metacool

Unabashed Gearhead Gnarlyness

David Kelley on Creative Confidence

"Don’t divide the world into 'creative' and 'non-creative'. Let people realize they are naturally creative ... When people regain that confidence, magic happens."

- David Kelley

 

Earlier this year at the TED conference I had the wonderful experience of watching my teacher, mentor, colleague, and friend David Kelley give the talk above.  It's about building confidence in one's ability to be creative.  It's also about empathy, courage, leadership, and choosing to strive to live the life you want to live.  

I hope you enjoy listening to David's thoughts on creative confidence as much as I did.

 

metacool Thought of the Day

"Never delegate understanding."

- Charles Eames

 

Principle 1:  Experience the world instead of talking about experiencing the world

Unabashed Gearhead Gnarlyness

The Delta Wing testing at Snetterton.  Gnarly.  Awesome.  Wicked.

Director's Commentary: Jeep Mighty FC

Here's a great look at the Jeep Mighty FC concept car, as told by its designers.  Though this director's commentary doesn't illuminate much of the actual design process which led to the creation of the Might FC, it does a wonderful job of showing us the importance of identifying and holding a strong point of view as you make your way through that process. 

In particular, I like this quote from Mark Allen, the lead designer:

Although we work for a very, very  large corporation, and you'd think there would be board meetings and all this stuff, really it's a few guys just saying, "I want to build this because it's cool."  To have that kind of flexibility in our corporation is great.  I've got great support to do this, and the vehicles come out very, very pure in thought.  They're not watered down through a bunch of meetings and decisions.  There's really never any regrets when we get it done.

Not only is it critical to establish a solid point of view, it is essential to trust the people who hold that vision to do the right thing.  A team of talented designers can create a compelling concept car like the Mighty FC.  An extremelky well-structured and led product development organization like Apple can take the vision of talented designers all the way to market.

I love this design.  I hope they find a way to make it -- it would be such a boon to the Jeep marque.

Unabashed Gearhead Gnarlyness

Ferdinand Alexander Porsche and the Porsche 911

Ferdinand Alexander Porsche, a designer who shaped many beautiful products, passed away yesterday.  He is pictured above astride one the truly iconic designs of the 20th century, the Porsche 911.  His Porsche, his design.

As an aside, how cool would it be to pose for a photo on a product of your own imagination?  Pretty cool, I think.

To my eyes, the Porsche 911 is an object I never tire of.  Particularly in its early incarnations, there's a very clean and pure design aesthetic at work.  I also love the later 911's, with their shapely hips and bulging flares and scoops and spoilers, but the original design offers something different: formal, modern minimalism very much in keeping with the work of Dieter Rams from the same period, yet still connected to the flowing, ur-Porsche shapes and surfaces penned by the great Erwin Kommenda in the 1930's.  In many ways that link between the streamlining period of car design and the very rational approach of the 1960's drives my abiding love of the 911 aesthetic: it is emotional in the right places, technical in the rest, and the combination just feels the way a sports car should: emotive, efficient, compact, agile.

I often think about cars I would want to have parked in my living room as sculptural objects, and an early 911 is at the fore, along with a Citroen DS, a Fiat 500, or a Saab 92.  They all have their genesis in a certain time period, which probably says more about me than it does about them.  But what I do think we can learn from all of these, and from Ferdinand Porsche and the 911 in particular, is the paramount importance of having a crisp point of view.  Product experiences that are remarkable to use, to behold, to feel, are always the result of talented people who not only know what they're shooting for, but know what good looks like.  If you want to have a thriving business concern, focus on creating great offerings first by hiring the best talent you can find an letting them run.

As an engineer, I can't help but admire the 911 from a dynamic standpoint.  Here is a classic example of an approach which works in practice but not in theory.  Who would have thought that this rear-engined architecture would go on to win everywhere from Le Mans to Daytona to Pikes Peak?  The inherent maneuverability and traction advantages of the 911, when put to good use, provide a textbook case of strategy being the art of making the most of what you have that other's don't.  A 911 is not a normal car, does not drive like one, and therefore can win in ways different from the mainstream.  For a more visceral perspective on that thought, please see my other blog.

Back to the man.  For me, the lesson I take from his story is that we must all strive to design our own lives.  He was lucky enough to be born into a successful family which was also a company.  On the other hand, imagine being born as Ferdinand Porsche, with a genius grandfather who defined many aspects of the automobile, and a successful industrialist father, who created a startup and navigated it to become a world-class brand.  That would be a tough legacy to live up to.  For some, that would be too much weight to carry.  I think for Ferdinand Alexander, the key was that he was honest enough to say that he would be an industrial designer, and not an engineer like his father and grandfather.  By doing so, he was able to express a deep congruence between his own dreams and the path of the firm, which resulted in the 911.  When those two diverged, he expressed the entrepreneurial instincts which I believe all great designers carry, and founded his eponymous design firm, which went on to create many lust-worthy products. 

So at the end of the day, whenever I see a 911, I'll think of the individual behind its shape, whose most worthy design was perhaps the arc of his own life.

 

Concept Car at Your Peril

The term "concept car" is used in many industries today to refer to a prototype that's meant to test a marketing concept.  Obviously the origin of the term is in the auto industry.  Under the guidance of design maestro Harley Earl, General Motors refined the art of the concept car in the 1950's, using one-off prototypes to test and showcase styling "trends" or upcoming technical innovations.  A concept car is something for which the user experience has been fully fleshed out, but the supporting technical detailing may or may not be there, and certainly all the layers that make up a whole product -- sales, marketing, support, service -- are nonexistent.  A concept car is usually built as a one-off or in extremely low volumes.  These days if you were to bring a model -- working or not -- of a future personal computer to a tradeshow or demo opportunity, you might refer to it as a "concept car".

Last week Jeep released a concept car called the Mighty FC Concept.  As you can see, it's very gnarly:

If you're the kind of person who dreams of parking a VW DOKA TriStar Syncro in your garage, as I write this you're probably creating an online petition to convince the powers that be at Jeep to put the Mighty FC into production.  For everyone else, please allow me to explain why this particular Jeep concept car has created a ton of buzz out among the forward-control cognoscenti, to wit:

• Historical Reference: the Mighty FC pays homage to the original Forward-Control Jeep, which was actually put into production in the 1950's.  That particular design was done by the famous American designers Brooks Stevens.  So the Mighty FC plays to nostalgia, but also is an "in" statement for a certain crowd.
• Functional Elegance: I haven't explained forward-control yet: it's when you take a truck chassis where the driver and steering wheel sit behind the front wheels, and via some mechanical contortions, you arrange the new seating position to be above or beyond the front wheels.  The iconic VW Bus is a forward-control job, too.  Functionally speaking, forward control is an elegant packaging solution because it moves human cargo to the periphery of the vehicle, opening up the rest for other stuff you'd want to haul around.  However, the functional deficit is that said human cargo now becomes the first on the scene of the accident, if you get my drift.  Given modern engineering techniques, materials, air bags, and structural know-how, I have to believe that the Mighty FC could be made relatively crash-worthy.  
• Pure Macho Gnarlyness: while the Mighty FC is by Jeep after Jeep, I'd argue that its proportions and stance are actually those of the formidable Land Rover Forward Control.  The British surely know how to make a handsome military vehicle. Unlike the Land Rover FC, the original Jeep forward-control had the surface detailing and proportions of a plant-eater: gentle, bucolic, easy going.  Its trans-Atlantic second cousin, however, is big and bold and looks much mightier.  And that's what the marketplace wants: to look tough and mighty.  That green paint, those crazy portal axles, them big knobby tires, the two spot lights nestled up around that winch, those orange tow hooks, that bottle opener behind the driver's door handle -- this thing just looks killer.  It's like, visceral, man.

So Jeep is going to build it, right?  Who knows.  Actually, probably not.  I doubt that the business case for the Mighty FC would work out, and it's not clear there's actually a market for an off-road capable pickup -- it would likely appeal to that small segment of the auto-buying public which fancies vehicles such as the Citroen Mehari, BMW M Coupe, and Cadillac CTS-V wagon... eccentric cars, all, but memorable ones, too.  To market it would be really great for Jeep's brand.

And therein lies my beef with concept cars in general.  If you have a great idea, and if you believe in it, should you concept car it?  I'd say no.  If you aren't sure about it, there are other ways to gain confidence in its validity beyond showing your concept in public.  And, if its such a great idea, why show all of your competitors what you're working on?  Why tell them that you've had a great insight?  And why alert the marketplace to an upcoming innovation? A couple of decades ago, Apple used to show lots of "concept cars" of future computing devices, and to what end?  Very few of them shipped, and those that did were either met with disappointment -- because the reality couldn't compete with the concept -- or they drove down sales of existing product, which is not the best way to get the most out of your brand. 

But perhaps the biggest reason not to show concept cars you don't ever intend to produce is that you disappoint your biggest fans, those net promoters who would do anything for, and tell anyone anything positive about, your brand.  These are the folks who write blog posts like "I Am So Excited About The Jeep Mighty FC Concept I Think I Might Die", or who spend hours photoshopping your PR photos to show the rest of us what a four-door or full-van version might look like, or who write headlines in national newspapers asking "Has jeep created the most interesting concept of 2012?".  Do you really want to excite these folks, only to disappoint them over the longer term?  My gut says no.  Product brands aren't like perennially losing baseball teams whose fans have no alternative to their hometown monopolistic losers.  Instead, it's pretty easy to switch when you stop meeting my expectations.  Better to surprise and delight me with a real product I never anticipated, than to tease me with vaporware that we both know you'll never ship.

The whole point of having a strong point of view is to ship something remarkable.  And the reason we're here is to ship.  If you do have that strong point of view, believe in it first, and commit yourself to shipping.  Then -- and only then -- show off your concept car.

 

 

Learning from the Panama Canal: John Stevens, innovator

The fellow in the photo above is John Stevens, a self-taught civil engineer who made a huge contribution to the development of the Panama Canal over a hundred years ago.  I've been learning about him through the pages of David McCullough's amazing work The Path Between the Seas, which is the story of how the Panama Canal came to be.  From political intrigue which brings down governments to financial engineering that would make even a Goldman VP blush to the hard-headed bravery of entrepreneurial engineers like Stevens, this book has it all.  It's the ultimate start up fable.  It was recommended to me by my friend and colleague Bob Sutton, who is a big fan of the book, too:

This is a great story of how creativity happens at a really big scale. It is messy. Things go wrong. People get hurt. But they also triumph and do astounding things.  I also like this book because it is the antidote to those who believe that great innovations all come from start-ups and little companies (although there are some wild examples of entrepreneurship in the story -- especially the French guy who designs Panama's revolution -- including a new flag and declaration of independence as I recall -- from his suite in the Waldorf Astoria in New York, and successfully sells the idea to Teddy Roosevelt ).  As my Stanford colleague Jim Adams points out, the Panama Canal, the Pyramids, and putting a man on moon are just a few examples of great human innovations that were led by governments.

For all you interested in the art and science of bringing cool stuff to life, this is a mandatory read.  It is so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking up a copy -- you won't regret it. 

Anyway, back to John Stevens.  Anyone tasked with leading teams of creative people on a quest -- where you know what you are going after, but you have no idea how you're going to get there -- needs to study Stevens.  A railroad man who trailblazed many a path through the mountains of the American West, Stevens instinctively knew how to get on with things, and how to inspire every one else to do their best.  In a very Dave Packard kind of way, the guy knew the value of literally getting in the trenches to so that he could know -- really know -- what was happening out in the world.  Where his failed predecessors in the saga of the canal ruled from the dry and safe roost of a remote office, upon his arrival in Panama, Stevens made a huge difference to the morale and direction of the entire enterprise simply by pulling on some big rubber boots and walking up and down the line of excavations, all the while chomping on a cigar.  This guy is a role model for all us trying to make a dent in the universe.

McCullough includes some choice quotes from Stevens, many of which come from some books he authored later in life, which I am planning to read after I finish Path Between the Seas.  Here are some of my favorites, with some color commentary:

"With great respect to supermen, it has probably been my misfortune, but I have never chanced to meet any of them."

As you might expect from someone with the discipline to put in the amount of study to become a self-taught engineer, Stevens was a believer in the simple value of hard work.  I have to believe that if Stevens were to be alive today in order to meet Roger Penske, he would deeply admire Penske's aphorism, "Effort equals results".  I also like this quote because it says something about the nature of talent, that it's not just about being born with something, but being willing to develop your talent, to gain the kind of experience that only comes with mileage.

Here's a great one on the primacy of doing:

"There are three diseases in Panama.  They are yellow fever, malaria, and cold feet; and the greatest of these is cold feet."

I love that line.  I'd wager that more organizations die of cold feet than from the burns that come with trying and failing.  For anyone who has ever engaged with getting an organization to change, it's cold feet that you're fighting.  

Finally, I'll leave you with Steven's wonderful expression of what I call Innovation Principle 15: celebrate sins of commision, stamp out sins of omission:

"You won't get fired if you do something, you will if you don't do anything.  Do something if it is wrong, for you can correct that, but there is no way to correct nothing."

In fact, I like his formulation a lot more than mine: there is no way to correct nothing, so do something.

Unabashed Gearhead Gnarlyness

The Audi R18 e-tron quattro

metacool Thought of the Day

"Coming up with ideas is interesting and indefinable, isn't it? The brain is a funny thing. An idea often emerges in the shower, or during a walk. Your brain has been ticking away and the idea just bubbles up. Occasionally you feel, 'God, I've gone dry.' It's like writers' block. Shortly before the launch of a new car, when I've used all my existing ideas, I think, 'Now what?' But running the car produces new ideas as you understand what you've created."

- Adrian Newey

Innovating the Delta Wing Way

The Delta Wing.  It looks like a rocket, but it's a car.  It also represents a fundamental, albeit still potential, paradigm shift in our conception of what a racing car can be.  I love the way it looks, and am even more excited about what it represents.

For students of the art and science of bringing cool stuff to life, the key question isn't "will it win?", but "how did it come to be?".  Hopefully someday someone will write a book on the story of the Delta Wing.  For now there's Wikipedia and this good Popular Mechanics article for those of you interested in the backstory on this amazing car.

Because I don't know enough yet about the how on this one, let's focus on the what.  If the Delta Wing were a movie and you were the director, here are the characters you'd ask central casting to deliver to your set to weave a compelling tale of daring innovation:

The Ace Technologist: Ben Bowlby is the technical mastermind behind the Delta Wing and the leader of a spectacularly talented and experienced design team.  I admire the elegance of his design vision, and the way in which he went back to first principles in order to reach for a new outcome.  The Delta Wing effectively performs as well as cars having double the horsepower.  That kind of elegant efficiency is what we need in the world today.  Efficiency is sexy, a notion that some wayward manufacturers would do well to rediscover.

The Visionary Entrepreneurs: two business-savvy racers were instrumental in making the Delta Wing happen.  Chip Ganassi provided financial backing for the first prototype of the Delta Wing, which was not accepted by the racing series it was designed for (see The Enlightened Incubator entry below).  Duncan Dayton then took the ball and ran with it, recasting the Delta Wing as a Le Mans competitor, and practising some magic to build a coalition capable of developing, building, testing, and ultimately running a competitive new racecar design -- quite a task.  Dayton epitomizes the truest sense of entrepreneurship: making things happen by making the smartest use of the resources you have at hand.  Dr. Don Panoz, an entrepreneur's entrepreneur, and Scott Atherton also played pivotal roles in the genesis of the Delta Wing.  And last but not least, kudos to Nissan for having the guts to engage with this endeavor as a motor supplier and sponsor.  Their commitment to innovating makes me want that GT-R even more.

A Team of Artists Who Ship: The Delta Wing is built by the heroes at All American Racers (AAR).  AAR is hallowed ground in the racing world, as place where heroes like  Dan Gurney and Phil Remington still walk the halls.  Over its long history, AAR has proven to be one of the most innovative institutions based on US soil.  I don't know about you, but the idea that the master maker Phil Remington had a hand in the creation of the Delta Wing, well, it sends shivers down my spine. 

The Enlightened Incubator: you can't run a race car without a sanctioning body to hold the race.  At the annual 24 Hours of Le Mans race, there are 55 positions available for race cars to compete.  Early on in the Delta Wing venture, Duncan Dayton and company secured the 56th place on the grid from the sanctioning body for Le Mans, the Automobile Clube de l'Quest.  While the Delta Wing won't be contesting the Le Mans race for points, it will be an integral part of the racing field, and will live out of the "56th garage" at the Le Mans circuit.  This idea of the 56th garage being available represents highly enlightened thinking when it comes to the art and science of innovation.  I've written before here on the vital importance of designating a place for the people in your organization to fail.  And while I hope the Delta Wing has a successful race at Le Mans, no matter what happens they will have learned a substantial amount, and the cause of innovation will be served.  Next year's car will be that much better due to the enlightened incubation of Garage 56.

Professionals to Get the Job Done: at the track, the Delta Wing will be run by the storied Highcroft Racing team.  Though most of the focus in racing is on the driver, it is actually one of the ultimate team sports, especially in the kind of endurance racing the Delta Wing is designed for.  Ideas are one thing, executing against them is quite another.  It takes a village. 

A Brave Protagonist: and then there's the human in the hot seat, Marino Franchitti.  Race drivers are only as good as their last race -- it's an incredibly competitive sport, and there's a line of drivers out the door waiting to take over your spot.  That's why I admire Marino Franchitti's willingness to take on the reputational and career risk of driving not just a new car, but a new paradigm.  Unfortunately, the world of racing does not operate by the rule of Silicon Valley, and failures are not celebrated as points of learning.  On the other hand, someone had to pilot the Wright Flyer, and now Orville's name is one for the ages.  Hats off to Marino, and here's to him showing us how fast this thing can really go, WFO.  He has guts.

One Sexy Beast: from an aesthetic standpoint, I think the Delta Wing rocks.  It looks wicked - why be beautiful when you could be interesting?  Of course, I've been accused of having a rather unmainstream view of car aesthetics (here, here, and here, for example), but I call 'em like I see 'em.  This thing grabs your attention, and keeps it.  I believe a whole generation of 8-year-old kids are going to fall in love with automobiles because of the Delta Wing.  And here's a suggestion to the fine folks at Polyphony and Nissan: create a digital version of the Delta Wing and let the rest of us drive it virutally in Gran Turismo 5.  It'll do wonders for the Nissan brand, and it will create a pull effect on the conservative world of racing: we really want to see you professionals race the cars we love driving online. 

To sum it up, if you're going to shift a paradigm, you could do worse than to try and do it with a really sexy beast like this one, but you'd better have the entire innovation ecosystem in place, too.  Enjoy the photos and videos below.

Unabashed Gearhead Gnarlyness

The Bugatti 100P. 

Designed from 1937-1940 by Ettore Bugatti and Louis de Monge.

 

via Silodrome

Prototyping is the process

If you google "design thinking process", you'll be presented with a series of diagrams or lists or steps which, in a linear fashion, purport to represent the way a good designer works.  They'll often look something like this:

1. Understand
2. Observe
3. Ideate
4. Prototype
5. Test
6. ... and cycle back to Step 1

We're all familiar with cooking manuals, and this one feels not unlike a good recipe for chocolate chip cookies... first this, then that, and then do this.  Easy, safe, predictable, comfortable. 

Except, that's not the way designing really happens.  There is no six-step process to design nirvana.  It doesn't exist.  Over the years I've tolerated and communicated this linear portrayal of the design process because it's an easy way to explain the gist of things to folks not familiar with the art and science of bringing new stuff to life.  The secret is that, when you're designing, it feels like all of these at once.  So I used to draw this linear process up on a wall, and then wave my hands in the air and say something like "But really, it's a big furball... when you're really doing it, you're bouncing all over the place and the steps don't matter." 

I think we can do better than that.  And now I know how.

A wise colleague recently corrected me on all of this.  "Prototyping isn't a step in the process," he said.  "It is the process." 

Exactly.  Designers are always prototyping, whether it's moving things around in their imagination, building a reverse income statement in Excel, or hacking something out of wood using a sidewalk as sandpaper.  The notion that a designer waits until it's "prototyping time" to start messing around with stuff is just wrong.  Prototyping starts when the design process begins, and it never stops.  We build to understand.  We observe for generative insight but we also observe to gather data regarding the hack we just whipped up ten minutes ago.  We ideate with our gut and our hands as much as with our brains.

We prototype all the time.  We must prototype all the time.  Prototyping is the process.

Unabashed Gearhead Gnarlyness

The Fujifilm X-Pro1

RIP, Sergio Scaglietti

The great entrepreneur, marker, artist, and businessman Sergio Scaglietti passed away on Sunday.

Via his intuition-driven design process, Scaglietti created some of the most visual stunning cars of all time, such as the Ferrari 250 GTO pictured above.  In the humble opinion of this writer, he also brought to life the most gorgeous and lust-worthy designs ever marketed by Ferrari, which is really saying something.  His creations took a Modenese vernacular sculptural aesthetic and made it the international standard for all things red, loud, curvy, and fast.

Unabashed Gearhead Gnarlyness

IDEO x Rock Lobster Oregon Manifest Faraday: a French porteur with a little lightning up its butt

A few of my colleagues at IDEO spent the summer collaborating with Rock Lobster to build our vision of what the utility bike of the future should be.  This was done as part of the Oregon Manifest.  What they created, in my humble opinion, is simply magical... and it goes by the name of Faraday:

 

Don't you just want to jump on it and ride away?

It's an electric bike.  There's a motor mounted in the front hub, super high-tech batteries are mounted inside the top tubes, and it's all controlled via a small throttle control.  How does it feel to ride?  Beautiful.  We engineered proprietary firmware and software which seamlessly integrates the push from the motor with the push you're getting from your feet.

If you're interested in voting for the best in show, you can do so here (and I wouldn't mind if you voted for Faraday!).

Here's what the judges had to say:

There is something profoundly elegant about this bike. I experienced it as a flawless design execution. While the idea of a front rack is not novel, the modular plug-in platform is brilliant. The prototyping and thought that went into deciding upon a frame geometry that would work well with front cargo appears to be accurate from my own experience. Having spent a bit of time working on improvements to existing electric assist integrations, I have great respect for the innovations and design execution for this facet to the bike. I have no doubt that the work that went into the design and fabrication of the electric side alone was easily equal to the rest of the bike.  -- Ross Evans

Contrasting with the other entries, the Faraday is a bicycle with two wheels, and it may be the better for it. It is an attractive machine that strikes a good balance between striking looks and understated aesthetics. Off all three entrants, this one probably is the most useful to most riders, as it’s easy to ride, easy to park, and easy to store at home. -- Jan Heine

This bike struck a chord with me almost immediately, my first thoughts were that this is a very well thought out bike and it is definitely my favorite of the three. Visually I love the traditional lines and the striking integrated racking system actually added to the appeal. Again we have the right type of drivetrain and braking systems, and the very smart addition of electric assist! What got me most though is what’s missing… a big, ugly, heavy battery that seems to be on every other electric assisted bike I’ve seen. Other savvy well thought out features continued to impress upon closer inspection. I really felt the data collection sensors to help determine just how much help you get from the motor was a very cool touch. -- Jeff Menown

My top pick of the three—and not just because it’s the sexiest and most conceptually successful. For me, the most important criteria are that the bike be practical, versatile, elegant, thoughtful, well-engineered, and, most important, a dynamic, real-world performance vehicle. And the Faraday is all of these things, despite its being one of those newfangled e-bikes, which run counter to my Puritanical belief that a bicycle’s engine is by definition its human. Otherwise, it’s a motorcycle, right? Well, dammit, this isn’t a motorcycle. It’s a brilliant update of the French porteur with a little lightning up its butt, and I love it. And a long-distance high five to those Californians for the clever name and great logo. -- Jeremy Spencer

As I write this, I have to admit that my eyes are welling up a bit with tears, so proud am I of the amazing IDEO and Rock Lobster folks who cranked on this project.  What you see here is the result of many late nights and long weekends; since I live near our office, over the past few months I popped by most weekends and looked in the window of our shop and they were always there.  I have a bunch of innovation principles listed along the right side of this blog.  But words are wind, and it just so damn affirming and inspiring to see people really live them and go beyond them.

Awesome work, guys.  Go Faraday!

Unabashed Gearhead Gnarlyness

Paul Budnitz Bicycle model No. 2

Intrinsic motivation, a killer input

Earlier this evening I came across an intriguing interview with racer, metal sculptor, designer, and archmaster of doing Shinya Kimura.  Here's an excerpt, with Kimura's thoughts italicized:

What were your early influences? 

The shapes and designs of Italian sports car like Lamborghini Miura and bugs.

Have you ever had another job? 

No

What are your favourite and least favourite parts of a bike build? 

I love to see the hazy idea of mine actually becomes materialized, that is the most favourite part of a bike build. Least favourite part is...polishing!

What are his hopes for himself and Chabott? 

Keep creating whatever I like.

What are his regrets?  

No regrets at all!!

Will he always be a bike builder or is there something else on the horizon? 

I don't categorize myself as a bike builder but I will keep building bikes and creating whatever I have in my mind as long as I live.

This morning I attended a demonstration of a cool new service, and got to meet one of the women behind its creation.  It turns out that this new business was launched as part of a Stanford d.school class last Spring, for which I was a judge.  But I didn't know about this service until today.  Why?  Well, in part because at the big demo fair they held as part of this class, where each of the student teams demoed their ideas, I spent too much of my allocated judging time talking with one team, who were unfortunate in that they had a team member who couldn't get out of what I would call "heavy sales" mode.  By that I mean, no matter what questions I asked about things like point of view, first-hand experience of the world, prototyping -- all the stuff you care about when engaging in the art and science of bringing cool stuff to life -- he kept on patronizing me with the party line, the premeditated marketing messages they had whipped up beforehand.  In other words, he was laying some heavy bullshit on me.  Bummer.

And you know what?  Bullshit is bullshit.  Bullshitters don't ship, and they can't attract intrinsically motivated people to be on their teams in any sustainable, long-term way.  Why?  Because we all want to be around people with that gleam in their eyes which says "this is going to happen".  Life is too short to waste your time working with people who are motivated by extrinsic factors, such as money, status, or grades.  It's the intrinsically motivated folks who sweat the small stuff, grok the big picture, and -- dare I say it -- think different.

When I look at the interview transcript above, I see someone who would be hacking on bikes even if there was no money in it.  Kimura's voice is that of a person who has pledged their life toward a specific passion.  A person who comes up with solutions in his dreams.  Who takes their inner desires seriously enough to try and make them reality, rather than repressing them in the name of what the outside world wants them to be.  When I interview folks to be part of the team at my employer IDEO, I'm always looking for the sparks of passion which are the mark of someone powered from within.  They are easy to see when they're there, and they are equally easy to smell when they is fake.  In my experience, having that intrinsic motivation makes all the difference in the end result.  Not only is it impossible to fake, but if you try to fake it, you will always sound like a bullshitter, which completely torpedoes the basis of everything you're trying to claim in the first place.

This is all a roundabout way of saying that intrinsic motivation is, in my opinion, a killer input.  Meaning that it is one of several key factors which define a space within which talented people can collaborate with other similarly aligned people to make magic happen.  I've said previously that trust is a killer app, but it's not an application, it's an input, just like intrinsic motivation.  The output is wonderfulness. 

And there are more; this is a subject worthy of more study.

 

 

photo credit: Chabott Engineering

metacool Thought of the Day

“You know the old adage that the customer’s always right?  Well, I kind of think that the opposite is true.  The customer is rarely right.  And that is why you must seize the control of the circumstance and dominate every last detail: to guarantee that they’re going to have a far better time than they ever would have had if they tried to control it themselves.”

- Charlie Trotter

Effective storytelling, a countermeasure against complexity

You may not like cars, or you may like them as much as I do, but I think we can all agree that the storytelling behind this Audi piece called Eliminating Luck is truly masterful. 

I admire the way they've taken a complex subject, a subject associated with myriad statistics and difficult to relate to numbers (how fast does 300 km/hr feel, anyhow?), and turned it into something lyrical and quite beautiful.  Effective storytelling is indeed an effective countermeasure when it comes to deconstructing complex situations and communicating their essence in an elegant way.

Again, brands are defined by how they make you feel

Stanford Magazine on the Stanford d.school

Stanford's alumni magazine, titled -- you guessed it! -- Stanford Magazine, ran a great story on the d.school a few weeks ago.  The article speaks with my teacher/mentor/colleague/friend/hero David Kelley and others about not only the d.school, but on living your life well, and on the notion of achieving creative confidence (here's a secret: those last two items are deeply related).

It's definitely worth your time to read through the article.  I really liked this quote from Stanford President John Hennessy:

Creativity represents an important characteristic that we would seek to inculcate in our students, and obviously one that's harder to put a firm framework around.  It's unlike teaching some analytical method. Will a bridge stay up? Well, we know what to teach. You teach physics, you teach some mathematics and you can do the analysis.

It's much harder to teach creativity. [It involves] multiple routes, multiple approaches and, obviously, it's virtually impossible to test whether or not you've succeeded. The measure of success is likely to come long after, not unlike many of the other things we try to teach: To prepare students to be educated citizens, to prepare them for dealing with people from diverse and different walks of life. Those are things that play out over a long time, whether or not we've done a good job.

During my time as an undergraduate at Stanford, I was very fortunate to be able to pursue two degrees, obtaining both a bachelor of science in engineering and a bachelor of arts in a multidisciplinary program called Values, Technology, Science and Society [VTSS] (it is now called STS and is one of the biggest programs on campus, though when I was there it was quite small).  I spent a lot of time in the library.  Though VTSS sounds like something very technical in nature, it was actually an incredibly rich humanities experience, with a focus on topics which, if you've spent any time around this blog, you know that I love.  For example, my honors thesis was on the origins and development of the Ferrari aesthetic, looking at how meaning was created in Maranello via the mechanisms of storytelling, racing, and panel beating.  My VTSS teachers were an incredible group of people, really inspirational, and they helped me build up my creative confidence in myriad ways.  VTSS also gave me a way to take all of the product design classes with David Kelley which I otherwise would not have been able to do had I just pursued my engineering degree alone. 

I bring all of this up because I do feel that Professor Kelley helped, in Hennessy's words, to prepare me to be an educated citizen, to prepare me for dealing with people from diverse and different walk of life.  If the d.school had been around while I was there, I wouldn't have had to get the two degrees (though I would have anyway, as I'm always "doing both").  For me, as someone who was part of the founding team at the d.school, and who remains extremely passionate and optimistic about its mission and potential in the world -- it is an experiment still in its very early days -- it's very gratifying to see that mission be couched in these terms.  Ultimately, we are not teaching folks to be designers, we are helping them realize their potential as citizens and as happy, productive human beings.  Awesome.

I'll leave you with this recent d.school video which has students telling it all in their own words:

d.school bootcamp: the student experience from Stanford d.school

metacool Thought of the Day

Thanks to my friend R. Michael Hendrix for this awesome photo.

Get out there and hustle!

Being remarkable: Sarah Kay

Sarah Kay

Salman Khan and the primacy of doing

What if all of the big intitatives -- both public and private -- put into place over the past decade to computerize learning were trumped by a smart, funny, personable guy who, acting largely alone and on a shoestring budget, used a human-centered approach to creating a simple, cost-effective way to reach thousands and thousands of students over the web? And what if it all happened simply because he started teaching kids?

Well, here you go: Salman Khan did all of that, and more.  He is a wonderful example of the primacy of doing.

Let's look at some of the innovations brought to market by the Khan Academy.  Among others:

• free access over the internet
• self-paced learning
• lecture attendance at home, homework at school
• the psychological and emotional safety created by learning in private
• helping students achieve true mastery, as opposed to minimum tolerable levels of understanding
• liberating "slow" students from the tyrranny of being put on the low achievement track
• a more human classroom experience

What do all of these have in common?  Well, aside from being truly amazing outcomes for students, teachers, and parents, none of them were captured in a business plan slide deck, nor were they necessarily premediated goals for his venture.  In other words, Salman didn't start out with the goal to flip the learning paradigm.  He worked his way up to that point by doing something he loved.  To push that point even further, Sallman wasn't looking to start a venture at all, just to tutor his cousins more effectively.  He designed for them, saw the value he created, and then went from there. 

Embracing the primacy of doing, getting started, saying "what the hell, why don't I try this!" is a way to open yourself up to powerful forces of serendipity, luck, and good fortune.  In technical terms, doing gives you access to a real option, which is defined as:

the right — but not the obligation — to undertake some business decision; typically the option to make, abandon, expand, or contract a capital investment.

Think about it: if you could create the right to give yourself an expanded range of opportunities in the future, wouldn't you give that gift to yourself?  Of course you would.  So what Salman teaches us is that we need to act -- we have to act -- because inside of that action is a gift of a better future, both for ourselves and for others.  Accessing the gift requires some courage, so tell yourself you can do it, and help your friends and family to embrace their own potential to get out there and make it happen.  For me, that's the ultimate lesson of the Khan Academy.

 

Toward an additive society

For those of us who make things for a living, we live a daily pardox in that most of our making actually involves subtracting.  That gorgeous MacBook Air you covet?  It was made subtractively: lots of perfectly good aluminum was machined away to achieve its seductive form.  Unfortunately, many of the miraculous fixes surgeons create actually involve taking out living material, and either setting up a workaround using existing components, or placing in a replacement part -- like an artificial hip -- which was probably made subtractively, too.  Even a quotidien net-shape process like thermoplastic injection molding requires the creation of complex metal molds, which are also usually made via subtractive processes, all of which are quite laborious and time consuming.

We're on the cusp of a significant shift in manufacturing techniques which has been several decades in the making.  As a newly minted engineer back in the early 90's, I started using 3D CAD software to drive stereolithography machines which gave me rough samples of the parts I was designing for ink jet printers.  Stereolithography was an early form of "additive" manufacturing, where you build up the thing you desire layer by layer, drip by drip, or atom by atom.  Though the parts weren't very functional, they were a great alternative to asking someone to machine out your impossible shape (I was very good then at creating impossible shapes...).  What's cool today is that variants of the same ink jet technology I was developing then can now be used to print out... kidneys. Or bikes.  And urethras.  Or even plastic injection molds.  And going forward, potentially just about anything we can dream up.  For me, I think this shift in manufacturing paradigm will be driven by three major developments in the art and science of making stuff:

1.  Cost-effective production of complex composite forms and structures

Save for their motors and wheels, modern Formula 1 cars are made almost completely out of a variety of composite materials.  As you can see from the crash sequence above (which the driver Mark Webber walked away from), composite materials combine light weight with very high strength.  The composite tub which Webber sits in stayed intact throughout this accident.  He is also wearing an advanced, lightweight helmet made out of composites.  And his head is kept attached to his torso by a composite yoke sitting on his shoulders.  However, the manufacturing techniques used to create all of these parts are slow and expensive.  To date, the use of composite materials in mass consumer offerings has been limited to things like tennis raquets and golf clubs, where the forms and structures were fairly simple and the market was willing to pay a premium for performance.  Boeing is about to ship the Dreamliner, whose fuselage and wings are made out of composites.  Cost-effective, lightweight composites would be a boon to the automotive world, enabling us to create much more energy efficient cars which maintain or increase levels of active and passive safety over today's metallic structures.  The good news here is that several organizations are pioneering manufacturing techniques which radically lower the price of composite structures. Gordon Murray's design firm has created the iStream manufacturing process, which combines steel structures with a fast composite manufacturing techniques to create a cheap, lightweight stucture for vehicles.  And McLaren, ever an innovator, is just about to ship its amazing MP4-12C road car, which uses a cost-effective molded carbon fiber tub as its main structural element.  Here is a technical analysis of that car, and here is an overview of the state of the art in structural composites by Gordon Murray himself.  As more of these manufacturing techniques come into the mainstream, we'll see composites in more and more products.  Significantly, these processes also have the potential to significantly reduce the physical footprint required to make things, and they can also skinny down the capital structure required to be a manufacturer.  More on that in the next section.

 

2.  Additive manufacturing of technical nutrients

By this title, I refer to the process of building up structures by depositing incremental bits of "man-made" materials until a whole is formed.  This is in contrast to traditional manufacturing techniques, where material is slowly stripped away, Michelangelo-like, until the desired form is achieved.  For more information on this, rather than attempt to duplicate a wonderful piece of journalism, I'd like to point you to 3D printing: The printed world, an article from The Economist.  For both both noobie and expert alike, this article provides a great survey of techniques and applications being developed all over the world.  If you're an engineer like me, the prospect of being able to additively manufacturing a titanium spar inside of a fully-formed carbon fiber wing is truly inspiring.  On the other hand, if you are a business model hacker like me, you'll also find the following Economist observation pretty mind-blowing:

Perhaps the most exciting aspect of additive manufacturing is that it lowers the cost of entry into the business of making things. Instead of finding the money to set up a factory or asking a mass-producer at home (or in another country) to make something for you, 3D printers will offer a cheaper, less risky route to the market. An entrepreneur could run off one or two samples with a 3D printer to see if his idea works. He could make a few more to see if they sell, and take in design changes that buyers ask for. If things go really well, he could scale up—with conventional mass production or an enormous 3D print run.

This suggests that success in manufacturing will depend less on scale and more on the quality of ideas. Brilliance alone, though, will not be enough. Good ideas can be copied even more rapidly with 3D printing, so battles over intellectual property may become even more intense. It will be easier for imitators as well as innovators to get goods to market fast. Competitive advantages may thus be shorter-lived than ever before. As with past industrial revolutions, the greatest beneficiaries may not be companies but their customers. But whoever gains most, revolution may not be too strong a word.

If you could make world-class titanium parts in your backyard studio, would you?  I might.  If you are GM, and you can start replacing huge buildings built to house humongous steel panel stamping presses with robotic cells which build up parts additively, would you?  I believe the capital efficiencies offered by these new technologies will be irresistable, and will transform the notion of "factory" to be something much smaller, more nimble, and more similar to the low mass organization we've seen develop to support many of the leading Web 2.0 brands.  I saw an inkling of this eight years ago, when I visited the Pagani factory in Italy.  At that point in time, they were not using additive manufacturing, but they were building all of their parts (save for the engine and some assorted metallic suspension pieces) inhouse using carbon composite manufacturing techniques.  Here's what I wrote about that visit:

Located a short drive outside of Bologna, Pagani sits but a stone's throw from the headquarters of Ferrari and Lamborghini -- part of the high performance internal combustion industry cluster that's existed in Emilia-Romagna since the 1920's.  The factory is very compact and sits, almost invisible, in a quiet suburban neighborhood.  It is divided into three main areas, each sitting side-by-side: a carbon fiber fabrication area with several autoclaves, an assembly area (big enough to fit three cars on jack stands) and an entrance lobby/museum.  The design offices sit above the museum, and the entire facility oozes quality and attention to detail, as do the fabulous cars that roll out the front door.

Three tiny buildings creating complete cars.  A factory complex so small I drove by it at least five times, finally resorting to begging two mechanics in a garage fixing an old Fiat 500 to point me in the right direction.  That's a big revolution in capital structure, and I believe it will signal the birth of many small, leightweight, easier-to-start-up entrepreneurial manufacturing firms.  Our industrial landscape may return to looking much like that of over a century ago, with as many exciting mechanical startups flourishing as we now have software startups.  By the way, the illustration above is also from -- you guessed it -- Gordon Murray.

 

3.  Additive manufacturing of biological nutrients

Here I refer to the process of building up structures by depositing incremental bits of "natural" materials until a whole is formed.  Or it may mean creating a scaffolding out of man-made or biomaterials, and then injecting that scaffolding with living cells so that it can grow to become a liver, or a urethra, or a bladder, or a kidney.  Since showing is better than telling, please give yourself 17 minutes to watch the following TED video -- it will blow your mind and may change the way you approach your work:

If you can't spare the time for the entire video, at least forward to the 10 minute mark in the video, and check it out.  Amazing.  By the way, this type of manufacturing approach will also change the business structures of many of the organ replacement systems we have in place today.  Contrast the complex supply chains we've created to harvest viable organs from donors, find a suitable recipient, and then transport and implant the donation.  Aside from reducing the human misery and suffering accrued (which cannot be measured in dollars), imagine what happens when Stanford Hospital has an organ printing center in the basement.

 

This shift in our manufacturing paradigm will be enabled cheap, lightweight structures, built-up physical products, and custom-printed biologic offerings.  In summary, this is just my attempt to synthesize for myself what may be happening across these trends.  The technological possibilities are fabulous.  The business implications are intriguing and even inspiring.  The societal implications are simultaneously energizing and troubling.  Let's see where things go, and I'd love to hear what you think.

How value is generated in a free copy world

Six verbs:

1. Screening
2. Interacting
3. Sharing
4. Accessing
5. Flowing
6. Generating

Some amazing thinking and synthesis from Kevin Kelly.

Unabashed Gearhead Gnarlyness

Always have a strong point of view

It is so important to have a strong point of view.  Let me repeat: it is so important to have a strong point of view.  It needn't be as extreme as the one voiced in this ad, but you've got to stand for something.

If you don't have a point of view, you won't know what you don't stand for, and so you'll be tempted to try and do everything, because "no" won't be in your vocabulary. Trying to appeal to everyone by playing in the mushy middle not only will make you less appealing over the long haul (because being boring is not attractive), it also makes it very difficult to get started (because the enormity of the task makes everything too daunting to tackle), and makes it really tough to ship (because you have to do so much in order to meet the needs of so many people).

Having a point of view is incredibly liberating.  It takes more energy and more time to get to an honest understanding of what you believe in, what you need to do, and what you won't do, but it is well and truly worth it.

For more on this subject, read Principle 19: Have a point of view

 

metacool Thought of the Day

"Strive for perfection in everything.  Take the best that exists and make it better. 

If it doesn't exist, create it.  Accept nothing nearly right or good enough."

- Henry Royce

 

(in other words, be remarkable)

Unabashed Gearhead Gnarlyness

www.deus.com.au

The new Ferrari FF and the return of jolie laide

Ferrari just announced a new, four-seat, four wheel drive car called the FF.  It sounds great and looks awesome:

The FF is the first design in a long time from Ferrari to break new aesthetic ground.  The recent 458 Italia is a truly gorgeous and wondeful car, and I'd love to have one waiting for me in my garage, but it represents the evolution of an idea which began with the 1963 250 Le Mans.  It is an almost perfect execution of an old idea. The FF, on the other hand, does not work from any proportional standards seen before from the folks in Maranello.  And I love it.  I love the roofline.  I love the way it hunkers over its rear wheels.  I love the way all of its visceral design elements combine to say... take me out for a drive.  Those wheels, those exhaust pipes, those side vents?  They're all whispering, "let's get out of here...":

And I love it because it dares to ignore classical standards of beauty.  Some might say it is downright ugly, but I would say it is unique and memorable, and perhaps a little beautiful-ugly.  Or jolie-laide, as my French friends would say.

As I once said about my favorite little puppy hearse, the BMW M Coupe -- to which the FF bears more than a passing resemblance -- why be beautiful when you could be interesting?

 

Amen.

metacool Thought of the Day

"I'm a designer. I'm a creator. I really like helping manage and lead a growing, profitable business. It's a design job."

- Alan Mulally, President and CEO, Ford Motor Company

metacool Thought of the Day

"Above all, think of life as a prototype.  We can conduct experiments, make discoveries, and change our perspectives.  We can look for opportunities to turn processes into projects that have tangible outcomes.  We can learn how to take joy in the things we create whether they take the form of a fleeting experience or an heirloom that will last for generations.  We can learn that reward comes in creation and re-creation, not just in the consumption of the world around us.  Active participation in the process of creation is our right and our privilege.  We can learn to measure the sucess of our ideas not by our bank accounts but by their impact in the world."

- Tim Brown

Truly remarkable: Kaz Yamauchi's Gran Turismo 5

This is what remarkable feels like

Original.  Creative.  Breathtaking.  Daring.  Singular.  Brilliant.  Artistic.  Practiced.  Considered.  Inspiring.  Flabbergasting.  Elegant.  Ingenious.  Astonishing.

Remarkable.

You can prototype anything: Ayr Muir-Harmony and Clover Food Lab

"I spent weeks thinking about and composing this. It’s very important to me, to the company, and I hope to all of you. This is a statement of the philosophy by which we are building Clover. We’re not coming to you with a product that is complete. Instead we’re hoping to engage you. We have big things we want to achieve and we’ll only be able to get there with your help.

Third, like most things Clover this wall is going to change. The white paint comes out in 3 weeks."

- Ayr Muir-Harmony, founder, Clover Food Lab

 

I'm a big fan of what Ayr Muir-Harmony has been doing with his startup Clover Food Lab over the past two years.  I'm jealous, even.  Ayr is incredibly gutsy, but also deeply thoughtful about how we goes about failing his way to success.  His venture is all about learning by getting out there and engaging with customers in an authentic, honest, and open way.  

Ayr lives Principle 5 better than just about any other person I've met.

More thoughts on the primacy of doing: Shinya Kimura, Jeep, Corvette, and the cultural zeitgeist of life in 2010

My last post on Shinya Kimura created some great discussions, both in email, on forums across the internets, and around my workplace.  That video certainly struck a deep chord with me, as it has with many other folks.  Kimura combines an extremely strong point of view with a strong bias for doing, and the combination is entrancing.  As I watched it again over the weekend, it made me think of two commercials which aired earlier this year, one for Jeep, the other for Corvette.

Here's the Jeep spot, which, if you listen carefully, sounds more like the manifesto for a social movement than it does an ad trying to hawk sheetmetal (and that's a Good Thing):

And then there's these amazing 45 seconds of brand building from Chevrolet:

Warning: rant approaching.

For me, the cultural zeitgeist of life in 2010 America is clearly saying "We need to start thinking with our hands again", and that we need at least to have confidence in our decision making as we seek to create things of intrinsic value -- be they forged in metal, hacked in bits, or whipped out of the air via meticulous planning and rigorous execution.  It's not difficult to get to a strong, compelling point of view.  That's what design thinking can do for you.  But in each of these videos I sense our society expressing a strong yearning for something beyond process, the courage to make decisions and to act.  Talking and thinking is easy, shipping is tough. 

I think that courage comes from foundational experiences messing with stuff.  We're still in hard times, undergoing a structural shift away from the economic flows which underpinned the 20th century.  The imagery expressed in the Jeep and Chevy videos is from that receding economic period, which still exists here in places, but which will continue to drain away unless we can grasp the essence of what those images are saying to us.  We need to start thinking with our hands again.  The Corvette piece pines wistfully for Apollo rockets and the like... and implies that we can't make them anymore.  Which is probably true.

However, we are indeed still creating Apollo-like icons for the future -- for example, Facebook, Google, and even the Chevy Volt -- but we certainly need more people who, like Kimura, can't keep themselves from hacking away at stuff.  Tinkering, hacking, experimenting, they're all ways of experiencing the world which are more apt than not to lead to generative, highly creative outcomes.  I firmly believe that kids and young adults who are allowed to hack, break, tear apart, and generally probe the world around them develop an innate sense of courage when it comes time to make a decision to actually do something.  I see this all the time at Stanford: people build their creative confidence by doing things which are difficult, rather than by mastering theoretical concepts, which, though complex and difficult in and of themselves, are not transformative in a personal sense.  In my training as an engineer, I took years of complex math, and it was incredibly useful to me as I applied it to thermodynamic and fluid mechanics issues I encountered as a design engineer, but nothing gave me the courage to act as the experience I had creating a casting pattern on a lathe and milling machine and then pouring molten aluminum in the negative space left by the handiwork of my mind.  It was my I can do this moment.  If we want more people to fall in love with the art and science of bringing cool stuff to life, we need to help them have that moment, wherever and however it may come.

Brian W. Jones left a wonderful comment under my Kimura post, one which I think sums it all up really well:

“The world can only be grasped by action, not by contemplation. The hand is the cutting edge of the mind.”  - Jacob Bronowski

How will you grasp the world?  What can your hands tell you?  We need to start thinking with our hands again.

What can you ship today?

Shinya Kimura and the primacy of doing

My personal creative process is a source of great joy in my life.  The reason I do what I do is because when I'm working on creating something, I can more often than not get to a state of flow, and living in that state, even for a few minutes, is an amazing experience.  I can get there by writing a blog post, drawing up the organizational structure for a new venture, carving out a wicked reverse income statement on Excel, or improvising on my tenor sax.  The medium really doesn't matter -- only doing it does.

But if I'm not careful I can very easily psych myself out.  If I'm not mindful of my own process, I can think all I want, as long as I want, about how I might get traction with whatever blank sheet of paper is staring back at me, but all of that mental toil never gets me anywhere, though it is extraordinarily effective at keeping me up at night.  In my experience, there's nothing quite like getting started to get one tracking toward success, as trite as that might sound.  By not getting started, however, I tend to create a virtual cage for myself, a cell whose bars are made up of equal parts, fear of failure, lack of confidence in process, and a vague sense that this may finally be the time when when hard work does not suffice and my talent and years of training will finally fail me.  And yet, when I start, my own creative process -- which is a variant of the generic "design thinking" process, I suppose - never lets me down, because it is actually built upon a premise of iterative failing.  The only failure is to never begin.  Whenever I finally get down to starting, all of the fear and worry melts away.  Doing leads to flow and progress; thinking about doing locks one in stasis.

Over the past five years, I have been talking about the idea of design thinking, which in its essence is a repeatable, generative process focused on the creation of options.  Yes, design thinking is about thinking like a designer, but what is often missed about the concept is that the thinking that a designer does is not thinking done in isolation from other aspects of life and the world.  Rather, much of the thinking and processing done by a designer happens in the context of active exploration of the world, whether it be playing with metal or with piles of market data.  It is very difficult to imagine any worthwhile design thinking happening from the inside of a totally white isolation cell, or for that matter, from the circumference of a corporate conference table.  The critical factor is to do think while doing, and to do while thinking.

Enter Shinya Kimura, stage left.

I am always intrigued by the reflections of designers who think with their hands.  Kimura, in a Harley Earl-esque fashion, does not do many of the things we expect designers to do, process-wise:

"I have images but I am not inspired by any particular thing.  I don't draw, either"

Kimura, it would seem, does not have a premeditated game plan for the bikes he creates.  Instead, he sketches with his materials as they are, where they are, allowing his confidence in his point of view to guide him through to the final result.  I think his bikes are truly remarkable.  Their aesthetics, coupled with the story of their making, are inspiring.

From a standpoint of time and material intensity, Kimura's way may indeed be less efficient  than a more rational approach to prototyping, the kind I teach at Stanford.  There, I preach the wisdom of baby steps, of modeling quickly with cardboard if the end result is to be resolved in sheet metal, in Excel if the object is a viable financial process.  By the way, I do think this is the appropriate pedagogic approach given a room of neophyte designers, but perhaps the challenge for those of us design thinkers is to move beyond rote process; to paraphrase Charlie Parker, first you master the art of prototyping, then the design process, then you forget all that shit and just design.  In other words, once you know how to do, just do.  Pre think a lot less, do think while doing a lot more.  If the rapid asendance and spectacular triumphs of the Web 2.0 superstars -- the Zyngas, the Facebooks, and the Twitters -- tell us anything, it's that doing trumps planning more often than not.  It is far better to ship now and learn soon than to study for a while and ship... much later.

In doing there is knowing.  Doing is the resolution of knowing.  We learn via our mistakes, and we make many more mistakes of value when we take action.  Kimura is a wise designer.

 

By the way, this amazing movie is the work of director Henrik Hansen, and was brought to my attention by my good friend, the indefatigable Jim Hancock.

Pattern recognition: Juke is the New Saab

I have to admit, I'm more than a little enamored of the new Nissan Juke.  It's gutsy, like a little rally car:

I'm infatuated, even. 

And then it dawned one me: the Juke is but a modern take on the venerable, hallowed Saab 96:

Do you see what I'm talking about?  Both share that iconic Saab reverse swoosh...

 

... as well as a big-eyed face only a mother could love:

Automotive reincarnation.  It's a Good Thing.

metacool Thought of the Day

"I love efficiencies in design, but I love efficiencies in business even more."

- Gordon Murray

 

Innovation Principle 19: Have a point of view

Take a minute to scan the montage of images I've collected above.  What emotions do they evoke, and what thoughts do they bring to mind for you?

As I look at them, here are the adjectives bouncing around my head:  alive, vibrant, crisp, beautiful, engaged, dynamic, iconoclastic, memorable, deep, intriguing, ingenious, timeless. 

To pull this montage together, I made quick list of the people, ideas, and objects which have made an impression on me over the years, and then I selected a subset which represented the whole of the list.  If you ask me about any of them, I could spend the better part of an hour explaining how they've created meaning for me, how they've influenced the course of my life, how they represent what's good in the world.  Your list is undoubtedly different -- it should be different -- and you may question my taste (yes, I do have an abiding fascination with cars shaped like an Air Jordan shoe), but I'd encourage you to take five minutes now (yes, now!) and jot down your own list.

(tick tock)

Are you done?

I'd love to hear about your list.  Even without being able to see it, I'd argue the following:  every choice on your list represents a person who made choices.  A person who knew what they wanted and what they did not, what mattered and what did not, a person who was able to listen to everyone but then do what they thought was right.  In other words, a person with a point of view.

What is a point of view?  Simply put, it is a crisp accounting of what matters which allows one to say no.  In the process of trying to bring cool stuff to life, it is so easy to say yes to everything.  It's much harder to say no to the things that don't matter in the end, and that's where the art part of the equation plays out.  But I can say one thing definitively:  if you don't have a firm point of view about what matters, your chances of doing something remarkable drop to zero.  Great things happen when we make choices, and we make good choices when we know what we want.

Above all else, you must have a point of view.  Don't leave home without it.

This is number nineteen in a series of evolving principles of innovation.  As always, I humbly seek your feedback, critique, and better ideas.

Unabashed Gearhead Gnarlyness

The Leica M9, by Walter de'Silva

Where good ideas come from

The Five Ways of Pulse

I really like this overview of the creation of the Pulse iPad app.  Written by Lisa Katayama of Fast Company, it succinctly captures the big things you have to do to bring something remarkable to market.  I especially appreciate the second of the five ways noted in the article:

Define: Are you focused and open to what your team needs in order to thrive? Define your personal point of view in pursuing your venture, and then think about what your end user, your team, and your business need. Even if your end goal is to reach all 6.7 billion inhabitants of the earth with your product or service, key in on a niche user to start and identify what works best for him. By observing and empathizing with the tech geek, for example, Kothari and Gupta were able to define his need: a better way to catch up with older news and other treasures that might get buried in linear feeds like Google Reader or NetNewsWire.

Over the past year, I've outlined 18 of the 21 principles of innovation I've been hacking on.  The nineteenth principle happens to be "Have a point of view", and I think the expression of this principle above is just wonderful.  Knowing what you stand for, and what you don't, and what is important, and what is not, is fundamental.  Without that knowledge, I believe it is impossible to manage the tensions that come with bringing something new to life.  Having a point of view not only helps you make decisions, it helps increase the odds that you'll make good decisions -- at least decisions that will feel good to the people you're designing for.  I suppose I should get my act together and write up those last three innovation principles...

I also dig this article because of what it says about the Stanford d.school.  First, I have to give a tip of my hat to my friends and colleagues Michael Dearing and Perry Klebahn, who created and taught the Launch Pad class wherein Pulse was created and launched.  They're incredible guys, and I consider myself very lucky to get to learn from them on a routine basis.  Second, when George Kembel and I wrote up the "napkin manifesto" for the d.school back in 2004, we had a vision of using "... design thinking to inspire multidisciplinary teams".  We thought it would be cool if the next pair of Hewlett and Packard, Filo and Yang, or Sergey and Larry found each other via the d.school.  Now, I'm not saying the Pulse is the new Yahoo, but it's very satisfying to see people at the d.school meeting each other, learning with each other, and working together to bring things to life which make a real impact out in the world.

Now that's way cool.

Some sage thoughts from J Mays

I'm always looking for feedback on my evolving list of innovation principles.  What works?  What doesn't?  What's missing?

Last year Esquire ran this list of aphorisms from the mind of J Mays.  I've been holding on to this list since then, and this afternoon I took another look at it.  Seeing them afresh made me feel that a few fell naturally into some of my framework of innovation principles.  Is it narcissistic to take the thoughts of another person and put them into buckets of your own making?  Yeah, probably. 

Anyway, here I go... thinking by Mays, buckets by Rodriguez:

Principle 1: Experience the world instead of talking about experiencing the world

"A designer is only as good as what he or she knows. If all you know is what you've garnered from fifteen years of living in Detroit, it's going to limit what you can lay down. If you've had experiences around the world, you'll be able to design a much richer story for people to enjoy."

Principle 2: See and hear with the mind of a child

"If you go into a person's house and look at his surroundings, you'll see exactly who he is. If you look at the same person in his car, you'll see who he wants to be"

Principle 3: Always ask: "How do we want people to feel after they experience this?"

"What does the cutlery look like? What's the plate look like? How's the food laid out on the plate? Has the environment been completely thought through? Part of the reason I go to a nice restaurant is to get the entire vibe."

Principle 8: Most new ideas aren't

"There have been more not-quite-right Mustangs than Mustangs. It had gone a little bit off the rails in the seventies, came back in the eighties, and went a little off the rails in the nineties. We did a lot of research before we designed the 2005, and we came to the conclusion that the ones that were really important, the ones that everybody logged in their heart, were between '64 and '70. I wanted the 2005 to feel like we were picking up in '71. So I basically erased thirty-five years of Mustangs in order to get the story focused in everybody's mind again."

Principle 18: Learn to orbit the hairball

"Success has a lot of fathers."

"Clichés are more correct than we give them credit for."

Principle 20: Be remarkable

"Believe it or not, there's an art to plowing a field. My father had an exact way he wanted it done, a laser-straight line over the length of the field. I just had to train my eye. If you lay out the first line wrong, then all the other lines that you disc will turn out crooked. There was a precision in those fields that I took into automotive design."

Who says you can't prototype software?

Sometimes it's easy to dismiss the idea of doing some prototyping when the "thing" we're working on is as ethereal as a service offering or a software interface.  The usual suspect excuses are very predictable:

• We can't prototype it because prototyping it is tantamount to building it
• We need to design the entire interface if we're going to interact with it on the device, so why prototype it?
• We don't have an interaction designer
• We don't have a graphic designer
• It'll take a few weeks to mock up the interface
• We don't have time

But, as the video above shows, where there's a will, there's a way.  If you believe you can prototype it, you can.  Warning, shameless plug approaching: Elmo's Monster Maker was designed by some of my colleagues here at IDEO, and it's awesome.  Not only is it one of my kid's favorite apps, but it's one of mine, too.  It's fun, social, wacky, will make you giggle, and in the way of all good games, you just can't put it down. 

None of this happened by accident. Perhaps Mozart could dish out an entire perfect opera based on the music in his head, but for the rest of us, there's no substitute for getting something out quickly, and then improving it over and over and over until we have to ship it. Iteration makes perfect. Starting is the springboard to perfection.

Some relevant innovation principles:

• Principle 4:  Prototype as if you're right. Listen as if you're wrong.
• Principle 5:  Anything can be prototyped. You can prototype with anything.
• Principle 10:  Baby steps often lead to big leaps.

A conversation with Jörg Bergmeister about interface design, the new Porsche 911 hybrid, and making green more red

If nothing else, working on metacool over the past half decade has helped me meet a ton of people I would never have encountered otherwise.  And thanks to another friend I met via metacool, I recently had the great pleasure of meeting Jörg Bergmeister, one of the most talent racing drivers working today.

Those of you out there whose eyes roll back in your head whenever I talk about cars can rest easy (relaaaxxx -- let those eyes roll baaackkk), because when Jörg and I met, we didn't talk about automobiles so much as about human-machine interface design and how new technologies may reshape the dominant paradigms of automotive design surrounding us today.  Our specific topic of discussion was the amazing new Porsche 911 GT3 R Hybrid, and yes we did geek out a bit on gearhead stuff at the beginning of our interview, but on the whole I think we ventured in to some very interesting territory.  In fact, we touched on many of the themes I surfaced in this post I wrote a while back about making green red.

By the way, have I mentioned how totally gnarly Jörg's 911 looks?

My favorite part of our conversation came when I asked Jörg about how he stays inspired, and his answer was just wonderful:

Racing is the one thing I love -- well, not the only thing, but I've done it my entire life and it has been my hobby and I made it my profession. I'm very fortunate to make my hobby my profession. I think that's enough inspiration. I just love, love racing.

Words of wisdom.  Can you make your hobby your profession, and achieve a "cold fusion" state of permanent personal inspiration.  What a way to remain always inspired!  I love it.

By the way, have you ever noticed how much the nose of a modern 911 looks like the skull of the ur-land animal Tiktaalik? 

Yeah, me too.