Progress by Title

Last semester I was TA for a class doing some new product development work with LG. It was a lot of fun because I got to interact with a number of teams as they developed their projects throughout the semester. 

After a several weeks of trend research and preparation the students started to propose concepts and a seemingly important factor in their success was in the choice of a title. This may seem strange, and to me it originally was quite unusual, however I think there are some strengths (and some weaknesses) of this approach which are worth contemplating. 

A positive attribute of concept naming is that if done effectively it can communicate the core value of a concept quickly and easily and can drive more laser like development in the future. Also, naming obviously offers a quick way to refer to the idea which makes discussion and reflection more accessible. On the other hand, naming too early seems to result in heightened perceived familiarity with the concept (especially in others introduced to the idea) which can lead to scope creep (either perceived by the audience or real within the team) as further development occurs. Another negative impact is when a name poorly communicates a concept and it is thus drastically misinterpreted. 

During my work as a TA I observed all of these situations on numerous occasions. In reaction, I have considered some precautions which could be taken to gain maximally from early naming. 

1. Don't Name Too Early - If a design can't yet cause an impression, but can only be interpreted as an incomplete concept then it is not ready for a name. However it can be useful to name features or other design patterns before a complete concept is established. 
2. Make the Name an Icon - Names should be act as symbols of the core concept. They should be a logical and clear explanation of the concept being presented and they should help others understand it and remember it.
3. Keep it in Beta - Early names should always remain flexible
4. Always Iterate - As changes are made new names should be considered. I personally think this is worth doing even if the factors which make the name significant have not changed significantly. 
5. Be Righteous - The name is part of the design so it should be treated with the same level of flexibility and the same sensibility as other parts of the design.

I think many further and better informed claims could be made about how to deal with naming effectively but for now this is what I think. What do you think about this issue? 

Image: Irrelevant but Pocari Sweat seems like a pretty disgusting name to me. I took this shot with my S90 which is now lost. 

Posted via email from Mark Whiting's posterous

Design for Medicine

Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Applied Materials Research in Bremen, Germany have developed biodegradable surgical screws. The screws are a composite of polylactic acid and hydroxyapatite, biodegradable over 24 months. Hydroxyapatite, a major component of bone, promotes bone growth into the screw.

Full story: Bone-hard biomaterial...

via medgadget.com

I think medical design often ends up showing what designers (or the feature creators) can really do because of the obvious risks involved. Additionally because of the nature of living things, many features must be considered in a simple but complete way. This screw design is not interesting to be because of the materials technology but because of the elegance of the industrial design and the tight relationship of all the features which make it up.

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Bricks and Some of Their Innovations

I like the strange things that happen when we think about count nouns as noncount nouns and vice-versa. One situation where this kind of issue comes to mind is with ground covering technologies. This may seem really strange but I find the continuousness of ground and the singularity of bricks used to sometimes cover it a oxymoron of sorts

In some parts of the world bricks are often not just rectangular prisms that sit next to one another. People have added some technology to integrate them and give them some influence on each other. In particular, in Korea, one often finds bricks that have a jagged profile that fits into the bricks around it. This is rather advantageous because the bricks are then much more likely to hold together, so much so that they often ley them without mortar, and as a result, they are reusable, which to my surprise I have seen first person on a few construction sites here.

A further innovation in the design of ground covering bricks is the integration of some holes to let soil through and, eventually, let grass grow. This is not uncommon in most places where bricks are used in gardens but here in Korea I have seen an augmentation of this technology so that the areas of dirt from one brick connect to those on another with a shallow section. The advantage of this system is that grass now grows to hold the bricks together and creates a more adaptive combined surface. I think this is quite brilliant because not only does it support a sustainable use of effective ground cover but it means that parking lots and other places where this method is used end up being about 40% green (made of grass) which is a significant further benefit to the environment. Personally, I think we should not have many flat surfaces in modern construction that do not have some kind of plant sustaining features but that is another thing to talk about. 

The images are just a few of the varieties of interesting ground coverings I have seen in Korea. And of course, there are many in other places it is just that here is where I have started thinking more about this issue. 

There is potential for many more ideas here. What do you think about this? 

See the full gallery on posterous

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Great Design from Non Designers

What's the right approach to new products? Pick three key attributes or features, get those things very, very right, and then forget about everything else. Those three attributes define the fundamental essence and value of the product -- the rest is noise. For example, the original iPod was: 1) small enough to fit in your pocket, 2) had enough storage to hold many hours of music and 3) easy to sync with your Mac (most hardware companies can't make software, so I bet the others got this wrong). That's it -- no wireless, no ability to edit playlists on the device, no support for Ogg -- nothing but the essentials, well executed.

via paulbuchheit.blogspot.com

I have written before about creating a design school or curriculum around the principals of a company like Google. In this provoking post Paul Buchheit (one of the people who did Gmail and later Friendfeed) talks about a perspective on design that I agree with very strongly, and that I think many other people have failed to clearly represent.

Additionally I think it is rather interesting that many non designers have very valuable perspectives on design, not just as solutions but really as methods and models for the creative process. I wonder how much we can really learn?

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Programers and Designers

The romantic image of an über-programmer is someone who fires up Emacs, types like a machine gun, and delivers a flawless final product from scratch. A more accurate image would be someone who stares quietly into space for a few minutes and then says “Hmm. I think I’ve seen something like this before.”

via johndcook.com

This is a snippet from a short and interesting piece on why programmers are not payed biased on productivity. I think he raises some interesting points and I think this snippet is sort of the key to it. Interestingly I think that this kind of situation applies to designers too. Good design is often about building your own kind of efficiency out of awareness of design in general.

What do you think?

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Art Lebedev - designers who admit to working

via artlebedev.com

I really love Art Lebedev studios. Not because they are the best, nor because they are the most interesting or the company with most valuable perspectives. What I love about them is the playful connection with consumer design, something that very few consumer product design companies seem to have. However there is more that makes them a valuable company. They regularly report on process and on conclusions about design in a rather interesting context.

In this image we see a new product called Fleximus they have designed as a kind of flexible camera. On it's website they provide a design brief, which is wonderfully simple "Problem: Design a flexible camera," and they also provide a link to their process which is arguably more interesting than the product its self. Conveniently they go further than simply telling you how they did it and have a rather nice selection of progress images. In this way Art Lebedev is a model design house.

Another effort of significant value is one of their blogs, Mandership. This blog is seldom updated but when it is, they speak of great conclusions or suggestions about doing design. Quite a great think I say.

What do you think of this company?

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Designing Luck

via Future Perfect Jan Chipchase

This image was used by Jan Chipchase to note Ritualised Luck, situations where rituals exist which aim to increase someones luck. In this image a prayer card is shown which the driver touches before every ride.

I think however, this speaks about a greater source of luck, valuable rituals strategically designed to enable luck to integrate into your life. What I am suggesting is a bit like a serendipity strategy, a strategy designed to expose you to conducive situations, new information, creative ideas and extraordinary people to help you find great opportunities regularly.

I think some examples are: watching TED, taking part in community building, regular and diverse reading, enforced seclusion and bordom, and continuous context shifting such as traveling.

Any ideas about other such strategies?

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Creating Creative Communities

via lookbook.nu

For those who do not know, I am working on my masters in Korea at a university called KAIST. The topic I am looking at right now (still being in early stages of the overal degree it is still not fixed) is related to the methods of integrating and working with external creativity from users and other external components of a company. With a strong interest in Design Management and Innovation Strategy, I want to think about how we can optimally integrate and facilitate this external creativity.

In any case, today, while reading through Google Reader and stopping at an interesting peice from NussbaumOnDesign, I was introduced to what seems to be a great success in the construction of a creative communities.

Lookbook.nu is a simple site that lets young fashion thinkers show their work in a simple yet integrated community. I particularly like how Nussbaum discribes this setting in his post.

Anyway, I am interested to think of how to make good communities and good integration between companies and external creative communities. Any ideas would be treated with kindness.

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More Guessing and Shiny Stuff

So I got an idea the other day which I think is not yet finished but I have made an initial model anyway. Here is an early stage render of the back. Any guesses to what it is?

More about New Stuff

Keep Guessing :-)

Here is another picture of what I am working on. I will still not tell you what it is but I will give you the hint that "Saddle" is in the name.

This thing is not that easy to model with the software I am using so I may switch back to a different package for some of the surfacing.

Making Things and How They Work Together

I just watched this great TED talk by an interesting man named Saul Griffith. My interest here is in a few capacities.

First, Saul speaks about the level of assembly of a few objects, which I have previously discussed as technology density, and compares organic and artificial assembly systems and manufactured solutions. In doing so he considers the advantages of each and contexts in which each would be more suitable. This is of course quite interesting to me as I think there is a significant market for improving human decisions by relying on a wider frame of decision making systems, including naturally inspired ones, and ensuring appropriate use.

Second, Saul shows some example projects including crossover decision making systems. These, I think, are quite neat though obviously far from complete in this talk.

Lastly, in the beginning he mentions project, seemingly names, A Registry of Standard Biological Parts , which offers a good perspective into another notion I have been interested by, which is that of software for the design and development of biologically inclined systems. In my mind this can include things which utilise some or even just one of the key elements of biological systems. A software like this, from my perspective, would help organise the involved ideas and approaches in order to generate short cycle evolution at much higher rates than natural selection would offer. Such a software could also be used to deal with the issues of human perception when trying to solve for the physical parameters when creating objects.

All in all the talk has reinvigorated me to think about a few problems I haven't for some time. As is often the case I am also reminded that the release early release often approach is good in almost every way and I should adopt it more seriously.

Google Design School

Google Logo for Lego's 50th Birthday

I am in the midst of applying for a interesting looking job. I hate writing cover letters, however I did think of something a little interesting. Google Design School.

Google, as everybody knows has a great line-up of really usable services and they have consistently kept the user at the centre of their design requirements. Being a large company and one that claims one of its core fundamentals "don't be evil" there is a need for a well defined path to avoid the expected corporate evils and ensure a future of great user service. Google has published their interpretation of this path on their corporate home-page and in doing so created a defining structure for others, in the same space and in my opinion, in almost any other industry. My personal interest lies in two of their documents which I think combined could be used to teach comprehensive design thinking, and hence the prospect of a school of design based on the methods and thinking of Google. The two articles are as follows

1. Google User Experience - A casual documentation of what google holds important when considering the user in their products. 
2. Google Philosophy - Seen as "ten things Google has found to be true" and some great insight about good strategy for almost anything, business, design and whatever else. 

I think it would be fun to discuss this more. If anyone wants to help me put together a course outline for a Google Design class it would be a lot of fun. I really think there is a lot of design learning available there and that it could be used to create something really interesting. 

iCar Initial Thinking

This afternoon I spent 6 hours in a KTV room and although I can sing a few songs I could not sing that many. The extra time I used to start thinking about what an anthropomorphic car is going to be and what kind of features it might have. I am still pretty lost in this regard but I have a few notions.

So my thinking was along the lines of a car that acted the way a car should act in order for it to parse correctly in terms of the human experience. This is a bit strange as it is hard to say what a car should do, however, I guess it is pretty obvious that it is a driving machine. So, a thing for moving people around. I am guessing it might park automatically. I am also trying to think of how one should get into and out of such a device. I think doors are a pretty in elegant solution but for now they may be the only option.

Next I tried to think of what is wrong with the state of existing cars. There are a lot of things, but the ones that are really important are the ones that people have not solved well. One is the power issue, so I have a feeling the iCar would be not that fast and pretty toy like. Its speedometer would go no higher than the speed limited of a road. I suspect it would also function mostly automatically. I am still not sure how to deal with reversing. I think that is a major point of failing in the driving experience. Another point I thought of is getting into and out of cars and loading things in and out of them. Other issues include things like safety.

I have very little idea of the driving experience for now. I think this will be hard. I am not sure how removed it should be or how familiar it should be.

I have also thought a little about the overall object of the car. I have a feeling it will not look a lot like a car and may look a bit more like the Scion box cars that exist in Japan and now the states, however I am not sure yet. I think because I suspect for it to be all electric I suspect there to be very little mechanical envelope. So the car may end up as basically a box (smooth or not) on wheels. I am not sure if it should be solar assisted. I am also not sure if it should be AL, Polycarbonate or Si3, or SS, but I think those might be the main materials. I do however want to incorporate a black plastic like is current at the back of the iMac.

What do you think? Comments Appreciated!!!

iCar - Thinking Agian

Soumitri has started blogging about making an iCar again. We had talked about this project a while back and done a few things for a competition along the lines of an iCar. The idea being worked with at the time is as pictured.

Since then I have become a little less stupid and realised more about what is really needed in an iCar. I in fact think this project is quite fun an interesting so I am going to try to create some kind of solution. I think the approach that I am going to start with is to start to get an idea of what makes a design Apples'. There is quite a lot of literature on this but for now I will just make a cursory list.

1. An obvious reaction to the norms of an industry or expected experience - I think Apple often tries to make the quintessential product of a sector. iCar should be the quintessential car.
2. Anthropomorphic - The user experience should parse logically to all users.
3. Intuitive - New users should have little or no trouble understanding what is expected of them
4. High Quality Experience - Where quality is not possible, design to remove the need for quality (or the perceived lack of quality) is important.
5. No buttons - Specific mechanical interfaces only, as much as possible or none what so ever.
6. Important controlls are really easy to get to. The things one would want to can usually be done with no digging in the interface.
7. Manufacturing is invisible.

So. Please add more things or ideas in comments or link to articles etc. that might be interesting for this project. Soumitri linked to an article on this matter but I think they writer is not completely right. I would love to see more info if anyone has found interesting stuff.

Seating in public places and transport

Does anyone think that seating in public environments could be designed better. I was thinking that perhaps there are a few issues with some of the common trends in this area. I have been travelling a lot recently, waiting in public spaces like airports and stations and using a lot of busses and trains and so on. The thing I have been noticing is that people often do not sit optimally for the best health of the crowd, that is to say, people often sit to to isolate them selves using a certain method, i.e. not sitting next to people if possible. There are of course other factors that are seen in some of the mentioned areas, like the availability of power, the fact that groups often move together, and the fact that some of the noted environments involve distinct changes in use statistics. 

Sooo. I thought about a few of these things and though a way to make busses or train a little nicer would be to make less wall oriented seating and more floating seating that would still let people walk around and would let people either be close to or less close to people around them depending on their acquaintance with each other and without taking up too much extra space. 

Also, I thought a little bit about steps to socially engineer people sitting in airport gates and other such places to make sure they would use the available chairs optimally, or at least in the sense that clusters and isolated individuals could exit without wasting seats or making either group less happy. 

I will try to put some sketchup models together to show what I am thinking about. Any other ideas?

User Centred Dogma vs. Design that is Good

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So this is a really lovely talk by some guy. I completely recommend everyone in the world watches it. It is about an hour and fifteen minutes long but I think it is worth it.

Just in case you were wondering, it is about how user centred design is not as effectual as it is claimed to be and is often used to justify useless endeavours. The speaker (who is actually Jared Spool) claims that simple good design with a strong interaction with people actually using the outcomes is a better model.

I agree. But hey I love doing dissemination maps so I am not going to drop trying to work out how people think yet. Also, I think his model is a good proposition but I think it could be made better by tailoring methods for this kind of work; "Release Early, Release Often" as Google often says.

Bottom Up Business

So this is nothing new but I have been thinking about a frame of thought providing justification for bottom up institutions. The idea originally came from the fact that I wanted to do design management and realised that by doing the associated tasks I was not actually doing creative design but simply helping the designers I managed do more creative design. Of course this may happen though creative insight on behalf of the manager but the real point is that a manager's job is really just to help improve the potential of the designer. I think this generalises to other fields and to most systems in which there is hierarchy. 

Ok so that was probably not at all new, but I do think it is interesting that the higher paid workers really just help the lower paid workers perform in an effective manner.  I think this probably applies all the way up the hierarchy. I think if people thought about it in this way it might make some business stuff run a little more smoothly. And I think it would be really effective if governments acted in this fashion more. 

How do you Ask Answerable Questions

I think it is so easy to make design problems that are esentially impossible to act upon. I mean, problems that have requirements that do not take into consideration reality, the issue of course is that it is hard to tell how far something is from reality when it is conceived. I guess sometimes instances like this are considered over ambitious however I think it is actually an issue in many situations where evaluating the complexity of a problem is difficult. For instance in operating systems, the complexity of the systems involved is so high that working out what effect a requirement will have on the rest of the system is really not easy. In some cases, I would say problems like this can be considered wicked however in many cases I think it is not the problem that its self is complex it is the evaluation method that returns data on the problem that is too complicated. For example. The problem of going to the moon is not really that wicked. I mean it involves a lot of complexity and a lot of very high rigour decision making but it is really not a problem that continuously changes and in which any answer is only a very temporary answer. The issue of difficulty in deciding weather the question is answerable is really high. 

Q: Let's go to the moon (can we go to the moon)? 

A: Yes lets, yay (we have no idea if we can or not).

 I wonder, is there a good way to work out early on that a design problem is like this. I think it wastes a lot of time and energy when people persue unsolvable problems. And I really mean is there a way that humans can look on the problem level, not on the implementation level, and establish an informed point of view either way. 

If anybody knows anything about methods for this I would be quite interested. Please comment.