Design-It-Yourself is a new Ellen Lupton book to help plain folks like me avoid the unnecessary time and expense of working with skilled designers. I’m especially amused by how poorly written and badly laid out (Hello? Typography? Punctuation? Caps? Bullets?) the page is. Hey, wanna look like crap? Buy this book!

simple ideas on how you can “think like a designer”

clear and coherent explanations of design technologies, from silk-screening to web development
what materials you’ll need to get your job done

where to find and buy them

Cosmetics companies are striving to understand how their products are used differently in their various emerging markets. Presumably, they are elsewhere looking at differences in meaning

, in addition to simply understanding usage.

Crucial to that effort is the search for differences that could help build a brand in critical emerging markets like India and China. L’Oreal has an expanding network of 13 evaluation centers around the world created to observe grooming and ponder a variety of burning questions: Do national differences exist in primping styles? Would women in Japan and Europe, for instance, stroke on mascara with the same lavish hand? (The answer is that in Japan, women apply mascara with an average of 100 brush strokes compared with Europeans, who are satisfied with 50, a difference noted by ethnologists for L’Oreal.)

It was observations like these that ultimately affected how the company made and marketed its mascaras or developed the foaming quality of its shampoos. “We are far from understanding everybody everywhere. It takes time,” said Fabrice Aghassian, director of international product evaluation for L’Oreal, which is seeking to map the world’s beauty routines in a landscape the company calls geocosmetics. “When we know the behaviors of people, we know what unexpressed expectations we do have to consider.”

Here’s my laugh of the day, from Maslow and Branding

Remember back in your Psych 101 class when you learned about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs? Bet you never expected to see it again in the business world

WHAT? Maslow is an overwhelmingly cliched and over-used structure in the business world. I wish I had a nickel for every variation and reapplication of Maslow that I’ve seen. I don’t take issue with Jennifer’s points specific to branding (frankly it was hard to really get to them, with that intro), but to claim some sort of clever uniqueness for bringing this into branding (or anything) is really silly.

Cliche aside, I did present a basic version of the hierarchy to my Design Research students this week, showing them that they can (and should) design for all sorts of needs, and as they do research, they’ll see interesting ways that the needs are related. One group is looking at nutrition, and obviously food is an amazing category for physical, emotional, and other types of needs all occurring at once. I’ll note that I went through a whole thing about how it is indeed cliched and once I had shown it to them they were guaranteed to see it a dozen other times in short order, and that it was absolutely over-used in business.

Funny, then, to see it presented this way so soon after.

The New York Times offers an analysis of cute and a helpful infographic

Sales of petite, willfully cute cars like the Toyota Prius and the Mini Cooper soared, while those of noncute sport utility vehicles tanked.
…
King Kong’s newly reissued face has a squashed baby-doll appeal, and his passion for Naomi Watts ultimately feels like a serious case of puppy love – hopeless, heartbreaking, cute.

Scientists who study the evolution of visual signaling have identified a wide and still expanding assortment of features and behaviors that make something look cute: bright forward-facing eyes set low on a big round face, a pair of big round ears, floppy limbs and a side-to-side, teeter-totter gait, among many others.

The local Macy’s store has modified all their card reading boxes so that the card swiping slot is blocked. That t-shaped blob of plastic along the right side is where the slot used to be.

The software hasn’t changed, however, and while your purchases are being run up you are asked (as always) to swipe the card. I looked for quite a while, feeling stupid, trying to to figure out where the heck to put my card.

There was no place.

They also have not changed their staff training, so there was no mention of what to do or not do with the card.

Eventually, they take the card from you and swipe it themselves, and you return to the device to “sign” the purchase.

Here’s a year’s best gadget list from David Pogue who skips overall gnarylness to consider “small, sweet improvements in our electronic lives” such as a digital camera with automatic bracketing in self-timer mode, downloadable TV episodes, and front-side connectors for everything on TV sets. It’s a bit of a relief to see a best list that deals with features and usability rather than form, finish, technolust, or cool.

Interim Thoughts is a reasonably active blog about the changing business culture in India. Recent postings focus on retail, Indian brands, and business publications.

Last week we went to get our vaccinations in preparation for January’s trip to Hong Kong, Bangkok, and India. Already a significant frame shift, for now we’re having conversations about horrible ridiculous diseases that we don’t even think about. I got shot up for Hep A, influenza, and polio. Been taking pills for typhus. And we’ve got pills for malaria to be taken en route.

Strange experience at the injection clinic at Kaiser, our HMO. The reception area is a hallway. With a door opening to the cold outside right next to it, and plenty of foot traffic going through. At least 10 signs on the door with a range of contradictory instructions about how to gain access; the door is locked and you can drop your card (for drop-in, I guess) into a Lucite contraption that seems guaranteed to eat your card, or your card and typed-up-form (for those with appointments who went to reception) into a shelf on the back of the door that seems guaranteed to eat your card. Not clear who should do which, or when. A sign indicates the waiting area. Above an empty part of the wall, where the chairs are quite some distance away. It’s a nightmare; we watched a woman and daughter approach, where the woman clearly had little English, and she didn’t even pay attention to the signs and try to problem-solve with them, she just peered through the small window and tried to make eye contact with someone for help. Good solution, I guess, since the instructions/information design was horrific.

Once inside, we are given a form and a clipboard. The form was a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy (reproductio ad absurdum) that could barely be read and of course included all sorts of information (name, address, contact info, member number) that was redundant to what was already captured by the computer form from reception.

And the injection nurse was the nicest, coolest most helpful person you could ever hope to meet in a healthcare situation! The human factor was awesome; the human factors were terrible. She talked to us about her own travels; advised us about injections based on good information re: the types of exposure based on types of activity, side-effects and so on. She had decorated the small injection room with blowups of her own exotic travel pictures. We had a good time with her.

Meanwhile, we also got our visa from the Indian consulate in San Francisco. You show up with all your paperwork between 9am and noon, and then show up at 4:00 to pick up your finished visa (in fact, they hold onto your passport for this time and put a special document into one of the pages). Upon our return we got the horrible customer service question for Anne: “Could it be under another name?” but eventually they found it. Turned out they had held it because she was red-flagged. Based on occupation. Yep, a social worker is required to come in and sign a special form declaring they won’t practice any social work while in India. I bet Indian visitors to the US are scrutinized for possibly taking tech jobs illegally, but when we go over there, we are forbidden from possibly engaging in any social work!

Anyway, the form was signed and the visa was issued shortly. There was something strange and ironic about it all; I suspect that may be the theme for the whole trip.

full story

Mr. Malave was one of dozens of curious riders who attended an ‘open house’ sponsored yesterday afternoon by New York City Transit to show off and receive feedback on a five-car test train, a prototype of the R160, the newest generation of subway cars.

Riders yesterday, told to focus on the FIND panel, were asked questions like, ‘Do you feel reassured that the train is going to your station?’ and ‘How easy or hard is it to read the words and letters on the sign?’

But riders seemed to be paying less attention to the sign than the rest of the car. Some of them said they did not regularly take the Nos. 2, 4, 5 and 6 lines (which use R142 cars, similar in design to the R143) or the L line and so were not familiar with the latest design.

Asked to compare the new car with the F train that she normally rides, Mar?a Romero, 72, a retired nurse’s aide from Gravesend, Brooklyn, said, ‘This is three times more advanced!’ Jared M. Skolnick, 34, an Internet marketer from the Upper West Side, said he admired the bright fluorescent lights, since he often took photographs in the subway.

James V. Sears, the agency’s senior director of marketing research, said the results of the surveys – along with comments from focus groups convened in 2003 – could be incorporated into the final design of the FIND panel.

Right. Because in order to understand the reassurance of a design feature, you simply ask people if they find a certain feature to be reassuring? Sigh!

I love the Strange New Products

blog. Some recent entries
Naughty Nads Bikini Design Kit
Brandy in a Sword
Yogurt made from Water Buffalo
Toiletiquette Stickers
Sea Monkey Necklace