting close to users and observe them using existing products to understand their needs.

I disagree with this approach for these kinds of efforts. User-centered innovation is perfect to drive incremental innovation, but hardly generates breakthroughs. In fact, it does not question existing needs, but rather reinforces them, thanks to its powerful methods.

With the iPad Apple has not provided an answer to market needs. It has made a proposal about what could fit us and what we could love. It’s now up to us to answer whether we agree.

I fully agree with Robert’s analysis. As I always say, consumers are horrible in telling you what they like. Listening to them gets you as far as optimizing your design, true innovation requires critical insight and a leap of faith. Apple is just so good at doing that.

Astute readers would remember a similar discussion on this issue. In my previous post, “Don Norman believes Technology comes first, User Needs Last. What?“, I concluded with:

So yes, Technology first, but if you put needs last or if technology does not collaborate or “handshake” with consumer needs, what is the point of being first?

So how is this different from this discussion?

Basically, in that earlier discussion, I indicated that Design should be used as a means to link innovation primers, in this case technology, to users. This makes technology meaningful, and a likely success. In this discussion and in Tom Kelly’s book, the idea of going to users to look for these innovation primers, which I’m sure you are convinced, is not always the right way to go if you want to challenge paradigms.

The game is changing; it is no longer enough to make things better. We have to rethink products to really make a difference.

Via: HBR

Ever wondered what design thinking is all about? The Stanford d.school has shared, with the world, the basics of design thinking as taught in their introductory class called the “design thinking bootcamp”.

This “bootcamp bootleg” is a nice little pdf file that contains a bunch of great methodologies for observation, data collection, brainstorming, prototyping, and concept generation.

After going through this pdf, I’m further convinced that design thinking is just about shaping the design process in a way that non-designers are able to understand and apply it in their problem solving activities. What do you guys think of my hypothesis?

via d.school blog

Click on the image for a larger size.

@Issue Journal has shared a wonderful graphic visualization of Disney’s internal organization chart. What is interesting to note is the organization’s structure is build up around a process, in this case the creative process, instead of the usual hierarchical top down or even the so-called flat reporting structure.

Businesses who are passionate about design and creativity or want to make design thinking a central feature in their organization can learn something from this. If you look at how Disney has been set up, the organization respects the process, and all positions including management, supports the creation of the end product.

Why not eh?

Via: Fast Company

Yep. That’s what Donald Norman (of Design of Everyday Things fame) wrote in his latest essay on his blog. You get the gist of his view in this introductory paragraph:

I’ve come to a disconcerting conclusion: design research is great when it comes to improving existing product categories but essentially useless when it comes to new, innovative breakthroughs. I reached this conclusion through examination of a range of product innovations, most especially looking at those major conceptual breakthroughs that have had huge impact upon society as well as the more common, mundane small, continual improvements. Call one conceptual breakthrough, the other incremental. Although we would prefer to believe that conceptual breakthroughs occur because of a detailed consideration of human needs, especially fundamental but unspoken hidden needs so beloved by the design research community, the fact is that it simply doesn’t happen.

This essay has set off a furor of blog responses from the design industry, many of which I also share. Some interesting ones include Design Thinking Consultant: Steve Portigal and Creative Director at Frog Design: Adam Richardson.

I don’t think Donald’s essay should come as a surprise. The Palm Pilot, iPod or even SMSing (or texting) was not a result of rounds and rounds of consumer research and analysis trying to figure out the next big thing/solution/money maker/brand etc.

Honestly it seems incredible that we finally need to have some kind of academic endorsement, especially from someone as famous as Donald Norman, for this simple fact. Designers have always known that the people they design for are great at explaining what they dislike, but are terrible at describing what they like. If fact it is a key skill of designers and design thinkers to be able to describe why they like something and why a solution works.

It all sounds logical: study people. Discover hidden, unmet needs. Fulfill those needs, and leap ahead of the competition, producing yet another wondrous advance. This is the mantra of the design research community. The research community does a wonderful service. It investigates the way people live. It makes voyeurs of all of us, and the results of their studies provide important titillations to our understanding of human behavior. And it’s fun to do: you get to go to exotic locations, to watch people do intimate acts, and then to come back and tell the world what you have seen, carefully disguising the identity of the “informants.” Oh yes, I know it can also be dull and dreary, exhausting and depressing, and sometimes even dangerous: but even these aspects can serve to embellish the final story.

But the real question is how much all this helps products? Very little. In fact, let me try to be even more provocative: although the deep and rich study of people’s lives is useful for incremental innovation, history shows that this is not how the brilliant, earth-shattering, revolutionary innovations come about.

While I fully agree with Donald, that design research has a huge application in incremental innovation that results in products that optimize rather than breakthrough, I believe he misses that Design Research is informative and predictive, but does not synthesize solutions. The role of synthesizing solutions is where a multidisciplinary team needs to come in.

A team of designers, marketers, business leaders AND researchers. Design Research should never be tasked to provide solutions, no, they apply best in building on a baseline direction or assumption. This direction could be anything; a marketing solution, critical insight, iconic form etc, but in most cases this baseline is technology.

Take for example Wi-Fi. This technology as been farting around for, I dare say, 10 years or more? The benefit of Wi-Fi was not only clear but also downright awesome. We could now do things and not be limited by wires. The problem is that no one sat down and figured out how this technology can be transformed into something that is easy for the consumer to use. In fact technology complicated and hindered the progress as no one could agree on a common platform. This is where Design Research or even Market Research could have come in to help in crafting a very integrated solution.

Assuming and expecting Design Research to be the Pandora’s Box, silos the competence and is frankly so very 90’s. While Design Research does have a creed to uncover untapped user needs, the competence can be so much more with wide ranging applications in many levels of the development process. So yes, Mr. Norman, while Design Research did not come up with a lot of the innovation technologies we have today like the internet or cellphones, without the input of Design Research, these technologies will likely just be brain farts in the minds of scientists or technologists that will benefit no one.

So yes, Technology first, but if you put needs last or if technology does not collaborate or “handshake” with consumer needs, what is the point of being first?

Via: Experientia

I stumbled over a really interesting interview of Kenya Hara by Oliver Reichenstein from iA or information architects. This interview was part of a New York Times feature on a new fad in the US, making Japanese Bento boxes. Kenya explains that Japanese culture has a craftsman inspired sense of aesthetic that is so focused that they miss the impact of the bigger picture.

The craftman’s spirit, I think, imbues people with a sense of beauty, as in elaboration, delicacy, care, simplicity (words I often use). Obviously, this also applies to bento-making and the pride people take in making them as beautiful as they can.

There is a similar craftman’s spirit (“shokunin kishitsu” or “shokunin katagi”) in Europe. Yet in Europe I can see it coming alive only from a certain level of sophistication. –In Japan, even ordinary jobs such as cleaning and cooking are filled with this craftman’s spirit. It is is common sense in Japan.

While Japanese are known for their particular aesthetic sense, I would say we also have an incapacity to see ugliness. How come?

We usually focus fully on what’s right in front of our eyes. We tend to ignore the horrible, especially if it is not an integral part of our personal perspective. We ignore that our cities are a chaotic mess, filled with ugly architecture and nasty signage. And so you have the situation where a Japanese worker will open a beautiful bento box in a stale conference room or on a horrendous, crowded sidewalk.

I never really saw it, but now that he brings it up, I have to agree. The last time I was in Tokyo, I encountered exciting avant-garde architecture (like the Prada shop at Ayoman, Omotesandō) nestled within a bunch of drab buildings. It stuck out like a sore thumb!

Kenya goes on to explain the difference between Japanese vs. Western forms of simplicity by comparing the design of two chef’s knives. He implies that the Japanese prefer simple, designs devoid, of any frills as it means the product can be used in as many ways as the user desires. It is interesting to see that by going with simplicity as an aesthetic approach does not necessary result in boring single use products but actually encourages products to be applied in many situations. I’m convinced.

Check out the full write up and the original interview transcript in Japanese at iA.

Click on the image to zoom in.

Check out this visualization of the Design Process taught at the Stanford D-School . The photo was taken by Nina, a senior at Stanford majoring in product design.

The visual is familiar, logical and strangely alluring. The design process made sexy? Just follow the curves!

Via: Young and Brilliant.

This morning, my colleague pointed me in the direction of this great little New York Times interview with Tim Brown, the chief executive and president of IDEO. (Wow, he even gets on the NY Times!)

In the interview, Tim shares that (design) leadership is not about having all the answers but asking the right questions. There is no point in creating a great design that answers the wrong question. Unfortunately, this is something that many designers are guilty of. Here’s a juicy snippet:

Q. What other important leadership lessons have you learned?

A. As a design consultant, I get to work with all kinds of interesting people who are leaders of their own businesses. So I constantly learn from watching some of the great leaders do what they do.

A. G. Lafley is a great example. I’ve spent a lot of time with him over the last seven or eight years, until he retired. I’m a member of his design board at Procter & Gamble, and we would get together every four months, and the various divisions would come and show their work.

He was willing to get involved really early on in new ideas — not in a way where his opinion was overly influencing what was happening, but where his support would really push an idea along quickly. I learned a lot from him in terms of style of leadership, which was involved without being dictatorial. He seems to see his role as constantly reminding teams of what they should be focusing on, rather than telling them whether they’ve got the right idea or not.

Somebody else I worked with a lot is Jim Hackett, the C.E.O. of Steelcase. He’s somebody who, no matter how compelling and short-term an issue might be, is always forcing the conversation up to being strategic. How are we thinking about this long term?

As a designer, I’m always looking for solutions to the problems I see in front of me. And the big trick to being a successful designer is always making sure you’re asking the right questions and focusing on the right problems.

It’s very easy in business to get sucked into being reactive to the problems and questions that are right in front of you. And it doesn’t matter how creative you are as a leader, it doesn’t matter how good the answers you come up with. If you’re focusing on the wrong questions, you’re not really providing the leadership you should.

Q. Can you talk more about that?

A. I do think that’s something that we forget — as leaders, probably the most important role we can play is asking the right questions. But the bit we forget is that it is in itself a creative process. Those right questions aren’t just kind of lying around on the ground to be picked up and asked.

When I go back and look at the great leaders — Roosevelt, Churchill — one of the things that occurs to me is they somehow had the ability to frame the question in a way that nobody else would have thought about.

In design, that’s everything, right? If you don’t ask the right questions, , then you’re never going get to the right solution. I spent too much of my career feeling like I’d done a really good job answering the wrong question.

And that was because I was letting other people give me the question. One of the things that I’ve tried to do more and more — and I obviously have the opportunity to do as a leader — is to take ownership of the question. And so I’m much more interested these days in having debates about what the questions should be than I necessarily am about the solutions.

Enjoy the rest of the interview here as it is a pretty good read.

While all the fan boys were getting Macgasms over the new 27″ iMac or the Macbook with the sausage shaped profile, I was interested in only one thing: Apple’s financial results. I tweeted my response on my twitter stream. Here’s a screen-shot.

Yep, I wanted to run to every rooftop and yell it out, nice and loud.

Here are the key numbers from Business Week.

1) The company reported revenues that grew 25% over the same quarter a year ago and profits that grew 46%.

2) Apple reported revenue of $9.87 billion, and a profit of $1.67 billion or $1.82 per share.

3) Apple’s stock finished the regular trading session higher at $189.96, up $1.81 or nearly 1% after opening at $187.84. On Oct. 15 Apple stock hit a 52-week high of $192.32, less than 6% off its all-time high of $202.96 set on Dec. 27, 2007.

4) Apple set an all-time single-quarter sales record with its Macintosh computers, selling 3.05 million, accounting for $3.95 billion, or 40% of sales. Apple finished the year just short of the 13 million unit mark for the fiscal year, an improvement over the prior year of nearly 3.3 million units.

5) iPhone unit sales also set a quarterly record or 7.4 million units, amounting to a year-on-year improvement of nearly 7%. IPhone sales broke the 20-million unit mark for the fiscal year.

6) iPod sales declined slightly year-on-year to 10.177 million, down from 11.05 million, and also down sequentially from 10.215 million from the third quarter.

7) Apple finishes its fiscal year 2009 with sales of $36.5 billion, up more than 12% from fiscal 2008, and per-share profit for the year $6.29, beating the consensus estimate by 41 cents.

I think this proves two things.

Firstly, people have not stopped buying. (Just look at the number of Macs sold!) Under such tough economic conditions, consumers have instead become very picky in the things they buy. Also Macs are not cheap, and yet it sells. This means people are willing to spend on purchases that makes sense to them. So what do we do? Focus on making better products. Correction. Focus on making your product is the best in class.

Next, I’m sure you would agree that Design plays a very important role in the success of Apple. I would even go as far to say that Design is their key strategic competitive advantage. In good times of excess, people could easily dismiss Apple’s success as a result of a “tide that raises all boats”. However, if we consider that Apple has successfully operated during a recession, it’s proof that Design can keep a company profitable and resilient.

So now do it! Spread the word, tell everyone, email, link to this post, re-tweet it so that the world will know the Golden Age of Design has come!