Don’t dig for the answer—connect

8. Be an anthropologist, not an archaeologist.

An archaeologist seeks to understand the past by investigating its relics and digging for the truth of what was. An anthropologist studies people to understand their values, needs, and desires. If you want to design new solutions for the future, you have to understand what people care about and design for that. Don’t dig for the answer—connect.

"IDEO’s Ten Tips For Creating a 21st–Century Classroom Experience," MetropolisMag.com, Feb 2009, www.metropolismag.com/story/20090218/ideos-ten-tips-for-creating-a-21st-century-classroom-experience via Alan Blood.

The Making of a Design Thinker

One of my heroes is the Victorian engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, a man who lived before the profession of design even existed. As the challenges of the industrial age spread to every field of human endeavor, a parade of bold innovators who shaped the world, as they have shaped my own thinking, followed him: William Morris, Frank Lloyd Wright, the visionary educators of the German Bauhaus, the American industrial designers Raymond Loewy and Henry Dreyfuss, the team of Ray and Charles Eames. What they all shared was optimism, an openness to ex-perimentation, a love of storytelling, a need to collaborate, and an instinct to think with their hands—to build, to prototype, and to communicate complex ideas with masterful simplicity. They didn’t just do design; they lived design. These great thinkers were not as they appear in the coffee-table books about the “pioneers,” “masters,” and “icons” of modern design. They were not minimalist, esoteric members of design’s elite priesthood, and they did not wear black turtlenecks. They were creative innovators who bridged the chasm between thinking and doing because they were passionately committed to the goal of a better life and a better world. Today we have the opportunity to take their example and unleash the power of design thinking as a means of exploring new possibilities, creating new choices, and bringing new solutions to the world. In the process, we may find that we have made our societies healthier, our businesses more profitable, and our own lives richer and more meaningful.

Tim Brown, "The Making of a Design Thinker," MetropolisMag.com, Oct 2009, metropolismag.com/story/20091021/the-making-of-a-design-thinker.

Dream bigger

“It’s time to take risks,” Mr. Fielding said he told them. “When consumers are ready to spend again, we will be ready.”

The involvement of Mr. Jobs, the Apple chief executive who joined the Disney board with the 2006 acquisition of Pixar, is particularly notable. For the first time, Mr. Jobs’s fingerprints can be seen on Disney strategy, in the same way that he influenced the look and feel of Apple’s own immensely popular retail chain. While Mr. Jobs did not personally toil on the Imagination Park concept, he pushed Disney to move far past a refurbishment.

“Dream bigger — that was Steve’s message,” said Andy Mooney, chairman of Disney Consumer Products."

Brooks Barnes, "Disney’s Retail Plan Is a Theme Park in Its Stores," New York Times, 12 Oct 2009,
www.nytimes.com/2009/10/13/business/media/13disney.html.

never use more when less will do

A fundamental design and life lesson from the Zen arts is to never use more when less will do....The ancient art of Japanese brush painting called Sumi-e provides a powerful lesson concerning the use of color, communication, and restraints. Sumi-e was brought to Japan from China and is an art deeply rooted in Zen, embodying many of the tenets of the Zen aesthetic including simplicity and the idea of maximum effect with minimum means....

...Either way the lesson is clear: few colors carefully selected and positioned can be more effective than many colors indiscriminately placed.

The objective of Sumi-e is not to recreate the subject to look perfectly like the original, but to capture its essence — that is, to express its essence. This is achieved not with more but with less....

Garr Reynolds, "Sumi-e, color, and the art of less," Presentation Zen, 6 Oct 2009,
www.presentationzen.com/presentationzen/2009/10/a-fundamental-design-and-life-lesson-from-the-zen-arts-is-to-never-use-more-when-less-will-do-this-goes-for-the-use-of-color.html

This is treasure

Later, after Yoko Takegawa had hung up with her sister in Sanjo City and had telephoned this stranger in Connecticut, it began to sink in. Her father had seen her face before he died; he had held her image near his heart during the battle. This realization, even so late in life, lessened a hurt she never knew she harbored and softened a sadness that had hardened long ago. “My daddy carried that letter with my picture in his body, in his bosom,” she said during a recent interview at her home. “I felt something, a spirit, come down in my body. This is treasure, a treasure that carried so much love to me. Before, I go to school with his money. But now, he sends his love to me.”

Lizette Alvarez, "U.S. Veteran Returns Iwo Jima Relic to Daughter of Japanese Soldier," New York Times, 18 Sep 2009,
www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/nyregion/20iwo.html.

Design works if it's authentic, inspired, and has a clear point of view.

Anyone who has ever been to Target would instantly recognize the Michael Graves section simply by the distinctive blue boxes lined up at the base of a kitchen-products gondola. 'Graves blue' is a Wedgwood-y shade, as iconic as Tiffany's robin's egg blue. Born from the color of architectural blueprints, it's a complex hue not easily matched with a Pantone number. But it's Graves's favorite and, naturally, the one he chose to use in his first collection.

Target, it seems, had other ideas. Graves remembers submitting his first collection -- which featured a toaster, a blender, and an ice bucket, all with blue handles -- to the trend spotters at Target's headquarters. 'They said, 'Well, we love it, but the blue will have to go,' ' he recalls, laughing. ' 'Blue doesn't sell. Half of America doesn't like blue, and the other doesn't like green. It's got to be neutral.' ' The standoff continued until Ron Johnson, then head of the discounter's home products, mediated the dispute. 'I had to step in and say, 'Guys, these are Michael's products,' ' says Johnson, who now oversees Apple's retail stores. 'Design works if it's authentic, inspired, and has a clear point of view. It can't be a collection of input.'"

When the line launched in stores, Graves was instantly vindicated. From day one, the toaster has been a hit at Target, and five years later, it's still available. "That's the fundamental difference about design," Johnson says. "It endures."

"Between the Lines," Fast Company, 1 Aug 2004,
www.fastcompany.com/magazine/85/open_betweenthelines.html.

It's really hard to design products by focus groups

'It's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them.'
Steve Jobs -- BusinessWeek, May 25 1998

Owen Linzmayer, "Steve Jobs' Best Quotes Ever," Wired, 29 Mar 2006,
www.wired.com/gadgets/mac/commentary/cultofmac/2006/03/70512.

Morale & Budgets

Brad Bird: In my experience, the thing that has the most significant impact on a movie’s budget—but never shows up in a budget—is morale. If you have low morale, for every $1 you spend, you get about 25 cents of value. If you have high morale, for every $1 you spend, you get about $3 of value. Companies should pay much more attention to morale.

Hayagreeva Rao, Robert Sutton, and Allen P. Webb, "Innovation lessons from Pixar Director Brad Bird," McKinsey Quarterly, April 2008, www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Innovation_lessons_from_Pixar_An_interview_with_Oscar-winning_director_Brad_Bird_2127.

That’s very Googley

For now, Microsoft continues to fight alone, but with more vigor than in years past, analysts said. Less than a month after Bing’s release, Microsoft beat Google and Yahoo to a hot new area in search: It became the first major search engine to index new postings from popular Twitter users almost immediately. The move helped amplify the buzz around Bing.

“I feel like they are a little more daring,” Mr. Sullivan said. “They popped this thing out in a few weeks. That’s very Googley.”

Miguel Helft, "Bing Delivers Credibility to Microsoft," NYTimes.com, 13 July 2009, www.nytimes.com/2009/07/14/technology/companies/14bing.html.

Stories for change

We tend to conform to the behavior of the people around us. Which is what makes culture change particularly challenging because everyone is conforming to the current culture. Sometimes though, the problem contains the solution.

'Stories.' I said to the head of the firm.

'Excuse me?' he responded.

'You change a culture with stories. Right now your stories are about how hard you work people. Like the woman you forced to work on her wedding day. You may not be proud of it, but it's the story you tell. That story conveys your culture simply and reliably. And I'm certain you're not the only one who tells it. You can be sure the bride tells it. And all her friends. If you want to change the culture, you have to change the stories.'

Peter Bregman, "A Good Way to Change a Corporate Culture," HarvardBusiness.org, 25 June 2009, blogs.harvardbusiness.org/bregman/2009/06/the-best-way-to-change-a-corpo.html via a tweet by David Armano