Chip and Dan Heath write in Fast Company about the power of constraints
Keith Sawyer, author of the insightful book Group Genius, spent years studying the work of jazz groups and improvisational theater ensembles. He found that structure doesn’t hamper creativity; it enables it. When improv comedians take the stage, they need a concrete stimulus: “What if Romeo had been gay?” The stimulus can’t be: “Go on, make me laugh, funnyman.”
“Improv actors are taught to be specific,” Sawyer says. “Rather than say, ‘Look out, it’s a gun!’ you should say, ‘Look out, it’s the new ZX-23 laser kill device!’ Instead of asking, ‘What’s your problem?’ say, ‘Don’t tell me you’re still pissed off about that time I dropped your necklace in the toilet.'” The paradox is that while specificity narrows the number of paths that the improv could take, it makes it easier for the other actors to come up with the next riff.
This is something I’ve emphasized in my talks on improv and ethnography (which always end up being a workshop on improv/ ethnography/ design/ creativity)…the energy that comes from working on problems that are extremely constrained along some axes (i.e., each successive utterance must begin with a successive letter of the alphabet, from A through Z) and utterly open along other axes (i.e., what the actors say can or be anything they want).
Fast Company describes how Alaska Airlines has been redesigning their check-in environment. Some nice bits of process to note
White assembled a team of employees from across the company to design a better system. It visited theme parks, hospitals, and retailers to see what it could learn. It found less confusion and shorter waits at places where employees were available to direct customers. “Disneyland is great at this,” says Jeff Anderson, a member of White’s skunk works. “They have their people in all the right places.”
The team began brainstorming lobby ideas. At a Seattle warehouse, it built mock-ups, using cardboard boxes for podiums, kiosks, and belts. It tested a curved design, one resembling a fishbone, and one with counters placed at 90-degree angles to each other. It built a small prototype in Anchorage to test systems with real passengers and Alaska employees.
It appears that Alaska had some obvious (and shared) design goals: increase throughput and reduce confusion. There’s a whole class of environmental redesign projects where the goals aren’t as clear. In those cases, there’s some generative research needed to understand what aspects of the overall experience could and should be different.
Student Protest, Bonny Doon, CA 1987
Today is the 5th anniversary of the current US military involvement in Iraq. I heard Army Major General Mark Hertling speaking on NPR this week about helping members of Iraq’s central government figure out what people in the different provinces really want and need.
“We call it reverse helicopter governance – bringing the ministers to the provinces.”
This starts to sound a lot like the kinds of contextual research we use to inform product design. Going out and talking with users in their own environments. Seeing what people’s needs really are, rather than making assumptions.
There’s been a thorny debate in the Anthropology community about doing anthropological work in military contexts, but this is a different type of situation. Hertling is talking about facilitating Iraqi ministers to do contextual research on the people they are charged with serving as government officials.
What would it look like to take a further step, and take a design approach to creating a “user-centered government?”
One important aspect of design is a spirit of playfulness-in the sense of “serious play.” A spirit of willingness to reassess the meaning of a problem and the range of possible solutions. To prototype rapidly and try multiple approaches.
Michael Schrage, the author of Serious Play states that
“…the real value of a model or simulation may stem less from its ability to test a hypothesis than from its power to generate useful surprise.”
Ideation and design processes have been used to solve some pretty complex problems. Steve wrote last year about introducing empathy and user-centered design into government. Participatory processes and contextual inquiry have become much more prevalent in development work.
What could be done to bring more of the spirit of serious play to bear on the ways that problems like civil and international conflicts are framed and addressed?
(also see part 1)
What sort of stuff is “popular” in another country? How do we, as visitors, experience, catalog or contextualize pop culture?
Tokyo’s Shibuya district is the throbbing heart of Japanese youth culture, overflowing with pedestrians (and vehicles), with dense ground-to-sky advertisements for music and electronics and clothing.
Upon arrival, we see a truck driving by advertising an upcoming album release by Ayumi Hamasaki.
In fact, we see this truck – or others like it – constantly. We’ve never heard of Ayumi, but clearly someone wants this album release to be a big deal.
One evening, we notice large crowds outside Yoyogi National Stadium. Turns out it’s an Ayumi Hamasaki concert.
(Notice the suitcase, featuring her logo.)
Parked alongside the stadium are a number of Ayumi Hamasaki tribute vehicles
Passing by the next night, New Year’s Eve, there is an even more extensive display of tribute vans.
Assuming (and I do) that these vans were made by fans, and not record company plants, then at this point it becomes impossible to deny the obvious: she is huge. The larger-than-life marketing messages are appropriate given the enormous popularity. The foreigner’s reaction of “Well, we’ve never heard of her” is only a temporary refuge in the face of the demonstrable devotion.
Consider this: in a major city in the world there’s an performer where fans decorate their vehicles with her face on the outside and displays on the inside and tailgate together with their custom vans before concerts. And you’ve never heard or heard of her. (Disclaimer: doesn’t apply to you if you’ve heard of her).
And: spend a few days in this major city and you will learn about this performer over and over and over again and wonder how you could have possibly not heard of her before.
Portigal Consulting is covered in a recent cover article (Design an “Experience” for Users) in NIKKEI ELECTRONICS, January 28, 2008 vol. 970.
A large number of companies are seeking detailed information from end users that will hold clues for products offering a brand new experience. But for an idea to become reality, companies will have to discard any basic assumptions they already hold.
The magazine is print-only, and is in Japanese (link above is only to the article summary). If you’ve got a copy of the article and want to share, please let me know. We’d love to see the piece
and someday even find a translation.
Update: scans are posted here. Thanks, David!