The case of the disappearing cup blurb

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Virginia Postrel tells this tale of her contribution to Starbuck’s "The Way I See It" campaign:

Cupquote11

Due to an unfortunate interaction between the sleeve and the cup, it’s Virginia’s writing that we stop noticing almost immediately:

Cupcover2

As is always the case here at metacool, my intent is not to poke fun at these kinds of sitiuations.  I’m much more interested in what there is to learn from this. 

I think the lesson here is how hard it is to successfully deliver an integrated offering.  Even for an experience delivery master such as Starbucks.   It’s these kind of snafus that make the routine performance of something like a Boeing 767 all the more extraordinary. 

The remedy?  It’s a bit of a cliche, but it comes back to the kind of multi-functional, multi-disciplinary teams fostered by Design Thinking.  Why not, for instance, put Virginia’s quote on the sleeve in addition to the cup?  Well, that would probably require a new set of manufacturing, graphic design, marcomm, legal, supply chain, and channel experts to meet and reach agreement.  But it could happen.   Design Thinking is a team activity.

2006: The Year of Total Design

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If you’re any kind of soccer fan, you know the meaning of Total Football.  Wikipedia defines it as "… a system where a player who moves out of his
position is replaced by another from his team, thus retaining their
intended organizational structure. In this fluid system no footballer
is fixed in their intended outfield role… Total Football depends largely on the adaptability of each footballer within the team to succeed."

In the world of soccer, Total Football created an entirely new paradigm for how the game should be played.  The fluidity, adaptability, and ultimately, the creativity it engendered markedly raised the performance of teams who adopted it.  And while the system of Total Football is what enabled players to play better than they ever had before, for the system to work required a special type of player.  Soccer legend Rinus Michels put it this way:

Total Football… places great demands on individual and team tactical excellence… An absolute prerequisite, to master such a team tactical aspect, is that all the players possess a positive mentality…

Back to the world of metacool.  I believe there’s something called Total Design.  Total Design is to normal design as Total Football is to normal soccer.  It’s what happens when you combine wickedly good design thinkers with a human-centered, business-sensitive design process.  Design thinkers who know how to work across professional boundaries, who can play any position, who are flexible, adaptable, yet capable of driving toward a unified goal.  Total Design is about tangible results that change the world for the better, and those results can be, should be, will be, awesome.

You heard it here first:  2006 is the year of Total Design.

 

Innovation starts in the field

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Thailand_transportThis series of photos arrived in my inbox via a friend of a friend.  They were taken somewhere in Thailand.

They show us how important it is to start the innovation process by going out into the field.  If we sit at our desks, or only seek inspiration in situations, people, and aspects of the world familiar to us, we miss out.  We miss out on witnessing the challenges that real people encounter in the course of their daily lives.

Such as trying to transport a toddler when all you have is a motorcycle and sidecar.

It’s easy to be judgmental when viewing this photo.  I know I was — "How could he do this to that kid?", I thought.  But design thinking is about empathy.  Put yourself in his place and imagine how his morning is going.  What did he eat?  Where is he going?  How is he feeling?  Does he do this each morning?  Is this a temporary arrangement?  Is it really as unsafe as it looks?  Is money a limiting factor?  If so, how?  Did he think this arrangement up or does someone else do it, too?  Is there a market for something better?

Judgment is the opposite of compassion, and by deferring judgment, one starts the process of innovation.

Design Thinking for a Monday Morning

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Yawn, croak, stretch.  Well, it’s Monday morning and now that all of that is over, it’s time again to start thinking about the art and science of making cool stuff.  Here are some good reads that caught my attention and blew out the holiday cobwebs this morning:

Success Code for CEO’s: get a design
Yet another article about the Institute of Design from the IndiaTimes.  This one features an extensive conversation with Robert Sutton, who is a core member of the d.school.  Robert and I will be teaching a d.school course at Stanford later this year.

Creativity’s Economic — and Sexual — Edge
The always entertaining Dan Pink is writing a column called The Trend Desk, and this week’s edition takes us on a whirlwind tour of mating behavior, BRIC, portion control, and sudoku mania.

Design: The New Corporate Marketing Strategy
This article by Ted Mininni ties a nice bow around a bunch of concepts involving a user-centric approach to marketing.  You need to register for the article, but it’s free and worth your time.

Happy reading, and see you around the pages of metacool this week.

Come si dice “Brand Dilution”?

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If you’ve spent any time at all wandering the halls of metacool, you know that I actively shun cynicism and empty criticism.  Design thinking, after all, is all about being generative, optimistic, and forward-looking.

But sometimes I just have to wonder what’s wrong with a universe where things like this can happen: Ferrari Barbie

Enzo would not be pleased.

Keith Duckworth

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Dfvdraw

This week, the world lost a great innovator, Keith Duckworth.

An engineer by training, Duckworth was one half of the vaunted firm Cosworth, designers of the paradigm-shifting DFV, which changed the face of motor racing and brought home 155 race victories.  Funded as a venture by Ford, the DFV acted as a modular platform around which indepdendent designers could, for the first time, create Formula 1 cars which could compete with factory efforts from the like of Ferrari. 

Duckworth was one of those fantastic engineers who, by embracing the realities of the business context they operate within, turn mere ideas into market-dominating innovations.

Unabashed Gearhead Gnarlyness

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Sr2_atl_wdog

The Rivendell Atlantis
from the Rivendell website:

"Form follows function" works for nature, but too often with people, it’s used as an excuse to rush to market something that’s fully functional but still not so good looking.  (Have you noticed that old things usually look good? Manhole covers, typewriters, ’50s station wagons, chairs, hand-saw handles, buildings, bells, letter openers, kitchen appliances, almost anything.  They were designed slowly, on a real drawing board, by people who were part industrial designer, part artist, part engineer.  When you mix those qualities with manual involvement and patience, what finally hatches usually looks good.)"

metacool Thought of the Day

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"My inspiration comes from my childhood. I have a theory: As a child, you do a lot of things, you soak in the most; 20 or 30 years later you are in a position where you can make these things that you dreamed of or thought of back when you were a kid. You can make them happen. The color turquoise became very fashionable when the iMac came out. The designer who designed it was 35, my age then.  I remember that turquoise was all over when I was 9 or 10. It was a color from my childhood. Orange was a color of my childhood. The minimalism from the 60s came back. The 80’s are coming back in the work of the younger guys."

– Markus Diebel