On January 25th, the New York Times published a lengthy piece focusing on the “human costs” of Apple’s manufacturing process. The piece is structured around the May 19, 2011 explosion at a Foxconn factory in Chengdu, China. The explosion was determined to be caused by the combustion of aluminum dust that resulted from the polishing of iPads that the site assembles. Authors Charles Duhigg and David Barboza do a nice job illustrating the human side of the amazing manufacturing feats that are achieved to help Apple and other electronics manufacturers turn out new products at a breakneck pace. It clearly hit a nerve, as Tim Cook issued a company-wide email soon thereafter in response.

I’m writing this post on my MBP that is currently charging my iPhone. It’s a challenge for me to simply watch a TV show without referencing my iPad at least once to look something up or wait out a commercial break. As a lover of Apple products, I couldn’t help but feel some level of guilt as I read about this incident (not to mention the day-to-day situation at these factories). I like to think that I make a lot of conscious decisions about how I can live my first-world life in a way that reduces my impact on others. Winter aside, I buy the majority of my produce from a local farmer. I drive a car that gets over 40mpg. My household recycles far more than we throw out. You get the point. So again, my concern: was my Apple habit supporting the exploitation and endangerment of others? Yes and no.

If you simply read Duhigg and Barboza’s piece, you’d be right in thinking that Apple is taking advantage of developing countries like China, squeezing them to work an inhuman pace to satiate our need for new iStuff. Pull back a bit, though, and you get a more measured view. Forbes had a nice reaction piece, citing a lot of economic theory that is still making my head spin. Thankfully, they reduced it into a bite-sized infographic (which Forbes is mysteriously no longer hosting). Also, dig deeper and read Apple’s Supplier Responsibility Progress Report from 2012. You’ll find that many of the numbers in the Times piece were reported by Apple. Dell and Samsung, the first two comparable electronics manufacturers that popped into my mind publish no such detailed reports that I can find. Dell makes something of an effort. Samsung…sends letters?

"C'mon, Apple."

Look, in comparison to their peers, Apple’s report is pretty impressive. If it’s an attempt to greenwash the issue, then it’s a damn good one. Having said that, as (retconned) Uncle Ben told us, “With great power comes great responsibility.” Apple just had the second most-profitable quarter for any company…ever (the most-profitable quarter on record is held by ExxonMobil). I think that comparison is worth pondering a bit.

Oil companies are frequently pilloried for raking in huge profits while their customers, employees, and others are forced to pay either through their wallets, lives, or environments. If Apple is now reaping similar rewards, why not hold them to this same standard? They’re talking a good game, let’s see if we can make them follow through. Nike, for all the flak they took in the 90’s, is now showing some positive examples of how to improve working conditions in the developing world. I have to think that was achieved through a combination of public outcry and dedicated corporate leadership. Today’s Apple seems to be in a similar position to 90’s Nike. Their leadership appears to be saying the right things and taking the right steps. Now it’s up to us as their customers (and contributors to that record-setting quarter) to ensure they know what’s important to us.

Children's Museum of Phoenix

A few months ago I took my 2-year-old son to the Phoenix Children’s Museum. Like the ideal Pixar movie, it offered a near perfect blend of pure fun, ah-ha moments, and creative inspiration. In fact, I’m pretty sure my kid was dragging me home. But even more memorable than the noodle forest and pneumatic hankerchef delivery system was a shuttered room with a sign that said, “Experiment in progress: we’re designing new ways to play”.

It seems almost counterintuitive to “design” play. We often associate play with spontaneous fun that’s, at most, bounded by a loose set of ground rules (e.g. no hair pulling) that can evolve as needed. But in many ways, today’s playgrounds are designed with a heavy hand and a few too many dashes of bureaucracy. American playgrounds have morphed into spongy turf areas filled with bulbous plastic structures that offer up ready-made, predictable experiences. These structures are meant to restrict (read “protect”) as much as entertain… let alone inspire.

It’s true, on one level cities pressed by budget constraints face issues like liability and upkeep, which in turn drives the eventual lowest-common-denominator form playgrounds take. But on another level, these generic playgrounds seem designed with an insidious checklist mentality—can kids swing? check; can kids climb? check; is there a tunnel? check; will parents think its safe? check. As we all know, a checklist does not fun make.

To design play well, we should start from a different mindset. A tunnel is not inherently fun. However, crowding into a tunnel with others and collectively squishing a beach ball through it could be. Here a tunnel becomes a congregation point that supports a variety of fun and unpredictable activities. So the question guiding the project becomes: how do we create a series of similarly inviting spots that encourage inventive play? Or better yet, how do we enable the kids to create those spots for themselves?

Imagination Playground

In The New Yorker, Rebecca Mead wrote about a new breed of “interesting” playgrounds appearing in the city. One of the examplars is Imagination Playground designed by David Rockwell. The key difference from the “uninteresting” playgrounds is replacing fixed equipment with a battery of loose parts. Kids can use these parts to fashion all types of things from forts to game areas. This type of set up encourages collaboration, sharing, and a sense of collective accomplishment.

As Mead described in a podcast, this park includes a “play worker” or coordinator, someone who oversees the park and is there to help children learn to play. Instead of being overbearing, this person is meant to help liberate the kids from their parents’ intrusive (but well-intentioned) mediation. This allows the kids to figure out how to accomplish things themselves while also enabling self-direction and invention. In other words, this more loosely structured playground actually offers more freedom for imaginative play and, in turn, more challenges for kids to puzzle through than the traditional one that attempted to anticipate and cater to their perceived needs.

Naturally this principle applies to broader creative challenges, too. Creating a supportive, collaborative environment where ideas can grow in unanticipated ways will, at a minimum, lead to a more engaged team and, ideally, better end results. As design “coordinators,” enabling others to think creatively themselves (while having fun doing it) will allow everyone tackling a problem to quckly jump past the generic solutions toward the more “interesting” or appropriate ones. For everyone who’s part of the creative class, it’s up to us to discover and teach others “new ways to play”. It’s serious business.

Mark Boulton does a nice job of illustrating the highlights of whitespace usage in his post on A List Apart. It’s a few years old, but the concepts haven’t changed. He breaks it down into four main concepts:

• Macro and Micro Whitespace — the negative space between the major block-level elements of your page (macro) and the space between individual lines of text or specific inline elements (micro)
• Micro Whitespace and Legibility — the idea that how you manage your micro whitespace will directly impact the readability of your content. This can even come down to the weight of your typeface.
• Brand Messaging — how much whitespace you afford to your content will have a direct impact on how people percieve your brand. Boulton’s examples of direct mail vs. luxury brands is a good one. More examples to come, but the simple math is that less whitespace = less “class.”
• Active and Passive Usage — by default, most web browsers and applications cover the most basic of layout issues. These insure that your lines of text don’t run together and are at least legible. Defining more specific leading, kerning, or spacing across your whole document is what Boulton calls passive usage. Further defining unique whitespace settings to emphasize (or deemphasize) a specific passage would be active usage.

As with much of what we do in our profession, how you utilize your whitespace is going to have a lot to do with your goals and audience. Are you looking to encourage deep dives into complicated content or quick hits of high-level synopses? Is your audience “design-minded” or more interested in getting the best bang for their buck? How you answer these questions will help answer how you might best address whitespace within your design. Let’s look at a few examples from various industries that illustrate these principles.

Gmail

Google recently released an update to their Gmail interface that makes extensive use of whitespace to address readability on different screen sizes. The three options—“Comfortable,” “Cozy,” and “Compact”—are shorthand for “a lot”, “some”, and “minimal” whitespace. Notice how the more compact the layout becomes, the more overwhemling it becomes and the harder you have to work to parse out each separate message.

The Many Sizes of Gmail — Comfy, Cozy, and Compact

The Huffington Post

Ouch. Aside from the monstrous headline article above the fold (not in my screenshot, but trust me, it’s jammed up in there), there is little rest for your eyes on this one. Three jam-packed columns of text with some photos interspersed, presumably to draw attention, but they just get lost in the screaming cacophony of this site. Even when they do try to segregate content with those little pointy arrow labels, it’s just more noise. I’m not sure what their goal was when laying this out, but if it was to discourage actual reading and retention, they succeeded. Definitely a case of more is less.

Must...focus...so...distracting

The Verge

Contrast this site with HuffPo. Both use the same 3-column format and both are trying to jam a lot of stories on the front page. Where The Verge succeeds, though (assuming readability is their goal), is in using color and typeface — but also whitespace — to separate their stories and set them apart from each other. All those serifs down the left-hand side of Huffington add up. The Verge also does a better job of letting their columns breathe with about twice the gutter space between them.

Like HuffPo, but without the bludgeon

Aesthetics aside, there is also the question of quantifying readability and comprehension. A 2004 study from the Software Usability Research Laboratory at Wichita State University focused on the impact of whitespace on both comprehension and satisfaction. A fairly straightforward experiment, they presented participants with a standard piece of text formatted both with and without margins as well as with and without adjusted leading (the space between lines in a paragraph). They found that while reading speed dropped for the with-margin example, comprehension (and satisfaction) was higher. Additionally, while leading had no impact on speed or comprehension, participants noted that they preferred reading the samples with adjusted leading.

By now, I’m hoping you have at least a working knowledge of what whitespace is, how it can manifest itself in your designs, and some ways in which it can impact how users interact with and internalize your content. There aren’t many hard and fast rules about what works and what doesn’t (you may have noticed that study didn’t tell us the optimal margin or leading). This is the point where you, the Designer, have to step up and defend your work. If you hadn’t considered whitespace before, go back and see how you’ve used it in the past. It may be that you subconsciously accounted for all these issues just by trying to make your work “look good.” If not, take the opportunity to learn from your mistakes and prep for the next project where you can make effective use of the spaces between your content. You may find that what’s not on the page is just as important as what is.

Ice Cube… on Design!

As it turns out, Ice Cube studied architectural drafting before becoming a rapper. Who knew he was a design aficionado?! He shares his fascinating perspective on the Eames House in this video. I love the parallels between design and music techniques like mashups and sampling. “It’s not about the pieces. It’s how the pieces work together.”

Just F’ing Do Something

I’m cheating and posting two, but they’re really just different statements of the same idea: just f’ing do something…good things will happen. I think of one or both of these any time I find myself in a rut or just procrastinating.

Sleepwalk With Me

I’m a big Mike Birbiglia fan anyway, but this special recording floored me. It’s technically a comedy album, but it is so much more than that…told as a single story with a lot of hilarious tangents, it’s a brilliant take on the human condition from the “everyman” perspective. The ease of delivery diverts you from how carefully it is constructed, and the humor is a sweet icing on top of what is actually a very emotional and heartfelt story. It has a little bit of everything in it, and the first listen provided me with one of those rare moments of realizing what I was experiencing was a “masterpiece”. An inspiring piece of work. An aside – yet another instance of how “we are all patients“.

“Be More Like Yourself” – Thomas Williams

Thom was a cherished poet, writer, artist, musician, husband and teacher to thousands of kids. He was my High School English teacher, mentor, and friend. Thom left us December, 2010. This quote embodies his simple-yet-challenging style. I wrote it down in my notebook after I learned of his passing and have revisited it throughout the year.

Food at Our Feet

I asked Emily if there are any healthy lunch spots near our office. “No.” But perhaps we were too literal. There’s food everywhere, at least according to Rene Redzepi, creator of Noma, a restaurant in Denmark that’s been recognized two years running as the best in the world. Much of his menu is made up of food he and his staff foraged from its surrounding environs. It’s the age-old artist trope of taking the obvious, the available, the overlooked…and transforming it through inspired labor into something that’s intangibly *more*. With a bit of study and some creativity in the kitchen, an evening walk could eliminate a trip to the grocery store.

Artfully Visualizing our Humanity

As a part of my Grad degree, we spent a lot of time looking into how to make vast amounts of abstract data accessible for people. This Ted talk by Aaron Koblin blew me away, not just for the way he brings complex data to life, but also for his collaborative, distributed projects including the Johnny Cash filmclip ‘Ain’t no Grave’. It’s really stunning to see how each contributor’s small artwork is woven into an amazing video. Really speaks to the power of collaboration, which is so central to what we do.

Louis CK Phenom/Father

In general, I’ve been a huge fan of what Louis CK has done this year. He writes, directs, even edits his own show, and his $5 pay-me-directly-to-download comedy special quickly grossed $1 million (with $280K promised to 5 different charities and $250K to staff bonuses). But what I read that struck me as most innovative is that he crams all his work into ½ a week so he can spend the other half with his kids.

Living with Ease

In Mettā (Loving Kindness) Meditation, a recurring theme is a “life filled with ease”. Sounds nice, huh? But try really being at ease. It’s tough to achieve. This relates back to Russ’ earlier post about the role of pervasive technology in our lives. From waking to sleep – and even during sleep – we are surrounded by tools to help make life easier. And they do. But it takes a lot to manage and tend to all these ease-making tools. We cram more into our days as a result of the time these tools have saved for us. I think about this a lot and how we in the design field can be making decisions that better facilitate ease, not just the promise of it.

Silly Things are Important Too

“Don’t wait until you know who you are to make things.” – Austin Kleon

I believe that we learn so much through the process of making something, whether that thing is a painting or poem, sketch or sculpture, or just a great big mess. Not only do we gain and practice new skills, the things that we create communicate aspects of ourselves that might never otherwise come to light. It’s important to acknowledge that making silly things is just as significant.

Sketching: The Visual Thinking Power Tool

Early in 2011 I read a great article by Mike Rohde on A List Apart about the importance of sketching. The practice of sketching has been an integral part of my life for as long as I can remember. At Think Brownstone we always make sketchnotes of the conferences we attend. Sketching is a vital part of our design process, and so we’ve framed our whiteboards and sketch on them together every day. I wholeheartedly agree with Mike Rohde when he says “Sketches have an amazing ability to foster discussions about ideas. With colleagues and especially clients, I’ve found sketches give everyone involved the permission to consider, talk about, and challenge the ideas they represent. After all, it’s just a sketch.”

On behalf of the entire Think Brownstone team, we wish you a Happy New Year full of fun insights!

I know this is not a new idea, but as experience designers we’ve been talking about it from what I believe is a unique angle. Plus, it’s the holiday season, and in Brad’s words, “this is the time of year for grandiloquent posts and recaps and resolutions.” So, hell yeah, I’m going for my personal spin on it in the name of the 2012 resolution I’m making as a result.

A Still From Terry Gilliam's "Brazil". Is The Future What Garry Tan Calls "Utter Saturation of the Mentalscape"?

Recently it hit me that my life has sort of devolved into a constant movement from one LCD display to another – on many weekdays, I’ve got one of those glowing nasties in front of me from beginning to end. I realized that although it feels like I take a break from one thing and move on to something else, there’s actually an eerily dystopian quality to it all when you take a few steps back and try to look at it objectively.

Reaching for the iPhone the minute I wake up, cycles of moving from the desktop to the laptop for different tasks, being jolted out of ever-shrinking periods of deep focus by intrusive messaging mechanisms, checking in on things while at stoplights or in line at the store, taking a break from all of that to bask in the glow of the TV for a movie or some Wii, then grabbing the phone again to play games or putz around until I fall asleep. Too many parallels with addictive behavior there for my liking.

Now listen, I’m no neo-luddite – I am in no way interested in eschewing the productivity and connectivity that these tools allow. In one of our recent e-mail conversations Brad made this point, with which I wholeheartedly agree:

There’s also the more nuanced subtext here of distraction-free work areas. I don’t see reading my Kindle as a problem because it’s a dedicated device that I will sit down and read alone. By itself. I’ve also been reading a couple articles recently by serious writers (well, bloggers/reporters…but legit ones) who are using their iPads with keyboards as their full-time writing machines. Their rationale is that its unitasking helps them write without all the distractions of their full-on computer (and the all-day battery life doesn’t hurt either).

Therefore, the argument that most folks would make is that if I feel like I’m being sucked into a vortex where it’s very difficult to focus or get into a really productive, uninterrupted, creative headspace, I’m doing it to myself because I’ve opened those doors. You have to “make it a point to unplug.” Thing is, that is a lot easier to say than actually do – especially when the interface between humans and technology is a big part of where you play. I wondered whether it was related to being older and having more responsibility…Phil’s response:

I don’t necessarily agree with the sentiment that this has to do with getting older and having more responsibilities. Teaching a class of mixed grads and undergrads I can confidently say that the attention span issues related to digital devices has no generational gap. If you’re digitally engaged, you’re easily distracted. The people in my class can’t avoid looking at their phones if they buzz, the folks who are embedded in their careers are a bit better, but ask them a question they can Google and they will whip out their phone/tablet/laptop faster than you can imagine.

Why do I care? “Rhapsody In Blue” could not have been written while simultaneously answering e-mails, re-tweeting funny links, and watching the news (aside: you think you’re at your best when multi-tasking? you’re wrong). A few recent side projects have made me realize that the absorbing creative headspace that was once so easy for me to inhabit has become more difficult to establish, because my brain is now so used to skittering around and taking a million little sips from the information fire hose; it’s not nearly as accustomed to long, satisfying drinks.

My Little One, @20 Months

I am concerned about that for myself, but my task is to reclaim what once came more easily – I at least have a reference point. But for digital natives like my daughter who will know no other way of life, they will have an uphill battle to claim that mode of operation in the first place – it will be a fight against the current and undoubtedly not the norm. What will we as humans be capable of as our minds and attention spans change in this way? I hope that the generation following mine will be outraged by the suggestion that they might not be given enough personal cognitive space to create things through art or science that will change the world, and assuage my fears that we might be moving into an age of ironic homogeny brought on by information, interaction, and communication ubiquity where break-out brilliance is too rare an occurrence.

So, my resolution for 2012? To reclaim the word “meaningful” from the design community, where it has been used too often and robbed of its power. A button or a click or a brief message might be intuitive, logical, and functional. But if I interact with it, move on to a million other things, and ultimately forget it, it is not meaningful. Meaningful things are the ones that stay with you, define you, and remind you why it’s worthwhile to roll out of bed and have-at-it again every morning.

Technology is not the enemy, but I want the story of my days to sound a little more balanced than it currently does. I’m going to listen to some albums start-to-finish while lying on the floor, just melting into the experience of it as the artist intended. I’m going to take Emily’s advice and read “All The King’s Men.” I’m going to force myself to not instinctively fill every “empty” moment by taking my turns on “Words With Friends” or checking Twitter, but instead figure out how to get maximum benefit out of those things by applying some structure and boundaries. I’m going to sit outside in beautiful locations for long periods of time, shut off my phone, and see where my mind takes me. I have no doubt that I’ll be a better digital citizen for the effort.

This is what I’m thinking about as 2011 draws to a close and a beautiful, orange, analog sunset (one I’m simply enjoying, with no attempt to capture) spills warm light into the Think Space. It has been an amazing year…next year, as I get a better grip on the reins of my brain, will be even better. Happy holidays!

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.

Blogworld Social Health Track Badge Decorations

Years ago I worked at a management consulting company producing and managing their line of multimedia products. Our Marketing department travelled to almost every industry conference; setting up booths, talking to clients, getting leads, and delivering sessions.

I once asked our Director of Marketing how many true sales were generated by our conference efforts.

His answer sounded something like, “Almost none. The main reason we do this is to talk to our existing customers and make sure our competitors know we’re doing well enough to spend money to go to conferences.”

Did you catch that? We attended conferences to make sure our clients and competitors knew we were still alive. It was all about showing up.

When I started presenting at conferences, I quickly learned that no matter how valuable your sessions are, very few qualified leads come of them. Sure, cards are exchanged and relationships begin, but conferences are often places to learn what’s out there and consider where to expand your business.

At most conferences, the bar was set quite low for session speakers. Usually, it was based on your ability to write a snappy title and a 250-word description. In case you’re wondering, neither of those is a requirement for being an engaging public speaker.

Then TED happened.

TEDxPhilly: Organized By Folks with an Eye for Design

While I’ve never attended TED, I have attended TEDxPhilly for two years now. TED is what many trade conferences often want to be, but can’t figure out how to be. For me, above everything else, TED is about the free exchange of ideas facilitated through compelling storytellers. It allows everyone to digest ideas and see how they may be able to apply them elsewhere. It doesn’t work unless the speaker has something worthwhile to say and can say it in a compelling way. You don’t need a laser-light show or rocking intro music or even a PowerPoint deck.

Before TED, I went to conferences seeking speakers I knew or topics I practiced.

After TED, I often seek out speakers I don’t know and topics totally unrelated to my day-to-day work.

If I want to learn something more about things I already know, I’ll reach out to an industry leader, search Google, or read a book. Finding the connections between things I’m not familiar with makes it a little more difficult.

Both the Blogworld Social Health Track and TEDxPhilly had more to offer than just showing up. So, rather than do a full summary of these two vastly different conferences, I thought I’d focus on one connection from each conference that changed my perspective a little bit:

BlogWorld 2011 Social Health Track

First off, big thanks go out again to Rob Halper from Johnson & Johnson and Marc Monseau of MDM Consulting for their tireless efforts putting this track together and keeping things running smoothly throughout. The word I wrote over and over again in my notebook for the three days of excellent sessions was Curation. Digitally engaged healthcare professionals like Dr. Val Jones, Dr. Nick Genes, or The Nerdy Nurse are involved in many different projects, but all focus on the central theme of curating content for their peers and patients.

Our Own Russ Starke Moderates a Session With Patient Advocate Bloggers Jenni, Kerri & Katie

Meanwhile, on the patient side, friends like Kerri (sixuntilme.com), Jenni (chronicbabe.com), and Katie (overflowingbrain.com) curate content for their followers to help guide them through the journeys their conditions dole out for them. There is SO much information on the internet, much of it false or misleading, that everyone needs help navigating through it. The more these folks do their jobs well the more the good information will flow to the top. That improves treatments, lives, and even the cost of healthcare.

So my perspective has now changed. If you manage content you’re either a creator, a curator, or both. I plan to study more about curation. I’ve talked about it for decades, but what does it truly entail these days? I’m excited to continue exploring that.

[On a side note, it has been more than just professionally rewarding to participate in the Social Health movement. Sure, Russ' skillful moderation of the Patient Advocate panel at the beginning of the conference was a great example of his years of experience working and teaching in our industry. It's the long-lasting friendships we have formed over the years with engaged patients, physicians and industry leaders that will last far beyond any conference session.]

TEDxPhilly

The official theme for TEDxPhilly was “The City.” Throughout the day, I kept thinking about how each speaker was finding ways to simultaneously transform a city while maintaining its identity. That’s not so easy if you think about it. Youngjin Yoo from Temple University’s Center for Design+Innovation observed, “Cities are the most complex man-made artifacts.” They are ever-changing, self-aware, and perpetually trying to improve. We often hear about the singularity as the moment that humans will create a system that has become self-aware, but haven’t we done that already? Wasn’t that accomplished long before technology was so advanced we could even think of the singularity? The City is simultaneously a self-aware organism and a computer collecting and processing data. TEDxPhilly was just an opportunity to see different systems within that organism come together.

We often talk about ecosystems on the projects we take on, but we don’t think about the entire ecosystem as an organism. That may sound like semantic mumbo-jumbo to you, but to me it solidifies something that has bothered me for a while. While you’re building or re-building your corner of a system, all the elements connected to yours are evolving as well. You should always expect that. You often can’t plan for the disruption this causes, but you can certainly panic less when it does.

So, conferences aren’t dead, they’ve just evolved. The massive, multi-track conferences have their place, but the trade show floors are often a depressing circus of tacky tchotchkes, lots of whizz-bang, and little substance. Keynotes are hit-or-miss, but when they’re a hit, you’re glad you came. The hard thing to do is to root out a session that changes your perspective, even a little bit.

Think Brownstone is among Philly's top 50!

Since 1988 the Philadelphia 100 has recognized some of our region’s finest companies when they were just beginning to emerge – Urban Outfitters, Forman Mills, Kremer Eye Center, Fiberlink, Neat Receipts, Saladworks, Yards Brewing Company – just to name a few. With this award, Think Brownstone joins the ranks of other 2011 winners including great companies like Fun and Function, Kildare’s, Henry A. Davidsen, and our client iPipeline (congrats, guys!).

This achievement was only made possible by our incredible team and fantastic clients. Thank you!

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.

Last week, Emily, Mike, and I had the opportunity to spend the day at an “ET” session: “Presenting Data and Information.” We thought it would be fun to each take a short crack at what our key takeaway was from that day. 

Emily

“So what?” I asked myself after hearing Tufte talk. He offered a lot of great observations and insights, but so what? No offense, Mr. Tufte, we ask this a lot at Think Brownstone. And clients engage us to help them answer their “so what’s.” Here’s one of the whats that came out of my so whating of his talk.

We spent a good deal of time looking at visual explanations of things, like: the evolution of rock, Napoleon’s 1812 march through Russia, and the origination of the SARS outbreak. Each of these represents an effective model for presenting complex information clearly and building understanding around an issue. Which is great, but…so what? The content is set in stone, fait accompli. Once I understand what it is conveying, the fun’s over.

If you’re putting all this rich data in front of me, I want more. I want to get my hands dirty and interact with it. I want to be able to pull it apart and mess with the variables, to run alternate scenarios and learn from them. What if there had been three fewer days below -20 degrees during Napoelon’s march? What if the Beatles never formed? You’ve given me what is, now let me play with what isn’t and learn from that too. In a digital world we expect more. Models need to become tools. Audience needs to also be manipulator. The marriage of data interaction with design can vastly magnify the “so what’s” asked and answered by a single data visualization, and that, my friends, is exciting stuff.

Emily's mashup of Napoleon, Robin Hood & The Pringles Man. Click For Full Sketchnotes.

Mike

I can see why Tufte uses so many examples of older charts and figures, from a time before people were concerned about projector resolutions and PowerPoint functions. There is much to be said for rendering figures entirely by hand and not having to limit yourself because of print margins or the price of glossy paper. Myself being an aggressive doodler, I was tickled by the fact that when Galileo wanted to show people what Saturn looked like through his telescope, he just drew it right there in line with his notes! With as much as I draw, I still feel a need to keep my notes and my drawings separate, as if they’re two different things. I think that stems from the fact that when I think, I tend to think about things as I would do them on a computer. If I’m taking notes, I open a word processor. If I’m drawing, I open up a graphics program. The two things become separated not because they are fundamentally different (in fact, with the way my brain works, they tend to perfectly complement each other), but because the methods that I use to create each thing don’t get along well with each other. 

Tufte made the point that whenever the methods of information transfer are separated (i.e. color vs black/white printing), the quality suffers. One of the examples he gave was books that had color inserts in the middle of them. Not only do the full color pages feel different then the others (they’re heavier), they’re stuck in the middle of the book and far away from any of their context. All of that leads to an awkward experience and a compromised information transfer. Integration is the key. So if you can’t fit your image onto a PowerPoint slide and keep it legible, it’s entirely possible that PowerPoint isn’t the tool you should be using.

Sometimes Mike's drawings should rightfully remain separate from other notes.

Brad

Nobody is going to question Edward Tufte when it comes to data visualization; he’s not only written the book on the subject, he’s done it four times over, each taking a different (and successful) tack on the larger issue. I was therefore somewhat surprised that he spent what seemed like such an inordinate amount of time during our one-day session extolling the virtues of “sparklines,” a miniature form of data visualization that he claims to have invented. The self-promotion and adulation was obvious and if nothing else, left an impression. 

I suppose that’s why it came back to me several days later as I reflected on the death of Steve Jobs, another famous self-promoter. Steve got a lot of flack from haters about the “reality distortion field” and how he created a cult of personality that tricked people into paying more for Apple products. But I will tell you as a design professional, what he created was no trick. He sold the hell out of it, but without the products to back his claims, Apple wouldn’t have pulled out of their mid-90’s death spiral. I’m betting that Tufte’s claims will be borne out as well, as you can already see on Google Finance (look at “Related companies”) and Google Analytics pages.

Ultimately, though, it doesn’t really matter to me whether the sparkline tangent was warranted or not. What seems more important is the pattern of success Mr. Tufte managed to (unwittingly?) illustrate with it:

• You can be great at your job, making a nice living working heads down your whole career. Those people keep our economy running.
• You can be a slick talker who knows what people want to hear and when they want to hear it. Those people might also have a bridge to sell you.
• Or—if you somehow find the courage, skill, luck, and charisma necessary—you could be great at your job and to get out there to share your knowledge with others. Those people are the drivers of our world and the enablers of our future. 

I know which one I’m not interested in. I’ll get back to you in about 30 years and let you know which of the other two I picked. Thanks, ET.

Brad changes the trajectory of sketchnotes. Purple. Woah.