The Fold is Dead. Long Live The Fold.

The past several years have seen a slow and steady decline in the population of viable newspapers in the US. Along with this has come an outcry for the loss of many newspapery things like objective reporting, long-form investigative journalism, and locally-focused news outlets. One thing that’s not going anywhere, though, is the concept of The Fold.

If you’ve been even tangentially involved in the world of web design, you’ve heard of The Fold. Likely, you’ve heard it used thusly…

“We need these 47 elements above the fold. Can’t you just shrink the text?”
“Marketing is going to want their badge above the fold.”
“We need to present our disclaimer language above the fold.”

The idea being that if a user doesn’t see everything that needs to be seen in the first three seconds of their visit, they’re never going to see it.

Seriously?

In his fantastic Life Below 600px, Paddy Donnelly points out that the whole concept of Above The Fold was to entice people to buy a newspaper based on the top half of the front page. They didn’t try to cram a headline for every article up there, just the key few. The bulk of the content appears below the fold or even (God help us), on a deeper page.

Meanwhile, usability practitioners have been preaching for well over a decade about how scrolling is safe. Furthermore, if you design your page to encourage scrolling and give the user a reason to read, you’ll do even better.

On top of all of this, can anyone out there tell me where The Fold lives? ‘Cause screen resolution ain’t even the half of it. You also need to consider:

• Browsers: IE? Firefox? Chrome? Safari?
• OS: OS X? Windows (XP, Vista, 7)?
• Window Size: Full screen, windowed?
• Toolbars

Where's the fold?

I’m sure one could take all these factors into account and come up with an over/under for The Fold, but really….

While my design brain wants to say The Fold doesn’t matter, the research brain makes a strong argument for not ignoring it. As with so much in life, it’s really a combination of both. So let’s break it down even more so there’s no confusion:

Yes, people scroll…
…if we give them a reason to scroll…
…and we consistently reward their scrolling.

Ironically, maybe we’d be better served by taking the metaphor that started all this to the extreme. Next time your co-workers or clients mention The Fold, pull out a newspaper (assuming you can find one) and look closely at how they manage it. While you might not want to emulate their business model, you gotta admit they’ve got layout nailed.

Divergent Thinking vs Convergent Thinking

Brian recently pointed everyone in the office to the Wikipedia article on Design Thinking. I never thought to go to Wikipedia to learn about what we do, but it’s always good to see what the crowd thinks, so I dove in, and I’m glad I did.

One thing that caught my eye that I haven’t stopped to think about for a long time is the difference between Divergent and Convergent thinking. It is so integrated into what we do, that we just don’t stop to think about the theories behind these two methods of thinking. We often rail against tired concepts in our industry like “think outside the box,” yet we still try to capture what that phrase meant before it became a cliché. It’s good to go back to the basics once in a while.

Phil Mulls Over Convergence vs Divergence

In my words: divergent thinking is taking a challenge and attempting to identify all of the possible drivers of that challenge, then listing all of the ways those drivers can be addressed. In practice, it’s more than just brainstorming. Some analysis is needed so you don’t put too many tools in your swiss army knife, but you shouldn’t hamstring yourself with too many constraints, either.

There are many extreme examples of divergent thinking out there. Twitter, for instance, created an online service without a clear practical application – then launched it to see how people used it so they could refine it. That doesn’t mean that launching something and then figuring out what the market is for it is a bullet-proof strategy. In Twitter’s case it worked, in most cases it doesn’t. You just don’t hear about the failures because…well…they failed.

Convergent thinking, on the other hand, is the practice of trying to solve a discrete challenge quickly and efficiently by selecting the optimal solution from a finite set (again, these are my words).

There are a lot of memorable examples of convergent thinking out there that demonstrate the necessity for this technique. For instance, how about that scene in Apollo 13 where the astronauts are trying to generate enough power to get the capsule back to Earth? The chief orders his team to make the capsule simulator “cold and dark” and create “the exact same conditions they’ve got” – right down to the readings on all of the instrument panels. One of his engineers says “I need a flashlight”, and the response is “That’s not what they have up there. Don’t give me anything they don’t have on board.” The challenge is discrete and the solutions are limited to the constraints of a hard reality.

The challenge in Design Thinking is framing the challenges correctly when you want a specific result. Frame it one way and you may be leading the group to spend two months brainstorming when all you needed was a hammer four weeks ago. Frame it the other way and you could end up with a team chasing every problem with the same old hammer while your competition invented the screwdriver.

Here’s an example of the same problem framed for divergent and convergent thinking:

Convergent example:

I live four miles from work. My car gets 30 MPG. I want to use less fuel in my commute for financial and conservation reasons. Money is no object. Find the three best replacement vehicles for my car.

Divergent Example:

I live four miles from work. My car gets 30 MPG. I want to use less fuel in my commute for financial and conservation reasons. Money is no object. What options do I have to reduce my fuel consumption?

The problem is the same, but the questions change slightly. The Convergent example asks for a vehicle, whereas the Divergent example doesn’t rule out options like moving closer to work, telecommuting, walking, carpooling, taking public transportation, etc.

All ideas are not always created equal

Both examples will produce valuable results. The convergent example may be driven by another issue – perhaps my current car was totaled and I only have a weekend to solve the problem. The divergent example may take more time to investigate – but you may discover an option that is completely different than what the user has asked you to do – like start your own company from home or invent a car that runs off of air. Or, if your brain works like Mike’s did when I asked for an illustration, you may expose your inner Inspector Gadget.

A lot has been said and speculated about Steve Jobs and the design process since he passed. The reality distortion field he was known to exude may have been his way of imposing convergent thinking at just the right times. Insisting that you need to ship in three months when everyone tells you it will take ten months can quickly move a group from divergent to convergent thinking. NOTE: This is a very dangerous tactic very few people can pull off. Among other things, you need a unique character, extensive platform knowledge, an abnormally talented team, and a high tolerance for failure to know when to play this card.

As designers outside of the reality distortion field, one of our jobs is to pick the right thinking method to ensure the project’s (and our client’s) success.

Everything To Everyone: Design As A Commodity?

Visit one of your favorite aggregators of design/business articles and do a search for “everything to everybody”, and you’re sure to get an interesting set of material back. Unsurprisingly, what you read won’t be touting the benefits of such a strategy; it’ll be a lot of cautionary tales and advice around focusing on and exploiting your core strengths. But when you’ve got a shop full of really smart, well-rounded folks with colorful skill sets and employment histories…and when you’re frequently asked by clients (to whom you’ve proven your mettle) to tackle wide-ranging projects for them, and succeed, it’s easy to backslide into thinking you can indeed do it all.

Actually, wait a sec…since there’s a part of me that sincerely believes our team really can do it all (owing a lot to our process)…let me rephrase: it’s easy to backslide into telling others who don’t know you very well that you can indeed do it all.

I can tell you from experience that in this situation, the smart folks on the other end of the table will challenge you – and they are right to do so. I should clarify that I believe that our process and our method of design thinking is useful for solving all kinds of diverse and complex problems; some of which we can tackle ourselves start to finish, and some of which we serve better by being part of a broader cross-functional team. That’s a lot different from trying to be, or thinking we can be, “everything to everyone.”

"Yep, We Do That Too"

As consumers, sometimes we are willing to accept the “one stop shop” in our daily lives – an obvious example is the superstore. But when do we accept this? When we are willing to go with the safe, the generic, and the bare minimum of service and attention to detail for the sake of saving time and a few dollars. Sometimes there’s nothing wrong with that, it just depends on whether or not it aligns with your goals. If my family is staying with me over the holidays, I might indeed stock up on paper goods at Giant, because they’re a commodity (to me, anyway – but you may disagree and insist on exclusive use of toilet paper woven by Korean silkworms). But if I want to have good bagels for the New York contingent in the morning (note: nothing you buy in a package has the right to be even classified as a “bagel”), I need to go to a local shop where they make them fresh every morning and not just by punching holes in kaiser rolls.

But let’s up the stakes, and talk about our homes – where most of us have higher standards. If I’ve got the plumber over for an estimate and he happens to notice a small piece of drywall missing and says “hey, I can patch that up for you while I’m here if you want” – I might be inclined to say “yeah sure, that sounds great!” Low stakes, I don’t need to be too discerning, and it’s very convenient. But if I’ve got a few rooms stripped back to the studs and he says “hey, I can drywall all of that for you if you want, run the electric, re-point that fireplace, and fix that antique stained glass for you”, the stakes are a lot higher, I need that stuff done right, and it’s going to take a lot of scrutiny to convince me that he’s really an expert at each of these things let alone the right guy for the job.

So, back to experience design – we’ve been developing some really fantastic partnerships lately, with folks who understand this reality. Many of the places we have partnerships with have small internal UX groups – and for the small patch jobs, they’re more than equipped for the task. But when it comes to heavy lifting, high stakes, enterprise-wide UX work – they know it’s time to get us on the horn. Similarly, when it comes to high level HTML and CSS templates or digital assets that require minimal coding, etc., we’re internally equipped for the task. When it comes to the back end of dynamic CMS-driven applications, HD iPad apps, and other high-tech development, it’s better for us and our clients to call in our dedicated partners.

In theory, a bunch of these focused businesses could be pulled together under a single umbrella and effectively become a one-stop shop, but I’ve worked places before where that was attempted (and know of a few operating right now as well…) and the reality is that I haven’t seen it implemented in a way where the quality was able to be maintained. Operations, logistical overhead, and the inevitability of layers of management overseeing skill sets they don’t remotely understand always seems to result in…well, superstore quality output.

So in the end it just comes back to what you’re trying to achieve…what kind of experience do you want for your customers? What kind of experience do you want to have when working on that project? Knowing whether you’re in the market for toilet paper or authentic bagels will greatly determine where you go shopping.

A Website Walks Into A Bar…

I recently met with a project team to talk about content strategy for a website redesign, specifically about the tone and personality that we need to get across in the site. I described the desired state as: “If this website was at a cocktail party, we want it to be the most interesting person in the room without going to the extreme of having a lampshade on its head.”

This off-the-cuff description of the site’s personality made me start thinking about how to actually achieve that effect, and how it can be taken to an extreme.

Who is the most interesting person in the room at a cocktail party? Someone who…

• Invites conversation with both friends and new acquaintances
• Engages you in conversation while making you feel comfortable and important
• Tells great stories
• Draws you in and makes you want to get to know them more
• Has personality!

These are not just what gives people that je ne sais quoi in a social situation; these are all things that give a website personality too. A website that has these characteristics is one that stands out from the crowd, draws users in, and keeps them there.

If Your Website Has "Skip Intro" Anywhere On It, It's One Of These Guys

Certainly, there can be some serious missteps in attempting to infuse a site with personality. Here are some cases of website personality gone bad (we originally toyed with including links here, but decided to let you identify your own – you’ll be able to spot them):

The “It’s Got a Great Personality” Website

This is the unfortunate case where the copy is saying all the right things, and the company has a great story to tell, but it’s masked by poor execution: inefficient site structure, visual design that doesn’t compliment the message, and/or confusing interactions. Common offenders: specialty manufacturing sites, benefits providers, and others with deep data repositories, lots of internal infrastructure reflected in the information architecture, and/or exhaustive customization options.

The “Lampshade On It’s Head” Website

This is the wild and crazy guy website with the equivalent of finger guns that is just trying too hard. These sites want so badly for you to be their friend/customer that they appear overbearing and desperate. They may have sleek or even flashy design, and content that’s more marketing-speak and fluff than simple substance and utility. Common offenders: restaurants, slightly off-the-mark advertising campaigns, and start-ups trying a little to hard to break the industry conventions.

The “Wallflower” Website

This is the site that isn’t quite sure how to best let its true colors show, so it retreats in the corner nursing a lukewarm cup of punch – watching everyone else. They blend in among the noise of the web, coming across as generic and revealing their treasures to a small select few…perhaps coming across as cold and impersonal as a result. Common offenders: content aggregators, government sites, and non-profits that haven’t learned that a little personality doesn’t necessarily equal alienation – and that being milquetoast is often worse.

But of course, beauty (and personality) is in the eye of the beholder. It’s important to keep in mind that the characteristics of a website with great personality will mean different things to different industries and consequently, different user groups. The Lampshade website at a financial industry party may look like the Wallflower at a fashion industry party; it takes some smart market & user research to determine what kind of personality your own little monster should have to be most effective.

So let your customers know who you really are! Invite them to converse with you, make them feel important, and tell a great story. Cheers!

It’s The Little Things

I took a spill off my bike earlier this summer and managed to break my index finger. The intervening months have seen many doctor and rehab visits, but just last week I was at the Orthopedist waiting for my final checkup to ensure everything was as good as it felt.

As a good (and somewhat anal-retentive) patient, I arrived around 10:00 for my 10:10 appointment. I believe they called me back to an exam room around 10:30. There I proceeded to wait for another 25 minutes until the doctor came to see me, 45 minutes after my appointment time. As I passed those 25 minutes, I heard the doctor spending copious amounts of time with the patients before me; explaining (and re-explaining) how a procedure would work, gushing over another’s vacation photos from the lake house, and generally doing every unintentional thing in his power to work me into a good lather.

ARE YOU READY TO PARTAAAAAY?!?!?

When the doctor finally arrived, he was his usual upbeat, friendly, and approachable self. He immediately apologized for his delay, explaining that the morning’s storms had knocked out their power, causing a 45-minute delay to the start of their day. After a quick examination, he dictated some notes into the EMR system on his laptop and I was sent on my way with a clean bill of finger-health.

Driving back to the office, I started to tick off all the key interactions of that visit that built up to my overall experience:

Check In

The receptionist gave no sign or indication of a delay (she barely gave signs of life), missing an opportunity to set my expectations and nip any annoyance in the bud.

No Cellphone Policy

This office has many prominent “Turn off cellphones before entering office” signs. In this day and age, a policy like this is curious. Is it a safety issue? Privacy? Politeness?

• Pro: There was a large variety of (current!) magazines to read, so my boredom was sated. Well-played.
• Con: I heard so many other people’s phones going off that I eventually ignored the ban took a hit off my Designed by Apple in California crackpipe. Many important things happen on Twitter in 45 minutes!

Doctor/Patient Banter:

• Pro: This doctor isn’t just about maximizing throughput. He spends the time to explain procedures to patients. He gets to know them. He has real human interactions with them. This is a guy that can put me at ease when serious medical issues arise.
• Con: Be aware of your surroundings. Bones and joints aren’t the most personally sensitive parts of people’s bodies, but they might not want all the other people in the hall to hear every word of their diagnosis. Also, there’s a time and a place for everything. Maybe you build time into your schedule to get to know your patients, but when you’re running 45 minutes behind, that’s not appropriate. There’s no need to rush, just level with people and they’ll likely understand. We’ve all been there.

Technology

EMR/EHR systems are becoming the norm. There are serious incentives for practices to implement them. However, with that comes new challenges and opportunities.

• Pro: This is the first time I’ve seen a doctor dictate their notes into an EMR. I’d never thought of it before, but what a fantastic thing. Now I know not only what the doctor tells me, but also what he is putting in my file. This is a great way to pull back the curtain that frequently separates a patient from their records. Remember Elaine and her files? No more.
• Con: Power outages mean servers can go down, batteries can run out. Physicians need sophisticated IT equipment to ensure minimal downtime. When your ISP has a better SLA than your healthcare provider things are a little out of whack.

Overall, my visit was a decent one. I got a clean bill of health and despite the delays, I was out of there in under an hour. Having said that, could it have been better? You bet. I spent 45 of those sub-60 minutes waiting to see the doctor. I wouldn’t call that respecting the client’s time. Ideally, I would have arrived and been immediately notified of the delay, giving me an opportunity to step out and make any work-related calls or adjust my day’s schedule. From there I could have settled in to a good issue of Bicycling and been at least resigned to the delay when the doctor finally saw me, instead of the fired-up state I was in after stewing in various holding patterns for three-quarters of an hour.

These are the things we tend to obsess over at Think Brownstone. Many times they’re minor points, but they can also be the straws that break the camel’s back (or the toothpicks that build the bridge). Crafting an extraordinary experience for your employees, customers, or patients is an exercise that requires a holistic approach including time-honored practices, divergent thinking, and above all an intense attention to detail. Luckily, that’s right up our alley.

Love What You Do and Do It Well

If you’ve ever had the misfortune to push the philosophy of “do what you love” while I’m within earshot, you’ve heard me enter into a tirade. You hear it all the time – people promoting the notion that if you pursue a career in something you are passionate for, you will be successful.  As a realist, I have to disagree with this philosophy. There are two main points to my argument:

Point 1: If everyone did what they loved, we’d have a shortage of poopsmiths

All kidding aside, there are some awful jobs out there that are both necessary and undesirable. Remember Russ’ story about his dad? We should always show respect for the folks who do the jobs nobody wants to do. They are the everymen and women who keep the world spinning while putting food on the table. I’m sure every one of them has a passion in life that they’d rather be pursuing, but reality has dealt them a hand they have to play and they’ve found a way to make it work. In many of those cases, I doubt their hopes and dreams included their two full time, back-breaking, thankless jobs.

Point 2: Just because you have a passion for something does not mean you do it well

I’ve pursued my fair share of passions that I never mastered enough to be a pro in: cooking, glass blowing, and writing, to name a few. All I love, all I find exceedingly gratifying, but that doesn’t make me good enough at any of them to eke out even a meager living.

I realize there ARE people who have pursued “do what you love” and were able to either make a living out of it or became wildly successful. There are many in the former category, but to be in the latter is rare. If you’re putting all your eggs in that basket, you are very likely to be disappointed.

Love what you do and do it well

I’m not as cynical as this makes me sound. Nothing is quite as infectious as watching someone who loves what they do while they do it well. Now, there’s a philosophy I can get behind. See what I did there? I turned it around. It’s not “Do what you love” it’s “Love what you do.” We are all good at several things. Your job as a contributing member of society is to find something you can be good at and have a passion for and pursue that. Passion is infectious.

I’m not talking about primal desire, I’m talking about a deep love and respect for your craft. It’s the difference between that couple that makes out on the couch at your party all night (but breaks up a month later) and the old man who gently pats his wife’s hand with a tear in his eye. The first type of passion is what gives us flavor-of-the-month professions, such as “Pumpkin Ice Cream Scooping Specialist” or “Social Media Marketer.” The second type of passion you see every day in the most successful folks in their profession. Here are some examples:

Music

I’ve made a pact with myself to avoid shows just because “I have to see them before they break up or one of them dies.” I prefer to go to shows where I can sense the passion of the musicians on stage. If I have to choose between seeing The Who and Bon Iver again, I’ll pick Bon Iver. Not because Roger Daltrey is getting crusty, but because I don’t sense his passion anymore. Justin Vernon’s passion is palpable on stage. To top it off, he’s surrounded himself with an ensemble that has not only made his work better, but watching them work together is amazing. If you like indy/alt music and haven’t seen them on stage, you should seek them out.

Food

A recent episode of Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations has him revisiting the renowned Spanish restaurant El Bulli before they permanently closed their doors. If you are into food, check out this episode. Bourdain sits down with the chef/owner Ferran Adrià to enjoy one of their 30-some course meals. As each course is brought out, Adrià gives gentle guidance on the dish, then quietly giggles, coos, and moans as he enjoys his own creations. This is a man who loves what he does, is exceptionally good at it, and has made a career out of teaching and sharing his craft with others.

The cage-free peppercorns are lovely this time of year

I love dining out and I particularly love eating at places where the entire staff shares the passion of the restaurant. They’re not just rattling off a script about the farm-raised, cage-free peppercorns in your salad. They want you to love it. I have a friend who never orders his own meal. Instead, he says, “Bring me what you would order.” Some servers find this frustrating; some just bring you the most expensive items on the menu; but when you encounter someone who crafts a meal they honestly love, you’ll know it and you’ll appreciate it.

The Daily Grind

Most of the people I know work because they have to. Many of them have chosen a profession that they are exceptionally good at and have a passion for.  They get that glimmer in their eye when you ask them about their job, but you still know that if they chose to “do what they love” rather than “love what they do,” they’d be playing guitar on the sidewalk, or reading romance novels all day, or sitting in a meadow counting the clouds.

I am known to talk a lot, but one of the things I like to do at Think Brownstone is to sit back and listen to a Brownstoner or a client when they are jazzed about something they’re working on. If they’re truly passionate, the vibe of the entire room changes. Voices get louder with excitement; people start talking with their hands; someone starts sketching on a whiteboard, someone else jumps up to grab the marker, and whatever we’re working on gets better.

Sure, when I’m filling out my timesheets or working on page 53 of a 70-page requirements document, I might think to myself, “I’d rather be in the glass studio.” I can still do that, but in the meantime, I’m grateful that I chose a craft that I love and, IMHO, I do it pretty darn well.

Change: It’s About The Experience (Like Everything Else)

At Think Brownstone, we don’t shy away from the fact that the most common Experience Design targets tend to be applications (mobile, tablet, desktop, etc.) and web technology – there’s a lot of exciting and important work being done there, and it’s the way in which we first engaged with many of our long-term clients. But lately we’ve been having more and more conversations outside of that realm, talking about things like recruiting methods, informal learning strategies, charity events, and non-profit donation experiences (among others).

Recently, we spoke with a client who is anticipating a major organizational change and is looking for strategies to facilitate the shift internally. The change will be on a scale that it will affect every individual in the organization in many different ways. The impacts will be felt on a continuous basis, in a manner that will require quick and agile response to keep the organization in alignment. It’s what you might call, in official terms, a “wicked problem”.

The client team needed to prepare themselves to adapt, react, and shepherd employees through the uncertainty and turmoil to achieve the business goals that are triggering the change. A problem like this may sound overwhelming, intimidating, or even insurmountable. To an Experience Designer, however, it’s the kind of challenge that gets us out of bed in the morning. So, we scheduled a session with the client team, and pulled out all of the stops – including round trip transportation to the Think Space via party bus and free reign of the space after the scheduled portion wrapped up. We were going to tackle some heavy problems, and we wanted the experience with us to be as easy and comfortable as possible.

All Hands On Deck At The Think Space

There are, of course, many different ways to approach this issue and plenty of respected and long-standing organizational theories and models to consider that can help guide the process of managing change. But our natural response to approaching a problem like this, while it may be informed by organizational psychology and related fields, stems from our holistic Experience Design perspective. We truly believe that any challenge can be successfully addressed at a fundamental level by following the design process, even if certain steps might require tweaking based on the specifics (something Carl brought up repeatedly during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill). We also believe that the arguments around Design Thinking being dead or alive tend to boil down to yet another battle of semantics – the fundamentals are sound no matter what you call it – and have learned from experience that teaching our clients the fundamental tenets of Design Thinking gives them some additional arrows in their quiver to point at organizational problems that need solving.

Scratching The Surface

So, that’s what we did – providing a reusable structure that can not only help define the problem, business objectives, and employee needs, and drive appropriate solutions, but it can also help the client team navigate through unexpected challenges and determine appropriate solutions throughout the change process. It’s all in a day’s work for…Think Brownstone! Let us know if you’d like to learn more.

Extreme Makeovers: People & Organizations

There’s some truth in the statement that a good consultant shouldn’t be afraid to tell a client when their “baby is ugly”. If you’ve got evidence to back it up, it does nobody any good to keep quiet in the interest of not making waves.

Some folks take pride in their blunt approach to delivering this kind of news, seeing themselves as uncompromising Howard Roarks and idealistic warriors for their discipline. And yes, there are some clients who are enamored of this kind of audacity (at least at first), but personally I’ve found that far more appreciate your taking the time to understand the political and emotional landscape and be more tactful about how the message is delivered. This measured approach need not be any less confident; contrary to being rendered mediocre by not reflexively shooting from the hip, it’s simply more collaborative and thoughtful.

Plume Publishing's Iconic Cover For "The Fountainhead"

We’ve been talking with a few organizations lately that have a rich history of success but just haven’t kept up with the times. I’ve been trying to put myself in the shoes of a company that, like the nerdy kid in the teen flick, is told that they need to lose the glasses, stop staying in to paint pewter figurines on Friday nights, and learn to dance. It’s an easy and perhaps obvious thing for a consultant to identify, but what must it feel like when you’re on the receiving end? Particularly when your vision and sweat equity created that identity in the first place? It’s PERSONAL.

I’ve come up with a metaphor from my own life, and think there might be a few lessons in it. Music has been on the back burner for me lately, but for a long time it was my main outlet outside of work and a big part of my identity.

Lesson #1: Determine The True Self-Perception

It may not have actually been a big part of how others saw me, but music was a big part of how I saw myself. Even if he/she were correct, and even if deep down I could see the truth in it (I could), someone telling me that music wasn’t as fundamental to my external identity as I thought it was would have at a minimum prompted some major self-examination and redefinition. I wouldn’t have advised anyone to make that statement to me without carefully thinking about how to frame it and having a plan for where to productively take the conversation afterward. Consultants would do well to plan for the same – statements like “we really should think about a new name and logo” are like throwing verbal grenades into the middle of the room…not understanding the emotional bedrock you might be upsetting could be a critical mistake.

Lesson #2: Appreciate The Unique Trigger Points

For years I identified myself as a “Fender Guy”, and in almost all pictures snapped during my years of moderate musical success, I’m wearing a Strat or a P-Bass – that’ll do a lot to influence self-perception. Other musicians will also identify with the fact that the unique feel and weight of those instruments, the way that they looked when staring down at them onstage, the way that they responded to playing them…these things became essential and core to my relationship with the music I made. However, at one point my live setup was becoming cumbersome for a number of technical reasons I won’t go into here, and another instrument and amplification/effects combo become much more logical for what I was personally trying to achieve. Considering a move to a new instrument was agonizing for me. If I wasn’t playing a Fender on stage, who was I? Was I the same musician? Was I even the same guy? Obviously, these were questions that at best baffled and at worst bored my family and friends. “Music is music, who gives a crap? Get the guitar that makes the most sense and get on with it. Does it even matter?” Yes. It does. And every unique person in every unique organization will have his or her own little variant on this theme that it is worth clearly understanding should you travel down this rocky road with them. As an outsider, what you may deem trivial – and may even know to be trivial – may be absolutely crucial to your client, even if only temporarily until their vantage point is altered.

Back In The Day...With A Strat In Hand, Of Course

Lesson #3: Focus On The Constants, Not The Variants

In the end, those who suggested that the instrument didn’t matter were partially right. Like those of us who love the warmth (real or perceived) of listening to music on vinyl, you can’t deny the aesthetic of a favorite instrument…for me, it’s even how the thing smells when I open the case. But for me to achieve what I was trying to make happen on stage – the number of different sounds, ones un-colored by the “Fender sound”, etc., I needed to make a switch. On stage for a while it was a bit like wearing new shoes you’re not completely sure of yet, but eventually I grew into my new “persona” and felt it was for the better. I’m not kidding myself that anyone else out there cared, but it most certainly mattered to me. And I moved through it by staying focused on the core of what I was trying to do, the core of the music, and the things that would always be constant no matter what instrument I was wearing – similar to the core values conversations that are had around branding and rebranding, because on a small scale, that’s what I was doing to myself.

In that way it’s probably similar to a change of wardrobe or hairstyle…it’s a good friend indeed that will pull you aside and suggest an update, and a better one that does it with the required tact, an action plan, and a true understanding of who you are at the core and what’s important to you. A good consultant does that too.

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?

Taking The Design Conversation Beyond Designers

My dad was a teacher (industrial arts, performing arts, special education), a general contractor, a motorcycle enthusiast, a trumpet player, a furniture maker, a lethal racquetball player, a cigar aficionado, and a whole host of other things. On paper that seems like the resume of a pretty well rounded individual – and he certainly was. But what is very interesting in retrospect is how he wasn’t any of these things in isolation. His knowledge of all of these little aspects of life informed decisions he made elsewhere, resulting in novel approaches to challenges that often suffered from a tradition of “having always been done that way.”

This broad and general interest in, well…everything…and his ability to distill concepts and apply them elsewhere, was one of the reasons why he was very often successful when diving deeper for projects within his “professions.” I believe that one of the best things you can be as a designer is open-minded, wide-eyed, and eager to learn how and why people do things they do – whether it’s why carpenters use those seemingly antiquated flat pencils (1), why the sommelier hands you the cork after opening a bottle of wine (2), or why a semicolon, dash, and closed parenthesis has become widely recognized a winking smiley face (3).

ANSWER KEY!

1. Because they don’t roll away – not to mention that they’re more durable for throwing them in with a bunch of other tools, have better grip, can draw thin or thick lines depending on how they’re rotated, and are tough enough to mark up concrete and stone.
2. Because feeling a cork to determine how cool, wet, dry, hard or soft it is can tell you a lot about whether the wine has been properly stored – it’s not to smell it.
3. Because of the “Law of Prägnanz” – the tendency of humans to interpret ambiguous images as simple and complete versus complex and incomplete.

Sometimes the various design circles we travel in can feel pretty insular. We tend to see the same folks showing up repeatedly as speakers and attendees at conferences, tend to all react to and discuss the next big idea (or internet meme) as a community, and tend to put our thoughts and ideas out there knowing that the people swimming in the lanes closest to us are those most likely to read and comment on them.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, and it’s great to have a community of colleagues to kick things around with…but perhaps obviously, the best designs often come from being inspired by and interacting with folks who don’t populate our beaten paths (like the inspiration sparked by the whole TED model, for instance).

As designers at Think Brownstone, it’s a measure of success for us to have our ideas and conversations ripple out beyond our peers. We’re starting to see evidence of that as we’ve recently had comments on the Think Blog from academics, musicians, consumers, and others – as a design community, this kind of interaction will only make us stronger and more creative.

I’ll close with one of those pearls of wisdom from my dad that was delivered in a typically off-handed and matter-of-fact way, but that I’ve never forgotten. One hot summer day when I was a kid, as the garbage truck came lumbering down the street, my dad dropped what he was doing and said “hey, come help me grab some beers out of the fridge” (yes, you read that right – beers). When the truck pulled up, my dad handed a generous amount of cans to the genuinely surprised and grateful men. As it rolled away I asked him why he did that…

“Everyone you meet in life, whether it’s the guy picking up your garbage, the guy signing your paycheck, or the guy begging you for change, knows how to do a thousand things you don’t know how to do. Aside from just being nice to people because it’s a good way to be, you can learn a shitload from them.” – Bill Starke