30.5.10

Pecha Kucha Volume 11

Pecha Kucha - Volume 11

We had a special edition of Pecha Kucha Vancouver as part of Vancouver Interactive Digital Week with the theme of living in the real digital world.

Here are some of my highlights:

Kevin Vallely, adventurer/designer, who traveled to Antarctica and was haunted by a four year old's question to him: "what are you looking for?" We could pause and look at our own lives - what might that four year old ask us?

Learning about The Cultch (the pronunciation reminds me of a cross between culture and couch) from Heather Redfern, executive director. The Cultch is an East Van theatre that offers programming in theatre, dance and music by local, national and international artists.

Irwin Oostindie shared his passion for W2, giving a call to action to the crowd (many of us could be mentors) and his perspective on how technology and communication is a human right.

Inspiring me to do a 24 hour fast from technology (I'll have to work my way up to a full electronics fast!) was Mara Branscombe - dancer, yogi, producer and co-director.

Lauren Bacon, partner of Raised Eyebrow Web Studio, an integrative thinker who reminded us that the path to truth is through stories, not story (singular). My example: something like this doesn't work with one person.

I'll be looking through a different lens when it comes to internet openness thanks to Brian LeRoux, chief software architect. Because 'free as in beer' is not the same as 'free as in speech'. I also loved his definition of embraces change = look for ways to work together quickly.

Michael Gordon worried me when he started out (sometimes sarcasm is lost on me) but I loved his riff on play in cities. His talk reminded me of a short video I watched some time ago about former pro skateboarders and how often they made good artists/entrepreneurs from what they learned from skateboarding (commitment, not afraid to try new things and make mistakes).

Todd Smith, of art direction and motion design fame, touched on an age old debate on learning styles and his complaint with the iPad (we've become users and are no longer makers).

For photos of the night, see Nicky Tu's work.

For the next Pecha Kucha, I look forward to returning to a more intimate venue and a reprieve from shallow sales pitches.

17.5.10

Putting the Elephant Back Together – Design Currency

Putting the Elephant Back Together – Design Currency

When Ashwini Deshpande of Elephant Strategy + Design started her talk with the story about the blind men and the elephant, it was at once new and familiar. New because I didn’t realize the story had Indian roots, and familiar because I facilitate a portion of a workshop on systems thinking and use a similar elephant story: dividing an elephant in half does not produce two small elephants.

In the previous 14 blog posts I synthesized all my mind maps from the conference into key findings. But like the systems elephant, looking at Design Week through the slice of each presenter does not give you a whole elephant – or the whole story of my experience and reflection. So let me step back and put the elephant back together again.

Like all stories we must start at the beginning. I attended Design Week on the suggestion of @coryripley. I took one look at the organizers – with graphic design in their names – and thought not. You see, I’m not a graphic designer. Cory persisted, saying that it wasn’t just for graphic designers, and sent me this talk. When David mentioned systems thinking around the 2 minute mark I knew I couldn't miss the opportunity to participate in this kind of dialogue. If you were to give me a soap box to stand upon, you’d hear me talk about the opportunity that design has in business – to help solve the complex problems they face both inside and outside their permeable walls.

But while I’m not a trained graphic designer, I am still a designer (it was even in my title at one time: learning design). My discipline? At my core, I’m fascinated with human behaviour in systems. My playground is learning, leadership, motivation, change, and performance - a blend of facilitation art and neuroscience. My tools are numerous and diverse and I’ve borrowed heavily from influences like IDEO, Adaptive Path, The Grove, Kim Vicente and more. So while I don’t know all the secret handshakes of the Design Week audience, it’s fair to say we swim in a similar pool.

Here is what I learned about that pool at Design Week: 1. You were an amazing, intelligent, fun and inspiring bunch of people I’m honoured to have met. 2. I was shocked and appalled at the devastation design has inflicted on our world via consumerism. 3. I didn’t want Design Week to end. 4. We still have too many silos.

It’s this last point that I want to noodle on further. What I know as World Cafe (started in 1995) appeared as dinner with design thinking. Change management peeked its head through when a question arose about resistance. Archetypes and story shone in one talk, packaged as a design tool however as classic system stories and narrative they can also be used to solve system problems. These are only a few examples.

In the spirit of what drew me to Design Week – a chance to further the use of design in complex problems and applied in a truly inter-disciplinary way, at times I found the topics a bit insular. This is no criticism of the conference organizers - I thought it was a terrific line-up. I only wondered if we could have benefited from more outside non-design perspective – perhaps an economist, an expert of today and tomorrow’s culture challenges, someone from youth and children's services, a respected CEO sharing the problems she faces with her stakeholders? And even more so, where were other people with their unique capabilities interested in solving those problems together with the design minds that gathered in that conference room? As Saul Kaplan said in his Business Week piece, “if we want to make progress on the big issues of our time, we have to look up from our silos and become more comfortable recombining capabilities in new ways in order to connect with the unusual suspects”. That is the movement I went looking for at Design Week.

On the darker flip side, there were perspectives shared that reminded me of the news industry when blogging was disrupting that, of photography when that was disrupted, of the music industry when they were disrupted (even in the learning field a disruption is occurring). Why fight to hold onto a paradigm of yesterday when the world is presenting you new opportunities to make a difference? I saw so many hands go up when Mark Sackett asked who still loved what they do and who wants to do different things. That sounds like passion that can be channelled to connect with Saul’s unusual suspects.

To be clear, I believe there is a place for the ones who put the artist in graphic artist. For those who design sustainable products and services. And I also believe that we can live into an expanded continuum, where we reflect on our strengths, skills and passions and choose what part of that s-curve we want to contribute to. For me, it’s the second road that Dr. Tony Golsby-Smith described (and I wonder if Gregoire Serikoff would have provided similar inspiration).

But every moment spent arguing and defending our value amongst ourselves is a moment not spent making a difference. Instead, let’s be unusual suspects and swim upstream in the reorganization of our society (hat tip to @jonhusband for the video).

Design Currency - UX Workshop with Stephen Fisher

Design Currency - Stephen Fisher – User Experience Workshop

Here are some of my notes and my thinking in italics...

  • What is UX design? Make it make sense and work well for the site user.
  • Goals? User is there to accomplish a task.
  • Use personas; focus on behaviours not features.
  • Don’t build a persona unless you’ve talked/done research.
  • User research: if the first 3 people tell you something’s broken – fix it! It’s broken. Don’t have to keep going.
  • Book recommendation: Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug.
  • Sites need to make sense – what’s obvious to you isn’t obvious to someone who’s new to the site.
  • Sometimes we can refresh versus redesign.
  • Customized 404 page is important – most visited page on your website.
  • Steve’s flexible, iterative UX process...
  • Define (site type, team, understand client/industry, define project objectives, current state, gather ideas from stakeholders). Loved this: put up a content plan (who is responsible for what content/when). (Like this addition from @mary13: Content = facts + presentation of facts. I find this equation helps take the pressure off the SMEs.)
  • Research (define user groups, personas, keep visual representation in front of you).
  • Visioning (flesh things out, what wanted might not be right solution, trends, prioritization)
  • Revisions
  • Wireframe and design (taskflows, everything is explained, prototyping – even paper to move around, will always include home landing page, generic/standard page with every possible element displayed, navigation with blog/newslisting, and archive).
  • Then come back in for QA; build, users test, QA with internal/external client... never ends.
  • Tips: Style guide documentation? Can use wiki.
  • Tips: Engage client whole time; in drafts – show links in blue. (I’ve already used this in a prototype I was working on!)
  • Workshop Q&A: resources – Palantir sharing resources

16.5.10

Design Currency - Tony Golsby-Smith

Design Currency - Tony Golsby-Smith from 2nd Road

Here are some of my notes and my thinking in italics...

  • We help groups of people think together more effectively so they can design their worlds.
  • We sell thinking; people want help.
  • Art of thinking was invented by Aristotle.
  • First time in history; articulated decision making (democracy).
  • Logic machine - mesmerized western world; Descartes and deductive reasoning and a promise of control at the end of the road.
  • About reading data, understanding it then controlling it – ha!
  • Never had more info or data – are we in control of the world?
  • With this model, thinking has a bad name, but there is another domain of truth.
  • A system where human beings will invent collaboratively a new way of doing things.
  • A process by which Greeks built communities and buildings, made decisions, and ran the world with that process. This is essentially design.
  • Number one tool in the tool kit is language.
  • Strategic repositioning of design; transform organizations to be more relevant.
  • Problem/frustration = pencils for hire and engaged cosmetically at the end of the process. Perhaps would be more helpful upstream? Story of my life – spent 25 years swimming upstream.
  • Something deep and irreparable is happening in the corporate world (book recommend: Laws of Strategy).
  • Never been a more opportune time for people who know about innovation and process to have a voice.
  • It’s the thinking – design thinking – that’s of interest. We can apply it to new classes of problems that haven’t been used.
  • Richard Buchanan’s Order of Design – lower = objects, become increasingly abstract as you go up (systems, experiences).
  • Key device we use in strategy is story; writing a future story (For a bit more on this peek at this post about narrative.)
  • Can’t just read about it, we’ve got to do it; real opportunity – swimming upstream and writing future stories.
Recommend reading this article Tony Golsby-Smith wrote for The Australian: From creation to innovation.

Design Currency - Sustainable Practice Panel and David Lancashire


Design Currency - Sustainable Practice Panel

Here are some of my notes and my thinking in italics...

Valerie ElliotiD2 Communications

  • Study done 6 years ago on new born babies – born with 287 chemicals in their system (212 of them had been banned for over 30 years).
  • When we’re good as designers we can persuade people to buy responsibly and we can change behaviours.
  • To change our behaviours, have to change our thinking.
  • Might adapt your business environment: staff hours change, change audience, change working partners; your vision of sustainability is what you make it.
  • Write down one value of your design practice – when you get home, consider how integrated into your design practice it is.
  • Designers are naturally change makers: change your mind, change the brief, innovate and help us change the world.


Nathan Shedroff – Experience Design Pioneer and chair of MBA in Design Strategy in San Francisco

  • Design transforming to include more than a visual appearance.
  • Design has been focused on creating solutions (have a thing orientation) This is much like learning: classroom course versus community of practice.
  • Have the attention of business world and government and need to rise to the challenge.
  • Design can change systems and policy; can’t do this alone – need to involve others.
  • Can’t lose our focus and go back to rewarding things that are pretty.
  • We are one of the culture makers, in particularly consumerism.
  • We have the models and process: we have this role to play, we have these skills, we can be leading this change. This is exactly how I feel about the broader design community – from graphics to learning to organizational – we can fill a greater need in society.

David Berman – Author of Do Good Design

  • ¾ of the world not online – this is the digital divide.
  • The mobile screen is where most of the world will access the internet.
  • Will we try to sell them stuff? Or use technology to truly innovate?
  • Don’t just do design – do good.
  • I highly recommend reading David’s book – it’s a needed wake-up call (not just for designers but for all of us).

Panel highlights:

  • Green is the new beige (no one cares).
  • Design competitions must include sustainability; shouldn’t win if has a bad impact on people and the environment.
  • All design degrees should include sustainability (not a separate degree).


David Lancashire

  • We’re not in control with this planet or this country.
  • Aboriginals live so close to this country (Australia) they’re part of it.
  • Think they have sustainability figured out.
  • No one culture is more advanced than the other; all unique and all can learn from one another. This connected back to Cameron Sinclair’s piece at the opening keynote when he described how we in the ‘overdeveloped world’ can learn from the ‘developing world’.

15.5.10

Design Currency - Olympics and Design Procurement Panel

Design Currency - Ali Gardiner & Ben Hulse - Vancouver 2010 Olympic Design Story

Here are some of my notes and my thinking in italics...

  • On the “look of the games” team.
  • Field trips – out to the games events at games time (feel the weather etc) this adds another dimension to the anthropologist aspect of design.
  • Core fusion graphic – never meant to be shown in its entirety; meant to be cropped for banners and shoe strings.
  • Medal podium was in the shape of Vancouver Island with a mountain shape to the three platform/elevations. Who knew? Awesome.
  • There was hardly a dry eye in the house after we watched a video of the games and emotion touched Dave Mason’s voice as he recalled watching the gold medal hockey game from New York.

PS Here’s my personal Olympic experience reflection.


Design Currency - Global Design Procurement Panel, moderated by Blair Enns

Here are some of my notes and my thinking in italics...

  • Spec work kind of like a drug deal going down (give me the stuff, no give me the money, let me try the stuff...).
  • Procurement – seen around 400 firms and can summarize their pitch to these five: best people, proprietary processes, ability, work with the best brands, and the experience of working with us. Equals no differentiation.Tweak these a bit and you have the general pitch for most businesses. No wonder we have such little differentiation.
  • Who has the power? The client – not because of the money, because they are the ones with the choice.

Interruption - Olympic Reflection



I'm working my way through my Design Week mind maps, reflecting away, when I get to the Ali Gardiner and Ben Hulse map. I realize that I sent my family a recap of my Olympic experience (my mom edits a newsletter that goes out to our very large extended family) and it prompted me to jot it down here. So voila, in it's full glory:

The minutes are ticking down til the newsletter's deadline and I can't think of what to write. I click on my bookmarks and the first tag I see is 2010 Olympics. Of course - the Olympics! How could I not write about the Olympics?!

First, the back-story. Some people remember where they were when JFK was killed, others when space shuttles didn't make it back to earth. For me, I remember where I was when we got the news that Vancouver was hosting the 2010 Olympics. Funny enough, I wasn't in Vancouver - I was in Montreal, and read about it on the front page of the paper. Back home in Vancity they had filled movie theatres with people anxiously awaiting the news.

I wasn't an especially ardent Olympic supporter (like some people *cough* Brandie *cough*). I was more lackadaisical; open to it, but not especially against it. Yay for the exposure, not so good for funding that could have gone to hospital wait lists etc. On with the story... political hoopla ensues with new construction, new transit lines, budgets, over budgets, changes in mayorships and who knows what else I'm forgetting. In 2009 Nat and I were in the camp of people who figured it would be a good idea to get the h-e-double-hockey-sticks out of dodge when the world descended on our city. Even better - let's make money off them and rent out the apartment! Well we ended up sticking around. My work went into major emergency preparedness planning anticipating that people might not be able to get into work due to traffic nightmares. I volunteered to be the sole manager on duty (I take the train to work and didn't think it would affect me until I heard about the possible 1.5 hour waits for trains - egad!).

And the protesters. Oh my the protesters. What I admired about 99% of this city is that there came a point, shortly before the festivities began, that there was a collective putting down of arms and putting on the red and white. This said it best, in the week before the rings were lit: "Dear protesters. The Olympics are coming. Get over it." And with that (or nearly) this amazing place I call home was absolutely lit up with the kind of Canadian pride I have never seen.

I got off the train on opening ceremonies day to Nat saying "hurry and get in the car - they're about to start!" and spent almost all of the ceremonies sitting on the ottoman in front of our TV where we were live streaming the ceremonies (no cable - thank god for streaming internet video). It was amazing. Nat had to leave for his band practice so I started taking pictures on my phone of what was happening on TV and emailing them to him. And then - Murphy Murphy Murphy - just when the torch entered the building the streaming video feed crashed! I was on Twitter so I turned to it to find out what was happening while I cursed and refreshed and cursed and refreshed. It came back when Gretzky was being charioteered to the big outdoor torch.

Fast-forward... we watched so much Olympics between the internet feeds and the cable down at our cabin. Never, never have I watched so much coverage. We became arm chair critics... of moguls (what? his knees were coming apart!) of speed skating (impeding - he impeded!) to - of course - hockey. We were at the cabin when Alex Bilodeau won the gold. But we were back on home soil for THE hockey game. We stayed at a friend's place in Vancouver the night before and woke up to the most Canadian scene possible - a group of friends (young and old) had put out some nets, draped a Canadian flag over the fence, with Timmie's cups lined up, and were playing our game. It was AWESOME. Our friend Ryan was walking to work days before and described how on one street people were pushing a bobsled, then when he turned the corner there was a spontaneous game of pick-up happening and before he knew it someone was handing him a stick and said "you're in!". Who knew that we had this kind of spirit and camaraderie?

Anyway, it's the biggest game day and we're gathered with friends. Jumping and cheering and nail biting right into - gasp - overtime. My favourite two videos of what happened next were 1) someone at LiveCity with a handcam watching the game on the outdoor big screen when cheers erupted and the camera literally jumps up and down for two straight minutes and 2) a camera shooting over False Creek captures the peace and quiet until suddenly that magical shot scores and the decibel level in the city goes up and stays up.

What I loved most about the Olympics was the inspiration. Of hearing the stories of young kids seeing the torch many years ago and deciding they wanted to go to the Olympics (and here they are now - winning medals). Of people wanting so badly to represent our country they try event after event trying to find their niche - and succeed. Of someone I know very well leaning over the table at dinner and whispering to me "I think I could be a speed skater". Of the way our city represented with what is the very best of Canada - warm smiles, helpful strangers, high-fives and so many Canadian anthem sing-alongs I'm pretty sure ever visitor knows the words. When Brian Williams says that there was something special happening here, I believe it. I'm getting teary just thinking about it again.

I hope it was just as special taking it in from wherever you were. No event like this is without it's hiccups (some extremely tragic, others more comical). I've gone on for too long, but in case you didn't see this, here is a link to an eloquent piece answering to world critics: http://strongconservative.blogspot.com/2010/02/vancouver-2010.html

With glowing hearts and waving red mittens...


Design Currency - Frank Chimero

Design Currency - Frank Chimero

Here are some of my notes and my thinking in italics...

  • Loved the ‘wet paint’ wording Frank used at the beginning – ideas in progress (all my stuff has wet paint still on it – life in perpetual beta).
  • Big needs: complexity is going up and audience size is increasing; thus user experience design. Interesting that not many in the audience indicated they were user/interaction designers.
  • Reflected on Milton Glaser and the value of design being to inform, delight, persuade.
  • Delight offers bit of a paradox e.g. SEO can make a nightmare for a user.
  • If people aren't paying, enthusiasm becomes your currency.
  • It's about crafting experiences (venn: delight is the overlap between surprise and clarity) e.g. big internet button when logging on at hotel.
  • Embrace the warts - can't always get rid of ugly situations (e.g. every exit is an entrance someplace else).
  • Turn the mundane into something special (Mac genie effect = cackle with delight). Love that he said cackle! Don't we want our users, learners, employees and customers all cackling with delight?!
  • Errors are a perfect time to be delightful (e.g. Twitter fail whale, sign-on mix-up where screen shakes head no at you versus "you made a mistake Frank" implying "you idiot!").
  • People delight other people; computers can't delight (only when they act like people).
  • Change of mind-set, we're gift givers; they gift us with attention, we can reward with meaningful experience.
  • Loved Frank's permission to not listen to all client's feedback - everyone's colours muddle together and all you end up with is black <- great visual.

5.5.10

Design Currency - Marian Bantjes and Ian Grais

Design Currency - Marian Bantjes and Ian Grais

Some of my notes on the rest of the morning of day two and my thinking in italics.

Marian BantjesDesigner and Artist

  • I am an artist who has made it in the business of design; hostile to strategic business of design.
  • What is art? What is design? Reoccurs over and over again; see even 'graphic' is being banished
  • for communication.
  • Inspire: to breathe in... gasp... inspiration is a moment of surprise.
  • Days as a strategic designer are over and days as a graphic artist began.
  • Inspiration: don't confuse with persuasion/influence; inspiration is cross-pollinating,may inspire scientist, doctor or babysitter; can't measure.
  • That's why I do what I do; I want as many people as possible to see my work, notice it, and take something from it.
  • (More of the essence of Marian’s talk can be found on her site here.)

Ian GraisRethink

  • Design is kung foo: but a sticker on a loony! Oil from oil sands to Kitimat, example of doing more with less.
  • Arial cabon light - font; reduces carbon footprint.
  • Design is stratecution: what to say and then how to say; too many ideas; need visionary.
  • Design is leadership; generate a lot of ideas and making sense. (Great Rethink video here on ideas.)
  • Ask ourselves “craft”: is it clear, relevant, achievable, fresh, true?
  • What is design's value? What values should we design? Really need to ask ourselves that. (I loved the power of this question.)
  • You have one assignment = you.
  • Hope you work in an environment with enough fresh air and water to let it out.

Design Currency - Heather Fraser and Ronald Kapaz

Design Currency - Day Two Morning

Here are some of my notes from the first panel of day two and my thinking in italics.

Heather Fraser – Director of Design Works

  • Little d and big D: design as a broader context; bigger challenges.
  • Wheels on suitcase -form and function.
  • Can use design thinking to solve problems; re-vector your entire business.
  • Design of actual business e.g. micro finance; needs a model to make money and sustain itself.
  • 3 gears of business design: empathy and user understanding, concept visualization, strategic business design.
  • Design is a shared platform - who's at the table? Designer, business leader, marketing, product development, operations, human resource component; bring all these people together!
  • Not just about getting seat at table; about engaging all in discovery and problem solving process, facilitating and taking a mentoring role, unleashing creativity, solving and co-creating.
  • Hebert Simon – economist – “everyone is a designer in some way shape or form”.

Ronald Kapaz – Oz Design

  • Buckminster Fuller – “what is the most exciting thing I can be in this moment?”
  • Caution: everyone talks about branding in a different sense, they are losing the value.
  • Change the dynamics from ‘catch a customer’ to design ‘for the customer’.
  • Believe it’s about new and sophisticated questions, to make your mark, that everything they produce is a mark of their legacy.
  • There isn't only one story; there are several (quantum physics)
  • Design is a dialogue; not a process, not a problem.
  • Why design thinking? Big issue - not in the thinking but in the feeling.
  • Talk through images to an audience that left that school at age 5, from drawing to writing.
  • Visual literacy stopped at age of 5; two sides of brain; thinking and feeling and design should bridge both.
  • Real issue not how design serves business but how business serves culture.
  • Well crafted question contains 80% of answer; art is to disturb, science reassures.

Heather and Ronald Panel Discussion

  • Remember there's a human being out there you're trying to serve.
  • Take some risks, stop writing business documents with empty words; use empathy, visuals.
  • Apply same principles in building business; creates a common language.
  • Not a competition, it's a collaboration and co-creation.
  • Business people have tools and now think they are designers? Honestly I have never seen that; they don't expect to be able to do that kind of design as well. More in awe of the technical aspects of design.
  • “Facilitated by design.”
  • Manage resistance to change? Critical for change = co-creation.
  • Example: hospital - overhaul experience around chemo, everyone said 'don't want to do'... already busy.
  • Engaged the client at the right point and who else to involve.
  • By the time we were done they thought it was their idea because they were engaged in the process (wonderful answer to the change question).

3.5.10

Design Currency - Day One Afternoon Speakers

Design Currency - Day One Afternoon Speakers

Here are some of my notes and my thinking in italics...

Ashwini Deshpande – Elephant Strategy + Design

  • Started with the story of the blind men and the elephant.
  • Saw not just ‘graphic design’, but the whole picture; hence named firm after the fable.
  • India has 1B people with 16 official languages and scripts.
  • Growing young middle class (earn $4K to $20K; 50 million people).
  • Future rise of middle class (583M by 2025; more than 40% of population).
  • Their consumption will double in the next decade, then quadruple.
  • Discretionary spending is rising 70%.
  • Family structure is changing as is spending patterns (increased dependence on loans) (future credit crisis of sorts here?).
  • What hasn’t changed? Recycling (story of Buddha and disciple – robe -> bed sheet -> pillow case -> food mat -> mop -> wick to light lamp) (similar to this story).
  • Tata Nano ($2,500 car).
  • Nokia; 70% of market in India – many homes don’t have landlines.
  • Mobile ATM with biometric authentication; video conference to connect with remote bank officer.
  • Cell phone chargers that roll instead of crank.
  • Newspaper project; from news focus to audience focus (didn’t write about terrorists, wrote about unguarded beaches); no water, polluted water; doesn’t show what happened, shows what to do in the future; more educational impact and powerful medium for social change. (I wonder how many communications from and within organizations take this approach - so much opportunity.)

Martin MirukaAtom.tdf – Passion for the Brand

  • Africa (45 different countries with complex cultures); brand currently determined by the outsiders as a ‘charity case brand’.
  • A new brand lies in economics and self-image.
  • First must change how we feel about the branch as Africans (important for any brand/experience project – first the change must be felt on the ‘inside’).
  • Steve Jobs on design: fundamental soul of a man made creation (not veneer).
  • Africa can offer the world more than minerals.
  • Cheetah generation; clawing its way back – won’t see this on CNN (would have loved to heard more on how they are engaging this ‘cheetah generation’ from the inside to change how they feel about the African brand).

Debbie Millman – Why We Brand, Why We Buy (president of AIGA)

  • Wave 1 of branding: guarantee of consistency.
  • Wave 2: guarantors of quality.
  • Wave 3: brands as expressive statements.
  • Wave 4: brands as experience.
  • Wave 5: brands help us connect.
  • (loved that Debbie shared some neuroscience in her presentation; limbic brain etc.)
  • We have power to further humanity or to destroy it with what we mark and make, brand and sell.
  • That choice is entirely up to us / hope we choose wisely.

Brian Collins – Changing Design (Chief Creative Officer at COLLINS)

  • Design has been turned into an algorithm; find ourselves in the design democracy.
  • We’ve argued away all creative forces from ourselves.
  • Design driven innovation = don’t get close to your users; better way to creativity (Verganti’s book).
  • Archetypes (design mythinking).
  • And a new algorithm: collect, perceive, learn, narrate, build, align.

Design Currency - What Is the Value of Design?

Design Currency - What Is the Value of Design – Table Brainstorm

I loved the idea of some table group work in a large conference setting. Here are some of my notes from the conversation with my thinking in italics:

Our table discussed how design wasn’t just about making things pretty, not just for money, that it isn’t a noun, that it isn’t a commodity and sometimes causes new problems. Some things it was: intangible equity, evokes emotion yet also function, life saving, organic (not fixed), has a higher systems perspective, with the power to change and influence.

Each table sent a representative up to the front of the room to share their 140-character-or-less answer to “what is the value of design” (was neat to do this in a conference room of over 400 people).

Our table: a process that inspires and creates change

Some other tables’ “Value of design”:

  • improvement of the human experience through creative problem solving
  • often invisible; mostly notice it when it doesn't work
  • universal language that helps bring order to the world
  • defined relative to the need
  • design equals solution minus problem, or solution = design + problem
  • recovers the divine in humanity (recaptures the divine)
  • enabler for purpose
  • evolution of ideas
  • when it delivers more with less
  • goes beyond the tweets
  • proportional to the degree it solves the problem
  • improvement of the human experience through innovation
  • complexity
  • beyond the bottom line; creates the new topline
  • empathic impact with purpose
  • between 6 and divinity

Design Currency - Sustainable Cities Panel and Oscar Pena

Design Currency - Sustainable Cities Panel

Some of my notes and my thinking in italics...

Cameron Sinclair (Architecture for Humanity)

  • More of our species live in cities than outside; 19 cities will have 20M people in the 21st century.
  • 4B people emerging middle class.
  • When they have a few extra cents: education, health care and improve living standards.
  • 1 in 7 live in formal slums/refugee camps; in 30 years that will be 1 in 3.
  • “Design is the ultimate renewable resource”.
  • Need to go to the decision makers (e.g. World Economic Forum).
  • Have to educate the decision makers at the top as well as when they’re grown (love this dual pronged approach; need to get this humanistic thinking in leadership programs as well as C-suite sessions).
Peter Busby (architect)

  • White paper with 10 ideas for Vancouver.
  • By 2030 a tonne of carbon will cost six times what it does now.
  • Vancouver is currently 6 tonnes CO2 per person/year.
  • Looking at moving from sustainable buildings to whole systems (think at the community scale; district energy systems).
  • Ways for buildings to feed off of the bad building beside it.
  • Doing the new Van Dusen building.

Bruce Haden (architect)

  • Vancouver is a little high on ourselves.
  • Humanity has not demonstrated the DNA to solve social change challenges.
  • Vancouver lost many aspects of the visceral necessary for the long term.

Suggestions sparked from colleagues in conversation after this panel:

Let My People Go Surfing

TEDx Vancouver - District 9


Oscar Pena – Philips Design (Senior Creative Director for Lighting)

  • Oversees design initiatives; what is technologically possible with what is humanly preferable.
  • How design shapes us (project ambient experience – MRI and kids; 25% need to be sedated).
  • Importance of the translator (translator is one who really listens) (and I’d add one who asks great questions and then listens).
  • Translators connect people with objects, ideas with business.
  • Great translators shape change, often with small steps.
  • Non-linear approach to innovation (three horizons approach: create viable options, build emerging business, extend and defend core business).
  • Light pole that harnesses solar energy by day. (This was very cool. Check out the screen picture.)
  • 1.6B people unable to connect to regular electrical supply.
  • Experience cycle/possible touchpoints (done with pictures; shows happy/sad face).
  • Designers have these kinds of tools – can’t hide them!
  • More about the thinking; less the doing (still understand the doing).
  • How can measurements connect us to the resources we use? We’ve lost connect with our size and what we consume.

Design Currency - Day One Breakfast

Design Currency - Breakfast with Mark E. Sackett - Why Sitting is Not An Option

(owner of 10 related creative businesses)

My notes from Mark's talk including my thinking in italics:

  • Interesting: equal number of hands went up for these two questions: those still passionate about what they do, and those that want to change/do different things; shows the untapped potential inside all of us.
  • We don’t share information in this profession (opportunity here – bring cases/proposals to share process etc).
  • Won’t do spec work (imagine asking a bartender to open three beers, sample all of them, then only pay for the one you like).
  • Doesn’t go to many design conferences, instead goes to business conferences/meet-ups.
  • Find someone better than you and share your portfolio – it’s an honest set of eyes (something all professionals can do – when was the last time you sat down with someone you admired and showed them your latest work to hear their feedback?).

Design Currency - Opening Keynote

Design Currency - Opening Keynote

Here are some of my notes from the opening Keynote (and my thinking in italics). One thing I learned: never follow a TED prize winner. Hat tip to Don for that tough spot and for sharing the potential design has at the political and cultural levels.

Helen Walters, editor Innovation and Design at Bloomberg Business Week (an edited version of her talk can be found here):

  • Demonstrate value in terms non-designers can understand (something all disciplines face, as Jay Cross describes).
  • Design thinking in danger of being a fad – how do we prevent that?
  • Critical that C-suite is educated about design (wouldn’t mini-sessions on design thinking, change, learning, motivation etc be fantastic?!).

Cameron Sinclair, chief eternal optimist at Architecture for Humanity (recovering architect and TED prize winner)

  • We’re the ‘over-developed world’; they aren’t the ‘under-developed world’.
  • Place for refugees from the corporate world; work hand in hand; real designers are the community.
  • Even if someone has lost everything, still value the aesthetic; they also think about future generations (why have tree there? That is where my grandchildren will sit).
  • Aid agencies; like trying to turn an oil tanker (corruption).
  • Haiti – how to communicate? Flash cards, not 100 page PDF, using videos (what’s wrong, how to fix) (interesting how much of corporate world uses text to communicate to employees – we too could these ideas. Further idea – webinars for customers on little educational tidbits!).
  • Re-think the way we educate a nation (content comes from the inside out).
  • Aid agencies need to open source everything – share it (criminal not to).
  • Haiti won’t wait; already re-building using same methods that contributed to the devastation.
  • Earthquakes don’t kill people – buildings kill people.
  • Can you make a living trying to design social change? Yes – can work within a company and for social change. You can be a pirate within the ship; spend 1% of your time, look for ways to make a difference in the work that you do.

Don Ryun Chang, past president Icograda, branding and design management

  • How do we reinterpret tradition?
  • Proclamation in China: design is very important (to create innovation, progress, create identity).
  • Mayor of a city (13M population); design most important agenda.
  • Oullim = perfect harmony (loved this!).
  • Tune nature, humans, and technology.
  • Harmonize east and west, equal footing of all individuals and nature.

Gaping Void Goodness