Design thinker
October 13th, 2010 • dee studio (486j) • No comments
What did I learn from this activity? Mostly that IDEO is a heck of a company. You can get lost on their website, it is full of great resources.
With regard to the exercise, it is really interesting to see how momentum really plays a key part in idea generation and brainstorming. Early on Moura touched on how it is important to keep the energy in the room up during sessions like these. Our team hit a couple road bumps, and some of us were not really familiar with each other, but it was important to keep pushing so we could turn off the critical voice in order to generate some good ideas. I found the same thing working on a project in a different team: at first everyone was a little quiet with the ideas, but once we forced the first two ideas they came flowing and we filled a page in no time.
One problem I had with the exercise: when you receive points based on your ability to “judge” ideas, you are basically getting points for being the most like all of the other teams. Perhaps this is the only way to award points given the dynamic of this game, but really the goal should not be to think like everyone else. This does not make a good judge. Often the most innovative, and perhaps the best, ideas are not going to appeal to everyone initially.
If the idea does appeal to everyone initially? Perhaps its not innovative enough.
The new marketing department
October 12th, 2010 • marketing (296) • No comments
I’ve recently come across a blog written by a man named Scott Brinker, called Chief Marketing Technologist. It is a smart blog covering marketing and IT.
In a post titled “Scaling the new marketing organization” he offers up a useful piece of advice. Instead of dividing the “marketing work” in the marketing department by media (PR, social media, web, TV), region, or product line as is normal practice, separate it by audience segment.
Why? With complex organizational structures often the actions of a company do not seem unified from the customer’s eyes. We’ve all faced it, and it is a big problem.
So you dedicate a single team to each audience segment instead. That way you know you are presenting a single, unified front to each of your segments. Of course, this provides for a whole host of other advantages including: increased agility, more customer focus and more specific promotion for each segment.
Smart. And with recent technology advances, not so far-fetched.
The post is quite lengthy and detailed. I could not do it justice here. Highly recommended.
Pursuit of Perfection
October 6th, 2010 • dee studio (486j) • No comments
Last week Hugo posed a question that was along these lines:
“How do I know when to stop iterating a physical product. When do I release it?”
Immediately I remembered Guy Kawasaki’s The Art of the Start (great book). Guy suggests that you get the product immediately to market, then fix, ship, fix, ship.
Seth Godin often encourages people to ship, ship, ship. Fail often, learn, and keep shipping.
Do it, do it better. Iterate, critique, iterate.
The only way to know if what you are doing is working is to get it out there. In the long run this process is more important than just a great first version. Imagine how long it would have taken Apple to come up with its current line of MacBooks, without having released the previous editions?
Interestingly enough, we spend most of our school lives going all-in on all of our assignments. There is no room for this process, just achieve perfection by the deadline.
Bonus cookie
Also from The Art of the Start: Guy’s 10/20/30 rule for presentations. Simply:
10 slides
20 minutes
30 point font
This is specifically for VC pitches, but it works basically everywhere. For everyone who thinks 8 slides is not enough for 3 minutes, Guy thinks you only need 2, maximum.
To help get you there
Garr Reynold’s Presentation Zen
Image and Reality
October 1st, 2010 • marketing (296) • No comments
I’ve had lululemon on the brain for a while now. The company is the current focus of the trend analysis assignment for my Business Writing class, as well as the focus for my Marketing group.
The image
I found the following in the FAQ section of their website:
Who is your target market?
This one’s for all you students writing their research papers on us… hmm, target… what’s that? Well if you want us to spout that marketing jargon, we admit that we aim our clothing primarily at active women and men: individuals that work, play and share our vision of creating healthier, happier and more fun lives!
Very tongue-in-cheek. Marketing obviously plays a huge role in lululemon’s business strategy.
But nevermind that, what I find even more interesting here is who they’ve left out.
The reality
The NDP Group claims that only 63% of the yoga apparel sold in Canada during 2007 was worn for exercise. Compare that to 30% of lululemon’s apparel being used for yoga. Yes these statistics are old and not measuring precisely the same thing (exercise vs. yoga), but it illustrates the point I am trying to make: a lot of the people who shop at lululemon do not do so for participating in this active wellness airy-fairy lifestyle.
Obviously lululemon is aware and their marketing/creative team keeps them in mind when designing new products.
Not that they would admit it.
And they couldn’t. Why? No one would buy anything at that point.
For a lot of people I think lululemon is an indirect, aspirational reference group. You may not have the time or the resources to do yoga everyday and spend your days dancing, singing, traveling and flossing. You may desire that lifestyle, and so when you wear your lululemon pants you are that much closer to being a part of that group.
If they started admitting they cater to this audience though, they will lose the core: the direct social reference group. And without them, the indirect group is lost as well.
Image and reality.
Week 4: On Blogging
October 1st, 2010 • dee studio (486j) • No comments
Start blogging!
So not everyone has started blogging regularly. When I first heard I’d have to write two blog posts a week (one for 296, one for 486J) I was a little disappointed. Two more things to do each week on top of all the regular course work? And what am I supposed to write about anyway?
But now that I’ve put out a few posts I am enjoying it. The process of writing a blog requires you to organize your thoughts in a way you may not normally do mentally. A couple times I’ve started writing a post with a clear argument and purpose in my head, and once I’ve reviewed my ideas in writing I’ll see it in a new light and completely change direction. In the end I feel I have a much stronger understanding of the topic.
I find subjects come much easier once you get into the swing of it, too.
So just get writing. Silence your critical voice for a second and iterate. It’s not like anyone’s going to read it anyway.
Unless you get profiled in class. Then you’ll get critiqued!
What did I learn from Wednesday’s class?
I need to be more prepared to present my work at any time. Though I feel that I bombed the presentation part, I was quite pleased with the discourse afterward. I found it much easier to think and recall facts and insights when asked questions or given direct feedback. When Moura put up the canvas it was like I was seeing it for the first time – “Bike Kitchen? What?” It is always interesting to get up in front of the class and I look forward to doing it again soon.
The Back of the Napkin
September 29th, 2010 • dee studio (486j) • No comments
Premise
Problems are complex, pictures are clear. You can use a picture, or series of pictures, to help understand or solve any problem.
Our brains can recognize patterns, and other precognitive visual attributes, in images instantaneously. This allows for a more comprehensive understanding of the data and relationships than any equally detailed written description. Since our “low level” mental capacity takes care of the basic relationships right away, our “upper level” mental capacity is reserved for “seeing” things that are not present in the picture – solutions or ideas.
Sound simple?
Don’t be fooled – it’s not. Once you start reading you’ll see it is difficult to do effectively.
This book shows you exactly which pictures to draw, in almost every circumstance. It goes far beyond simple bar charts, into portraits, maps, flowcharts and multi-variable plots. And it includes the SQVID, a visual thinking exercise guaranteed to turn any problem you have on its head – 10 different ways.
Highly recommended for anyone interested in visual thinking. To those who are not so convinced about this approach to problem solving, you’ll be satisfied to know there is a great deal of analysis you must go through before you actually start drawing. And it is designed to be read in one sitting!
Available in the David Lam Library.
Memorable quote:
Drawing our pictures is going to be harder than expected for the artistically gifted … and it’s going to be easier than expected for the “I’m not visual” crowd.
What is it helpful for?
Case studies, analysis, presentations, decision making.
Further reading
Unfolding the Napkin by Dan Roam
Now You See It by Stephen Few
Zappos! and the New Marketing
September 23rd, 2010 • marketing (296) • No comments
Zappos.com – superstar e-tailer acquired by Amazon last year for $1.2 billion.
Tony Hsieh, Zappos CEO, was recently interviewed by Guy Kawasaki. The entire interview is short and worth reading, but I found the following portions quite interesting:
What is the math behind the policy of two-way free and overnight shipping?
TH: Our philosophy is to take most of the money we would have spent on paid marketing or paid advertising and instead invest it into the customer experience, and let our customers do the marketing for us through word of mouth. We view the free shipping both ways and surprise upgrades to overnight shipping as our marketing costs.
Is customer service the new marketing?
TH: What’s new is that we are all hyperconnected and information travels much, much faster than before (through Twitter, blogs, etc.) So customer service stories, good or bad, tend to spread more quickly and therefore can have a much bigger effect on a company’s brand.
What role does the plain old telephone play in Zappos?
TH: We believe the telephone is one of the best branding devices out there. We have the customer’s undivided attention for 5-10 minutes—compare that with a 30-second Super Bowl ad when the viewers are probably not paying full attention. If we get the interaction right, what we’ve found is that customers remember that for a very long time and tell their friends and family about us.
Consumers have seen every type of ad campaign, they’re being “sold to” nearly non-stop from when they wake up to when they go to sleep. Zappos’ approach is refreshing in that they are not “selling” to customers – there is no ad campaign, no commercials or gimmicks.
Here is a company that is choosing wisely the channels through which it communicates with its customers – and is owning them. Their focus is to deliver quality, value and a great experience – and that is something remarkable people want to talk about. The virility is built in, and there has never been an easier time for these stories to spread than now.
Those students with the preconception that marketing is all about manipulation and advertising should be relieved. This is exactly the type of value-based marketing the smart companies are moving toward, and quickly.
On a personal note, unfortunately Zappos did not at all deliver on their dedication to service when I placed my first order with them recently. In fact, the entire experience was quite terrible.
Consistency counts.
Why not? Part II
September 22nd, 2010 • dee studio (486j) • No comments
I’ve been going over the video from my previous post in my head with respect to a particular problem I have been facing since I moved on campus this summer.
The Problem
Residents of Acadia Park (student family housing, where I live with my wife and our son) are constantly taking their garbage and leaving it outside in common (usually green) spaces. People leave everything from large pieces of furniture (including mattresses, refrigerators, and sofas) to smaller items like old pots, cans of paint, and electronic equipment. A popular dumping ground for the residents who live in my “cluster” is a space under 3 tall pine trees. This is a central area, and is in plain view of every home in the cluster. Every few days or so, the UBC Plant Operations people come by and haul out the old junk, and the cycle continues.
Aside from it being terribly depressing to have your neighbourhood also function as a garbage dump part time, this practice is extremely unsafe for the young children who live here. Old mattresses propped up against trees and tall shelves sitting on uneven ground are two examples of hazards which appear quite frequently. Further, the garbage attracts pests and can serve to worsen the bed bug problem at UBC, should anyone take furniture that was left outside.
WWTD? (What Would Trump Do?)
Trump might pay someone to remove the furniture and dispose of it entirely. This is not practical for student families as most do not have the resources to call a junk removal company to remove their things. Especially since UBC Plant Operations is willing to remove the junk for free every few days.
Perhaps if we organized a specific day each month where residents of Acadia Park could bring their old furniture and things to a specific location to be picked up by Plant Operations that very same day, we could reduce the amount of casual dumping which occurs. UBC may also save money by reducing the amount of time spent by employees driving around Acadia Park picking up trash. Acadia Park would be a cleaner, safer place to live.
Why not?
By no means a rhetorical question.
Why not?
September 20th, 2010 • dee studio (486j) • No comments
This is quite an interesting lecture from Barry Nalebuff of the Yale School of Management. In his talk he discusses a number of different ways to look at problems in order to find innovative solutions – a sort of design approach. If you do not have time to watch the video, I highly suggest listening to the audio version (iTunes link). There is also an accompanying site which serves as an idea exchange for creative solutions to problems.
Introduction
September 15th, 2010 • dee studio (486j) • No comments
Why I took this course
What I want most out of my degree is a strong ability to solve complex business problems. I hope by being a part of the D-Studio I will learn how to develop better, more innovative solutions to the same types of “wicked” problems I will encounter later on in my career.
I like that this course is instructed in a hands-on and collaborative environment, because that is precisely the dynamic in which most projects are completed. As Ron said, not once has he worked on a project by himself. I believe the D-Studio will nicely compliment the more analytics-centered decision making which the bulk of our degree focuses on.
Background in design-thinking
I have always been interested in design: from graphic design, to architecture, to industrial design, to the design of environmental and public spaces. Over the past couple of years I have taken an interest in the design approach to business and have been following a number of sources I would categorize as using design-thinking. I would suggest following Seth Godin for anyone interested in marketing and entrepreneurship, and Tina Seelig who is the Executive Director of Stanford’s STVP and is a part of the d.school which we have mentioned in class.