One of my new favorite photographers. Also a babe.
(Source: photosbynicole)
One of my new favorite photographers. Also a babe.
(Source: photosbynicole)
Lock Load Aim Fire. A short photo series inspired by biking in San Francisco. Visit the project’s micro site.
A little close up of #bonfire’s launch stickers.
Stickers came in today for a social network called Bonfire that we’re branding. It’s called Bonfire, and it’s for discovering people around you with similar interests. The stickers are being used at a conference to help participants spark conversations with each other.
All brunch all the time
Animated with Loopcam for iPhone.
Our studio has moved to a new shared working space, affectionately (and appropriately) called 660 Alabama. The guys asked me to make a logo for the facebook group, so I thought of the most brutal thing I could and made that.
Design by Empathy
After last week’s SF Design Week D.Talks, I’ve been noodling with a little idea. It’s an idea that I’m actually still working on defining, so bear with me. But I want to bring this up while it’s still fresh in my mind, and perhaps even in yours. My sense is that it was an undercurrent for each of the talks and discussions from last week, and even more interestingly, the sort of work that I do as a designer every day.
I think that designers, at our best, are actually professionally empathetic.
Our purpose is to enter a space or organization or website and notice how we feel. How do other people feel here? How do we want them to feel?
Maybe that’s not everything, maybe it’s just part of a bigger picture and exists as a single skill on our tool belt. I don’t think so, though, I actually think this quality of empathy informs much of what we do and why we do it.
It is telling that 500 Start Ups recently launched the D.Fund, a start up accellerator specifically for designers. Designers make things that people actually want, states their credo.
I want to find a way to talk about this, and communicate it to clients in a valuable way. Some have defined it as “Experience Design”, which is a holistic look at a brand’s/space’s/process’ impact for a user. But I think it might be deeper than that. The same empathy is required to create an identity, or packaging, or any element of a strategically developed brand.
When I walk into a space, I don’t just think about designing someone’s logo, or menu, or sign. I think about how easy it is to get on the wifi, or the ways in which the signage systems and language shape a customer’s relationship with a space. These are unusual, sometimes small, yet valuable things that, for me, are essential parts of a brand’s experience.
Am I an experience designer? Are we all? At our best, I think we empathize with both the client, and more importantly the end user, to create meaningful and effective experiences, no matter what touchpoint we’re designing for. The challenge becomes communicating to our clients this underlying virtue that extends beyond those disperate elements of the logos, website, etc., etc.
Pay me to empathize for you. Because at the end of the day, it’s about a feeling that someone has about what you do or say you do; because as a designer, in order to create that feeling, I myself need to experience that feeling; and because at the root of it that’s actually what I’m good at.
I’m certainly not sure yet, but I am noodling with it, and this is a start. What do you think? If you want to talk about, I’m always here for you, bro.
“China town is getting gentrified, man!”
Where can we start with this? As a connoisseur of accidental Chinese hipsters I’d thought I’d seen some things, but NOW. All of the elements are here: the flattering black leggings, the punk as shit jean jacket, jail stripes, an aggressive hat to go with a coolly unpleasant face. And then we get to the scrunched up tube socks in sandals. Now, I know this to be a classic look from my own father, who once wore his socks and sandals with one sweatpant leg tucked into the sock and the other out, but socks and crocs is a whole new move. It truly cinches the glory of the outfit.
Well done, Brooks of SF, who saw this man riding the M line of MUNI to the Outer Sunset. I keep imagining him telling me about DJ-ing important house music, or maybe yelling at me in Cantonese on a busy street corner, and both ideas fill me with glee.
Notes from Whole Brain Thinking D.Talk
Whole Brain Thinking
Connecting Strategy, Creativity & Business Results
A D.Talk by SALT Branding
Thursday, July 16th at AIGA SF HQ
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Part of San Francisco Design Week 2011
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These notes are a not verbatim transcription, but rather the takeaways from the talk.
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This talk focused on the Milliken case study. Milliken is a virtually unknown, yet gigantic, supplier of chemicals, carpets and stuff like that. Basically they’re super awesome and were ready for a transition to the public spotlight after their last CEO stepped down. SALT spent a year helping position them for that spotlight.
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Cesar (Right Brain) & David (Left Brain).
Try to avoid the Left/Right scenario, try to be both sided.
However, recognize that Left Brainers mostly make decisions in companies, so we as Right Brained creatives have to learn to speak with them in their own language to be effective.
Strat + Creative. If integrated well = efficacy. Otherwise there will be a disconnect. (See “The Brand Gap”_
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TAKEAWAY – Frame it! If you don’t frame your thinking for the Left inclined, you’ll lose it. Justify, explain your logic. That context is what it takes to get the Left on board with an otherwise mystical/non-linear Right solution.
“This is not about a logo and a color.” It’s about delivering on your business goals/vission. What are you trying to achieve ≠ do you like the logo.
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Ask the right questions. What are your goals? Strategy? Context?
Get to know your client. David and Cesar found their best solutions came through getting to know their client, their personality and needs.
It would seem Empathy is playing a large roll again. Working from the feeling level.
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Serious Play – “You cannot be innovative until you are ready and willing and able to seriously play.” This phrase frames their approach to Milliken. But they had to find ways of taking it off the page, making it more than words, for the Left Brainers.
Their Strat/North Start Development took about 4-5 months w/ Milliken. Working with execs to get everyone on the same page.
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Designers bring a point of view.
Strat is not words on a page. Get the whole team in on understanding & internalizing those words and let them serve as a becon to guide creative.
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Positioning is a lens for everything
PR, Product, even HR evaluations. Not just for communications.
Effective brands start with the business. Don’t let the tail wag the dog. A vibrant and aligned internal culture will cultivate the brand from the inside out.
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Why was SALT effective at Milliken?
They found ways of communicating with their client that made sense to them / resonated with them.
They brought them into the creative process.
Found ways to get them to take ownership of the ideas, that way they’ll be more effective.
(again, see “Smuggler’s Guide to Innovation”)
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“Empathetic Research” = taking time, being with the right people, listening, asking the right questions.
Notes from the Future of Experience D.Talk
D.Talk – The Future of Experience
Wednesday, July 15th at AIGA SF HQ
As part of San Francisco Design Week
Here are the notes I took during the discussion. It’s not a verbatim transcription, it’s more like the bits of wisdom that I thought were useful or interesting
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What is the Future? How do we get there?
Experience is…
- anything we interact with, feel, or observe
- thinking beyond the artefact and into how it fits into the rhythm of someone’s day
- the design of anything with human experience as an explicit outcome and goal.
Brand = vision. Inside out. How companies want to be seen.
Experience = tangible manifestation of vision. Outside in. Discovering what users’ needs and wants are, and then finding how to deliver that to them. Getting inside customer’s head first.
Brand Promise vs. Experience
is jusdged by the customer
No experience exists in isolation.
You’ve got to think about the rich network of connections that surround us and it.
Experience design sometimes = business decisions.
Best / Most Effective Experiences create an open experience framework – twitter, pandora, etc – that give guideposts for users to create a custom experience within.
Designing the Whole Experience
- Help clients think beyond the day-today
- (I’m calling this being an “Empathy Professional”)
- 1st. define ideal experience
- 2nd. map out scenarios across all touch points and across time
- Context. Go through the day of the customer, show brand’s relationship with that day. Helps the client see their context. “Customer Journey.” Could be a sales journey, etc. Make a cartoon that tells a story, helps client see their website as part of a larger experience.
If a client comes to you with a specific deliverable – website, etc – it’s our job to show them there is a bigger vision.
Defining that vision strategically and communicating it to the teams working on those touchpoints makes it happen effectively.
Creating Brand vision from an agency is one thing, but clients must culturally adopt these values to actually continue them.
- Use story telling
- videos
- things clients can share / use to socialize internally
Read: “Smuggler’s Guide to Innovation”
Ideas are more effective if you sneak them in and spread them, creating collaboration and shared ownership. Championing an idea is rarely as effective.
Experience Design requires feedback, must be collaborative.
Facilitating conversation around problem solving, then plucking ideas out is the Design part. How to run a workshop seems key to me here. See “Game Storming”
A thought: Things that designers like < Things that customers like.
A note: there was a minute where we digressed into stuff about augmented reality glasses, touch screens and virtual media. I didn’t write any of it down cuz I felt like it was too specific, whereas the future of exp in our context is a broader definition of how we work with a client to define and craft their relationship with their users/clients.
How to get to this future?
We must approach clients with the goal of helping them solve business challenges.
Work at the SPEED of start ups.
You gotta be sketchy, messy, fast, rough & ready.
Don’t take yourself too seriously.
it’s about you, an engineer and a business guy standing around a white board scribbling, then maybe 4 hours of you at your favorite adobe product.
Note: Adaptive Path’s Design Scrums
Helping to Solve a UN challenge through
Tuesdays @ 10 am for 1 hr
KEY EXPERIENCES
- Mapping
- Storytelling
- Proof points
So what is their flow within the engagements?
Creating open frameworks for experiences to be shaped.
Elevate the value of your design with proof.
MY TAKEAWAYS
“Empathy” Professional
Communicating to clients the context of an experience in order to define and design a larger one.
I Haight Walking – A Community Walk.
Blogging? Wow haven’t done this in a bit. Been partying way too hard lately.
The Summit SF crew setting up the Peek Gallery for it’s new show.
Under the Golden Gate Bridge. Taken from the deck of the SFNY Cruise.
Apocalypicnic Sunday. Don’t worry if you don’t know how to say the name, you’ll be dead anyway.
Rickshaw action.
Hey, my name's Brooks. I enjoy adventure, mischief and changing the world. I run a design firm in San Francisco and post about thinking, design, inspiration and SF goings ons.
