I found this on Tim Brown’s blog – it’s a really cool video from the Landor design firm, showing how the team approaches and tackles a project, in this case to design a Whiskey decanter.

What’s funny is how this video, shot in the 60′s already shows some of the hyped practices of design. We sometimes play it like ideation, rapid prototyping and all that are inventions from the 21st century, but here they are in full effect, 50 years ago.

Especially the prototyping is shown to great extent, and it’s amazing to see what care is taken to bring the designer’s ideas to life.

An oldie but goodie that just resurfaced with a little help from Garr Reynolds: advice on how to do creative collaboration and how to look for great people, from one of Pixar’s finest: Randy Nelson.

I particularly like Randy’s distinction between cooperation (working together) and collaboration (amplification).

Watch this is you are interested in developing highly creative and effective teams.

As is often the case with good ideas, they tend to pop up at several places at once, fed by trends and circumstance. To me this signals there is fertile ground for the idea, if pursued it can gain real momentum.

So after I wrote my call to arms for the idea of heirloom products, I find this post by Haiyan Zhang, with essentially the same message: we need to create products that last longer.

The obvious next step, at least with electronics, is to build an architecture that will allow new features to be added through software (hello, iPhone),  while the electronics can keep up without replacing the whole device.

As Zhang suggests:

The main complaint I have now is the increasing sluggishness with each new firmware update. Apple’s products all have an inevitable use-by-date as the software outgrows the abilities of the CPU. So it was interesting last week when I read that the Android 2.2 firmware update for the Nexus One will be 450% faster. Is it possible for new software to make your old CPUs perform better? Or possible to create CPUs we haven’t fully exploited the performance potential of at release?

Okay, so nevermind how google have managed this feat, the great potential here is that the lifespan of the mobile gadget, like the lifespan of the species, can be extended by much much longer, reducing the impact on planet sustainability. We will no longer need new stuff for their features, or new stuff for performance, or maybe even new stuff for fashion, because our old stuff would do all that stuff.

So the challenge for product design here is to keep up with the advances in software. How do we create gadgets that don’t need replacing? Is there a value in creating gadgets whose physicality improves with age? Can we swap out the bits that still need improving while keeping the things that don’t?

And she has already found a first try at the concept:

How exactly this is different from swapping lenses on SLRs is not entirely clear to me, but at least this manufacturer is acknowledging the problem and stepping to the plate. Kudos.

But let’s not forget there are more ways to Rome: not all of the answer to this problem will be found in the product only, we should also look for innovative business models that will allow us to give older models a second life, or build ecosystems of repair and refurbishment that are a lot more efficient than the ones currently at work.

I’m guessing we’ll be seeing a lot of smart things happen in this space the coming years.

As designers we are constantly questioned about our impact on the financial results of a company. Business is interested in our methods but the final two (decisive) questions are always asked at the end:

1.    What does it cost?
2.    How much money will it make me?

And that is the only thing designers couldn’t answer – until recently.

Innovation is a risky journey with an unknown destiny. It is like being Columbus. You might end up somewhere completely different (he was actually pursuing a new route to India) but it can bring you immense success, awareness and wealth.

As a designer I can honestly say I have never been doubtful during an innovation project. There is always a marvelous solution out there, ready to be discovered. In a sense – there is not much we can’t do – we have landed on the moon already 40 years ago…

So I am very sure we can come up with an innovative solution for almost any new consumer problem or need out there. The thing I am interested in is what the final solution will be. And how we will get there. Every journey is different, has different roads, crossroads, set backs and leaps forward. Every idea ends up completely different, with multiple moments of great breakthrough.

However, as an experienced discoverer it is still difficult to persuade the owner of the ship to set sail with you. They want to know where you are going, and when you will get there. And that is exactly what we didn’t know yet, until now.

For the first time in history research shows that design actually boosts the financial results of companies with a mighty 20%.

The success of a new product increases when a lot of attention is paid to design and when designers are involved in the development process from the beginning till the end. More freedom for the designer even leads to a higher success rate. These are the most important findings of major research conducted under a large amount of Dutch product and service centered companies.

In this sense you can say that design helps to minimize the risk of innovation and helps to strengthen your position in the market as a company.

This is a great step forward for the design and innovation industry as it helps companies to give the green light and endorse the investments needed for a ‘risky’ innovation project.

It would have been easy for Columbus to get financed if he would have known his final destination (it took him 8 years to get the investment needed). But in that case Columbus would have never ended up in America but more likely around the corner somewhere in Europe…

For the complete report on ‘effectiviteit van design’ click here (report in Dutch)

The Harvard Business Review blog featured a post on the four lessons of culture and customer service. These four lessons were based on an interview with Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh. Zappos is an innovative online shoe retailer and known for its great employee culture and customer service. For example, Zappos introduced a system in which they are paying employees to quit.

In many blog posts Zappos.com has been discussed as a social media best practice example, but after reading the interview on Harvard Business Review blog, it’s clear that this company uses social media as a tool to strengthen their “Delivering Happiness” strategy.

This case is an example of a company’s culture being the perfect brand. Zappos has been busy with building a corporate culture that represents their mission, ‘delivering happiness in a box’. This strong corporate culture in combination with their image as an innovative e-commerce business is the perfect PR basis for a company. As Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh says, “Your Culture is Your Brand”.

PR benefits from this positive corporate culture. As positive vibe reflects on both employees, customers and other stakeholders. Think about your favourite brands. I’m sure you are thinking of brands like Google, Apple and Nike. All known for their creative culture and amazing working environment.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Tony Hsieh on Delivering Happiness (theopenforce.com)
• Delivering Happiness Is A Personal Look At The Zappos Phenomenon (adpulp.com)
• Zappos.com Salutes Customer Loyalty Team in New Ad Campaign (eon.businesswire.com)

HOME is a production of the PPRGroup (known for brands as Gucci, Yves Saint Lorrent and Alexander MCQueen). Home is a weel shot documentary about our home – planet earth.

The chosen angle of the footage and script is very impressive: we humans are constantly documented from above as little insignificant creatures who are able to disrupt their own biosphere. Also the voice over speaks to the viewer directly and stresses the fact that the documentary is not about the third person – but about you!

Please invest tonight a mere 1,5 hrs to watch this free online documentary – as 8,5 million people before you already did!
I’m only sorry you will have to travel this one time to Youtube to watch this movie as it cannot be embeded…

Enjoy!

As a frequent flyer, I’m all too often confronted with the snafus of airport security and the silly processes airlines themselves make you go through. I still can’t believe that sometimes the time I spend at the airport is longer than the actual flight.

And man, most of these problems would be easy to solve if the bean counters would get out of the way and let designers tackle these systems.

So Quantas has done just that, and enlisted Marc Newson to design, after its planes’ interiors, the check-in procedure. Not exactly groundbreaking, rather more like the Most Obvious Solution, but hey, is’s a start:

What’s equally stunning is that this kind of idea, like the useless Privium system at AMS, is always done by one single airline or airport on its own, rather than partnering with others. So now your checkin at SYD is going to be a breeze,  while getting on your connecting flight at good old BKK will still be vexing to the point of suffering a heart stroke.

Dear air travel executives, why not make this an industry-wide initiative? That way, you’ll save the hassle of reinventing the wheel over and again, you can build appropriate standards into the system from the start, and the roll-out will obviously be much easier than with a one-sided approach.

Easy, no?

“The global economy’s problem isn’t best seen as a lack of demand. But as an oversupply of toxic, industrial age junk.”

Any entrepreneur or anyone involved in the creative side of business will benefit form good brainstorming techniques. It’s one of the best ways to apply creativity and groupthink to solve problems in a highly effective, focused way.

Yet with all the techniques and methods available, I’m stunned to find that so many firms–even more startling, or perhaps typically, many ad agencies I’ve seen–still consider brainstorming to be ‘sitting in a room with a group of people for a few hours yelling random ideas’ or something very similar.

So for anyone who’s reading this and thinking: “wait. Isn’t that it?”, here’s a really great presentation by David Sherwin, an interesting mix between discerning between different levels of problems and explaining some great brainstorming techniques.

You know how I recently posted Hugh’s idea that ‘Advertising is the cost of being boring’?

Here’s something that’s sort-of the opposite of that: a guy who sells lobster rolls in the same way a drug deal happens.

Yes, you read that right.

Never mind the fact that Ben Sargent is a TV personality and well-known seafood specialist, and that doing business this way means you’ll be selling very expensive rolls, this is how the game should be played.

But:

• No way this could ever happen in a big, ‘professional’ organisation. A committee would look at it, a meeting would be held, and somewhere a disclaimer would slip into the deal. No go.
• You have to be pretty nuts about seafood and make an amazing bun for people to go along with this. However gimmicky, it’s a cool experience wrapped around a product that is kick-ass to start with.
• Having a great chef make great lobster rolls and having a marketing team create a campaign like this, is unlikely to have the same effect. It’s hard to buy authenticity.

This is authentic. Some guys thought of this, and the same guys executed it. They love their lobster, they figure other people do, and the are going to have a laugh selling. In the process, they have probably created the best selling lobster roll in NYC.

The only way to enable this kind of exciting stuff to happen in your organisation, is to have people who are nuts about what it is that you all are doing, to have a culture around shared passion and beliefs, and trust your people not to cross obvious boundaries.  Passion, culture, trust.

You can’t look at this as a wrapper. Thinking like this has to be a fundamental part of everyone’s job in your company.

It’s very hard to do, and it certainly doesn’t scale all that much, but you’ll have the most exciting* product available.

*And yes, I am confident that also goes if you’re in the wingnut business. Exciting is a relative term.