InnovateWithKraft, as they are now taking ideas from anyone who’s got one to send in

Kraft is accepting ideas under this policy for new products, packaging, and business processes/systems only. We are most interested in ideas that are more than a concept, in particular new products & packages that are ready to be brought to market (or can be brought to market quickly).
Although we very much appreciate: recipes, entertainment ideas, ideas for line extensions for existing Kraft products or packages, ideas for advertising/promotions and the like, such ideas fall outside the scope of this policy–and thus will not be reviewed by our Innovations Team or considered for compensation.

There is more information about how it works (IP and compensation) in their PDF submission packet. You’ll notice the contact info for the SVP of Open Innovation. I’d link to Friday’s WSJ article that brought this initiative to my attention, but of course the WSJ online content is mostly pay-only, so I can’t link to it. Instead, you may want to read this anlysis

of Kraft’s efforts by Frank Piller, presumably a specialist in Open Innovation (admittedly a new term to me – can’t we just call it Innovation 2.0?).

BusinessWeek has a new article about ethnography

. The author posted a blurb about it on a mailing list I’m on, asking for feedback (I guess some on the list provided input into the piece) and expressing interest continuing the conversation. So far my comments have gone unanswered, so I’m summarizing them here.

It’s nice to see some fresh examples of success in the application of ethnography. The GE example is very cool and goes beyond the usual fix a product case study and into the evolve a business’s culture that really rang true from my own experience.

However, I was disappointed to see the article buy into the ethnography = anthropology myth and the corollary that all ethnographers are anthropologists. Indeed, the article incorrectly attributes the anthropology credential to some people such as Tony Salvador who I believe was trained as a psychologist, or the people at Steelcase, some of whom I know as graduates of the Institute of Design, and are definitely not anthropologists. IDEO may have anthropologists, but a great deal of their people involved in “human factors” (as they term it) are coming with other educational backgrounds.

It’s tempting to see a conspiracy of highly-placed anthropologists who work behind the scenes to ensure that any conversation about user research in product development and consulting succumbs helplessly to this myth, but I think really sloppy reporting is more likely the culprit here.

John Thackera Thackara writes about the article in his typical sanctimonious style (seriously – I will have to give up on In The Bubble because it’s filled with mean-spirited judgment of one profession or endeavor on one page, and then a capricious about-face on the next page to drool over another effort that meets his opaque standards).

Do ethnographers need exotic names to do well in business? A story in Business Week features two guys called ‘J. Wilton L. Agatstein Jr’ (who runs Intel’s new emerging-markets unit) and ‘Timothy deWaal Malefyt’ (an anthropologist who runs ‘cultural discovery’ at ad firm BBDO Worldwide).

Whoah. Racist much, John? Portigal is a pretty funny name. So is Thackera Thackara. What of it?

In 2002, I posted here

I learned about Silent Running years ago when I found an old Esquire magazine that had a series of portraits of the actors who portrayed the “drones” – double amputees who fit inside these plastic costumes to make for convincing little robots. It was a dramatic series of photos – people with no legs glaring with a lot of world experience and attitude, some as young as 16. I was very young when I saw it and really made an impression. I would love to find those pictures again. There are tons of web sites with stuff about the drones – CAD renderings, people who have made their own versions, on and on. But none of the portraits. Do let me know if you ever see what I’m describing.

I found the pictures in a file folder while digging through old stuff. I’ve scanned and posted them here.

As I’ve written about recently (here and here), this issue of theory within the practice of user research is challenging and at least, provocative. To that end, I’ve started an online study group that will be looking at theory from, well, social sciences, I imagine. We’ve got a diverse group of people signed up, more than 80, with a good range of experiences, and some great discussion around where to start (i.e., who to read) and how to interact together.

We’ve just launched our first assignment and I’m reading Clifford Geertz’s essay on Thick Description. Here’s an interesting passage:

And it is in understanding what ethnography is, or more exactly what doing ethnography is, that a start can be made toward grasping what anthropological analysis amounts to as a form of knowledge. This, it must immediately be said, is not a matter of methods. From one point of view, that of the textbook, doing ethnography is establishing rapport, selecting informants, transcribing texts, taking genealogies, mapping fields, keeping a diary, and so on. But it is not these things, techniques, and received procedures, that define the enterprise. What defines it is the kind of intellectual effort it is: an elaborate venture in, to borrow a nation from Gilbert Ryle, “thick description”

He goes on to explain the difference in meaning between the same gesture – an involuntary eye-twitch and a wink.

Good stuff!

Eve teasing “is a euphemism used in India for sexual harassment or molestation of women by men…from sexually coloured remarks to outright groping.” Param points us to the BLANK NOISE PROJECT and explains “In these events, a group of people get together in a public place. As a group, they stare at different people on the streets!! This is followed by distributing leaflets/pamphlets to the person who was stared at.”

It’s an interesting example of designing a simple behavior (descriptively simple, but complex in the way it violates social norms) that can be used to cause powerful change. Compare with Buckminster Fuller who took the notion of the trim tab – a small flap that drives a larger rudder – as a metaphor for the power of the individual to cause larger social changes. Indeed, his gravestone reads “Call me TRIMTAB.”

These signs are all over SOHO, right near the Core77 world HQ. Could they be a promotion for Design 2.0?

Although I often take the role of curmudgeon, it was a pleasant surprise at Overlap

to see others taking that role. That said, I sometimes can be negative about those who are cheerleaders. One notable exception is when they are cheering for me, as in this post from Business Week’s Bruce Nussbaum, who calls me a “a really smart innovation consultant” while talking up the imminent Design 2.0 event where I’ll be speaking.

This past weekend at Asilomar we put together a small (50-person) “unconference” referred to as Overlap, nominally set up to address the (perhaps emerging) confluence of design and business. The emphasis was not on the typical conference top-down presentations by “experts”, but on the creation of discussion moments.

But in planning the event, we took a open-ended approach. We didn’t define or even seek to define what the Overlap really meant or what the outcome of this conference should be. We conceived of an approach where presenters were asked to keep their remarks extremely brief, and work with another person to really facilitate a targeted discussion. Unfortunately, that didn’t play out in execution. Presenters ended talking for much longer than I had expected, and then it was thrown open, often without a mechanism for facilitating either the speakers or the topic. And 50 people piling on was often unmanageable – it takes a fair amount of force to jump into a discussion with that many inhabitants (not participants; that’s my point, you couldn’t easily participate unless you were loud and fast, at least).

It wasn’t chaos, it was engaging and it had an energy, but it was not fully inclusive, and it was rather tiring. We had highly spirited discussion, and even some persistent disagreement that I think was extremely healthy (in contrast to the hushed horror seen at DUX and other events when an idea was challenged) without being excessively personal or inappropriate in tone.

Tom Mulhern opened the event by asking everyone to go around the circle and talk about what they thought the Overlap was between. What were the endpoints? The answers were fascinating and grew in depth as the circle proceeded. This was truly a group looking to bust some paradigms, with exciting, diverse backgrounds and an intensity towards moving towards…something. Indeed, this discussion (and our effective warmup intros via email, in the days leading up to the event) made me feel better about various insecurities. Feeling like I don’t fit, or don’t have a clear identity, or the identity that I want were all themes that other participants echoed flavors of, while offering up fantastic credentials and passions…hmm, if these people are so awesome, why do they have the same troubling feelings I do? Maybe there’s some lesson to be learned here. Indeed, I returned to the blogosphere to find rather similar thoughts from PeterMe

.

Some of Tom’s presentation [Note – I took a few notes about a few different parts of the event. I’m not summarizing every aspect of every presenter and I won’t mention some presenters. That doesn’t imply that there was nothing of value. I’m lazy, and some presentations don’t easily translate to a blog posting. I imagine more exhaustive notes will emerge over the next while] about the things that design can bring to business, or the “products” of design, were built on his structure of Grease, Grit, and Glue.

Grease – the power of design to align people, i.e., make people work in a team – if you are going to have the pleasure of becoming unconfused, you have to allow yourself to be confused

Grit – we encounter people taking on Newspeak terms about the future, about their products or business, but bringing a real person into the process (a real “user”) brings the 15,000 foot view down to a real level (and prototyping is a way to do this even further)

Grout – taking things and holding them together – i.e., a wall doesn’t work without grout, but the grout is not really what it’s about, this is helping people connect stuff, such as communication design, i.e., creating a brand “bible” that everyone would believe in

After Tom’s piece, something changed when Richard Farson led the first session the next morning.

Richard said a lot of great stuff in a direct and articulate voice of authority. For example
– design is one of the few industries that is dominated by its clients and this is not healthy
– we are a business not a profession
– we have a vendor mentality when we approach clients, not as peers (he referenced the period in history when architects were at the highest level of a society and mixed with presidents)
– we must move from a market orientation to a goal orientation; from meeting wants to meeting needs
– (designed )situations are more powerful creators of behavior than [a long list that included genetics etc.] – i.e., “no one smokes in church”

But this shifted into a discussion of social responsibility or rather Social Responsibility that seemed off-topic. But had tremendous gravity for the group. It became this underlying theme for the event (why, I am not sure).

Immediately the discussion turned to ways we can start to address the list of social ills that Richard presented, and whether his public/private sector perspective was the way to handle it. And the “we” became “designers.” I started hearing that dreadful “As designers, we….” preface to statements from every corner of the room. I can’t stand when people start doing that. Suddenly people were acting as if we were a bunch of designers on a retreat somewhere to talk about design which therefore means saving the world. We weren’t people with multiple professions and identities, we were one thing: designers. I tried to flag this for the group, but the language didn’t change; the traditional behaviors are hard to break, perhaps.

There were lots of other presentations, some with breakout exercises where we might try and design a solution to a complex problem. Brad Nemer gave us a task where we looked at a range of media sources or artifacts (Reese’s Pieces in E.T., Fox News, blogs, “4 out of 5 dentists”, NYT, Oscars, and 25 more) and asked us to deconstruct the issues of trust within those sources, and then to design solutions. I was struck by the framing of the exercise, where “the problem with society and media” was baked in, rather than being more open-ended.

Unpacking the issues of trust was fascinating our breakout group. But our design was an unsexy Google-News-on-steroids that would automagically do a lot of shit better. One other group came up with the same thing. And three other groups couldn’t finish. It was a bummer – I saw none of the “sweeeeet” moments in the entire event – where someone comes up with something that maybe isn’t fully realized, but is elegant in a way that grabs you in the gut and brain simultaenously, making you utter in a low voice “sweeeet!” without even thinking about it. I don’t know if the exercise was at fault, or the framing, or the save-the-world tone that pervaded the groupthink by that point.

A fascinating, if troubling, exercise was led by Erin Liman and Marc Levine. 1/3 of the group was brought up to be Influencers. The rest of us sat in our chairs and were Influencees. The exercise was for the Influencers to get the Influencees to try drinking some buttermilk.

But first a bit more context – this was an enormously social experience. We dined together at special tables for Overlap in the dining hall. We stayed together in one or two buildings that were exclusively Overlap folks. We talked extensively during the many breaks, during meals, with beer (which people independently purchased and shared), during walks. There were many familiar faces, other faces put to names, and other new people met. It was really a great connection where everyone was pretty much really nice to each other, convivial, welcoming and collaborative.

And that informed the exercise and my feelings about it.

Structurally, the Influencers would have some time to go plan their approach, then some time with the Influencees (which I was one of), then more time to revise their approach, and then a final session with us.

What happened was fascinating as a story if unnerving as an experience: the Influencers did what seemed very natural in the setting of a workshop exercise. They play-acted. They did improv, taking on characters that were enormously familiar. They parroted the language of telemarketers and informercials.

Watching them do it was amusing and kind of meta-ironic. But then they wanted us to actually do something. To take an action. To drink something. It wasn’t about the drinking of the buttermilk, it was about the feeling of being treated that way. Insincerely. Manipulated. And these were new friends acting this way.

Funny to see this hugh macleod image today.

That really sums it up. I had people standing in front of me and channeling every awful camp counselor/peer pressure/telemarketer/religious zealot/scammer – people with whom I had developed these great relationships. It was horrifying, and in a couple of cases I was not even really able to repair the post-exercise relationship.

And of course it didn’t work. What worked was people who approached each other sincerely, even acknowledging the frame of the exercise. The fact we had to learn that insight so viscerally through failure is really a drag.

I’m not entirely sure how this was an Overlap-relevant experience, but again that was one of the risks with such a (deliberately) ill-defined brief.

The nearest thing to a “sweeet” moment happened in this session, however. The Influencers realized that buttermilk was good in other foods, say, pancakes. They went to the Asilomar kitchen and in the space of a few minutes managed to get them to make some buttermilk pancakes. Sadly, they arrived as the session was concluding and so it didn’t serve to persuade us (too late), but it would have been pretty cool. The fact that they pulled that off is a tribute to the power of creative thinking and extroversion.

The event ended with a discussion of what comes next, and I think that’s still being sorted out. There’s some real passion for an outcome, I’m not sure if there’s too much around a specific outcome (we’ve talked about future events, regional events, taking on projects, creating a publishable archive of what we’ve done, or what we will go and do, etc.), or even the individual leadership to take on any of those outcomes (because we’ve all been in groups where there’s clear energy towards doing something, but have seen the success or failure when a single person does or doesn’t step up and move things forward).

I’m not fascinated by fixing the world and those big-picture initiatives – at least where they are now. When they get “real” I can definitely get on board, but I was so burned out from the hard work of the experience (and lack of sleep) that I couldn’t see how that will happen. I am fascinated by more personal connections and more insights into who we are and how we do what we all do, and I think that will be an outcome in one form or another.

I had a good time and I approached Overlap with few in-depth expectations, and so I’m not upset or disappointed by what happened. I’m a bit surprised, sure, but we did frame this in the organizing as a planning meeting, keeping it relatively unconstrained, so the results do seem appropriate for that. There’s a desire among most of us to further define this thing we’ve unleashed, and I may find more comfort or my own personal niche as that definition gets refined.

I think people brought a lot of passion, insight, hard work, commitment and other good-tasting-ingredients to Overlap and I’m so appreciative of that. I’m okay with things not working, or not working the way I want; that’s part of letting go and riding the experience. I wouldn’t have changed the approach too much, even with what I know now (I’d do it differently next time, but I wouldn’t have done it differently this time). I look forward to ongoing connections with the new friends I’ve made.

See my Overlap pics at flickr.

(This one is for Gene!)

It looks like a freakin’ teapot. You pull up to flush. And there’s no range of flush intensity available (say, based on how high you pull up or how long you hold it) that I could determine.

Some bad government usability on a notice we received from the county

The aplication requests an Off-Street Parking Exception to allow for 1 uncovered tandem parking space within the existing driveway, where 1 free-and-clear arking space is required for a second dwelling unit. The application has requested this exception to allow the required parking space to be located in tandem to existing covered parking spaces.

I read this several times, looked at the diagram on the back of the page, walked over the house in question, read this again, and I’m still really confused. Really confused.