DMI “Value Of Design” Conference Recap

Brian, Carl & I headed to Amsterdam last week to attend “The Value Of Design” – a conference held by the Design Management Institute (DMI). Why travel to Amsterdam for this? Well, there were a number of good reasons:

1. We’re extremely interested in the topic, as we’re continuously looking for effective ways to explain the value of design to our potential clients (and the world, for that matter). A conference dedicated to full exploration of the subject, with built-in peer collaboration/discussion sessions, was right up our alley.
2. We’re interested in making connections in Europe and worldwide, to continuously grow our global insight and also to plan for future partnerships or office locations. A full roster of international design professionals (speakers and attendees) was a huge draw.
3. Dude, it’s Amsterdam. Have you had a fresh Heineken and a stroopwafel?

So, in keeping with tradition, I’ll provide our high-level impression of the conference and Brian will provide interactive sketchnotes for some of our favorite sessions. Be sure to hover over each sketchnote image for links to lots of great information and resources.

Brian's interactive sketchnotes. Click image to see 'em all.

Overall, we were really impressed and felt that we got a lot of value for the investment. As we debriefed, some telling things rose to the top. For instance, there was a refreshingly low hipster quotient, with absolutely no talk of ninjas, superheroes, rockstars, or zombies. Not that those things aren’t fun…just, tired. There were plenty of laughs besides.

The venue (the Felix Meritis) was a brilliant choice, and infinitely better than a conference room at a hotel complex. There were a few logistical problems due to the uniqueness of the space, but the organizers handled them very well and we’ll take that any day as the potential price to pay for two days at such a distinctive location. The food was great, the pacing felt right, and there was ample time for networking, breaks, and reflection.

Perhaps most importantly though, we were amazed and heartened by the speakers not only sticking around for the rest of the day after they were finished, but for the rest of the conference. They participated in the breakouts and exercises, asked questions from the audience, ate meals and attended happy hours with the rest of us as equals. You might think this shouldn’t be an exceptional case. But it was. It made a big difference.

Marty Neumeier at DMI Amsterdam 2011

So what of the sessions themselves? As with all conferences, some hit harder than others – and that’s par for the course. However, there was healthy skepticism openly and professionally offered where warranted (as opposed to only passive aggressive Twitter-snark), rich discussions as a result, and on the whole, very strong content. It was interesting to have so many speakers all orbiting around a central issue – at times it made us long for something “off-topic”, but in the end it was one heck of a concentrated punch. We’re DMI converts, and grateful for all of our new friends and connections worldwide – that’s the way to do it!

CDC’s Zombie Apocalypse Goes Viral

It’s been a busy week at Think Brownstone and I’ve been trying to post something on the Think Blog. Although I have a backlog of topics to get to, every time I put hands to keyboard I had a bout of writer’s block…  until Brad mentioned the odd juxtaposition of the upcoming Rapture and the CDC’s blog post on preparing for a Zombie Apocalypse May 16th.

Since the original publication on the 16th, the CDC’s article has been going viral at a slow, lurching pace. It finally landed on the front page of CNN at 2:09 May 19th. Coincidentally, most scientists agree that’s about the same amount of time it would take the Solanum Virus to overtake the US Eastern Seaboard.

Braaaaaiiiinnnnsssstorming

I’m confident that the CDC’s blog post and the Rapture events are purely coincidental, but I wanted to take a moment to commend the CDC’s courage in publishing this story. The article is actually a well thought-out piece that uses the zombie apocalypse as a metaphor for emergency preparedness. As it turns out, most of what you need to do to prepare for a zombie attack is similar to what you would be doing if there were a hurricane or tornado warning.

If I had to guess how this article was approved for publication, I’d imagine some government stuffed shirt raised concern that this serious topic deserves a serious treatment. Turns out, the government has tried that approach before with mixed results. One or two wise folks in the room pointed out that the goal of the article was to raise awareness. What better way to raise awareness than to get attention with a tongue-in-cheek title and introduction?

Perhaps this mini-campaign came out of a technique we use at Think Brownstone when a team is having trouble generating new ideas: Reverse Brainstorming. In a reverse braaaiiinnnnssss storming session, the participants come up with ideas that would prevent them from achieving a goal or that would cause their problem state. Once you have a good list, brainstorm ways to prevent those things from happening. Poof – you now have a list of things to help achieve your original goal. It’s the reverse-reverse psychology of brainstorming methods and, among other things, it can help get you out of a rut.

The CDC only gets one chance to do something like this before it starts to look schlocky, and I think they aced it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to buy some duct tape, canned beans, a baseball bat, and some extra shotgun shells (’cause you know, rule #2 and all).

Google Analytics: This Beta Needs Better Data Visualization

Google Analytics recently launched a new interface (in beta, of course). Sadly, for a tool intended to help its users understand and process data, they have done very little to improve the data visualization tools built-in to the application.

Let’s pick on the Visitor Loyalty graph, which has always bothered me. It looked like this:

Google's Old View of Loyal Users

And now, the new-and-”improved” graph looks like this:

Google's New View of User Loyalty

The only thing Google improved here is changing the name from Visitor Loyalty to Frequency & Recency. The concept of “loyalty” is relative to your users, their goals, and the context of their usage, so frequency may not even be a good indicator of loyalty. For example, a loyal Google user may visit google.com more frequently than a loyal Amazon user visits amazon.com. However, a loyal Google user probably views less pages per visit than a loyal Amazon user. That does not mean that either user is less dedicated to the site, they just fulfill their needs in different ways.

So, the name change is good, but what has bothered me most about the old graph still hasn’t been fixed. My concern is that it’s virtually useless to anyone who spends time with it, and misleading to anyone who only glances at it.

Apples Meet Oranges

If you look down the left side of the graph, you’ll notice that the scale is all wonky. It goes from 8 visitors to the range 9-14. This weird incrementing creates what appears to be a bump in the data around 9-14, when it is probably a smooth curve if you map it out correctly. If that’s not confusing enough, each range is different. Another way to express the increments they are laying out would be: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, next 5, next 10, next 25, next 50, next 100, everything else. So, while the bump at 201+ may cause an initial wave of euphoria, you soon realize that the 159 visits in that bump are probably spread evenly between 201 and 360.

(Before you ask, I’ve checked across all of the high-volume and low-volume sites we monitor for our clients. The wonkification of the scale doesn’t change.)

I get what they are trying to do. Loyal users will show up in clusters around one of these increments, but when the increments continue to adjust along the span of data, it’s impossible to compare one chunk to the next. What seems to be bumps are probably nothing, but there’s no way to be sure. There cannot be a generic benchmark for frequency that applies to all sites. Trying to genericize a graph using arbitrary increments is a disservice to the data and only misleads your users.

So, how would YOU do it, Phil?

Well… the first thing I would do is make it a line graph to generate a smooth curve with a consistent scale from 0 to X, where X is the most number of visits recorded. That’s easy to do and Google Analytics uses line graphs elsewhere, so we know they have the graphing capability. It would look kinda like this:

A Useful Visitor Frequency Chart

OK, Phil, why is THIS better?

It’s better for me, but maybe not for everyone. It depends on what you need to do with the graph.

I was once asked by a client to briefly explain how I find odd things in their analytic data before anyone else. There are many different reasons to be looking at analytics reports. I play a troubleshooting role on that team, so my answer was simple: “I follow the trend line and look for aberrations. If I find one, I dig into the data to find the root cause. Then I call you.” The chart above wouldn’t set off any alarms, but the chart below would cause me to dig:

Oooh, Piece of Candy!

That peak would make anyone wonder what’s going on, but with the bar charts that Google uses, that peak would end up buried inside one of the wonky ranges.

But that’s only how I would use it for a role I play on a specific team for a site that has unique needs. That’s the weakness of the Google Analytics interface that I was hoping they would fix. I want to be able to customize their charts like I can in Excel. Sadly, the data visualization tools they offer in the new interface aren’t enough. Even more sadly, when I export the data from the wonky chart, it retains the bizarro scale. So even if I wanted to use my own charting software, the data is garbage. To quote my film editing professor, “garbage in, garbage out.”

What Would Tufte Do? (WWTD)

When I encounter poorly communicated data, I ask myself, “What would Tufte Do?” Edward Tufte has authored several books on data visualization.  While his work has sparked much debate, I believe he would have a lot to say about the use of bar charts for something like Loyalty or Engagement.

You see, even though the charts presented by Google Analytics are missing the chartjunk Tufte has railed against, they rarely communicate data in an appropriate manner. A bar graph is absolutely the wrong tool to use to analyze this set of information. To select the appropriate mapping of this data, you first have to ask yourself, “What is the user going to do with this data?”

For something like engagement (which Visitor Frequency hints at), you may want to know:

• What are the behaviors of an engaged user?
• Are we losing, gaining, or keeping a consistent level of engaged users?

Both of these would require completely different visualizations of data, but neither is served by the out-of-the-box graphs presented by Google. My gripe about the out-of-the-box graphs in Google Analytics is that I often can’t figure out what they are trying to tell me, and they don’t let me customize the graphs to meet my needs.

We are entering a period where strong data visualization is getting a lot of attention. It’s more than making pretty pictures, it’s making images that provide value and answer questions. Google Analytics is a valuable tool for an unbeatable price, but when a new version is launched and the greatest value you’ve added is a UI facelift, you’re kind of missing the mark.

Design Thinking: Don’t Call It A Comeback

Like so many other things in the blogosphere, Design Thinking is apparently dead. That is, if you agree with Bruce Nussbaum, the once eloquent champion of Design Thinking who recently declared that it was a failed experiment and that it’s time to move on. Apparently, he’s not alone. A growing number of critics are joining the chorus – some have gone so far as to say that extolling the virtues of design thinking is at best misguided and at worst, likely to inflict dangerous harm.

As the argument goes, Design Thinking was envisioned to inject creativity into the hyper-analytical, profit-driven processes that hamper organizational change and innovation. As it evolved over the last decade, it was commoditized to appeal to business culture and eventually transformed into a linear, methodical, risk-averse Process (with a capital P). It’s suggested that this Process stifles, not cultivates, the experimental, precarious, and often disorderly activities that fuel innovation.

Available at your local tattoo shop. You might want to get it only as a stick-on.

Others think that business never bought into the message. Helen Walters notes that there was never really a consensus on the definition of Design Thinking or agreement as to how it should be implemented. Purported successes were either elevated as the unrivaled accomplishments of the elite few who “got it” or degraded as merely incremental changes that would never amount to widespread organizational transformation.

Still others argue that Design Thinking was doomed from the start. It will never produce the results we were hoping for because design considerations will always be an afterthought, long after strategic decisions about a product or service have been established. Business is driven by numbers and expediency, not creative chaos. Therefore, designers should just be resigned to their fate as “aesthetic window dressers.”

Ironically, Nussbuam’s post included a video in which he asked Tim Brown from IDEO if, within this period of great turmoil, design should be considered a social movement. Brown replied that the concept of design as a social movement is not new but what may make it so is the combination of Design Thinking plus social networking sites, collaborative environments and all of the other things that are allowing so many more people to create and/or influence design outcomes. It’s through what he calls “the democratization of design,” that design has the potential to solve major social issues.

On the one hand, Design Thinking has no sustainable value but on the other hand it has the potential to transform our world? I don’t get it. It’s not time to move on. It’s time to refocus. The best place to start is to establish a consensus on the guiding principles of Design Thinking… a credo of sorts. Here are some initial thoughts to jumpstart the conversation:

Design Thinking Thrives On Passion For Purpose

Design Thinking is inspired by an unwavering commitment to improve the human experience. We believe that meeting this challenge improves quality of life for all of us, and we’re committed to doing it one company, one process, and one outcome at a time. We help our clients envision and enact solutions within the context of what’s important to both the users and business. Organizational politics, unrealistic deadlines and arbitrary constraints may deter our progress but we’re committed to fighting the good fight to rid the world of frustrating experiences from the most endemic and systemic to the most mundane and minute. We’re okay with incremental change as long as it’s constant.

Design Thinkers Work With Their Clients, Not For Them

We share a deep appreciation for, and commitment to, a holistic view of design – infused with experiential wisdom and a process (yes, a process, but with a small “p” because it’s open and flexible) that enables us to tackle complex business problems, with our clients. We don’t say to our clients, “okay…now we’re going to go off for a few weeks, do some design thinking, and come back with an idea that’ll make you more innovative.” We simply guide them to think in a different way – to understand the benefits of an iterative and interactive process. We work collectively to achieve a common understanding of the problem and opportunities before us, to observe and learn from those who will be experiencing our outcomes, and ride the ebb and flow of the creative process recognizing that the true innovation is never constrained by the status quo.

Design Thinking is Contextual

Design Thinking is an inclusive process that leverages the collective knowledge and experiences of those who are most impacted by its outcomes, but it must also address the overarching needs of the business. We have to come to terms with the fact that our clients are not going to pursue novel solutions without the promise that they will contribute to the bottom line. If we want to ensure that design considerations are at the forefront of strategic discussions, we have to be diligent about framing design outcomes within the context of market opportunity. In a sense we have to be “a creative group with business minds.” To this end, we must commit to an ongoing dialogue by sharing our stories of success and failure and learning from each other’s experiences rather than simply espousing the idea that only a select few can actually get it right.

What do you think? If you believe that it’s way too early to declare that Design Thinking is a failed experiment, what inspires you to stay focused?