Design story: The Decanter from Landor Associates on Vimeo.

For a wonderful “Mad Men” era video about design check out the decanter video from Landor. No doubt design was simpler back then but it is impressive to see the level of craft applied to such transient objects. I was also impressed by how big the budgets must have been to afford such lavish prototyping. It is great to hear the voice of one of the grandfathers of American design.

We have been working on a project for a while now that we are very excited about. It is called OpenIDEO and it is launching today. We are hoping that we can create a platform for you to work with us on some important social innovation projects. Don’t worry if you are not a practicing designer. There is room for you to contribute things that may inspire other designers, post your own ideas or you can evaluate ideas that others have suggested. One of the first challenges is for Jamie Oliver, this years’  TED prize winner. The goal is to find ways to inspire and educate people (especially kids) to cook and eat healthier food. The other current challenge is for Gray Matters Capital and is to do with low cost educational tools for the developing world. Check them both out and contribute if you can.

The idea of crowdsourcing innovation is, in my view, still a big experiment. Conventionally the question has been whether the crowd can outperform the internal team. Our view is that small teams are good for some things and the broader community is good for others. The goal of OpenIDEO is to find out whether it is possible to orchestrate a collaboration between the two to achieve better results. We are starting the experiment now and we hope you will join us.

Let us know what you think!

I don’t generally travel to rural Oxfordshire, the place in England where I grew up, for design inspiration. History, beauty, friends and family – yes, but design – no. That is at least until I discovered Giffords Circus on my trip this summer. Giffords is a family circus that spends the summer months traveling around Oxfordsire, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire performing to small crowds in fields behind pubs and other such local landmarks. This is a tradition that has gone on in England for a century or more and to be honest most of these circuses are tired and a little sleazy – not so this one. From the beautiful and vibrant graphics of the program and map that shows the locations of performances; to the rigorous application of the ‘corporate identity’ on every vehicle the visual design of the circus is stunning. Beyond this the performance is delightful; a cross between Cirque de Soleil and vaudeville with inspirational music, amusing plot and loads of humor. The final touches include homemade cakes and drinks at the interval and even the option of a three course meal made from the best local ingredients with the performers at the end of the evening. A UK food magazine describes it as “one of the most enjoyable and memorable restaurants imaginable”.

This delightful experience is owned and delivered by Nell Gifford and her husband Toti (a landscape designer). It shows what can be achieved with the combination of imaginative design, enthusiastic entrepreneurship and talent.What would happen if our local school districts, city councils and health authorities exhibited the same imagination?

I don’t usually write about things IDEO is directly involved in but I am making an exception here.

Lars Hinrichs, founder of the social networking site for professionals XING, launched his next enterprise today. It’s called HackFwd (Hack Forward) and it aims to be a place where European technology talent can develop new ideas. It’s a pre-seed investment company that offers ‘passionate geeks’ the investment and support they need to develop their ideas and get them out into the world.

Living where I do in Silicon Valley it is easy to forget that this kind of entrepreneurial ecosystem does not exist everywhere and is particularly weak in Europe. Lars’ venture is special not just because it is offering European tech entrepreneurs the chance to get local funding (and so not be forced to make the trek to California) but also because the whole business has been designed to deliver an experience that is tailored for geeks. Check out the great video animation with the voice over from Stephen Fry on the front page of the HackFwd site.

Having been trained as an Industrial Designer I have always seen design as a form giving process. Communications designers might see it differently, but I think of manipulating and organizing materials, physical or virtual, when I design anything. I have been wondering recently whether this is an outmoded paradigm.

As designers get asked to tackle systems problems such as behavior change we discover that the final form of the system is unknowable. It is too complex to be able to define every element or predict every outcome. So should we use form making as the central process to design systems which have unpredictable forms?

Just last week I sat through a fabulous talk by author, futurist and investor Juan Enriquez. He described the impact life sciences might have on business and society. In particular the topic of synthetic biology got me thinking about how design might be changing. The scientists can now create synthetic cells. Indeed one of Juan’s more famous collaborators Craig Venter made an important announcement about this just a few days later. They will soon be designing new synthetic organisms that can perform all kinds of unique tasks and as scary as this might be it has big implications for design. Instead of forming the material of the organism, in the way that a horticulturalist might create a new hybrid plant, the scientists use code. They literally recode the DNA to create new cells with new behaviors.

Assuming no major ecological disasters, it will not be long before the technology is developed enough to get out of the hands of scientists and into the hands of designers. We will be coding behavior, not forming it.

Is this how we should think of all design in the future? Using the code of 1’s and 0’s or A’s, T’s, C’s and G’s to design complex behaviors that evolve and are emergent rather than fixed and determined. Or perhaps this is a false distinction. Perhaps design has always broken complex systems down into small parts and formed individual components (products, services, buildings, applications) that come together to create system level behaviors. Perhaps it is the interplay between forming and coding that will be key to design.

How will designers learn the skills of  coding so as to participate in the design of future systems?

As a follow up to my last (and rather old) post I wanted to say something about networks as organizations and their aesthetics. I am most of the way through reading Connected, a brilliant book on the science of social networks by Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler. Among the many insights is that we will be able to intentionally manage social networks as we understand more deeply how they operate. Given the power of networks to achieve many things I think it likely that many more organizations will seek to design themselves as networks.

There is much to admire about the aesthetics of networks including their emergent behavior, their resilience and their ability to evolve to be more fit over time. These are things that classically designed organizations have struggled with. Does this make networks beautiful? I certainly find the social network maps of the Framingham heart study, that the authors use to illustrate contagious behavior, quite beautiful.

At IDEO we have been working on the topic of designing organizations for a while, most specifically the design of organizations to be more innovative. My struggle with this particular domain of design thinking has been one of aesthetics. Great design thinking results in  functionally and emotionally satisfying solutions where the emotional value is generated through the creation of meaning. In design, meaning largely comes from aesthetics and so I have been wondering how to think about aesthetics when considering the design of organizations. Hence the question, can organizations be beautiful? More specifically can organizational designs be beautiful? Is there a ‘designerly-ness’ to the process of organizational design?

I have been wondering about this partly because I believe without an aesthetic component the best design minds will not apply themselves to these kinds of problems and partly because of a frustration with current organizational design practice that seems to largely be about arranging boxes in an organizational chart.

Are there overarching design concepts that can be described as beautiful? I think Shaker communities might be considered beautiful, not just because they created beautiful things but because of the simplicity of structure, clarity of purpose and thoughtfulness for every aspect of the experience.

Is Google, with its twenty percent personal project time, a beautiful organization?  Are there organizational archetypes that can be evaluated in aesthetic terms? A bee colony could be considered a beautiful example of emergence. What would a beautiful, innovative organization look like or feel like?

Kevin MucCullagh has written a challenging, and long, piece explaining his questions and concerns about design thinking and you can see it posted on Core 77 here.

I support much of what he has to say. Design thinking has to show impact if it is to be taken seriously. Designing is as much about doing as it is about thinking. Designers have much to learn from others who are more rigorous and analytical in their methodologies.

What I struggle with is the assertion that the economic downturn has taken the wind out of the sails of design thinking. My observation is just the opposite. I see organizations, corporate or otherwise, asking broader, more strategic, more interesting questions of designers than ever before. Whether as designers we are equipped to answer these questions may be another matter.

I sympathize with Kevin’s frustrations but I wonder how many of them stem from a business culture that struggles to see the opportunity in change.

For avid followers of the TED conference it will not be new news that British chef Jamie Oliver won the TED Prize this year. The result is that he gets $100,000 plus the chance to make his wish in front of the TED audience. These days that audience consists of millions (so far there have been over 200 million talks viewed on the website). You can already check out the video of his passionate plea for a healthier America. Here is his wish:

“I wish for your help to create a strong, sustainable movement to educate every child about food, inspire families to cook again and empower people everywhere to fight obesity.”

Tackling obesity and encouraging healthier eating is something that I believe design and design thinking can make a significant contribution to. Whether it be through innovations in new technologies and applications that allow us to track our food intake better, ( I am a big fan of the i-Phone app Lose It) or through the design of behavioral change programs that consist of new incentives, new tools and communication of new social norms.
There have already been hundreds of folks volunteering to help but I hope that as designers we get behind this wish. The chronic diseases that result from obesity are a major cause of our out of control health costs.

I just got back from TED where the content was as great as usual, maybe even better, and the networking even crazier. There were definitely more movie stars around this year. I guess the move to Long Beach is good for them.

The topic of simplicity merited its own session as part of the overall theme of  “What the world needs now”. I have to say I thought the theme worked really well this time and it was nicely reinforced by the stage set which was representative of  start-up attic.

So, back to simplicity. It’s a topic I have covered here before but there were some thoughtful additions from a number of folks this week. The great mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot gave us a potted history of his amazing career which included the discovery of fractals. He asked the question “is there a science of simplicity?” His main point was that simple rules create complex outcomes.

George Whitesides, the most cited scientist around today, proposed a concept of simplicity built around four principles: predictability, low cost, high performance and stackability. The stackable idea was particularly interesting and relates to Mandelbrot’s point. Whitesides showed how things as complex as the inernet are a stack of simple ideas working together. So simple ideas are most useful when they can interact with other simple ideas to create complexity. Back to simple rules create complex outcomes.

Philip K Howard, the legal reformer, made a beautifully simple proposal that could cut through the crazy complexity of the contemporary US legal system. He proposes that instead of judging the law based on its effect on the individual it should be judged based on its effect on society. He has proposed a new form of health court in which a judge appoints technical experts to help him adjudicate civil cases. The argument is that we could save between $200billion and $600billion in US annual health costs by taking this approach.

The last inspirational contribution to simplicity came from designer Alan Siegel, founder of Siegel and Gale. He showed some stunning work he has been doing to simplify IRS forms and bank credit agreements. By taking a human centered approach and by using plain language Alan has created a real breakthrough. I desperately hope this particular form of simplicity will make it into the world very soon.