Designing for Parody

People have struggled for years to find ways of explaining the product or "brand experience" and how it can be created. It's been explained by Pine and Gilmore as a theater with props (drawing with no doubt from Erving Goffman), as a mindshare, and in many other ways.

My personal constructionist view of brand is that the best brands are a combination of design and emergence in real communities, but i won't take the time right now to explain (perhaps a later post).

Perhaps the best way to analyze one's brand, though, is to gauge its ability to be parodied. For those of you who have a product or a business, unless it can be parodied in a video like this one (apologies in advance for the questionable content), your product probably doesn't have a strong enough brand. Where does your business or design fall on the 0-10 "parody-able index"?

As an example, the current version of BigTreeTop.com (a company i co-founded) achieves around a 1 or 2 on the index (low) - a problem we're working to solve by making much stronger, fearless statements about who we are.

Bloomington Startup Weekend

For those of you anywhere in the Bloomington area, and who are interested in new ideas, do yourself a favor and consider joining in, or at least following along with the Bloomington Startup Weekend - an event taking place the weekend of February 8-10th here in Bloomington, IN. I will be joining the fun, looking forward to meeting lots of other folks, and perhaps kicking off a new venture (though i of course will be offering my help in getting it off the ground, bidding the startuppers adieu, then promptly jumping back into my PhD work and BigTreeTop.com).

If you are interested, get click here and register quickly, since as of the time of the writing of this post, there are only 22 spots (out of 70) left!

More information can be found here!

Interdisciplinarity

From the introduction to Norber Wiener's Cybernetics - written in 1947:

Since Leibniz there has perhaps been no man who has had a full command of all the intellectual activity of his day. Since that time, science has been increasingly the task of specialists, in fields which show a tendency to grow progressively narrower. A century ago, there may have been no Leibniz, but there was a Gauss, a Faraday, and a Darwin. Today there are few scholars who can call themselves mathematicians or physicists or biologists without restriction. A man may be a topologist or a coleopterist. He will be filled with the jargon of his field, and will know all its literature and al its ramifications, but, more frequently than not, he will regard the next subject as something belonging to his colleague three doors down the corridor, and will consider any interest in it on his own part as an unwarrantable breach of privacy….

…There are fields of scientific work, as we shall see in the body of this book, which have been explored from the different sides of pure mathematics, statistics, electrical engineering, and neurophysiology; in which every single notion receives a separate name from each group, and in which important work has been triplicated or quadruplicated, while still other important work is delayed by the unavailability in one field of results that may have already become classical in the next field.

It is these boundary regions which offer the richest opportunities to the qualified investigator. They are at the same time the most refractory to the accepted techniques of mass attack and the division of labor. If the difficulty of a physiological problem is mathematical in essence, then physiologists ignorant of mathematics will get precisely as far as one physiologists ignorant of mathematics, and no further. If a physiologist who knows no mathematics works together with a mathematician who knows no physiology, the one will be unable to state his problem in terms that the other can manipulate, and the second will be unable to put the answers in any form that the first can understand. Dr. Rosenblueth has always insisted that a proper exploration of these blank spaces on the map of science could only be made by a team of scientists, each a specialist in his own field but each possessing a thoroughly sound and trained acquaintance with the fields of his neighbors; all in the habit of working together, of knowing one another's intellectual customs, and of recognizing the significance e of a colleague's new suggestion before it has taken on a full formal expression. The mathematician need not have the skill to conduct a physiological experiment, but he must have the skill to understand one, to criticize one, and to suggest one. The physiologist need not be able to prove a certain mathematical theorem, but he mus5t be able to grasp its physiological significance and to tell the mathematician for what he should look.

We have dreamed for years of an institution of independent scientists, working together in one of these backwoods of science, not as subordinates of some great executive officer, but joined by the desire, indeed by the spiritual necessity, to understand the region as a whole, and to lend one another the strength of that understanding.

For those of us who strive to uphold this standard, it is our constant and necessary challenge to be "qualified investigators", and to be keenly aware of other qualified investigators, whatever their pedigree.

Deloitte: Nearly Half of U.S. Consumers Frequently Create, Post Content Online

In an upcoming report (posted in the Online Media Daily website), Deloitte & Touche, a well-respected global consulting firm, reports this compelling result. The implications of this number - and particularly of the 12-point annual jump - are staggering for small businesses. Consumer generated online content (videos, articles, photos, magazines, etc.) is on a trajectory to surpass professional media at some point.

With the increasing ease/low cost of online customer engagement tools, SMB's have a huge opportunity to ride this wave of participation to growth and profit - and HCI Designers are quickly going to have to become master tool makers, rather than the ones building the house.

Here's a link to the article:

http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.san&s=73771&Nid=37950&p=393517

Beating the Wal-Mart Effect

My wife and i spent a romantic Friday night watching The Corporation,



and Wal-Mart: The Hight Cost of Low Price,



and though we known it before, it became even more clear what the mission of BigTreeTop.com is, and that is to do our part to prevent two things:

1. The "Wal-Mart Effect" on small business (small businesses dying off as a result of large businesses moving into a community and exerting their pricing influence past where smaller businesses can compete), and
   
2. Corporatization of America (consumers and employees becoming less aware and less involved in the organizations that shape our lives)
   

These two things have exerted a heavy influence on SMB's in America for quite a while, and many have gone out of business by trying to beat big businesses at their own game. It's our idea that the game needs to change altogether - especially where SMB's are concerned. Here is a little graphic of the two forces i seem to see exerting influence on the SMB today. On the right is the still-dominant paradigm for business. On the left is the new paradigm we're proposing:



BigTreeTop's contribution to the solution is by starting with small and mid-sized businesses and organizations, to provide a platform that will help them to more easily adopt co-creative practices with their employees, customers, and business partners, by involving them in some decision making, story-telling, community and partnership-building and creation of value itself. We are sure it will have at least the following two effects on small business in local economies:

1. It will help to stave off the Wal-Mart effect on SMB's and their local economies by improving the advantages they already have over large businesses trying to exert their influence: real community, adaptability and customer loyalty beyond just product and service value
2. It will provide consumers with increased ownership of the success of their local businesses and economy

..and we are reasonably sure that it will have the following two effects on the big businesses in the national economy:

1. Large organizations will be forced to involve employees and customers in deeper co-creation as a source of real competitive advantage.
   
2. Deeper co-creative involvement of customers and employees in large organizations will lessen their ability to take part in unsustainable business practices.
   

What we're proposing is a pretty radical new way of thinking about organizations and their boundaries which suggests that, with the right platform and process in place, an organization which blurs its boundaries and emphasizes the deep involvement of its community of employees, customers and business partners will be more successful than an organization which does not. We think that SMB's and smaller non-profits can benefit more naturally from co-creation, since it merely magnifies what they do already - which is to be a part of a real-live community of people who are concerned not only about the cost value of a business's products and services, but about the business itself, its people and its existence within a local and national economy.

Reifying HCI (Part 2) - Personal Connections

Personal connections are a key in any field - design, the academy, business. Everyone admits this publicly, but i've noticed a slight negative subtext in conversations where it became clear that folks still don't like the idea that "it's not what you know but who you know." This subtext betrays a feeling that, while folks know that personal connections are important, they still want to land the job or the deal or the publication completely on their own merit without having leveraged a connection to get it done.

This notion is complete hog-wash. The myth (except in a few edge cases) of the iconic, seminal designer or author is just that - a myth - that we hold dear because we want to think that we are important, special and unique. Except for a few edge cases, this is not the case. If i really were the iconic, seminal designer or author, i would have no need to feel negatively toward the notion of personal connections at all. In fact, those connections would be coming to me.

There is a rising need for personal connections, in my opinion, and it is due to 2 increasingly necessary things:

1. Trust (Digitization makes it increasingly easy to fake resumes, plagiarize work and purchase degrees. Trust is at a premium)
2. Character (Character is what ensures that a person will thrive in any environment - regardless of the changes around them - much more than will a skillset. See my previous post

about what VC's look for in a team)
The importance of these things - and the resulting importance of personal connections - occurred to me again yesterday as i sat in a meeting with the Managing Partner of a VC firm to discuss BigTreeTop. Her fund is in the Life Sciences, and therefore not a potential investor. She graciously offered, nonetheless, to take the time to give me her advice and perspective - which was the end result of a long line of personal connections that served, for her, as a guarantee of my reputation (whatever that is), and as a signification of my character. The string of connections goes back over 10 years, and includes former employers, family friends and colleagues. Without those connections, no amount of genius would have gotten me into her office, since her time is extremely valuable, and she wouldn't have known me from a hole in the wall.

For those of us in any profession (academic, business, interpretive dance), there are therefore a few imperatives that will serve to grow and keep connections that can later serve as a guarantee for those wondering if they should take the time to meet with us.

• Be Genuinely Interested - Never, ever use people for their "connection value." The human brain can detect all but the most clever forms of sycophantry in an instant. Be genuinely interested in the people you meet. Find common ground and explore it - both as a connection opportunity and a chance to learn.
  
• Keep Bridges - Never, ever burn a bridge from your end. When leaving an organization, don't leave them until you can leave on good terms. One of my former employers is now an investor in BigTreeTop, and another is funding work in the School of Informatics.
  
• Connect with Fish of all Sizes - There is no such thing as "little fish who grow up to be big fish." People are connected along many different dimensions. I have seen many instances where the administrative assistant of a corporation is among the most influential in hiring decisions, by virtue of his or her direct, conversational access to the CEO.
  
• Character is Key - With forward-thinking folks, character trumps skill every time. If your network knows that you have character (adaptability, integrity, etc), they will want to connect with you. If they aren't sure, they won't. Anyone can gain skills - and pretty quickly. Character is harder to come by - and therefore more imperative.
  

Erik Pukinskis, Skip the PhD

Erik, if you're out there reading this, drop the silly PhD dream and fulfill your destiny at MC Hammer's "Dance Jam"!

http://www.dancejam.com/

http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/11/06/mc-hammers-dancejam-opens-its-doors-to-a-select-few/

http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/09/25/tv-coverage-for-dancejam-realius-and-gizmoz-at-techcrunch40/

ReifiyingHCI (part 1) - Investment in Team

This series of posts will be a sort of ecclectic collection of thoughts and observations from my dual-life as an entrepreneur and academic. They will be posted in fairly random order, and in fairly random order of importance. Some of these observations and personal discoveries may be common knowledge to those of you reading this, but others may find them surprising. Here goes:

Having lived (on cans of tuna - no bread - for lunch) through the dot com crash of the early 2000's and watched first-hand the startup investment game, one of the things i always wondered about was how any investor - angel, venture, institutional - made such a large decision to invest millions of dollars in an unproven concept. There are of course a number of factors that go into the decision (investment horizons for their fund, the way a prospective investee fits into their existing portfolio of companies, acceptable rates of failure, etc), but perhaps the most interesting fact that i learned is that investment folks invest less in the concept than they do in the team that came up with it. In HCI/d education, we speak very little about the character, the personality and the charisma of the design team, but in fact the people with the most money to lose actually place the highest value on these things.

..and when considered for more than a second, this makes sense. Markets change. Economies change. Societies change. When an investor puts money into a venture, they are betting against a 3-5 year future which, in a society that is, according to Marshall McLuhan, moving at electric speed (very fast), is likely to be completely and unpredictably different in 3-5 years than it is today. Therefore the concept that an investor sees in front of them today is likely to be obsolete tomorrow. They expect this. Therefore the thing that is the most likely to provide a good return on their investment is the team that came up with the concept - and especially their energy, process and smarts to be able to keep coming up with more concepts to adapt to the rapidly changing environment.

In a fairly recent presentation, Idris Mootee, CEO of Idea Couture - a strategy/design firm, showed the following slide with the characteristics of highest importance to Angel and Venture Capital investors. From my talks so far with investors and entrepreneurs, it appears to be pretty accurate:



Some potential implications of this:

• A hyper-efficient iterative design process that can communicate well to all stakeholders (including investors) is clearly more important the one or two good epiphanic designs.
• Investors may want to understand your process. If they can see how you got to today, they can plot a trajectory to where you might be tomorrow, which is what they really care about.
  
• Investors are more design-oriented than is obvious at first glance. They just speak a different language.
• Trustworthiness is more important to investors than either sales potential or the entrepreneur's experience. People who don't have their ethical house in order probably will have a hard time surviving.
  
• Choosing and managing a team is of primary importance when starting any organization
  

ReifiyingHCI (part 1)

The process of starting a business has been extremely intense and interesting. It has forced me to learn about design and the reification of design (a.k.a. business) by drinking from the firehose of practice as well as from the water fountain of books. I would highly recommend the process to anyone who wants to learn at a rapid rate. Over the next few months, i will be blogging more about the process of starting BigTreeTop.com from an HCI/d perspective. I have been relatively quiet about our business until now because a) just about every spare moment is taken up with other academic and business activities, and b) i wanted to first, before writing, ensure that i had a good handle on what is smart - from an intellectual property perspective - to write about publicly (if i had my way, all IP would be out on the table for the world to kick around, but people better-versed than am i in the ways of current legal/business practice convinced me that this would have been a bad idea).

To my colleagues at IU Informatics: If i've been a bit distracted in classes and meetings over the course of the past 6 months, i hope that you won't take it personally. The thousands of tasks around getting an idea like BigTreeTop off the ground are pretty good at pushing themselves consistently to the forefront of one's consciousness, especially when paired with simultaneous PhD work. This will probably continue for a while longer, but my hope is that, in time, the effort will produce a living, breathing organization that that we can all use as a test bed for HCI/d research, as well as an experiment the result of which we can analyze and from which we can all learn.

I hope that the upcoming series of musings is interesting information for those of you currently studying HCI/d, for those of you now practicing it, and for those of you who have an idea that you would like to some day make a reality in the form of a real live organization.