Come And Get It!

So it turns out that new experiences, not things, are the keys to personal happiness and satisfaction, according to a 2010 study out of Cornell University. I could do my own review of the study, but I wouldn't do any better than Stephen Messenger of Treehugger.com did last April. If you don't have time to read the short article (link below), the general idea is that experiences are less likely to be compared to the experiences of others, do not degrade over time, and provide one with a more internal sense of ownership than a product which is mearly posessed.

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/04/happiness-no-purchase-necessary-says-study.php

I'm left wondering what this means in regards to the development of new products and services. Particularly, I'm curious what this means in the digital domain, where the line between products and services is pretty thin. For instance, I consider Mint.com and its corresponding mobile app to be products, but its notifications and pro-active research algorithms (to help me find better loan rates, for instance) make it a pretty rich service. I guess my distinction is that a mobile or web app is a product because they have a form and take up digital space. In a sense, they are "digitally tangible".  Conversely, services are much more ephemeral and intangible by nature - plus, to be overly simplistic, they serve you. To take this product-service relationship one step further, perhaps a digital service is one that provides value outside of the digital domain? There are lots of mobile apps that do this, from navigational apps to shopping assistance and restaurant reviews, but perhaps we haven't gone far enough into the real world.

This got me throwing ideas around about how our digital products could have an even greater real-world existance. From that, I came up with the concept for "Come And Get It". The basic idea behind the service would be that a person could essentially "unlock" a deal at a real-world establishment and trigger their friends to reap the benefits. Those that arrive fastest will receive the best deal, but a minimum amount of people would have to show up for the deal to go through. Essentially, it would be like a location-triggered, time-based, contact-driven version of Groupon. However, since it must take place in the real world, it could trigger a whole range of unique shopping behaviors, such as friends rushing to join each other in the aisles of the same store, or customers behaving like sales people, trying to get their fellow shoppers to buy a product. Might sound annoying or hectic if you're an uninterested customer, but what if you're an owner of a struggling store?

Interested? Hate this idea? Please comment and we can discuss...

Visualizing Ideation - My Project Proposal

I just completed a quick write-up of what I intend to produce in my Systems Visualization course this semester. Since I'm obsessed with the Customer-to-Ideation-to-Design process, I figure a visualization of Ideation as a system was a worthy goal. Here's my write-up. Please provide feedback if you have any. 

The development of new ideas is traditionally viewed as an unpredictable and ambiguous process best left to creative people and brainstorming sessions. Yet, history has shown us that ideas do not as haphazardly as one may think. In fact, the most well-known ideas often emerge, adapt, and evolve in predictable patterns. More specifically, the majority of “new” ideas are not new at all, but simply existing concepts that are re-purposed, evolved, or merged to create some new instance of the existing idea. As these ideas come together, they collectively behave in a Darwinian manner, slowly evolving, branching, and discarding as necessary with each innovation. Ideas can be as grand or as simple as one would like, from Einstein’s Theory of Relativity down to a homeowner’s clever fix for a creaky floorboard.

 In the course of this semester, I am going to attempt to visually represent the ideation process as a functioning, evolving system of interconnected components. The two primary components of the system are the internal mind of the idea developer and the surrounding external environment. At any given time, each component contains its own intentions, capabilities, knowledge, and problems in need of solutions. When the two components interact, an environment for ideation is developed. To pull a concept from the discipline of system design, ideas are the emergent properties of the internal and external components. I will put particular focus on visualizing the “patterns of ideation”, as I believe that these provide a critical foundation for an improved pro-active ideation framework. A major challenge in this effect will be in the representation of the full spectrum of ideation sources, from accidental discovery of the “adjacent possible” through the pro-active adaption and evolution of existing concepts.

 While I develop this visual model, I will be coordinating with the work of classmate Matt Harper, who is exploring the management and ultimate realization of ideas. One of the outcomes that I hope to achieve from this work is a visual representation of an optimal model for repeatedly developing innovative, high-quality ideas. After all, any organization interested in innovation should model their process after the way ideas emerge, connect, and evolve in nature. The concept of “ideas as connections” is interesting as it suggests value in an organized, patterns-driven, connection-based ideation system over unstructured ideation. Some may suggest that an attempt to structure and constrain the ideation process would only hinder the creative mind. However, it is this tension itself brought forth by constraints that often brings about the most innovative solutions. I will attempt to visualize how this tension emerges across the components of the ideation system.   

Finally, I will attempt to validate and iterate the ideation visualization by mapping some of the most influential ideas in history against my model. The source I will use for this will be Time Magazine’s recent publication: “100 Ideas That Changed the World”. I would like to visually demonstrate this full range of influential ideas within my visualization in hopes that it will reveal insights about the ideation system. In this project, I will leverage insights on ideation developed over the past decade as a professional designer entrenched in the creative process. I will also draw from the readings of leading ideation and innovation experts, including Steven Johnson, W. Brian Arthur, Tim Brown, and many others. 

Concept design from February 9, 2011

An Illustration of Ideation

Where do good ideas come from? I've attempted to visualize it. This isn't perfect, but neither is the process itself! 

Idea: Charitable Gambling & The Unexpected Merger of User Insights

Super Bowl week has arrived and my mind's on football. Despite the fact that my hometown Patriots failed to get there, I'm actually looking forward to this game. The NFL's popularity has skyrocketed in the past decade (Sunday's event is expected to be the largest viewing audience in sports television history), and this is due no small part to the games fans play around the games. I'm talking, of course, about Fantasy Football and sports gambling.

The rise of the internet and expansion of TV coverage has enabled even the casual spectator to get all the information they need on every player in every game. This has been a key to the meteoric rise of Fantasy Football. If you're not familiar, Fantasy Football allows football fans to create and compete with their own notional lineup made up of real players. Performance by a Fantasy Owner's players in a game (Touchdowns, Yards, etc.) lead to points for that person's team. The impact on real-life football? The Fantasy Sports Trade Association reports that "55 percent of fantasy sports players report watching more sports on television since they started playing fantasy sports".

Gambling, meanwhile, has been steadily gaining popularity for quite some time as well. Online gambling sites have enabled the average football fan place bets online in a far more easier and safer way than once possible. Of course, it is illegal, but convenience has a way of encouraging these kinds of activities. Finally, it's worth that there has been a recent emergence other competitions for the "active spectator", including "survivor pools" (attempt to pick winning team every week until you lose) and "pick'em leagues" (pick a series of games every week against competition). These competitions take on the mechanics of gambling (e.g. picking games against the point spread), but they tend to include more of the average fan.

So why all the gambling and game-playing? Well for some, gambling is about the pursuit of money at best, and at worst, it's an addiction that goes much deeper. However, these hardcore gamblers are not the reason for the recent rise in NFL popularity. The rise is more from the casual fan who has picked up all these various competitions as a way of making the actual product that much more exciting. Sure, it's still often about the thrill of risking a few bucks to win a little spending money, but if it's solely about the money, why not just play cards or scratch tickets? The reason is that it's NOT just about the money. People play these games because it makes the actual football action that much more exciting for many people. A random Week 6 Cardinals-Browns game is meaningless and boring unless you're counting on Peyton Hillis to score two touchdowns to win your fantasy football game...then it becomes exciting. (Author's Note: I actually stopped playing fantasy football a few years ago, so don't think I'm selling it here.. I'm getting to my point in the next paragraph)

Here's my point... if you ignore the seedy and illegal aspects of sports gambling, and just focus on the human behavior associated with it, you come away with the conclusion that many people in this country like to play games in order to make actual sports more entertaining. It's a way of taking some ownership and getting more immersed in the action. It's active participation more than passive observation. Now consider the fact that people are willing to lose (ie. SPEND) money in order to experience this higher level of entertainment and you really have an interesting insight.

So the point of this TReil & Error blog is about idea development, not sports gambling, so let's get back to that. This original insight about sports gambling/contests came up a while back during a conversation that a friend and I had while watching the NCAA basketball March Madness tournament. The question we asked ourselves is whether there are ways to leverage this insight in a way that is more positive than illegal sports gambling. What we came to is a completely different domain where people also are willing to give up their money: charity.

While this pairing between charity and gambling is somewhat counter-intuitive (one is risky and self-serving while the other is completely altruistic), there are some commonalities. I have the statistics on it, but most gamblers lose in the end or break even at best. Personally, I always hear of the person who goes to the casino, loses $100 and says "oh well, it's worth the price for a fun night". In other words, losing money is fine if it's equal or less than the cost of a fun time.

Meanwhile, charity has it's own associated behaviors. Some giving is done in traditional or direct ways, but other giving is done through charity events, such as galas or casino nights. On these occassions people are willing to throw their money around more willingly because "it's all in a good cause". In other words, their spending habits are completely uninhibited (and rightly so) due to the fact that the money is all going to charity. Worth noting that Americans give an average of 2% of their post-deduction salary to charities, more than any country in the world.. that's quite a bit of money.

So why not align these two things together? What if we created an online sports competition tied to charitable giving? I realize completely this is a legal mindfield in both domains (and potentially a non-starter), but I think the product itself is worth considering. Users could compete in pay-for-play online competitions, such as Football Pick'Em leagues and Fantasy Sports. Everyone who plays would have to register with their charity of choice, and they would have to pay a small monthly fee, or a per-contest fee, such as $10-$20. The losing players in the leagues or contests would "lose" their money to the charities of the winners. In other words, everyone would be competing to win money for their preferred charities...money that would be more than they could be individually. I would imagine that charitable organizations would be willing to give up prizes and benefits for the ability to get the huge exposure of the sports-watching demographic.

I could write much more about this idea, but I just wanted to focus on the core concept for this entry. If you would like to collaborate on this project, such as determining how this can be completely fair and legal, please let me know. I hope this has proven a good demonstration of two common behavioral insights combined in an unexpected way. Finally, check out the concept design for "Gamble for Good" that I created a while back. Enjoy the game on Sunday!

Design Patterns of Snow Removal

So I've taken a few weeks off to organize my work from the past year and plan out the year ahead. One of my primary goals for the year is to work with one or more of my classmates to develop a product design framework that could potentially stand as a foundation for a future consulting service, book, etc. It will focus on the processes of needs definition, solution ideation, and system design. If I play my cards right, development of this framework will be integrated into my classwork, and most importantly, during the time of my thesis. After all, if you're going to spend the time to write a 100-page research paper, it might as well serve some purpose after you graduate.

While the exact end state of the framework is still fuzzy, I am fairly certain that a "design patterns" approach will be critical to getting there. At least, I know that I feel most comfortable examining a complex space by organizing it into common trends and patterns. Modularization of like-minded components is generally seen as an effective method for simplifying complexity, and I don't see any reason why this approach isn't the best starting point. An example for this framework may include the organization of customer needs into patterns (e.g. Expectations, Needs, Nice-to-Have's) or even binning products themselves into the abstract concepts they are representing.

www.wovel.com

For today, I want to conduct a design exercise and explore design patterns within a given domain. There are two ways to do this - one is to examine an existing environment and define the design patterns that emerge and the other is to examine an existing environment and define the design patterns that could exist. If you're read anything on this blog, you'll know which one I'm going to choose (come'on.. new ideas are much more fun). Since we're expecting about 17 inches of snow in the Boston area tonight, I can't help but focus my attention on snow removal. What are the possible ways that snow can be removed? If you were the CEO of Toro, or hired by them as a design consultant, what are your options for new innovations? What does snow removal look like ten or twenty years out?

A few guidelines before we begin. The key is to create technology-agnostic design patterns. If you're talking about specific blade configurations, you've gone too deep. Design patterns should be abstract enough to leave room for creative technical solutions. Also, it's important to ignore legal, safety, and technical limitations for the time being. They kill creativity and they'll have plenty of chance to ruin the fun later in the design process. Finally, I recommend placing a couple constraints or boundaries. Used appropriately, they can generate creative tension that forces even the unimaginative into problem-solving mode.  For this exercise, I'm going to focus on driveway snow removal, since that's really the core problem of the average person.

A quick note about methods for documenting this type of work… I'm a huge advocate of the usage of mindmapping tools for this type of task. They are visual, fast, and flexible, and most importantly, mimic the logical structure of how we already organize information and ideas in our heads. This approach also forces unexpected connections, which is the hallmark of a good ideation process. If you're looking for a mindmap tool, my personal favorite is FreeMind, which is a free open source tool available at:  http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
I've used it for organizing all of my work and class notes since November 2009.

So here goes…The Possible Design Patterns of Snow Removal. The patterns are in italics and the resulting design concepts are the sub-bullets of them.

Strategy 1

Snow Prevention by way of...

Heating ground

• Design Concept: heated driveway

Heating surface of ground

• Design Concept: heated blanket  + driveway
• Design Concept: tube system that periodically emits heated puffs of air

Blocking snow

• Design Concept: car port

Misdirecting snow

• Design Concept: slanted roof 

Strategy 2

Snow Removal by way of...

Pushing snow

• Design Concept: Plow
• Design Concept: Shovel

Throwing snow

• Design Concept: Snowblower
• Design Concept: Shovel

Heating snow

• Design Concept: Roomba + driveway (roving, autonomous, heated vehicle that periodically scans driveway for snow) 

There are clearly a range of other possible conceptual directions to go in here, but I think this is a start. Notice that we do little in terms of preventing snow, or at least removing it during its nascent stages. This is odd when you consider how easy it is to remove light snow cover by heat or physical movement, as opposed to how intensive it is to lift heavy snow banks. The next steps I would take would be to select a 4-5 unique design concepts and explore possible forms for each. While there probably wasn't anything revolutionary here from an innovation standpoint, I hope that it demonstrates the value of this methodology. If you're in the northeast, good luck with the snow tomorrow!

Idea #16: Tactile Vision

Ever since Microsoft announced their revolutionary Kinect system a few months back, every geek and hacker has been tripping over themselves for a the slick little 3D interface. The excitement was compounded when the user community immediately hacked into it upon arrival in the market. If you haven't had the chance to check it out yet, it's incredible. Using the interface is an intuitive, fun, and almost surreal experience, but what's really shocking is the fact they're doing this with reasonably common technologies in a lightweight package for an accessible price. The performance isn't perfect (like Oblong's $500k G-Speak system), but it's close enough, especially when you consider the price tag and lightweight hardware. Add the wave of user innovations from the hacking community and it's like a lesson in technology evolution in real time. Time will tell how quickly and effectively these interfaces evolve beyond the gaming world, but I'm sure it will happen.

So if 3D interfaces are going to integrate into the technology landscape, where does it happen first? Our kitchen appliances? Our entertainment systems? Our cars? Maybe all of the above, but I don't think that's an interesting enough challenge as a design experiment. How can 3D interfaces bring real value to people? How can they solve real problems for regular people without the means for accessing the latest technoloies. The rest of the entry to going to walk through a simple ideation experiment.

First, we're going to combine 3D interfaces with another technology from the gaming world: haptic sensors. These sensors allow users to experience haptic feedback when a virtual object has been collided with, giving the user a more tangible impact experience. So who needs a better sense of touch of a virtual object? Perhaps no one, but what if you made one simple word change, swapping out "virtual" for "nearby". Determining who has a need for a tactile feeling of a nearby object and you have a whole range of people.

For starters, over 300 million people worldwide suffer from visual impairment, many using physical canes to feel around in their environment. I would need to research this market further to truly understand their needs, but I'm curious if they could benefit from a concept of an "invisible cane" in ways that could go beyond the current tools. It could be a wearable device, such as a glove, vest, or belt that could receive progressive haptic feedback of nearby objects. The 3D interface system would essentially be built in to the glove. In other words, as the person walks closer to a doorway, vibrations on the sides of the device would grow increasingly stronger in intensity. If implemented correctly, I believe a person wearing this type of device could learn the feedback language to the point where it could become an extension of their senses. On the whole, this system could promote public safety and freedom for the visually impaired of the world.

Beyond visual impairment, I could see opportunities where people need to train the coordination of their muscles, such as the physical rehabilitation process following a stroke. I'm curious if someone would benefit from the ability of "feeling" objects around them from a short distance away. This may enable them to have a better understanding of the location of their hand, thus improving their hand-eye coordination. Taken one step further and one could imagine applying this concept to performance measures. The system could allow an athlete to feel an oncoming pass, a shot on goal, or feel the rotation and projection of a oncoming pitch.

We developed and discussed this "Tactile Vision" concept in my Tangible Interfaces team at the MIT Media Lab. This team includes Birago Jones, Phil Salesses, Nick Pennycooke, and Laura Janka. We may or may not be developing this concept in the near future, so please do not hesitate to comment or contact me if you have any feedback or want to get involved.

Design Principles - December 2010

The following document contains my personal principles for designing a system. They have been guided by the MIT Professor Ed Crawley's System Architecture framework, but they are also a result of a decade of professional experience as a Human Factors Engineer and User Experience Designer. I expect to evolve these principles as I progress in my professional life and learn from real world experience. In the meantime, the following are the principles which will guide my design process: 

TRANSFORMATION

Good system architecture is the intentional, accurate, 

and repeatable transformation of concept into reality.

Find a purpose, craft a vision for fulfilling it, and holistically 

advance it until the architectural objective is met. 

UNDERSTANDING

To architect an improved state, one must begin 

with accurate comprehension of the current state.

Take great measures to develop a rich 

understanding of your stakeholders and their needs. 

CONCEPTION

Great ideas are not created from empty space. 

They are in hiding, waiting to be discovered and given new life. 

Embrace the patterns in which ideas are developed.  Create an
environment in which ideas can be discovered and evolved. 

EXPERIMENTATION

An idea is not fully understood until it can be seen.

Establish an experimental process for prototyping, 

understanding, and evolving ideas

UTILITY

A well-architected product conveys its purpose and function.

Utilize form, structure, and interface design 

patterns to visually communicate the utility of a system 

SIMPLICITY

Simplicity is not a matter of less, it’s a matter of fit.

Avoid unnecessary excess at all levels of an architecture, from unused elements
on the user interface to low-value parts in the architecture.

ACCEPTANCE

The greatest feature serves no value if the system is not adopted. 

Don't show people how great your system is;

show them how great they’ll be with your system.

EVOLUTION

Sustained existence is impossible without the ability to adapt to change.

Design architectures that enable graceful evolution without diminishing value or altering intent.