Coca-Cola is running a three-page ad in the Sunday paper.

As part of our ongoing commitment to finding new ways to suit your changing tastes and needs, we’re always working to develop innovative options. We’d like to say thanks for the inspiration. And please stay tuned, because it’s just a taste of things to come. To learn more about our latest innovations….

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I noticed the use of innovation twice in their copy and as much as I like to throw the word around, I’m often troubled when I see how it’s being used by others. I think most of us find new brands or new products or new packages interesting (granted, some of us more than others!), but the small can (for example) isn’t new.

Mini cans of Pepsi, Burlington, ON, 2004

The ad also reminded me of an image from 2005, showing just the diet beverages sold by Pepsi.

That’s a lot of choice! But good luck trying get a handle on how many different things Coke sells. It’s impressive and overwhelming. Their huge list of brands (worldwide) is here and a virtual, global vending machine is here.

Meanwhile, Oroweat is doing their small-packaging bit with new smaller bags of bread.

I wondered what has changed that necessitates this new package? Are breadboxes getting smaller? According to their site

, the smaller bread package came out at the beginning of 2007 (emphases mine)

New Smaller Loaves Fit with Industry Trend of Reduced Size Options

The unique line of mini-sized variety breads are perfect for smaller households or families that like to buy several different varieties of bread. Although the loaves are smaller in size, they deliver the flavor and quality known from Oroweat.

“We all like the freshest bread and many consumers have told us they cannot finish a full size loaf of bread before its expiration date. Oroweat Mini Loaves are the perfect solution for smaller households that typically toss away a portion of a loaf of bread,” said Dan Larson, Oroweat Marketing Director. “Mini Loaves also make it easier to enjoy a variety of breads for different occasions; including 100% Whole Wheat with whole grain nutrition, and Country Buttermilk, a favorite for the perfect grilled cheese sandwich! Now you can have both. This is one more example of Oroweat’s innovative thinking to offer new options that are important to our consumers.”

With the average number of people per household just over two in the United Sates, smaller size offerings are gaining attention in the food industry. Keeping an eye on trends and listening to consumers, Oroweat is one of the first bread companies to introduce smaller loaves. Last year, Oroweat successfully introduced premium buns in four-count packages.

Oroweat confirms it, then. Small packaging is innovative thinking.

The problems in getting San Francisco high school students to use the separate line for free lunches in San Francisco is not surprising

Lunchtime “is the best time to impress your peers,” said Lewis Geist, a senior at Balboa and its student body president. Being seen with a free or reduced-price meal, he said, “lowers your status.”

School officials are looking at ways to encourage more poor students to accept government-financed meals, including the possibility of introducing cashless cafeterias where all students are offered the same food choices and use debit cards or punch in codes on a keypad so that all students check out at the cashier in the same manner.

Only 37 percent of eligible high school students citywide take advantage of the subsidized meal program.
…

Many districts have a dual system like the one at Balboa: one line for government-subsidized meals (also available to paying students) and other lines for mostly snacks and fast food for students with cash. Most of the separate lines came into being in response to a federal requirement that food of minimal nutritional value not be sold in the same place as subsidized meals – which must meet certain nutritional standards.

It’s frustrating to encounter situations when the owners of the system understand explicitly why their target customers aren’t adopting their product or service, but are unable to make the changes necessary to reach those customers. In this case, the schools are morally (and legally, perhaps) obliged to provide this service in an accessible fashion, but politics and bureaucracy get in the way. It’s not as if the schools are noting “hmm, no one seems to be eating our free lunches. We have no idea why that is. And even if we knew, we’d have no idea how to fix it!”

I first learned about wicked problems from Adam Richardson who described simple problems as those where both the problem and the solution are known, and complex problems as those where the problem is known but the solution is not. In wicked problems, neither the problem nor solution is known. Looking at the school cafeteria itself, we see a simple problem. Looking at the educational institution, there’s a likely wicked problem lurking just out of sight…why haven’t they solved the simple problem?

I’ve seen so many design student projects that solve simple problems without acknowledging the wicked problem that has prevented the adoption of similar solutions for so long. Naive designers so often believe that their solutions for simple problems are so fantastic that they will automatically be adopted but the sad truth is that the real problem isn’t about the lack of solutions.

There’s been a lot of interesting discussion recently around personas. Part of what’s really being talked about is how to tell an effective story. As in, one party has information they want to impart to another in a way that is impactful, memorable, makes a good working tool, and can be internalized and passed along to others.

Stefan Nadelman’s animated short, Food Fight, which I discovered over at Drawn, is a virtuosic example of telling a story through alternate means. Nadelman’s film presents a history of major armed conflicts since WWII, using food to represent the conflicting nations. It’s hilarious, touching and thought-provoking, and it made me want a Big Mac.

Food Fight relies on a set of shared reference points to tell its story, and I think it’s useful to keep in mind that the more we use proxies to convey information, the more we are relying on all of the communicating parties having the same set of reference points. That’s why it’s so important in a design process that any type of information vessel be treated not as a static artifact, but as a material that we can work with to clarify interpretations and surface assumptions.

• CEO says Victoria’s Secret Is “Too Sexy”
  “We use the word sexy a lot and really have forgotten the ultra feminine.” Victoria’s Secret was launched with the idea that Victoria was manor-born and lived in London. That’s some pretty significant drift in image/meaning/story.

A few months ago we saw a very cool Hollywood used car lot, Kay Kars, featuring rather poorly executed (and dated) film icons as enthusiastic decoration.

A mural along one wall featured Brando, Marilyn, Clint, and Arnold.

A banner along the street showed some of the same classic stars, as well as Bugs and the Three Stooges.

Meanwhile, an otherwise non-famous bunny encouraged potential shoppers to “Come On In”

A few months along, Kay Kars has either moved or closed down (the website describes their luxury car inventory; not likely the same business) and the empty lot is nothing but sad.

Update: Here’s the scene in February 2009:

• Ontario health minister apologizes for diaper comment; sets participant-observation back at least a decade
  Before outcry led to apology, minister said he was “seriously considering” wearing an adult diaper to ensure a decision to use them was appropriate. If corporate execs can flip burgers and staff registers, why not the gov’t?

• Personas and the Role of Design Documentation
  Andrew Hinton’s inspiring piece: How it’s less about deliverables, and more about design.
• UX Methods Cards by nForm
  They are doing another set this year; the current set doesn’t feel very complete. How’s about open-sourcing the PDF so people can print their own?

Starfucks sticker, Taipei, December 2007

Service outages seem to be common news stories lately. Sure, it’s news when many people in Florida lose power, but also when Pakistan causes a 2-hour YouTube blackout, BlackBerry service goes down

, or Hotmail is unavailable.

There’s a sense that we are relying on far too many fragile systems and that as complexity increases, these stories will become even more commonplace (and perhaps even less newsworthy). But being forced to do without something seems to be a tactic companies enjoy using to extract a sense of the value of their service. The Whopper Freakout ad campaign is the most prominent example, but other companies such as Yahoo and Dunkin’ Donuts have conducted (consensual) user research experiments where people go without something and report back on the sense of loss.

But Starbucks pulled off the genius move, closing for a few hours to retrain staff, and making front-page news not for their failure (see: Florida, Blackberry, YouTube, Hotmail above) but for their retraining efforts towards a clarified service promise

Starbucks is welcoming customers back Wednesday with a new promise posted in stores: “Your drink should be perfect, every time. If not, let us know and we’ll make it right.”

This won’t address all of the challenges Starbucks is facing, but it’s a pretty brilliant P.R. success, hitting the denial-of-services hot button and emphasizing the valid, powerful reason behind the outage.

Sketches for “Personal Greenhouse” ¬©2007 Dan Soltzberg

Debbie Millman and Mike Bainbridge have posted their article, Design Meets Research, over at Gain: AIGA Journal of Design & Business. The piece provides a quick overview of various tools in the research toolbox, calls out their particular strengths and drawbacks, and makes the point that picking the right tool for the job and using it well are paramount.

Here are a couple of quotes from the article and some of my thoughts in response:

There are a wide variety of research techniques that can have merit for designers. . . There is not, repeat not, one correct way to test design.

I see research very much as a generative tool as well as an evaluative one, and have started to question whether the concept of a border between research and design is really accurate or productive. At the front end of the design process, research is a way of surfacing opportunities and generating ideas. At later stages, it’s a way of refining and validating these ideas as they become concepts and prototypes. In this way, research is a design tool in the same way that drawing is a design tool, except that at the center of the mechanism is the customer/user.

When used correctly, research shouldn’t stifle creativity but rather offer designers stronger inspiration and focus.

By taking a facilitative, collaborative approach to working with companies and design teams, research and research findings can be integrated into the design process in ways that enhance rather than stifle creativity. Keeping the customer/user and their needs prominent throughout the design process needn’t be limiting–having clear goals and constraints ultimately makes a design problem more interesting and leads to better, more elegant solutions.

And better, more elegant solutions are, after all, the end game here.

• Goodbye to Postum
  Made of wheat bran, wheat, molasses, and corn dextrin, Postum was considered a “healthier” drink. It did not cause the jittery side effects that coffee gave some people. Kraft has stopped making it.
• How People Count Cash Around The World
  A demonstration of supposedly how people in different regions in the world count bills. The posture and gestures vary widely. One wonders these evolved so differently.