aplo | designing experiences

starting with those that your designs affect

How the people at Continuum approached the design of a hospital room for Herman Miller: They began by interviewing and observing everyone in the hospital spectrum--patients, doctors, janitors, visitors, administrators--to discover inefficiencies and learn how infection spreads throughout a room. “A lot of times, especially as caregivers, they don’t often even know why they do certain things,” Beth Nickels, president of Herman Miller Healthcare, says. “And when you listen to their answers, you might be able to point out a better way to do things.” (From FastCompany)

The Dutch have done it again

Core77 has recently reported on the work Ducth design firm Autobahn has done for the the customs office at Schipol Airport. The design firm was tasked with designing a campaign to worn passengers about bringing banned items into the country. Autobahn placed life-size real-looking luggage  containing banned items on the luggage carousels.

Have a look at passengers' response:

folding plug system

One more of those design archetypes that hasn't been updated since its first appearance following the second world war, the UK plug. A recent RCA graduate offered a refreshing point of view with his design for a folding plug system.

traffic lights: a different take on an old design

We get used to seeing things the way they are and forget that they either were not always like that or that they do not have to be the way they are in the first place. it just makes it easier to keep them the same, that is until we see what Serbian designer Damjan Stankovic' take on traffic lights.

The design featured in Core77  shows the red light surrounded by circular countdown display (shown below). The designer claims it will make drivers' lives less stressful as they do not have to keep their foot on the pedal and they could even turn the engine off.

I'd like to see this for pedestrians.

tactile retail experience

A beautiful installation by Japanese designer Tokujin Yoshioka for Hermes. It succeeds in making window shopping a tactile experience.

It continues on the trend of the 360 degrees retail customer experience, like Ralph Lauren's Wimbledon 24 hour window shopping screen display in London in 2007.  While Yoshioka's installation does not allow you to buy a scarf, it certainly wets your appetite. The work is quite beautiful, ethereal, and serene - that depends of course on the traffic!

Designing for the extremes

There seems to be an increase in products designed specifically for the elderly (IHT Sept 7th).  Apparently populations are aging and the elderly (what does that mean exactly?) have more cash to spend so designers and manufacturers are after a slice of the grey dollar, pound, yen, or euro. Ok, this is good, though the motive: make more and more money, is not what I would have wished. In the IHT article experts talk about how firms want to ‘know how to adapt their products’ and that there is a clear need to create ‘senior-friendly’ products. This is where I get confused.

Can you really adapt a product designed for one type of user to suit the needs of a different user? As Alan Cooper said many years ago, sand a chair as much as you like, it will never turn into a table.  Rather than try to adapt a product why not do the unthinkable and start by looking at people’s needs, motivations, and experiences and let this insight drive the design?

Which leads me to the second point: ‘senior- friendly products’? What the …  does that mean? Does it mean creating products based on a designer’s assumptions of ‘elderly’ people’s needs, which will certainly result in a product patronising its users? Products for the elderly do not need to be targeted to the ‘elderly’ or look like they are made for them. OXO and Smart Design are making beautiful objects that anyone would like though they can be based on the needs of a specific user group.

My final point is that grouping users by age may work for marketers but not for designers, grouping users by needs, abilities, motivations, etc, that makes sense

data or insight?

A few months ago Douglas Bowman, the lead visual designer at Google (now at Twitter) quit his job and used his blog to explain why. Basically he was fed up with the data-led approach to design. He argued that at Google 'data eventually becomes a crutch for every decision, paralyzing the company and preventing it from making any daring design decisions.' A recent article in the NY Times debates the argument for and against user involvement in making design decisions. While on the surface the Google approach appears to be different to the one expressed by design and innovation experts quoted in the article, a closer look reveals that the differences are less pronounced. The argument for user insight, one that I strongly believe in, is relevant for all innovation firms including Google which I am sure runs a pretty good design research department.  The argument for data lead design is one that still has its place after design research has identified solutions, innovations, and new approaches. basically you do design research to develop insights and design ideas and then data can help refine the design. So as long as data helps refine the designs and  does not dictate it, I am fine with it.

philippe starck's school of design.. cont

Philippe Starck's School of Design on BBC2 in April... I think. Here is a clip I found on YouTube

Greek designers respond to riots

Following the recent riots in Greece, designers expressed their outrage through a series of posters. You can see all posters on Nassos Kappa flickr account. There is also an article in design week

wireframes, wireframes, wireframes...

A fellow UE  came across an age old question (paraphrased here) the other day: 'how many wireframes can you do in a day, I need an estimate for the project'. You can image what happened: the estimate was considered to be too high prompting the following response (again paraphrased): 'even I can do x number of wireframes in a day'.

I promised myself not to get involved in such inane arguments again, but here I am at a cafe early morning, getting ready for a meeting... I just couldn't resist. So I  suggested the following exercise for our dear 'I can do this' friend:

• Estimate how long it would take to draw a map of let's say Covent Garden in London. Would it take 10’, 15’, half an hour? I guess 10’ - 15 ‘ would be enough.
• Draw it
• Then ask yourself a few questions such as: Can a tourist use the map to find her way around?  Can she use it to locate other interesting landmarks like the British Museum, which is nearby? Can the land registry use it to create an official map? Can the Covent Garden Market manager use it to know which stall is where and who to charge? ... well, you get my drift.  I guess the answer to most if not all the questions would be be something like: ‘nice drawing but a bit of a useless map’
• Then estimate how long it would take to draw a map that answers those questions: a day, two, a week?  You will need to talk to tourists, understand their needs, check other similar maps, visit the area, measure things, etc, etc. etc.

The point?

Of course anyone can draw boxes in Visio, well, you do not even need a beige box or a fancy Mac; just pencil and paper would do. However, this is not what we are talking about, at least I hope it is not.

scariest website ever

Ok, I am exaggerating, but belgia.ru really scared the hell out of me. I came across the site while on the Favourite Websites Award (FWA) website. Apparently the site's innovative use of HD video earned it the FWA 'site of the day' award on the 24th August this year. As the FWA explains, the site is for a 'Belgian style village neighbouring Moscow... depicting "hundreds" of reasons to emigrate from the overcrowded megapolis.'

Admittedly the site is beautiful to watch and a pleasure to use. What scared me though, was the way those 'hundreds of reasons' were depicted. The site appears to be aimed at the growing Russian middle classes eager to escape the daily reality by moving to a gated community, in this case a faux Belgian village.  It unashamedly feeds on people's fears of everything and anyone around them. Through a series of beautifully filmed scenes of clean looking, well fed, well groomed, young, wealthy Russians, the site sells a lifestyle that is miles away from big, fat, ugly, poor, owners of scary dogs!

It's worth a look.

the 'leave me alone' monster

One of the benefits of having a young daughter is that you get to know the characters on children's' TV programmes. The 'leave me alone' monster is one of them. Our not so friendly monster believes he doesn't need others and keeps ordering people away, until that is, he finds himself at the playground. There, the monster has a go at the seesaw with, as you guessed, no success. He turns around to see if there is someone he can play but it is too late, everyone is gone.

The point is that I met the 'leave me alone' monster in person the other day. Well, not so much of a monster but certainly a 'leave me alone, I  know best' kind of client. While in early discussions on methods and approaches, we posed the following question: 'how about getting to know what your customers want before designing the service? Otherwise we risk designing for ourselves'. The response was "this is a risk I have to take', in other words: leave me alone I know best, I want this to be mine.

Be wary of the 'leave me alone' monsters out there, if you see one offer them a seesaw to play with, this may save them.

design thinking

Interesting article on design thinking in June's Harvard Business Review. Download design_thinking.pdf.
You can also download the article from the IDEO website

philippe starck's school of design

BBC 2 and Philippe Starck are teaming up for a brand new TV series to find the next great British designer. 10 lucky participants will be offered a place at the School of Design in Paris.

I just cannot see Phillipe saying 'You are fired'...

Pucture taken from the BBC website

this is what happens naturally

I am more than half way through Designing Design and I come across another of Mr Hara's insights to design. The design ethos of Muji, Mr Hara, tells us is "interest in people... Our concern is for those who work and rest, sharing the planet of today: people who create their living spaces with realistic expectations, have fun with their attire, eat safe food, sleep, go on a trip now and then, face the usual ups and downs, laughter and tears - ordinary people". Further down he describes the process of design at Muji: "Coolly observing people among people and life... Integrating optimal materials and technologies ... listening to the voices of our customers... Working with the world's designers... This is what happens naturally"

Need more evidence to support a design research appoach and UCD?

the Monocle urban recovery recipe + 2

Monocle's issue 15 (July/August 2008)  is all about urban living. It ranks the 25 most liveable cities, by the way, London is nowhere to be found!. The Monocle staff propose a 10 step recipe for aspiring cities around the world. A short version of the recipe sounds something like this:

• Get together those who can affect change and get them to experience the city.
• Get them to sample great cities around the world
• Come up with a top priority list
• Get working

All seems good and definitely inspiring, but somehow I feel that something is missing. How about:

1. Spend some time observing the city’s residents, its different tribes. Discover, how they experience their city. How far do they have to walk / ride / run to get some milk? Do they venture out after dark? If so, at what cost?  Can they take their pram out for a spin without risking lumbago? What do they think about they new neighbours? What are they proud of? What is it that they rather keep quite about?  Observer and discover insight that will enrich the experts’ opinion and plans.
2. Do the same with the city’s visitors, what is it that surprises them, will they come back? To see what?  Will they just wipe the entire trip off their memory? What would they improve, why?

Ask questions, but above all, observe and learn, after all cities are for living in, so get those who live there to contribute to the process.

everyone is a creative... so it seems

Working in the design / IT industry you come across creative people on a daily basis. People that somehow  believe that they and they alone are the creators of ideas and innovations. Having an equally creative title, they get together in brainstorming sessions with other highly creative people and they develop creative ideas to sell to clients.

What happened to the notion that creativity is a collaborative exercise? And I do not mean collaboration between the creatives in our industry but between the users and the people assigned those creative roles. Innovation comes when those of us who call ourselves creatives fully understand users' motivations and needs and use that insight to develop exciting solution that would meet those needs.

As Charles  Leadbeater put it in his TED presentation: The rise of the amateur professional, innovations lie with the users.  Only by exposing ourselves to the people that will ultimately use and make our products a success will we be able to create useful, exciting, inspiring and hopefully innovative solutions

 

14th April: what ideas have you shared with others today?

This is just one of the questions IDEO invites you to answer through their clever widget they created in conjunction with the 2008 TED conference.

Looking for inspirations? just download the widget for both Mac OSX and Windows Vista.

how does this make you feel?

Recently and while talking about e-commerce the issue of not being able to touch a product on an e-retailer came up. Users, when buying specific types of products such as clothes, feel restricted by the online experience because they cannot touch and see how a product feels against their hands. This is true; it would be great if we could touch and feel when browsing online, but we cannot. I am sure some really clever people somewhere are working on it and I am also sure the porn industry will let us know when the technology is ready. In the meantime, we will have to do without the privilege.

The question I have is why are we so focused on the limitations of haptic experiences online? So what if we cannot hold a pair of jeans in our hands when browsing an e-retailer? Being able to touch and feel a product is only part of the experience. What is important is how the product makes us feel. Does it make us feel warm, cold, loved, ignored, sensuous, erotic, smart, stupid, thin, fat, cool, expensive, cheap, cutting edge, or ordinary?

Creating these feelings involves more than just the sense of touch, which in the world of e-retailing includes the online brand experience, the use of other media, such as pictures, illustrations, videos, etc.

A designed artefact could even create a sense of touch. Take Meret Oppenheim's fur-lined teacup for example (see picture). Just by looking at a picture of the cup makes your entire body shiver, as if you had just touched it. Why is it then that e-retailers cannot reproduce a similar sense of touch by the way they present their goods?

I understand that I have barely touched the subject and I need to look into it in much more detail, but a brief look at luxury e-retailers has left me unispired and uninterested in their products.

design thinking and user centred design

Kenya Hara in Designing Design, introduces us to the concept or re-design by providing the example of a glass. He argues that the closer you look at a glass as an object you are designing the more you lose your existing understanding of the object. At the same time you become "more keenly conscious of glassess than before... you understand glasses more realistically". So, the more you look at the object in detail; the more questions you ask about it, the better you understand its purpose, limits, and constituent parts.

As a designer you start asking questions to help you define your design approach: what type of glass are you going to design, what will its purpose be, what liguid is it going to hold, is it going to be alcoholic, non alcoholic, cold, warm, heavy, light, coloured, odourless, etc.  who is going to use it, in what context, for how long? For example: is the glass you are designing going to hold milk to be used by a toddler, or will it be a vessel to welcome champagne to be drunk in a comfirtable business glass seat on a transatlantic flight? The answers to all these questions will help provide you with a clear brief for the design.

This design thinking approach reseambles User Centred Design, only UCD goes beyond the object/service to be designed and focuses on the user/consumer of the design output. Take e-commerce sites for example. We are all familiar with them, we use them on a daily basis to buy our grocceries, presents, or even financial products. But what if we were asked to design one? How would we approach the challenge? We could try to replicate what we already know using our existing knowledge and experience, or we could apply some design thinking and suspend our knowledge of e-commerce sites and start asking questions about the site's purpose, context of use, its users' goals, motivations, and tasks. So, what are going to sell through the site, who is going to use the site, in what context, what is is that they are lookign for, what is it they are concerned about, what information are they preperred to divulge, etc. Applying design thinking in the form of a UCD process provided us with the freedom to re-think the design object (site, software, service, tool, etc.) and approach it afresh and with the end user in mind. What is wrong with re-inveting the wheel then? Why not make it work better for those who are going to use it? I am not suggesting we ignore established solutions, just suspend our understanding and ask if we can provide a better solution for our clients and their users.