Hot Studio

SXSW Recap (Part 2): Play Nice in the Sandbox

Maria Giudice

Note: This is the second of four posts recapping “Moms (plus one dad) vs. Management,” a talk on the parallels between parenting and management given by Hot CEO Maria Giudice and an all-star group of panelists. If you haven’t already, be sure to check out Part 1.

Today we’re looking at Pixar manager Lourdes Alba’s tips on successful collaboration, or “playing nice in the sandbox.”

Work and play rarely occur in a vacuum. And whether you’re collaborating on a client proposal or a sandcastle, fights can and will happen. That’s why the ability to compromise, to play well together, is a skill set that parents and managers must frequently emphasize (and re-emphasize) among their respective broods.

When you’re collaborating, it’s all about working with people, not working for them, or having them work for you. It’s about creating a space of multidisciplinary collaboration. For Lourdes, who’s helped manage some of Pixar’s biggest hits—including Ratatouille, Up, and Toy Story 3—the ability to get other people and departments to play nicely is one of the biggest aspects of her job.

So what has Lourdes’s experience as a mom taught her about being a successful manager? Some insights:

Lourdes, the Mom: The most frustrating thing for a kid is feeling ignored.
Lourdes, the Manager: It’s the same with employees. That’s why it’s important to create an environment in which dialogue can happen and people can contribute ideas based upon their worldview.

Lourdes, the Mom: You can’t make everyone happy 100% of the time.
Lourdes, the Manager: Even when you’re collaborating and welcoming ideas from across the spectrum, there still needs to be an owner or influencer on a project. Management is about listening and taking action; it’s not always about building consensus.

Lourdes, the Mom: Choose your words carefully.
Lourdes, the Manager: There’s ample opportunity for miscommunication and misinterpretation in the workplace. Language is an essential tool, and mustn’t be overlooked.

Lourdes, the Mom: Don’t crush your kid’s dreams.
Lourdes, the Manager: Don’t reject suggestions outright. Always open up ideas—even wild ones—before you close them down.

Lourdes, the Mom: The family that eats together stays together.
Lourdes, the Manager: Believe in the social power of food. If you can get everyone in a space where they’re sharing a common activity (eating) it’s a very powerful support system. Bring in food, bring in beer. Create places to congregate and eat together to break down the walls of conflict and open people up to good ideas.

Early Research Catches Worms

Elysa Soffer

A few months ago, my project team launched into fast-paced design and development work for a new mobile product we are creating with a client. The goal of this product is to establish a strong connection between the company’s brand and a new audience. To proceed, we needed insights to guide the early designs and conceptual models. So I teamed up with Hot’s newest content strategist, Anna Bloom, to determine the best research method.

As designers, we study what people want so we can deliver the most useful and beautiful products. We previously conducted interviews during the discovery phase of this project to learn more about our target audience. But, at this point, in order to kick off this new phase, we needed more information about the audience’s mental model—how this group would naturally prefer to use an app. We wanted to know if our initial ideas would meet audience expectations and, most importantly, if the tasks were completable and fun. Unfortunately, we didn’t have the gift of time to build a fully functioning prototype to gather the data.

Anna and I proposed an accelerated solution. We leveraged existing wireframes to create paper prototypes that mapped the product’s task flow—the steps within the app. It wasn't a full prototype by any means, but it could give us enough of a direction to confidently move the product forward.

These paper prototypes consisted of rough wireframes with written directions to simulate the digital experience. Each page walked people through the proposed steps—directing them to circle the actions in place of pressing a button, and write in the information rather than typing. On a Friday afternoon, we gathered a dozen participants who represented the core audience for our paper prototype test. It took them about 30 minutes to finish our test.

To augment this data, Anna and I video recorded follow-up interviews with each of the participants. We captured initial responses and emotions, and even ran through sections of the paper prototype aloud to see how they would respond to the prompts in a conversation. This took another 30 minutes. From about an hour's worth of testing and gathering feedback, we ended up with plenty of data to make informed changes.

So what did all this tell our Hot team? In addition to helping us define a specific use case for the product, the research helped us course-correct early on, before development. We shuffled the order of some screens to match our intended audience’s mental model. Our team also identified design changes to improve the consistency and hierarchy across the product. Finally, we fine-tuned the language. The voice and tone was critical to audience engagement with the product. Rather than taking a directional or instructional tone, the research indicated a conversational tone was most effective.

In the end, the research provided critical proof points for our team to refer to. It was quick, dirty, and—as it turns out—worked surprisingly well.

While this paper prototype and other super-lightweight research methods can never replace more comprehensive research, they do provide a good starting point. And if you want to avoid pitfalls and extra work later in a project, then this research isn't just a good idea, it's a necessity.

Elysa Soffer is a Strategist who recently earned her MBA in Design Strategy from California College of the Arts. Since migrating from Philadelphia for the eternal California sunshine, she spends her free time in Dolores Park and exploring San Francisco on her neon orange bike.

Unhackathon #2: The Process

Laurel Tripp

On April 6th and 7th, five of us Hotties, Vika Kovalchuk, Tina Santiago, Gabe Wasserman, Josh Williams, and I had the chance to participate in the second Mix & Stir Unhackathon at California College of the Arts: TED City 2.0 Equality Challenge. This Unhackathon focused on increasing equality in the Bay Area by applying design expertise to increase access of small businesses or individuals to education, economic opportunities, or social services. We were all inspired and touched by the challenge.

In another post, Gabe discusses how the challenge aligns with our social consciences (both personally and as an organization). In addition to learning a lot about the challenges within our local communities, we had the opportunity to work with and learn from some of the brightest people in the design community, everyone from CCA design students and teachers to a host of people from Esri, developers of GIS software and services.

As a participant in Hot’s outing to CCA's first Unhackathon, I was a little tentative about splitting away from my colleagues into different groups because we all work together so well. But not only did we all have successful experiences, we learned a lot about ourselves as we learned from others. Here are some of the things that I learned, with a lot of examples from my fellow Unhackathon Hotties.

Variety is the spice of design

A key advantage of our mixed teams was the diversity of voices, bringing a rich set of skills to approach the problem. We all had to break out of our normal routines and try new ways of working. If one brainstorming method didn’t work, we would just try another one. It was challenging when we had to explain what we take for granted, but having to explain your own methods makes them that much stronger.

Notes from a brainstorming exercise Josh and I learned from teammate, Charlie Sheldon, Industrial Design faculty at CCA

It was also a challenge getting to know new people and their different ways of working while simultaneously trying to come up with feasible solutions. It’s really easy to ignore the non-talkers in a group or silence the over-talkers in an effort to stay on schedule. But that just doesn’t work. All of us realized that the vast majority of the day consisted of discussion, which was important because we were all on the same page and could articulate the problem and our solution. Tina noted, “Letting go of ownership of ideas and focusing on the problem was a principle that we called out and stuck to.”

The best laid plans

It’s always really important to have a clear schedule in situations like this. And it’s even more important to know when you need to break the schedule. As Vika put it, “It was difficult to plan the day and then realize that wasn’t how it was going to happen.” Because most of us had very different approaches to problem-solving, we needed to be a bit more flexible about how much time things would take. My group actually put together a very loose schedule that was geared more towards deadlines, leaving the rest of the day more open to explore different ways of brainstorming.

While my group had a team leader, the other two groups did not. But we all realized someone needed to have their eyes on the clock. This gave the rest of the team the freedom to think and work. In the end, we all spent much more time thinking and talking than actually doing. As Gabe put it, “One problem is when people don’t have the patience to spend that extra time to frame the problem, and instead want to rush to the solution.” By making up your mind too soon you’re not getting the big picture and can fall prey to holes in your logic.

Finding (and filling) the holes

When doing something intense like this, the last thing you want is to have someone come in at the eleventh hour with a bunch of game-changing feedback. So when we had mentors or teammates come in and give us advice that completely made us question our ideas, this became a make-or-break moment. While it was frustrating having to go back to the drawing board, the last-minute feedback actually strengthened our concepts by isolating the deal-breaking holes in our argument.

The team (Mike Zuckerman, Shannon McElvaney, Josh Williams, and Charlie Sheldon) trying to come to consensus

As Vika put it, “Throughout the day we had to remain flexible in our process as we encountered continual pivot points in our attempts to address the problem.” And none of us had fully baked ideas until within an hour of our presentations. I know this sounds crazy. But being able to explore concepts throughout the day, choose different paths to go down, fail, then circle back, ultimately made our final concept much more solid, and our ability to explain it more concise and convincing.

The trick was to understand and have confidence in the ability of our team to pull it off. In the last push towards our presentation, we literally divided up our presentation board and divvied up the work by our skills. Because we were all on the same page, we could make the final push and still have time to practice our presentation. We only had five minutes and one board with which to explain our concept, but that simplification led to clarity and brought all of us back to the point of why we were there—to emotionally connect with the issues of inequality so we could affect change.

Finding a voice for your audience

A desire to help others connects all of us at Hot, so it was great to work with others at an Unhackathon devoted to helping those most in need. A part of the Hot process is to understand our users, which proves challenging when we are not that target audience. Furthermore, since we were designing for an underserved population that is rarely viewed as a target audience, our toolkit of best practices didn’t quite apply. One of the biggest drawbacks of the Unhackathon format is that we didn’t have access to people from this community, and weren’t able to get their feedback on our ideas. Most of us spent a large majority of our time just trying to get in the mindset of this audience, diagramming, talking, and arguing to consensus.

Chart of the information we had about the audience for which we were designing

I can’t emphasize enough the value of arguing, particularly in regards to understanding our audience. Just like there had to be a time-cop watching the clock, we all periodically assumed the role of audience-watchdog, challenging our assumptions. For example, when we came up with the idea of bringing services to a community, the watchdog challenged, “Are we being paternalistic? Do they want that specific service?” This continual introspection helped to guard against ideas that wouldn’t work because they didn’t address the specific needs of the target audience.

Our participation in this most recent Unhackathon was a win-win situation. We were able to work with and learn from other smart people in the industry while coming up with really kick ass solutions to some of the most intractable problems in our local community.

Unhackathon #2: A Good Place to Start

Gabe Wasserman

Our latest foray into brainstorming ways to save our city can be summed up in three concepts: Reclaim Blight, Bring it to The People, and Keep it Simple.

Two weeks ago, I spent 24 epic hours with four fellow Hotties, grappling with serious societal ills at California College of the Arts' (CCA) second Unhackathon, The Equality Challenge. (You can read about the first Unhackathon, for which Hot also suited up.) Again, the focus was on improving San Francisco, but this time there were two challenges: how to help spread small business growth through San Francisco, and how to offer the city’s poorest residents better access to education, economic opportunity, and social services.

First, the good news. Two Hottie-infused teams won the challenge and will be presenting their solution directly to City 2.0 TED Prize judges for a chance to win real bank to implement their idea! (Stay tuned for news of future glory.)

Additionally, we learned a huge amount in the process, and left the Unhackathon with a sense that designers, along with technologists and business people, can together make a difference.

The Call to Action

The organizers of the Unhackathon were deeply moved and inspired by a talk recently given at TED by Bryan Stevenson, the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative. Stevenson, a lawyer, defends minors—mostly poor and African American—on death row and sheds light on deep systemic injustice. Stevenson goes to some very dark places in this work and told his audience they should not shy away from these zones. So much at TED is about innovation, technology, forward-looking hopefulness—and these are good things. But, as Stevenson put it: “There is no disconnect around technology and design that will allow us to be fully human until we also pay attention to suffering.”

This resonates for a good many in the design community and certainly for many of us at Hot. We are not comfortable with the idea of using our talents and energies and limited time to uncritically design and develop products just because someone waves a big wad of money at us, and we actively seek out socially meaningful and impactful projects.

Having said that, if you want to tackle, head-on, issues as deep as poverty and injustice. Where do you start? Unhackathon #2 was not a bad place to begin answering this question.

The Problem

Hot's Josh Damon Williams listening to the Unhackathon panel: (left to right) Brian Cheu, SF Mayor's Office; Tatiana Bertsch, Equal Justice Initiative; Chris Roach, Faculty, CCA; Regina Dick-Endrizzi, SF Office of Small Business; John Petersen, Public Architecture

The Unhackathon was kicked off by a panel that included San Francisco City Services officials, CCA designers/architects involved in affordable housing organizations, and an emissary from the Equal Justice Initiative.

They underlined the lack of access to even the most basic necessities for poor residents of San Francisco (and, yes, these problems are hardly unique to San Francisco). How, for example, there are no grocery stores anywhere near some of the poorer neighborhoods and how difficult it is for some to get fresh produce, which leads to poor nutrition and a host of issues including higher healthcare expenditures.

Also, generally speaking, poorer residents’ (including many small business owners) lives are more unstable (no steady childcare, no health insurance, unsteady income, no car, far from public transport and so forth) making it more difficult for them to do the things some of us take for granted: plan a day, make an appointment at a specific time, navigate bureaucracies.

There’s a silver lining: despite recession-era cutbacks, there are still plenty of services, some funded by the City of San Francisco, others by nonprofits. The difficulty is in connecting this patchwork of services to the poorer residents or to struggling small businesses.

A Communication Problem?

And... lightbulb on! The City and funded organizations have a clear problem: they are desperate to get information to targeted recipients. They have a communication problem, and communication problems are designers’ bread and butter. What’s more, this problem is happening in familiar territory—our very own backyard, San Francisco.

These communication problems are interesting and varied: How to visualize data sets to get help where it is most needed; how to update affordable housing availability in real time; how to let non-native-English-speaking shop owners know that they may be eligible for loans from the city; how to bring social services into neighborhoods... and the list goes on.

Connecting The Dots

Denise Brosseau and Ben Rosenthal sweating the details

On the second day we focused on coming up with actual solutions. A number of criteria had to be met, including that the solution had to have some form of a self-sustaining financial model. Without describing each solution in detail (more to come after we present them to the City 2.0 Ted Prize competition), I'll highlight some of the areas of focus and some of the bigger realizations that came out of these solutions.

Solution #1: Reclaim Blighted Properties

Owners of vacant, dilapidated properties in troubled socioeconomic areas have difficulty renting and renovating spaces, which in turn is deterring traffic to those neighborhoods as well as perpetuating the blighted/forgotten look.

The proposed solution addresses the following:

How do you rally the community around these spaces to renew and restore them?
How do you energize the community to become engaged in their neighborhood?
How do you use this process as an opportunity to bring education and hands-on experience to young residents of targeted neighborhoods throughout the process?
How do you make a self-sustaining pop-up process that could be transplanted to any neighborhood across the U.S.?
How do you leave a space, a community, a neighborhood better than you found it?

The bigger idea: Connect two problems (in this case blight and unemployment) to create one positive solution. Directly involve residents in changing their neighborhoods.

Solution #2: Bring Comprehensive Services to the People

The people who most need services either don’t know these services exist, or have trouble getting around and making it to appointments.

The proposed solution addresses the following:

What’s the most effective way to bring services to these people?
How do you make the most effective use of time for both the social services folks and the people in need?
How do you connect social services agencies to each other to insure good coverage and avoid overlap?
How do you keep costs down?
How do you make a visit from city agencies a fun and empowering event people actually look forward to and attend in large numbers?

The bigger idea: Connect services to each other before bringing them to the people. Use the right mix of high-tech and low-tech and no-tech (people) solutions.

Solution #3: Provide Simple Ways to get Quick Answers

Small business owners are key to the economic well-being and fabric of this city and its neighborhoods. But small business owners have difficulty finding the information online that could really help them and they generally don’t have time to go to City Hall for answers.

The proposed solution addresses the following:

How can we make it easy for business owners to ask business questions on the spot right when and where they are facing a tough problem? (e.g., “My store is flooding. What should I do now?).
How do we make sure they get accurate and timely answers?
Can we track and analyze these questions and answers to better understand in which areas small businesses need the most help?
What’s the best way to use this information?
Could this project be self-sustaining?
Who are the interested parties beyond the city and small business owners?

The bigger idea: Simple real-time solutions such as text messaging can be powerful when part of a larger ecosystem. Sources of funding may be easier to find for projects involving small businesses.

Some other ideas we had:

Hot is in a good position to make connections between people in need, city services, not-for-profits, and the big corporations we work with.

Making connections hyperlocally, possibly down to the block, has interesting potential, especially if you consider that in San Francisco young dot-commers with disposable income often live on the same block as a struggling cafe owner and a blighted property.

We also came up with ideas on how to improve Unhackathons, and our own process, which will be detailed in this post.

What Next?

Hot has been committed from its inception to do social good. It’s in our company’s DNA. Over the last year we’ve been working hard to grow a dedicated Social Innovation practice in order to find or spur socially impactful projects. We are hoping that much of what we learned at the Unhackathon can be used by the SI team to get rolling on specific projects in San Francisco, or New York (where our other office is located). We’ll be keeping you updated on our progress and welcome your comments as we look for ways to make positive changes in our cities and beyond.

Hot’s John Butterfield Brings the "Battle of the Bulge" to the iPad

Hot Studio

Check out this cool new project from John Butterfield, one of Hot Studio’s Senior UX Designers in New York: “Battle of the Bulge” is a new strategy game for the iPad based on the actual events that transpired during the pivotal WWII battle.

Image credit: Shendandoah Studio

Conceived and designed by John, who is a member of the Game Designer’s Hall of Fame(!) and has designed interactive installations for the likes of NASA and many others, “Battle” is a serious simulation game that allows multiple play modes. It was designed by John with the iPad exclusively in mind.

“Battle” is the first game being released by Shenandoah Studio, a new, independent game publisher that’s producing games for the iPad in the tradition of classic turn-based strategy board games likes, like “Stratego” and “Risk.”

There’s a Kickstarter page going right now to help make “Battle” a reality. Be sure to check it out!

Musings from SXSW—Setting the Stage for the Next Big Idea

Chris Jones

Heather West via Wordle

The dust storm of people, ideas, technology, and BBQ that is SXSW Interactive seems ages ago. But only a month later, I am still digesting some ideas I heard there—and a little of the pulled pork, too. After a few years off from SX, I returned without any must-sees or to-dos. A few important client meetings and interesting panels, but I purposely kept space open to hear new ideas and ruminate without discretion.

Without a big tech launch, I wasn’t distracted. I had time to watch startups present and consider some reoccurring themes. I listened to ideas about things like, “How will technology continue to add value? Is this obsession with hackathons turning the corner or jumping the shark? What is the ‘hacking’ buzz all about, and what problems will ‘hackers’ really solve?”

In my mind, all designers, investors, developers, and inventors are hackers to some degree. For these SXSW “hacker” attendees, questions like these are good—in fact, this uncertainty is familiar and often fertile ground.

I didn’t hear anyone with definitive answers to these puzzles at SX, but I did hear some interesting ideas.

The Challenges of Data and Democracy

This year, there lacked an emphasis on re-engineering the way we sell books and music as I’ve seen in the past. It was nice to see disrupting traditional commercial models was not the primary focus. The discussions on the docket focused more on how we act and what we value as a society.

Particularly, there was lot of talk about data: big data, APIs, data mining, etc. There is more data than ever before—ain’t that the truth. But what do we do with it? How can big data become smart data, useful data?

Todd Park, the U.S. Government’s new Chief Technology Officer, gave a presentation about all this data. His office wants to create APIs for America’s entrepreneurs to leverage and help the government solve problems. He set forth the challenge to create new businesses, products, and services with the government’s data—all while keeping taxpayer costs neutral. This turns the role of government on its head! Rather than government supplying the end service, it is releasing the raw materials of the information age—data—and empowering the private sector to define or improve a service.

The same sentiment was echoed by Jennifer Pahlka of Code for America. I’ve been doing some coaching for Code for America, and seeing Jennifer’s presentation put that work in a much wider context for me. Systems once locked behind layers of bureaucracy and inefficiency are opening up.

We, the Hackers

The message from Park and Pahlka was inspiring, and reminded me of the open days, during the dawn of the “commercial Internet.” I remembered a meeting I had in the mid-'90s with a well-respected brand manager. At the time, he equated the Internet to wine coolers and scoffed at the market size of web users. Many people shared that view, but they also lacked any leadership or vision. But the hacker culture didn’t let this perspective define its thinking—it turned fuzzy navels into billion dollar valuations.

How? It wasn’t a top-down culture. The hacker culture embraced visionary leadership and constant innovation from engineers, students, investors, and designers. The commercial Internet’s growth could be attributed to this new thinking and risk-taking powered by this spectrum of people with a wide range of skill sets.

I see elements of that in what Park, Pahlka, and others are trying to do. They are searching outside their organizations for innovation. They bring leadership, vision, and data—and want to connect with a diverse group of people and skills to solve problems. Tough, big problems.

For instance, how can we leverage healthcare data to tackle our population’s soaring diabetes epidemic? How can we find work for our returning war veterans? How can people improve their public transportation systems? Or how can people become more connected with their local communities to improve their standards of living?

All these questions fit naturally into the hacker culture’s thought process. This is what makes the hacker community at SXSW so vital. This culture thrives on constantly reinventing technology to create new opportunities.

Already, the White House is seeing returns on releasing certain data sets, and Code for America is making a real impact in American cities.

I am certain there is no better group to do that than the fearless members of the technology and design communities at SXSW that will inevitably hack something together that no one predicted and will be irreplaceable. It doesn't have to be a billion dollar idea. On the other hand, it's not unprecedented for a small group of hackers to transform the solution to a complex problem into the next billion dollar company.

The Presidio Trust Launches New Digital Strategy

Brian Cronin

Part park, part residential neighborhood, part business district, the Presidio is one of the most unique settings in San Francisco. And we’re proud to announce that the Presidio Trust, a nonprofit entity that oversees all aspects of the Presidio, has a new website and digital strategy to help tell its story and meet the many needs of its visitors, tenants, and residents.

In working with the Presidio Trust, Hot developed a digital strategy—based on research and the involvement of key stakeholders from the Trust and other sister-organizations—to pave the way for how the Trust meets park user needs. We then designed a new website, a social media and content strategy, and a roadmap that will provide clear objectives and metrics going forward. All without requiring the Trust to add any new staff. The new site features maps, beautiful photography and special mobile features, all of which help users experience the magic of the Presidio whether they’re on the grounds or thousands of miles away.

We’re grateful to have to had the opportunity to work with Presidio Trust and wish them continued success in their mission of both preserving and enhancing one of San Francisco’s greatest treasures.

Learn more about the project.

Join Sarah Brooks in Malmö, Sweden for SOCAP: Designing the Future!

Hot Studio

Join Sarah Brooks and the world’s leading social impact innovators for SOCAP: Designing the Future in Malmö, Sweden (a short 20 minute train ride from the Copenhagen airport) May 8-10th, 2012.

Designing the Future will gather 75+ keynotes and panelists, and 400+ attendees total, including the world’s pioneering impact investors, social entrepreneurs, philanthropists, government and civic leaders, and innovators to design a world that’s better for all. The event schedule includes keynotes, panels, interactive workshops, evening parties and more.

Sarah and David McConville, President of the Buckminster Fuller Institute, will be leading a session on Designing For Resilience.

View the schedule.

Space is limited. Register today!

Two Scoops of Webby: Hot Studio Recognized in 16th Annual Webby Awards

Hot Studio

The Webby Awards annually honors the best of the Internet. And this year, two projects from Hot Studio have been recognized as Official Honorees!

"Out of nearly 10,000 entries submitted to the 16th Annual Webby Awards, the Official Honoree distinction is awarded to the top 10% of all work entered."

Hot’s work with Gilt Groupe on the design of Park & Bond is an official honoree in the Fashion category.

And Hot’s iPad app for Zinio was named an official honoree in the Lifestyle (Tablet) category.

“We’re very excited to have our work recognized by the Webbys,” says Hot CEO Maria Giudice. “It’s a big honor for everyone at Hot, as well as for our clients, Gilt Groupe and Zinio, who gave us the opportunity to do excellent work.”

Thanks to the Webby Awards, and congrats to all the other honorees.

SXSW Recap: Fair vs. Equal

Maria Giudice

Over time, I’ve become more and more aware of the ways being a parent has affected my work and managing people at Hot. And when I started talking to other managers that are parents, they often said the same thing. But it’s not something people really talk about in general.

Last month, I travelled to SXSW Interactive with an all-star team of panelists to present “Moms (plus one dad) vs. Management,” an hour-long talk that looked at the strategies and lessons that successful managers have brought from parenting into their working lives.

If the topic was unique, the presentation itself was even more so: each speaker was introduced via video by their own kids, and attendees with three or more children were given some well-deserved prizes. The mix of practical info and a fun, intimate atmosphere left people buzzing afterward, including the folks at genConnect and the Wall Street Journal.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing some of the insights from “Moms (plus one Dad) vs. Management” here on our blog. Whether you’re a parent or not, I hope they’ll have some use for your own working life.

First up, some lessons on “fair vs. equal” from Mike Tschudy, who’s a VP of Product Design at SAP, and—according to his identical twin sons Will and Henry—is “a relatively fair man, unless it comes down to the last slice of chocolate.”

How has Mike, the Dad, influenced Mike, the Manager?

Mike, the Dad: Kids are who they are. You can influence them, but you can’t change them. A parent should help their kids discover their unique qualities and point them toward new experiences without fear.
Mike, the Manager: Employees are unique as well, and a manager shouldn’t try to change who employees are. But you can set them up for success by understanding their strengths and nurturing their interests.

Mike, the Dad: Your kids are not perfect; they will have strengths and weaknesses.
Mike, the Manager: So will your employees. Set realistic expectations, and put them in a position to learn and grow. The whole business will benefit.

Mike, the Dad: Kids need feedback, but so do parents.
Mike, the Manager: An open, honest dialogue between employees and managers can help both parties succeed.

Be sure to check back next week for more from “Moms (plus one Dad) vs. Management,” and hear from Pixar’s Lourdes Alba on the necessity of encouraging collaborative work and play.

And in the meantime, I’d love to hear your thoughts. How has being a parent impacted your work?

TripleBottomLunch and Biomimicry

Sarah Brooks

Hot Studio is kicking off TripleBottomLunch—a monthly lunchtime speaker series exploring social, economic, and ecological value.

Julie Sammons led the first event, helping us explore how biomimicry can inspire creative design solutions and inform our approach to solving complex problems. Julie is a biologist, business advisor, and co-founder of the Bay Area Biomimicry Network.

Here’s some of what she discussed:

Biomimicry
The term biomimicry was coined by biologist Janine Benyus fourteen years ago. It is an ancient practice and emerging discipline that emulates the forms, processes, and systems found in nature to solve modern design challenges. Biomimicry 3.8 is the recently re-branded identity of the Biomimicry Institute; the name references the 3.8 billion years of nature's research and development here on earth.

Increasingly, biomimicry is used as a lens to guide development of consumer products, manufacturing processes, materials research, and the creation of organizational structures by asking, "How would nature do that?"

Form and Function in the core patterns found in nature
Julie brought the natural world to Hot Studio in downtown San Francisco, beginning the workshop with a sensory exercise. With closed eyes, each attendee was given a series of natural forms to explore via smell, shape, and texture and asked to consider recurring or differentiating patterns. When we opened our eyes, many of us were surprised to find a turtle shell, magnolia blossom, seashell, feather, and stingray tail among the collection. It was fun to get out of our heads and have a kinesthetic learning experience to ground an exploration of nature's processes with, well, objects from nature. It sounds so simple, but we don't do it very often, and there were many interesting insights shared.

Life's Design Principles
Julie reviewed the biomimicry group's distillation of Life's Principles: evolve to survive, be resource efficient, adapt to changing conditions, integrate development with growth, be locally attuned and responsive and use life-friendly chemistry. She gave a few examples such as the spider web, which is stronger than steel, and the alternating height of a zebra's black and white stripes, which create a rolling ecosystem of cooling—patterns suited for form, function, and the environment.

The idea of micro competition within a context of macro co-operation sparked a really interesting conversation about what that means when applied to the world of man-made organizations and systems. Julie introduced the idea through the example of the Eucalyptus tree. Native to Australia, Eucalyptuses were imported to California during the Gold Rush for use as railroad ties. Planted in the same coastal ecosystem as the native redwood there were a few unintended consequences. Eucalyptus trees grow differently here. The trunks twist and make them unsuitable for railroad ties. And, the sap in the soil from fallen leaves is toxic to redwoods. So the two species compete to survive and thrive within the larger ecosystem.

Complex Adaptive Design
Biomimicry teaches that living systems are our best models of complex adaptive design; we evolve to survive, replicating what works, integrating the unexpected, and reshuffling information along the way. The trick is that nature does this utilizing the design principles of optimal energy efficiency, local attunement, and efficient resource usage. Julie pointed out that of every patent granted for a human innovation, there is only a 12% overlap between "biological" solutions and "technological solutions" using the TRIZ methodology, which compares patterns in new inventions, patents, and ideas. Only a small percentage of them meet the criteria of life's design principles that are optimized to support life. Food for thought.

Complex vs. Complicated
Another really interesting aspect of the workshop was our final discussion of complex vs. complicated systems. As Julie explained, complex systems have a dynamic interrelationship of connections that lead to emergent outcomes, whereas complicated systems feature a structured relationship of connections that lead to predictable outcomes. People and our social systems are complex. Are we accounting for emergent outcomes in our design solutions? After all, Hot’s tagline is "Making the complex beautifully clear.” We all agreed we'd love to dive into that question, but alas, we ran out of time. So it will have to be another conversation for another day.

We all quickly saw the crossover of these principles to practical application in our work at the studio; conversations with clients, approaches.

It was a successful start to TripleBottomLunch. Stay tuned for Patrice Martin and Liz Ogbu from IDEO.org, up next month.

No More Brain Bashing

Marsha Plat

A group of us at Hot have been discussing the recent bashing of brainstorming in The New Yorker and the various responses. Because the conversations have been so heated, I was intrigued to hear more from the author of the piece, Jonah Lehrer, in a recent Fresh Air story: 'Imagine' That: Fostering Creativity In The Workplace.

Lehrer describes recent scientific work around “insight” and describes the familiar feeling of gaining insights while taking showers or going for walks—doing anything that takes your mind off the problem and relaxes you. There are some great case studies in the story. In particular, he describes how product design firm Continuum came up with the idea for the Swiffer (and coincidently there was a post by a design strategist at Continuum saying that they don’t brainstorm, they have deliberative discourse).

At Hot, we hardly ever brainstorm in the traditional sense, but we frequently gather our brains to create a storm of ideas. Our brainstorming sessions almost always involve a period of time in which individuals think on their own and then share out. The key point is that we think independently and then collaboratively within the same session and in the same room. One of our standard "storms" is the Hopes & Dreams exercise that we do to kick off a project with a new client. This exercise works well because individuals have time to think independently, avoiding groupthink. After a period of quietly writing on Post-its with squeaky Sharpies, we share ideas one at a time and build upon them or generate new ideas. As we share, we categorize the ideas by moving the Post-its around on a whiteboard. It’s a quick way to generate a framework for what will constitute success, and get everyone’s buy-in.

A similar approach is used for sketching sessions. We sketch in groups of two up to twenty. We'll sketch with clients or just with the core team. (If our clients have trouble sketching we give them cut-outs and Post-it notes.) Whether we are sketching logos, home pages, or new product ideas, we use a similar process in which everyone draws independently first, and then shares, and then we build on the shared ideas. We can then group the sketches into a framework.

You might say, “Why not just have people sketch or think at their desk and then share them?” Being in the same room, at the same time, doing the same thing creates a group dynamic similar to an exercise class. It's true that I could do 15 sun salutations at home by myself, but I'm more likely to do them when I've shown up for yoga class (8:30am Tuesday mornings at Hot). The presence of the group creates a certain expectation and energy that causes me to work better. Food also helps. (I've noticed that I always make time to attend brainstorming sessions at Hot that include sushi and beer.)

Collaboration sessions work well when we follow the first rule of brainstorming: defer judgment. However, I've also seen sessions work in which we question, critique, and narrow down to a solution. It really depends on where the team is in the process. In the beginning of a project, it makes sense to be open-minded and generate many options and wild ideas. As the project progresses, it's necessary to be more critical and refine the ideas toward a workable solution. Scott Berkun does a great job of describing this need to diverge and converge in his response to Lehrer's article. Berkun’s points about needing a good facilitator and smart people are also valid. In the end, brainstorming really is just one technique, of many techniques, used to generate innovative ideas.

Most of which taste better with sushi.

Molding Young Minds in Manhattan!

Hot Studio

A mentor can inspire a young person to think beyond common boundaries, can help a student set an education and career trajectory, and so much more. At Hot, we believe time and energy spent mentoring students is necessary to foster the next generation of creative problem solvers.

Hot NY's Jennifer Kilian, Creative Director, and Roisin Cooper, Office Manager, are hosting an AIGA / NY mentoring event at our office. High school students will familiarize themselves with Hot’s work environment and meet 1:1 with their mentors.

Founded in 1993, the AIGA / NY Mentoring Program matches AIGA members with students from New York City’s High School of Art and Design. Mentor-and-student pairs meet for four hours each month over the course of a year, and the Mentoring Program also dedicates time for social outreach and cultural events.

If you are an AIGA member in the New York City area interested in learning more or joining the Mentor Program, then you're in luck.

Type@Cooper: From Paper to Pixels

Blake Olmstead

As a Brand Experience Designer at Hot, I collaborate with client-partners and teammates on visual designs that change the way people interact with a website or app, and also with a whole company and brand. I see every online interaction as part of a broader conversation. On each project, I work with typography on some level or another. Sometimes it’s the foundation for an identity; other times it is choosing two or three typefaces that will be used to communicate a site’s content hierarchy. Regardless, it all ties back to the client-partner’s brand and how they’re connecting with people.

What attracts me, in part, to typography is the challenge of working within such a confined system—a system that everyone is familiar with, but few truly know and understand. A lower-case 'a' has to look like a lowercase 'a.' There are certain expectations that have to be met for any given letter to be understood by a viewer. A long and complex history has shaped the letterforms into what they are. There’s something about establishing an intimate relationship with those forms in order to bend and manipulate them into something completely readable but totally new that is fascinating to me.

Typeface Archeology
This fascination led me to Type@Cooper: a program at Cooper Union that teaches typeface design principles through workshops and lectures. While continuing to work at Hot, I completed my first term and am in the midst of the second. The first term at Type@Cooper offered me the space to immerse myself in the world of typography by designing a revival typeface.   Though hundreds of thousands of typefaces are now digitized, many still remain on the pages of the books for which they were created. It really makes one pause for a moment to reflect on how far type design has come in such a short time. From creating punches by hand to the development of the pantograph, from the widespread use of photo-lettering to modern drafting programs like FontLab, the tools used in creating a typeface have radically changed.

Although technology has evolved, the theories and methodologies behind systematic and aesthetic choices have largely remained the same. That’s why a revival works so well for a first term project, because it forces a designer to bridge the world of manual typeface creation and novel technology by understanding and applying those theories and methodologies in real time.

Reviving a Typeface
For my revival, I was charged with finding a typeface which had fallen out of use and bringing it—or at least its essence—to the digital world. This process was the closest I have ever been to true detective work.   I spent hours researching typography in the rare book archive at Columbia University, which houses the world’s largest collection of type specimens. The catalog was overwhelming, so I narrowed my search to the first type foundry that came to mind: Deberny & Peignot, a French foundry established in the early 1900s.

It was surreal to be in the viewing room of the Archive, a kind of glassed-in outpost on the top floor, waiting for preservationists to bring me one ancient book at a time. I carefully leafed through fragile pages, waiting for that one long lost typeface to find me. The room was darkened. The oxygen levels must have been low. My eyelids got heavier with each delicate page turn. But then I caught a glimpse of something as I turned a page.

Photo of Naudin type specimen taken at Columbia's rare book archive (these are the books foundries would use to showcase their selection and sell to clients)

Eureka! It was Naudin! What you ask? Naudin was the elusive typeface I had been waiting for, likely named after Bernard Naudin who may have designed the original typeface in 1911. Here it was in the second volume of the Deberny & Peignot 1923 type specimen—or pieces of it, actually. Only a few pages of text were there, but it was enough to take photos of and start the design process. Oh yeah, no scanners or photocopies allowed when the book is the last of its kind and nearly 100 years old. A few days later, a colleague found the entire basic character set of Naudin at the NY Public Library—and I was off to the races.

This is when theory meets practice in the Type@Cooper program. Calligraphy guided my understanding of how letterforms were constructed. Naudin is a face with strange quirks that I could only comprehend after deconstructing it into its most basic calligraphic pieces, and even then, the forms were clearly not based on a broad-nib pen. Rather, I interpreted these calligraphic pieces through the different tools the designer may have used in 1911. With further research, and application of lettering and spacing techniques, I was able to shape Naudin into a digital 'set' with letters, numbers, and contemporary symbols like '@.'

But is it right for the web?
So will Naudin appear on a website near you soon? Probably not. A typeface a like Naudin is more at home in the printed world, on packaging or as a display face; probably not on any of our clients' websites. Why not?

That’s what the Type@Cooper program is all about. Through an earnest exploration of the craft of typography, we are trained to make more informed and prudent typographic decisions. The typeface should be unique, vibrant, and in-line with the brand’s values, but never disrupt usability or content.

The understanding of this process and methodology has prompted me to ask deeper questions as I work on websites and applications. How often have we seen websites with 8 point text? How will a logo’s typeface get distorted as it moves from device to device? Can this typeface scale across the digital divide back to print?

All of these print and digital considerations are not only making me a better Brand Experience Designer, but a better problem solver for Hot’s clients. If we recommend the right typeface to a client, it becomes a powerful tool for expressing their brand and connecting with people in any medium.

If you love typography the way I do, leave a comment here and I’ll make sure you’re in the loop when I report back on my second term at Cooper Union.

Unhackathon #2: The Bay Area Equality Challenge

Hot Studio

Are you a problem solver, a tech-driven designer, a big thinker, or a data miner who loves working on large scale, real world problems? If so, then join the TED Prize, the Equal Justice Initiative, California College of the Arts (CCA), officials from the Office of the Mayor of San Francisco, and Mix & Stir Studio for Unhackathon #2. They provide the problems and the data, you work with others to find a solution.

Unhackathon #2 focuses on improving equality in San Francisco and the Bay Area. Teams will have the choice of tackling one of two unique problems using Ted Prizes's City 2.0 platform: economic opportunity and civic identity.

The top team walks away with an opportunity to personally present their winning concept to TED for a chance to receive a $10,000 funding grant.

Check out what Hot's team did in Unhackathon #1.

The Cherries Atop Our Sundae: Awards in 2011

Hot Studio

All of us at Hot feel fortunate for the breadth of design and technical challenges we get to tackle every day. Our clients’ happiness and success are our top priority. But it’s also nice to have our efforts recognized and celebrated by objective experts in the field. 2011 was a banner year for us on this front as we racked up awards for everything from websites to iPad apps.

Here’s a rundown of some of the biggest cherries atop our collective sundae:

HOW “Your Best Work” Merit Award Winner—HOW magazine’s “Your Best Work” Design Award judges how a design firm consistently delivers leading-edge work to clients. Only twelve agencies were selected to appear in HOW’s May 2012 “Creativity” print issue–and Hot is one of them. Our winning entry included the following five projects:

Interactive Media Awards: (5) awards including Best-in-Class and Outstanding Achievement—The Interactive Media Council recognized a number of Hot’s 2011 projects as “Best-in-Class” or for “Outstanding Achievement.” Best-in-Class is the highest honor bestowed by the Interactive Media Awards, and the Outstanding Achievement award recognizes that a website has met and surpassed web standards of excellence.

IMA judges span the breadth of the disciplines in the interactive field, and they work at the likes of American Express, Verizon, AKQA, Time Warner Inc., and Food Network, to name a few. Their decisions were based on criteria including design, usability, innovation in technical features, and content. Here’s what they awarded to Hot Studio:

Best-in-Class Winners

Gilt Groupe's Park & Bond website - Lifestyle category
Evri iPad app - Science / Technology category

Outstanding Achievement Winners

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) website redesign - Museum category
PopTech iPad app - Nonprofit category
Kiva.org website redesign - Nonprofit & Financial Services categories

Thanks to you!

We wouldn’t have received even one of these awards without the trust and collaboration of the clients with whom we co-created these experiences. We’re looking forward to working with all of you again.

See more of our award-winning projects.

Unhacking Public Transit: Systemic Problems Require Design Thinking—and a Story

James Goldman

A couple of weeks ago, I joined five of my Hot Studio colleagues to participate in an “Unhackathon” hosted by Mix & Stir Studio at the California College of the Arts (CCA). The event's purpose was to help San Francisco solve some of the city's most pressing public transportation problems. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I was eager to work with a new team of “Hotties” and to indulge a personal obsession with public transportation. (I gave up my car a few years ago.)

For this Unhackathon, our team tackled problems surrounding SF MUNI's communication platforms. If you're unfamiliar with Unhackathon events, here is a rundown of the format:

On a Friday night after work, teams of designers, strategists, coders, and other creative types met at CCA to hear public transit officials speak about their jobs and their most pressing concerns. The teams reconvened on Saturday to construct a proposal that used existing infrastructure and resources to create implementable solutions that would have a genuine, positive impact on the city's riders. There was no incubation period—this was an 8-hour pressure cooker for ideas. Then we presented our proposals.

One thing I noticed about our team early on, and I really like this about Hot in general, is that we capitalize on collective knowledge. We don’t create “design solutions” or “technology solutions” or “brand solutions,” but solutions encompassing all these things. The line between content strategy (my discipline) and business strategy or design becomes blurred in a most inspirational and productive way.

Mayor Lee gets a progress report from the team

What we did:

At Hot, we all have great ideas. This is sewn into the fabric of the organization. However, pruning our ideas down to the ones that best meet the needs of our clients and support an overall vision is where the proverbial rubber hits the road. So before diving into a brainstorming effort we developed some principles to guide and help evaluate our ideas.

Our solution had to be:

Immediately implementable: Every client needs concrete, workable solutions, but none more than a local municipality.
Visionary: While practicality is important, there were a lot of great minds participating in this exercise. At one point, even the mayor was a working participant. Our solution not only had to solve an immediate problem, but give MUNI a path to future success.
Technology agnostic: San Francisco is home to over ¾ of a million people with additional millions of tourists, commuters, and business people who rely on MUNI every day. If our solution merely helped those with smartphones, for example, it wouldn't be the right one. It had to work for everyone. Technology elitism just wouldn’t cut it.

The process from that point on was a condensed version of Hot’s problem-solving process. We brainstormed, debated, researched, tested our ideas against our principles, established consensus, and iterated until we had a solution we felt confident in. Once we had our solution, we applied our cross-disciplinary skills to build a presentation that summed up our entire idea in five minutes. Wow, Twain’s sardonic wit on the difficulty of brevity never seemed more pertinent. (“If I'd had more time, I'd have written a shorter letter.”) This was a frenetic pace for such a difficult task but in the end, due to excellent leadership, organization and the talent of my teammates, we had a presentation that didn’t merely explain our solution, but told a compelling story.

FACT: If you want big ideas, you need big walls

Was it of the caliber Hot typically presents to our clients? With one day to do months-worth of work, probably not. But that wasn't the point. We practiced the design process in hyper drive. It was about muscle memory. It was about staying focused in even the most confusing and pressurized situations. It was about doing what you do best and letting others do what they do best. It was an exercise both in leadership and self-organization. (My Scrum trainer would have loved it!)

So what did we come up with?

In short, we created a solution that uses the real-time knowledge of MUNI riders in conjunction with existing data sets to empower riders to make more informed decisions.

It uses simple feedback workflows, data integration, and digestible data displays.
It benefits all riders by using only currently available display and data input resources. (NextBus signage and phone texting for example.)
It has a path for growth as new data and display sources become available.
It uses iconography to get data from riders and similar iconography to display it.

Better information, better decisions, happier riders

I regrouped with the team a few days ago and, interestingly, even with the benefit of hindsight we unanimously felt the idea was strong—which was surprising. With so much pressure, we could have easily created an idea that was as much noise as substance. We all agreed that we wish we had had more time to craft our message; 8 hours was a little tight. As a content strategist I completely agree. Crafting your message is as difficult and as vital as creating your solution. I’m very excited to be part of an organization that shares this value.

In the end, the “Unhackathon” made us better at our jobs. That alone was worth dedicating a long but invigorating Saturday to helping our community. Thanks Mayor Lee, “Mix and Stir,” CCA, and all the event sponsors for giving us this fun learning opportunity.

Now, onto the next challenge. With perhaps a little more time?

Here is Hot’s roster of all-star Unhackers who spent a Friday night and all day Saturday tackling this tough problem:

Elysa Soffer Strategist
Laurel Tripp User Experience Designer
Zach Gibson Brand Experience Designer
James Goldman Content Strategist
Eric Grant Director, Brand Experience
Jason Punzalan Director, Technology

The State of Hot's Tech

Dan Harrelson

Hot’s Technology team built up some substantial momentum last year, and isn’t slowing down in 2012. At Hot, we aren’t simply designing industry-leading experiences, we’re building them.

First, and perhaps most importantly, we’ve made significant hires in both our San Francisco and New York offices. Jason Punzalan came on as our Director of Technology in New York and Anthony Bovasso, Bill Fisher, Kerry Nehil, Tory Polich, and Scott Tran joined our group as well. As I reflect on everything, I’m happiest with the fact that our group, which now includes more than a dozen engineers, is happy and busy building interesting software.

Hot’s increased technology capabilities allow us to deliver outstanding work for our clients. Two key projects include iPad apps for PopTech and Art.com. Though both are built for the same platform, the projects’ differences speak to our team’s versatility and the variety of technical projects Hot pursues.

The challenge with PopTech was to incorporate and make tangible massive amounts of data collected by PopTech’s partners, PwC, the UN Global Pulse, Jana, and The New York Times R&D Lab. Our tech team worked closely with the Hot’s designers, as well as PopTech and its partners, to develop a series of flexible, interactive visualizations that told the story of how the world will change socially and economically in years to come.

Art.com’s app, called artCircles, could be described as “experiential e-commerce.” Its primary objective is to spark conversation: artCircles leverages Art.com’s vast catalogue of images, prints, and original artwork to get users talking about the art that inspires them. Though important, the actual purchasing of art is a secondary element of the app. In building artCircles, the team incorporated elements of social integration, mobile commerce, and unique information architecture.

Our experience with touchscreens and mobile interfaces also led to significant work with HTML5 and responsive design, which we believe will become the code of choice for many mobile applications going forward. As such, HTML5 and responsive design will remain an important element of our work throughout 2012.

Recently, we’ve built several HTML5 apps with Zinio, including Zinio’s magazine reader for the HP TouchPad, which runs webOS and relies heavily on HTML5. We also launched Touchy, an opensource jQuery plug-in developed by Hot’s Bill Fisher. Released in September 2011 at the San Francisco JavaScript Meetup, Touchy helps an application manage touch events in any browser that implements ontouchstart, ontouchmove, and ontouchend events—notably WebKit-based browsers such as Mobile Safari and the Android Browser—thereby allowing applications to better parse out the user’s intention.

As our tech team has grown and contributed to more projects, the culture here at Hot has begun to change as well. We’ve been hosting more tech events, like the 2011 Balanced Teams Conference and our very first Hackathon. We’ll be hosting even more tech events this year. Technology is no longer an add-on offering for us; it has become an integral piece in the services we provide our clients, and part of our identity.

Ultimately, we believe that Hot’s tech capacities allow us to deliver better products for our customers. By building what we design, we can offer a truer execution of our clients’ visions. It’s also allowing us to work in new ways, and with new kinds of clients. One example of this shift is our work with Code for America on their Civic Commons project. Rather than designing and building Civic Commons ourselves, Hot took more of a coach/mentor role, through which we helped with product prioritization and development, while Code for America’s fellows handled engineering. Working in this fashion allowed the teams to solve problems and work quickly without sacrificing quality. It also helped Code for America work within its budget.

This year will be an even bigger year for the Tech department, and for Hot as a whole. With a solid foundation in place, we have several interesting projects underway for touchscreen and mobile apps.

And we’re still growing. We’re looking for experienced, creative engineers. If that’s you, and you like the sound of what we’re doing, please drop us a line.

InfoCamp Berkeley 2012: The Unconference

Rachel Elkington

Want to learn more about interaction design? Have a user experience question you want answered? Just interested in information? Then you can’t miss InfoCamp Berkeley.

Billed as the “unconference” for the information community, InfoCamp Berkeley is for anyone interested in user experience, information architecture, interaction design, service design, library sciences, and all related fields. Other than the keynote, none of the session topics are decided on beforehand. If you want to lead a session, bring your idea to the group and pitch it! If you don’t want to lead a group, then come join the discussion anyway and, you never know, a session might inspire an idea or question you want share later in the day.

David Hogue, Ph.D., will deliver the keynote speech on Saturday morning. An applied psychologist and interaction designer, David teaches information design, interaction design, social media, and mobile design courses at San Francisco State University, and is Vice President of Experience Design at Fluid, an interactive agency specializing in digital shopping experiences.

Come on out!

WHERE: UC Berkeley School of Information, South Hall
TICKETS: Regular $30 / Student $20 / Register here!
FOOD: Coffee, lunch, and snacks provided throughout the day
PARKING: On campus, and in Berkeley in general, is possible but not a lot of fun.

More details.

Art.com Introduces its First iPad App

Hot Studio

Congratulations to everyone at Art.com on the release of their first iPad app, artCircles™.

artCircles takes you on an epic journey through the world’s most inspiring art collection. Anchored by a clever filtering system (literally comprised of interrelated circles), the app allows you to easily discover classic, current, and little known works of art by viewing images inspired by curators, like Yves Behar; colors, from cyan to cocoliquot; or words, from "wanderlust" to "ethereal." Deep social integration lets users tag their favorite art images and share favorite pieces with friends. Each of the 19 curator collections is accompanied by a recorded message or voiceover that plays while a slideshow of images appears on the iPad. Hot Studio partnered with Art.com on the app’s concept, user experience and interface design, naming and visual identity, and engineering and integration.

Be sure to check out the app yourself, and download from iTunes. We’re sure you’ll circle in on something you like!

Mamma Manager! Maria Giudice and Friends Present at 2012 SXSW

John Cantwell

Remember that each person is unique.

Get everyone to play nice together.

Work past tantrums and conflicts.

Learn from mistakes.

Parents do these things every day when dealing with their kids. And many successful managers have similar duties when working with their employees. Indeed, there’s often surprising overlap between parenting and managing, but precious little discussion of how the two relate to one another. Can’t being a good parent help make you a better manager?

That’s the question that Maria Giudice, Hot Studio’s Founder and CEO, and an all-star panel of presenters will answer during an hour-long talk at SXSW on March 12, 2012. The talk, “Moms (plus one dad) vs. Management,” looks at the strategies and lessons that successful managers have brought from parenting into their working lives.

“Over time, I’ve become more and more aware of the ways that being a parent has affected my work managing people at Hot,” says Maria, a proud parent of two. “And when I started talking to other managers that are parents, they often said the same thing. But it’s not something people really talk about in general.”

Maria will be joined at SXSW by a remarkable group of speakers. Lourdes Alba, Project Manager at Pixar, will discuss ways of encouraging collaboration. Margaret Stewart, who leads YouTube’s User Experience team, will look at ways of managing conflict. And Mike Tschudy, VP of Product Design at SAP and father of twin boys, will talk about recognizing and nurturing different personalities.

“I’ve found managing and parenting to be tricky pursuits,” says Mike. “Being effective in either often has more to do with how to recover from your mistakes rather than a sure fire ‘secret sauce’ for success.”

Whether you’re a parent, manager, or none of the above, the talk promises to be a fun and illuminating hour.

WHEN: Monday, March 12, 2012 / 12:30pm - 1:30pm
WHERE: Courtyard Marriott, Austin, TX

Panel description.

AIGA Continuum 2012: Celebrating Our Past, Present and Future

Hot Studio

Join us and AIGA San Francisco in honor of AIGA's 2012 Fellows: Patrick Coyne, Maria Giudice, and Karin Hibma. Fellows are recognized for their ongoing contributions to the design field and are credited for their work in areas such as leadership, education, and writing.

Proceeds from the evening will benefit the AIGA SF Enrichment Scholarship Fund, which assists Northern California design students with their education costs.

Honorary Event Chairs: Jennifer Morla and Clement Mok
Hosted by: Sean Adams

Schedule:
6:30 – drinks and hors d’oeuvres
7:30 – awards presentation
8:30 – drinks and dessert

All are welcome. Tickets are limited. Click here to RSVP.

Designer Fair: A Science Fair for Kickass Designers

Hot Studio

Think ‘science fair’ but for designers building cool things all over Silicon Valley and beyond.

The Designer Fund is hosting Designer Fair at Stanford’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, and Hot Studio is one of the sponsors. Several of us will be there—including Dani Malik and Matthew Carlson—to meet with students, designers, and hackers.

Designer Fair is more laid back than a typical conference. Tables are set up throughout so people can share demos and portfolios with each other. The afternoon allows time for short presentations and talks from designers-for-hire and design consultants as well as in-house designers, investors, and founders.

So if you're a designer looking to meet people from startups, VCs, agencies, and tech companies like Google, Twitter, Pinterest, and Facebook, there's still time to sign up!

We hope to see you there, and come find us at our table!

WHERE: Stanford d.school (Hasso Plattner Institute of Design)
DIRECTIONS: 550 Panama Mall, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305
PARKING: Free, all around Stanford—hooray Saturday!

AOL Launches a Completely New and Rebranded AIM

Brian Cronin

Congratulations to our friends at AOL's AIM on the launch of AIM’s revamped messaging platform with their brand new identity.

Hot Studio was honored to help conceive a new identity that would introduce a new generation of users to one of the Web’s truly iconic social utilities. Working closely with AIM’s product team, Hot’s designers created a brand strategy and hand-drawn logotype that closely integrates with a host of new AIM features, and underscores the fun and functionality of using AIM.

AIM's new look is already getting lots of attention from folks like PC Magazine and Time. Be sure to check out AIM for yourself, and say hello to an old friend with a great new look.

Service Design Drinks NYC

Margaret Shear

Its happening, the service design community is forming. The thinking is beginning. We spend our time connecting people, props, process, partners, and places through service design. Now it's time that we connect ourselves and our passions.

Come voice your knowledge about how the service design conversation can influence the design, public policy, and business communities.

Hope to see you there!

Click here to RSVP.