Author Archives: Nathan Shedroff

One of the most interesting aspects of business culture is that while many businesspeople are focused on creating lots of value (particularly the multiples they see when companies like Instagram and WhatsApp are purchased by huge companies like Google and Facebook)—basically, what every startup is trying to do—the tools they use are habitually focused on creating and managing traditional business value. When you hear someone exclaim “people won’t pay more for that,” this belies a fundamental misunderstanding of people and business. Most designers know there’s more at work in creating great customer experiences than just a focus on the numbers but even our tools are only now groping to describe what these other aspects are and how to work with them.

This is one of the reasons why Steve, Sean, and I wrote this book. Most businesspeople recognize that there is premium value in the world (any brand that can charge more than others is a premium brand). But in developing products, services, events, and spaces as offerings for this brands, those doing the developing still run-into the challenge of “justifying” the very aspects of the experience that make it premium and desired in the eyes, ears, and minds of customers. This is an old frustration of many designers and developers.

Our supposition is that we can’t use traditional tools, built only around “the numbers,” to create premium value that comes from emotional, identity, and meaningful engagement. And, the other half of this point is that we can’t communicate these aspects of the projects, nor verify them in the field with traditional design tools. In short: we need new tools!

In Blindspot, we describe some new techniques that should easily become a part of customer research and some new tools, in particular the Waveline, for using this key research to better develop the offerings and experiences that create premium value.

This is only a start. Eventually, we’ll need to rethink all of the tools we use to create, manage, and measure value but that job will be for another book.

From PSFK: http://www.psfk.com/2011/07/ecohols-reimagining-alcohol-brand-packaging-with-tetra-paks.html

Designer, Jörn Beyer aka Jørn, based in Düsseldorf, Germany has revamped the packaging of major spirit brands, to see if people’s product decisions would be affected by replacing their signature glass bottles with Tetra Paks. The resulting series called ‘Ecohols’ displays the labels of Jack Daniels, Absolut Vodka and Jägermeister on ordinary beverage cartons. What remains of the brand, is it just about the name, its contents, or the total package?

TruthStudio, shows several projects, articles, and diagrams. They are some of the clearest visual descriptions of the complexity of ecological impacts in product and service use that I’ve seen. In particular, one of the reports he authored, Design and Sustainability, should be required reading for any designer.

Several years ago, I had a conversation with a Parisian educator about design and innovation. When I enquired about sustainability, she replied that French designers weren’t terribly interested in sustainability. While a certain amount of ecological awareness was already part of their culture, doing something more sustainable just didn’t get most design students in France excited.

Further in the conversation, I asked about the correct French term for “sustainable design” (my French is VERY rusty after many years not using it). I expected it to be “design sustainable” but her answer was “design durable” (or conception durable)–literally, “design that is durable.” That explained why designers and design students in France weren’t particularly moved by this idea. It never occurred to me how different the term might be and how the translation itself might impact the imperative of its message.

When I suggested using the term “design systemique” (literally, systems design), she paused and smiled. Her response was “that might change everything.”

Consider how simple a change that is but what a profound difference it might make. How we frame sustainability changes people’s concepts and their involvement. This is more than just a “sales job.” It helps us understand the extent and importance of a concept. Reframing sustainability from something about durability (definitely a part of sustainability but not even close to the whole thing) to something about systems, changes our idea of where we can participate and how interesting an complex our solutions might be.

So, what is sustainability (or sustainable design) called in your language? And, what might it be called to get more traction?

I was just pointed to Gerd Waloszek’s (in SAP’s User Experience Group) fantastic, 6-part series on more sustainable solutions. It’s incredibly deep, well-written, and a detailed exploration that ties what I wrote in Design is the Problem to interaction design and user experience. I’m terribly impressed and appreciative. It’s worth your time to read, as well:

www.experientia.com/blog/designing-for-a-workforce-that-acts-more-sustainably

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted. It’s not like there isn’t a lot happening related to sustainability and design. In fact, it’s the opposite–there is so much happening, it’s difficult to stay on top of it all.

However, I wanted to point to a fantastic example of how all areas of sustainability can come together to create a context for much better solutions. In this case, it concerns prosthetic devices.

We’re all familiar, by now, with the Maker Movement, 3D printing, CAD software, the resurgence of craft, etc. One firm, led by designer Scott Summit, pulling all of these together in service of helping people is Bespoke Innovations. They create custom prosthetics for heal people that are not only effective and insanely beautiful, but personal, sustainable, and don’t cost more than current solutions. Just take a look at some of their products.

This is the kind of solution that can arise when designers think systemically and holistically: for the same price (or less), these solutions 9which need to be fitted personally to these people’s bodies anyway), can reflect their personality and increase their effectiveness. In addition, the very same processes (like, for instance, reducing the mass, weight, and amount of material) can become benefits in other areas (like creating more ventilation for the skin) and, at the same time, offer the opportunity to be beautiful (like the delicate lace pattern created by these perforations). All of these come together and are made possible by CAD software and 3D printers, of course, and they enable these solutions to be more sustainable for people across ecological, economic, and social dimensions.

We need to see more solutions like these!

This is a pretty amazing development. As the patent war heats-up in the mobile computing sector, Scifi is being recognized as instances of “prior art.”

Essentially, Samsung is using a scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey to bash Apple’s IP case, citing it as prior art for tablets. There isn’t much in the scene that shows tablets in actual use (two sit on a table playing an interview but there’s no interaction with them). Better clips might have come from Star Trek: The Next Generation, which uses PADDs throughout that and the following series.

Read the article at FOSS Patents

We have two thoughts:

1. To interaction designers, this means knowing scifi could become a vital part of their work, since it’s public prior art.

2. To studios, this creates some pressure to use experienced designers (outside of production designers) on staff (or consulting) for interface/interaction design. It might also signal the possibility for studios to begin patenting what comes out of their own imaginations, since the relevancy to industry may be just a matter of time.

We haven’t posted in awhile but we thought I’d give a quick update. The book is coming together really well and the first draft should be finished in roughly 30 days (at least, we hope). We thought we’d publish the list of properties we’ve reviewed so far (not all are films and television shows). Not all of these will make it into the book and it’s clear to us that we have way more material than one book will hold (sequel perhaps?). However, we want to make sure that, on this maiden voyage, we don’t leave-out anything critical (or something we’re going to be crucified for later, for not including). So, in the interest of transparency, here is what we’ve made it through so far. If you don’t see something on the list that you think we should know about, now’s the time to speak up!

Thanks.

2001: A Space Odyssey
Adaptive Path Charmr
Aeon Flux
Aesthedes
AI
Alien
Alien Resurrection
Alien vs. Predator
Apple Project 2000
Armageddon
Avatar
Back to the Future
Barbarella
Batman
Battlestar Gallactica
Big Bang Theory
Blade Runner
Brainstorm
Brazil
Buck Rogers (1939)
Children of Men
Chronicles Of Riddick
Chrysalis
Cisco Telepresence
City of Lost Children
Clockwork Orange
Cowboy Bebop
Dark Star
Defying Gravity
Deja Vu
Deka Prosthetic Arm
Demolition Man
Demon Seed
Destination Moon
District 9
Dollhouse
Dr. Strangelove
Dr. Who
Dune
Eagle Eye
Enemy Mine
Equilibrium
Event Horizon
eXistenZ
Fantastic Four
Fantastic Four Silver Surfer
Firefly
Flesh Gordon
Flesh Gordon 2
Flight of the Navigator
Flightplan
Forbidden Planet
Futurama
Futureworld
Galaxy Quest
Gamer
Gattaca
Ghost in the Shell 2
Hackers
Hitchhicker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Hollow Man
HP Halo
Inception
Independence Day
Iron Man
Iron Man 2
Johnny Mnemonic
Jurassic Park
Kekkou Kammen
Knight Rider
Knowledge Navigator (Apple)
Lawnmower Man
Le Voyage Dans La Lune
Lifted
Logan’s Run
Looker
Lost in Space (film)
Lost in Space (TV)
Marooned
Men In Black
Metropolis
Microsoft Actimates
Microsoft BOB
Microsoft Photosynth
Minority Report
Mission to Mars
Moon
Motorola StarTAC
Ms. Dewey (Microsoft)
Odorama
Outer Limits
Pandorum
Paprika
Paycheck
Pi
Pitch Black
Pultius Products
Quantum Leap
Red Planet
Renaissance
RIBA and RI-MAN (robots)
Rocketship XM 2
Serenity
Silent Running
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
Sleeper
Solaris
Space Truckers
Space-1999
Star Trek (TV series and films)
Star Wars I-VI
Stargate Universe
Starship Troopers
Strange Days
Sun Starfire
Sunshine
Supernova
The Abyss
The Cell
The Day the Earth Stood Still
The Fifth Element
The Final Cut
The Glass Bottom Boat
The Incredibles
The Island
The Last Starfighter
The Lathe of Heaven
The Matrix
The Terminator
The Tonky
The Truman Show
The Visitor
Things to Come
Timeline
Torchwood
Total Recall
Transformers
Transformers 2
TRON
Until the End of the World
Vanilla Sky
Virtuality
Visual Human Project
WALL-E
War Games
Watchmen
Westworld
When Worlds Collide
Wildfire
X-Men
X-Men 2
Xenotran Xenovision
Zardoz

Brian David Johnson is a futurist at Intel who’s work complements our own investigation well. He’s a sharp, fun, and fascinating guy who is exploring how Science Fiction is already being used as a prototyping process for the development of real technologies, products, and services.

His latest two books (he wrote Screen Future last year), investigate the subject from two different perspectives. The first, Science Fiction Prototyping, directly investigates how SF can be used as a design technique, complete with interviews, examples, and some process description. It’s a fun, smart read. You can download his book in PDF here: http://www.morganclaypool.com/toc/csl/1/1

The second, The Tomorrow Project, is a set of commissioned SciFi stories specifically to inspire designers and developers to create new things using these stories as a departure

This is the video from our presentation of Make It So at MacWorld this year. It contains some of what is in our draft Chapter 1 on this site.