In 2006 Half.com (remember them? I barely do) decided to delete my inventory for sale as a response to level of activity not meeting their standards.
Today I got this email
I haven’t been selling my stuff there for two years, since, well, they got rid of my inventory listings. And now I won’t be buying stuff since they aren’t going to maintain my wishlist? I am amused at the patronizing and punitive tone they’ve taken in writing this email. One wonders what the cost is for them to maintain this data, and what they gain by purging their database of crappy customers like myself.
Of course, there are so many more positive ways they could come up with to encourage my action. What sort of non-monetary incentives could they provide for getting me to add something to my wishlist in the next 24 hours? They’ve got this amazing opportunity to interact with me and make it positive, instead they ridiculously negative about it. Wouldn’t you expect better from eBay?
Photos from my various travels depicting global cultural variations of the fundamental person icon.
Bali, Indonesia. They’re some pretty small people, so why does that first person seem so hulking and Cro-Magnon-y?
Taipei, Taiwan. Note the hip chapeau the stroller is sporting, and the protective headgear (?) worn by the worker.
London, UK. This fellow toils as above, but without the benefit of a helmet. Less chance of sunburn, maybe?
Tokyo, Japan. The Japanese cute aesthetic shows up in the large head and even larger cigarette.
Bangkok, Thailand. Who takes care of children?
Providence, RI, USA. Not just walking, but actively moving forward, dancing, and exuding joie de vivre.
And Karrie Jacobs has a nice example here.
Graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister gave a wonderful talk Wednesday night at Stanford, as part of the David H. Liu Memorial Lectures in Design series. He focused on Things I Have Learned In My Life So Far, a group of projects based on a list of personal maxims he took from his diary.
For me, the highlight of the talk came when someone in the audience asked about Sagmeister’s ideation methods. After mentioning “hotel rooms in foreign cities,” Stefan described an Edward DeBono lateral thinking approach which involves looking at a project from “a completely nonsensical point of view.” Then he picked up his water bottle and did an off-the-cuff ideation that created a perfect little gem of a moment.
I’ve paraphrased a bit, but this captures how he talked through his process:
“Say you were going to design a new water bottle. You could base it on a . . . zipper” (the choice was triggered by a zipper on the jacket of an audience member in the front row).
“Let’s see, it could interlock” (demonstrates by spreading and interlocking his fingers), “You could have 2 that go together . . . maybe a 4-liter bottle that comes into 4 parts. That wouldn’t be too bad.” (pause)
“Not bad. DeBono would be proud.”
From start to finish, this ideation took about 10 seconds, and it was just a great illustration of a creative thinking process.
This demonstration, coupled with a caution Stefan made about the dangers of starting ideation from existing solutions and opinions, got me thinking about the art of research.
Design research is often positioned as a kind of counterbalance to the type of creative act I’ve just described. But, when it’s well-practiced, research includes a juxtaposing and synthesizing of ideas that is similar in creative process to the bottle+zipper riff. Just as with other aspects of the design process, research culminates in possibilities for new ways that things can go together. For design researchers, the materials for this synthesis include a deep and focused exploration of people: behaviors, bodies, meaning, culture, complaints, wishes, lies and truths.
At the beginning of the night, Stefan talked about his fear of doing graphic design primarily for other graphic designers, comparing it to playing “music for other musicians.” He said at a later point, “If you can reach a mass audience with good quality, that’s the highest honor” (and listed the Arch of St. Louis, The Simpsons, and the Champs Elysees as examples).
The beauty of integrating a focused understanding of people into the whole design process-using it as one of the basic materials with which to design-is that what comes out the other end of the pipe will be imbued not only with the vision of its creators but with the soul of that wider audience as well.
Back in January, the Wall Street Journal ran a technology-oriented look at what our lives will be like in 10 years, around shopping, gaming, movies and TV, making and keeping friends, searching online, getting news info, and protecting privacy.
It’s filled with many speeds-and-feeds-driven predictions like
Moviegoers also can expect digital projection of their movies in super-high resolution, exceeding anything they could get at home, either online or through high-definition DVDs.
Somewhat better are the feature-driven predictions like
When you buy an airline ticket, you’ll have the option to send a text message to people in your network to let them know you’re taking a trip — in case any old friends will be in the area and want to meet up. Or you might let friends know you just bought a movie ticket, in case someone has a review to share or wants to join you.
And as GPS hardware becomes more widespread, that information will follow wherever you go — literally. You’ll be able to keep track of the physical whereabouts of your friends, so if you’re stuck on a layover in Dallas, your phone might tell you that you have a friend stuck in the same airport.
Mostly the piece just makes my skull throb (and not in a good way) with a barrage of mostly disconnected incremental changes in the amount of noise, communication, advertising, technology we’ll have to manage. That’s largely a function of the experience of reading through this laundry list of changes, not so much the specific predictions themselves. But I didn’t react the way I used to as a kid, waiting for the enticing possibilities of the future, which of course turned out to be way cooler than anything most people thought. This may simply be an artifact of aging (I’m likely more cynical than I was at 14), or may be an artifact of where we are at in terms of epochs of technological revolutions.
What do you think?
My second interactions column, Everbody’s Talkin’ At Me, has just been published. I offer some thoughts on the crucial but undervalued activity of listening within the context of storytelling.
Get a PDF of the article here. As the interactions website only has a teaser, we’d like to offer a copy of the article. Send an email to steve AT portigal DOT com and (if you haven’t given us this info before) tell us your name, organization, and title. We’ll send you a PDF.
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