So we’re done with the year, Keela’s off to fly all around the world. Tom, our crazy contractor has left the building for colder weather. Damien is hush hush about his plans. Maria, the intern, is off to warmer weather and sandy beaches. And me, I’m going to bounce around locally and reflect on all the great events that made 2011 spectacular. As a relative newcomer to Central I don’t have a lot of Central history to reflect on. Instead here are my predictions for 2012.
- First and foremost I’m declaring the Cute Kitten Project Management system un-Central-tutional and therefore a project tool that we can no longer utilize.
- The Toolkit will be completed and ready for public consumption.
- Damien will announce he is quitting espresso once every quarter.
- 67% of the office will be getting married in 2012.
- Central will have projects that result in solving problems in the areas of…well… everything.
- The Squiggle T’s next color combo will be a teal shirt with a lime green squiggle.
- My new commute vehicle will be a 1974 Vespa Rally.
- Germany will win every match in the 2012 Euro Cup Tournament and lose the only one that matters. Random but true.
- The HVAC unit will work whenever I want it to.
- We’ll have an office cat named Squiggle. I love him already.
Happy Holidays and a safe, happy, joyful start to 2012!
5:10pm. Standing guard.
This week…
Well, we got a new coffee maker. I broke the old one. It had it coming anyway, always dripping coffee everywhere when I try to pour a cup. The new one is shiny and brews a mean cup. I’m the only one who uses it…so happy early Christmas to me.
I’ve switched to the drip coffee maker from our regular nespresso machine. I attribute this to the volume of work. Large projects, big tasks and up-hill climbs call for a big pot of coffee, refilled every 40 minutes or so. It’s especially needed when editing. A proper cup of drip coffee is a must when editing a long paper, or Re:Vision Toolkit for that matter. Read a sentence, take a sip, read a paragraph…hold the cup and ponder. Coffee in one hand, pen in the other, can’t edit a paper drinking espresso … you’d be wired with ink everywhere .… not red of course. I’ve learned that writers don’t really like red pen all over their work. It makes sense, I just never really thought about it being offensive. I use a green fine-tip sharpie…sometimes blue, although they do go through the page which is a drag.
…
Did you hear about the word of the year…it’s occupy, well so says Geoff Nunberg.
“The occupiers were romantics, holy fools, anarchists. Or they were an incoherent mob of dirty hippies — and with iPads, moreover. I make “dirty hippie” a strong candidate for comeback word of the year. It would have vanished from the language years ago if it hadn’t been kept on life support on South Park.” I’m right there with you Geoff, Dirty Hippie…comeback word.
…
Because it’s my last weeknote of 2011, I’d like to switch it up a bit. The end of the year is about reflection of the past 350 days or so, big events, milestones hit, new additions. So, I’d like to end with my Central highlights for 2011…
Best of List for Central 2011
1. Studio arrangement-We finally cracked how to arrange the studio, and it only took 5 NORDEN dining room tables and 7 EXPEDIT shelves.
2. Interns-We had two outstanding interns, Emma and Kathleen for our incubating client Re:Vision and now we have one of our very own, Maria, stellar researcher and all around smart cookie.
3. Squiggle T’s-flying off the shelves like hot cakes…well really given away like hotcakes in our attempt to establish some sort of Squiggle army. You all know who you are.
4. Linda the studio ninja-always 3 steps ahead of you, always smiling, always has cookies…sometimes the German ginger ones.
5. Our obsession with Tinkering Monkey and the new foam core rails that were installed yesterday. Now our 4’x8’ foam cores are 100% usable space, up from a measly 66%.
6. Cute Kitten Project Management-(compliments of Damien) in development. Let’s just say you better be pretty accurate with your projections or someone…or thing might get hurt.*
7. Alabamboo-2500 miles on a hand-made bamboo bike…we were just glad to be a part of their journey.
8. The Central Chicken compliments of Tom, our hot-blooded contractor.
9. Weightshift…and the “how fast can you launch a website project” see current website, or Central V1 or V2 for their past work.
10. Damien announcing he was giving up espresso…both times.
11. The Re:Vision Toolkit, always talked about never revealed…until now. It’s still in development, but things are coming along…thanks to the Cute Kitten Project Management tool. Coming soon to a Central shop near you.
Happy holidays to you all. See you in 2012.
*No animals were hurt in the writing of this post.
Really? We have only 2 weeks left before the holiday break? Crazy doesn’t even begin to explain what our to-do lists look like. The Toolkit took a holiday break but now it’s back and in need of attention, year end accounting wants some love as well, early next week we have Tinkering Monkey coming in to install what should be an awesome railing system for our foam core boards, I need quotes for a mini remodel project, we’re all researching for different projects, I’m grant searching on another, working on the operations manual and I still have to make my holiday cards! I know my mind is racing and looking over at Keela she’s so busy her eyes remind me of a Kit Cat clock. But we’re getting things done, checking them off our lists slowly one by one. But this week is different, this week we are plus one!
Monday we welcomed Maria to the team as our new Central Intern. We are so excited to have her with us. She’s settling in nicely by buying Oreos and drinking espresso, but she’s also a mad researcher. I mean it, she’s currently glued to the monitor not noticing anything around her. Oh and another great quality of hers is that she’s a great tree scout.
Look at this perfection. Marvel at the great lines. Envy the fine craftswomanship of the ornaments. On a randome note: Maria and I learned how to maximize the holiday smell that comes from a tree. Since the smell originates from the sap one can score or break open the sap bumps. The tree will “weep”(now this sounds sad) and emit a strong tree smell. Instant holiday warm and fuzzy feeling.
Since my to-do list is getting longer I need to get back to it. But after last weeks introduction to the new (morbid) project management tool I want to leave you with another warm and fuzzy feeling. Warning you might need to have tissues nearby. It’s the story of Lab Pups getting their first taste of freedom . I hope this some how counteracts our new Central Project Management Tool.
Have a great holiday. 2012 is going to be amazing.
It’s late. 21.42 in fact. That’s some time after 9pm for those that don’t follow the 24hr clock. Tom is finding a workaround with the big printer to get some printed file dividers made. And putting together a first draft of the Workshop Toolkit we’ve been working on. Here’s a not-very-instructive photo of it.
We have to do that, be unrevealing, because we’ll be selling it in the future. In the coming month it will be turned into a fully working product for Re:Vision employees and into a box set for sale. So for now, we’re keeping the ingredients under wraps. The last two weeks have been full on. You must be somewhat bored of hearing that. But it is even more intense than the last time someone else wrote it here. In order to keep the pressure on, we’ve resorted to the “Cute Kitten” project management tool. As you can see below. Keela will explain it to you if you want. It’s a little morbid.
Earlier this month the kind folks behind Seabright Studios came to my Stanford graduate class to give a lecture. Gino, pictured gesturing below shared his wisdom and knowledge on UX to the class. It was brilliant, straightforward and naturally a little provocative. You can read his post about it and see his presentation over here.
Thanksgiving is here. The nation goes all tryptophantastic by eating a lot of turkey. It also signals, in business, the beginning of the end of the year in which suddenly things become stupid with people getting in touch, demanding to meet before the New Year, and there’s not enough time to wrap up the work, have those meetings and go to all the inevitable Holiday parties. I’m giving serious thought to closing the firm for the “sprint to Christmas” period so that no one here has to suffer the increased stress and workload that is about happen.
Because this post isn’t that interesting I really recommend you drop on over to Berg to read their latest post: Sometimes the Stories are the science… it is quite a delicious one from Matt Jones.
Finally, here’s the Central Chicken mascot that Tom created. Or is it a turkey? Who knows. Have a good one, if you’re giving thanks this Thursday. Otherwise, we’ll be back next week.
Woah, we just found a ream of paper already hole-punched. That’s like a time machine, saving us a massive amount of time and energy.
It’s November 17th already. Not a significant date, it’s just farther along in the month than I feel like we should be. I swear yesterday was Halloween. Oh well…it just adds a layer of urgency on top of the already impending client deadline. Race to get a massive amount of work done before the holidays so you can actually relax during the time off. Sometimes I wonder if I would get work done if the clock weren’t ticking…tick..tick..tick.
This week has been especially tough. Meaning a lot to do…not a lot of time to do it in. The way I’ve found to deal with it is to break everything down into bite-size pieces. Take those bite-size pieces and throw them up on Basecamp for all to see. I’m learning to love daily to-do’s. Actually, I’ve always loved them, but I’m now making lists assigning tasks at a daily…almost hourly rate. There is a definite warm and fuzzy that comes along with striking through those outstanding items. Sometimes you get to strike through one that is due tomorrow…well sometimes, but not that often. At first I had a love-hate relationship with 37 signals, specifically Basecamp, but I am definitely growing fonder of it. Since they integrated the calendar into Basecamp instead of having to use BackPack, it’s much more useful. I’ve begun recapping all meetings, no matter how small and making those public in our project rooms as well. I don’t know if anyone else reads it, but it sure makes me feel better. I’ve invited the client to have a look as well, see where the daily force is going. I like the idea of daily transparency, documenting the “Pulse of the Studio”, as Damien calls it. The pulse this week would definitely be a higher rate than normal. I actually prefer that…working hard, cranking stuff out on a daily, rather than weekly, basis. Because it’s been a tough week, I’m keeping this post short, light, fun, and colorful.
Nothing says fun like a Japanese Hipster Robot. He can balance and steer, and yes this is a fixed gear.
Oh and lightly getting into the holiday season, if you have been invited to someone’s Thanksgiving meal next week and don’t know what to bring, this might help.
For colorful, see beautiful Sausalito sunset at the top of the page.
I love this time of year, for me it’s birthday, anniversary and holiday season neatly wrapped up into three months. It also means wearing layers to go anywhere. We live in such a unique place, the mornings are cold enough to wear gloves but by 2pm you’re down to short sleeves and the fans are turned on. I really love the colder moments of the day – it’s a good excuse to make hot cocoa. Once I find the base to our Nespresso milk frother I can get a little fancier with my chocolate hazelnut cocoa concoctions.
I’m a year older this week and feeling quite disconnected with this new number assigned to me. In celebration there was a weekend long Vespa repair session. Media blasting, sanding, bondo and welding, almost 30 hours of work. Next year I want a party. Next year I want a pony.
At work it’s been 24/7 toolkit. It’s more heads down and less outwardly frantic then it was with the design challenge however the blinders are on and everyone is focused. I’ve been doing a considerable amount of grant research for our client. It’s amazing how many foundations there are; the work is in making sure the non-profit aligns with the foundations mission or issue areas. The Foundation Center is an amazing resource for finding applicable grants and for the novice a great starting point. If you are starting to search for grants I highly recommend starting with the Foundation Center.
We’re also working on a few internal processes to kick off in 2012. One of them is a Studio Manager’s Guide. You might be asking yourself why is there a need for a guide if I’m here? Well if for some reason I disappeared, or if I’m hit by a MAC truck, I would want someone able to jump in, find things, understand what I do, umm did, and do all of that quickly. There are a lot of moving pieces and it’s beneficial when explaining this role to a new comer to offer a visual supplement.
Before I go back to sketching I want to say Happy Veterans Day and thank you to all that have served and continue to do so. Morning Golden Gate Bridge commuters should keep an eye out for a parade of veterans, give them a supportive honk, thumbs up, or join them.
You may have noticed, we have three live sites for Central right now. Version 1 and Version 2 besides this one. This was born from the idea that Weightshift would collaborate with us annually to redesign our look in line with our developments. In this latest temporary site we lost the Squiggle page and so we’re going to make one now. A dedicated place to the Process of Design Squiggle because it turns out that it’s been spotted in dozens of different places, is used by many more people than we know about, and so we’d like to promote those. Here.
So if you’ve used the Design Squiggle, or seen it in action, send us a photo and the credit we can put with it. And we’ll drop it on the site. Right now, we have versions of it in books, on web sites, on T shirts, in wood, on someone’s forearm… and so on.
Send submissions to our hello email address. We look forward to seeing them. And from time to time, if we really enjoy your usage of it, we’ll be in touch about sending you a T Shirt.
The beginning of the week started off as a continuation of the week before. We were in relay mode, pit crew mode if you will. We had a quick and fast deadline arise last week Friday that left us with a lot to do in a little time. We saw an opportunity for our incubating client to enter a challenge that might award them a grant. We presented them with the idea, they said yes…it was then game time. We sat down on Friday morning to sketch out who was going to do what. 9 questions total. Doesn’t seem like a lot, but believe me when I say these questions were meaty. Application due Monday. Clock is ticking. Everyone worked on their assigned questions over the weekend and came in prepared early Monday morning to collaborate, compare and complete. Normally, we stick to instant-gratification nespresso in the office, but this called for a full pot of drip coffee. With the sound and smell of coffee brewing and 4 people simultaneously banging away at their keyboards, it was like the floor of a newspaper room, 4 hours before you go to the presses. We had a drafting station, editing station, review station and submission station. Thank goodness for Google docs, especially the chat function. This allow the client to give real-time feedback for everyone to see, that is most importantly in written form.
Everyone was 100% focused with their eye on the ball. Christy, our temporary on-staff writer, proved her skills at rapid generation of content…really good content. We’ve been very fortunate to have her. She’s been helping us out with the toolkit lately but has been eager and willing to jump on any project that we have come up. It’s an asset to have someone that can not only switch gears to a completely different project, but doesn’t seem to lose momentum or focus. After the application, was submitted, meaning after Linda pushed the “submit” button, which by the way was right next to the delete button on the screen (really?), there was a overwhelming sense of relief and accomplishment.
I think that a rapid deadline, fueled by a common goal is a great exercise in team building. It wasn’t just that we had to get it done, but we all took stock in what we were doing, which made us work that much harder. Does mutual buy-in + hard deadline=success? Normally, our projects tend to be very long in duration due to their complexity and scale. They can go on for 1-2 years, and you don’t get to experience the feeling of elation after something has been completed as often as say a traditional design firm that launches a website or an iPhone app for a client every couple of months.
All this thinking about quick deadlines reminded me of an post I read about the Rapid Results Institute, which uses the Rapid Results Approach-an approach that mobilizes teams to achieve results in 100 days or less. They take this approach into developing countries to do things like accelerated HIV testing. The idea is that the tight deadline “forces a degree of prioritization and focus which leads to results, avoiding white elephant projects which tend to be grandiose but not implementable.”
Can accelerated timing lead to creativity? The most recent project by Damon Albarn, of which I am a huge fan, proves yes. If you are unfamiliar, Albarn is the frontman for such bands as Blur and the Gorillaz, but has his hands in dozens of other musical projects, like The Good, the Bad & the Queen, Monkey: Journey to the West and Massive Attack. Albarn is always trying out new things, always experimenting and is essentially always in the concept and prototype phase of the design process. It seems he just does his ultra-rapidly and ends up with something like a Grammy-winning song. His newest project took him, along with 11 other producers, to the Congo to record an album in just 5 days to benefit Oxfam. I’m no record producer, but I do know that that is lightning fast and what they ended up with sounds pretty amazing. It does beg the question: Can we work faster to get something better?
As I get my weeknotes ready the espresso machine hums in the background. The printer is churning out toolkit proofs for Keela to review and Christy’s fingers are feverishly typing away on her laptop. The weather is thankfully cooler now. I welcome the fog since the A/C is confused and against my wishes (and relentless button pushing) pumps out heat. As a result our contractor melted. Sorry Tom. I’m sure I’ll soon hear the hum of space heaters and the clicks of resetting circuit breakers. Maybe we should have a Squiggle hoodie? Which brings me to some cool news!
New Squiggle T’s are here!! Check them out, orange squiggle on a navy background, looks really good. Sizes are limited to women’s medium and x-large. For the men we have large, x-large and a few xx-larges available. We haven’t updated the store to show the orange squiggle T or that we have the XL sizes available so please make sure to leave me a comment on your order that you want the orange squiggle and size if it’s one of the XL or XXL.
In other news, if you follow us you know we’ve been helping out with the Alan Turing documentary. There’s been a lot of interesting events since our last mention of Turing. Recently Warner Bros. outbid others for the rights to the script and Leonardo DiCaprio is most likely to play Alan Turing. I’m really excited to hear this because it reminds me of another film DiCaprio acted in that increased the popularity of other documentaries *cough* Titanic *cough*. I remember weeks after I watched the movie I sought real stories, real footage and pictures from that time. I was glued to the History channel, Discovery and even got a sneak peak at one of the largest complete hull pieces of the ship when it came through San Francisco. Hopefully the movie will do the same for the Turing documentary.
Okay that’s it for now…time to go back to work.
I typically like to read anything about the world’s most successful animation studio Pixar, as I’m fascinated by the process of design, creativity and the making of things. I like to pull from things I read that could inspire our work or what I teach. As luck would have it, Fast Company recently published a piece titled: The Inside Story: 5 Secrets to Pixar’s Success. Written by the very smart CEO and founder of the hybrid strategy consulting firm Jump Associates. Though this time I was disappointed as I read the 5 weak Secrets about the animation studio as if they were some kind of Cosmo tips for a better relationship. And this made me think a little about a: how eager we are for short, nicely distilled secrets to other people’s success, and how poorly people often distill those secrets and apply them to other situations. I’m all for sharing your interpretation of someone else’s success, I just think it needs to be handled correctly so as to not end up minimizing the actual truth and end up spreading some false logic at how you too could be successful like the story you’re hearing about.
![[Illustration of Pixar Talk by Jonathan Gabrio]](http://www.fastcodesign.com/multisite_files/codesign/imagecache/inline-large/post-inline/pixar.jpg "Pixar Illustration")
Illustration from FastCo Article, by Jonathan Gabrio
For the Fast Company Article, the former CTO of Pixar, Oren Jacob, was interviewed by Patnaik under a new version of the Chatham House Rule known as “What happens in Vegas” rule, so its conceivable that there were some incredibly juicy secrets exposed there that we’ll never know about.
The first point that I stumbled over was #4 Match the Medium to the Message. Where Patnaik makes the suggestion that you should try a variety of different media to find out what works best for you and your organization in pitching new ideas. He does this based on the story that the former CTO, Jacob decided to pitch his concept for new software using 50 pages of sketches because “storyboards are the currency of the building”. And then Patnaik goes on to say that the sketches worked, it got approved and Patnaik developed his software.
I don’t imagine it really was that simple. There’s not enough in that legend to say that it should become a rule. What Jacob was really talking about was storytelling versus presenting.
Storytelling definitely has a lot to do with picking the right media to deliver the story – but crafting the story, creating the content, and presenting it all have a considerable amount of weight in achieving success. So for me, my instant question to Jacob would be: “Wow, that almost sounds as if storyboarding your pitch ensured success, do you think there were other reasons or other things you put into that pitch that made it successful?” And to that he might have answered, well yeah- he’d put considerable effort into telling the story from the point of view of using the software and what it would be like for the company. In there he’d also used humour and personally acted out some of the scenarios he was trying to have his audience envision. And oh by the way, he happens to be an excellent illustrator (having been an engineer) so it didn’t hurt that his work looked good too. But if he were to use storyboards a second time to pitch designing new software, it might just be that it could be then considered a gimmick.
So when I reread Patnaik’s fourth inside secret to Pixar’s success, I’d say that the post-rationalization to take from it should instead be the following:
Perfection can be alienating. Sometimes, it is far better to present your very well thought out idea in sketch form, even presenting scenarios or cartoons of how it might really exist in the real world. What this has to offer that a typical Powerpoint, Keynote or screen-based presentation doesn’t is that the sketching feels more approachable, and that your audience has room and an opportunity to get involved in the development of your idea. They can potentially become stakeholders along the development of your idea, or just feel comfortable in diving into something that doesn’t look too wrapped up, too polished that there’s nothing to do but either like it or dislike it. Added to which, in a less resolved scenario, it relies on you to do more of the presenting.
Sketch by Dave Gray XPLANE
So this is something Pixar does really well. They also understand Voltaire’s statement: “The Perfect is the enemy of the good”. And they embed this throughout their creation process. They don’t make a perfect movie and pitch it to senior execs, but rather sketch stories out, pin them up on boards, then act them out in order to get the people in the room excited. This is something you can do too- No it’s not that weird.
Imagine you’re presenting a new mobile wellness app to some senior execs at ATT. Showing them a beautifully rendered iPhone with different screens against a white background on a screen is nothing compared to you passionately explaining what is going on in a row of pinned up, hand-sketched storyboards, that have all the same details your renderings would have, but a whole world of imagination as well. Added to which, and this might be the most important part- there’s something very powerful about hand sketches. They are incredibly inviting, with their imperfections, but yet clearly show talent and skill. People still marvel at those who can illustrate by hand. Mix this with your passion, imagination and smart thinking- you’ve got a better chance of convincing people of something that should exist that doesn’t already.
So rule #4 is in fact all about about storytelling, and that any time you’ve got an audience for one of your ideas, or some kind of knowledge you are sharing- you’ve got a platform for telling a story. So think about all the different ways you could tell that story and move people to truly have empathy for what you’re sharing. Do take from the Pixar story that you should use different media appropriately for different occasions. But above all, every presentation is an excuse for Pixar-type storytelling, never miss an opportunity to be a great, passionate storyteller. And because of that I’d rewrite the #4 rule to be: Great Storytelling moves people, Powerpoint doesn’t.
So as I read through the rest, there were other such missed observations. Here’s one more: #5 Hire for Excellence. If you take a look at the image of an illustration at the top of this piece (or at the beginning of the article on Fast Company) you can see in the bottom right hand corner of Jonathan Gabrio’s illustration a How Do you Hire? question. Patnaik completely misses this out in his focus on excellence. And it jumped out for me. (sorry)
What I do like the is point to look out for excellence in potential candidates and how it shouldn’t matter what kind of excellence someone has achieved, so long as they have experienced it. I think it is spot on to reinforce this. But there in that illustration is this point: Extraordinary accomplishment in your life- and then “it is difficult to train for this”. I think this could more than just achieving peer-respected excellence in your field or interest.
The NGO Ashoka has found an interesting pattern in those that it appoints as Ashoka Fellows. If you’re not aware of this Ashoka helps to launch leading social entrepreneurs by electing Fellows into its network. Now with over 2,000 fellows around the world grown over the last 30 years, Ashoka noticed a single common trait in most of the people who went through the selection process for a Fellowship. Almost all of the people had overcome a extraordinary event in their early adulthood, where they had do something incredible to survive or change things for themselves and possibly their family. And this is important because of the developmental stage someone goes through at that age, and for them to have had that experience. Yet I don’t believe even Ashoka would translate this into a rule. But then they weren’t asked by Fast Company to write a short piece.
Now this reframes excellence a little to not just mean quality but to also mean outstanding.
But you can’t ask people: What massive thing did you have to overcome when you were 11-13? Because for some puberty might have been the thing that comes to mind, or perhaps changing schools. And you can’t train adults how to have the thing built into them: the ability to overcome an extraordinary event and turn it into something of excellence, but you can find those people and listen to their stories.
So rather than just looking for what someone might have done that is excellent in their late 30s- why not find out what they’re made of and what they did in the earlier developmental stages of their lives as they became adults. If you look at that, you might find that this person didn’t just brute-force a product of excellence, but has it in them as their core DNA. Soon you could find yourself surrounded not just with people who can code, design, synthesize or whatever to an excellent standard, but are remarkable in their own right and take your organization way beyond what you could imagine doing on your own.
So here, I’d rewrite #5 as: Hire for extraordinary events of excellence. But then you’d have to include all that stuff about Ashoka.
In my view the first point he makes is instead about courage and self-confidence. Not the ability to say something sucks. And I’m kind of at a loss for #3 as to how Patnaik tries to tie it into how you might look for problems in your new product development. But I do rather like #2: Keep your explanations brief, then hit play quickly.
A lot of us are fascinated by the way people behave, or do what they do, the environments they create to be creative in and how their level of success has been achieved. Working backward to connect the dots is perhaps the only way you can make sense of it all. But I find that too many times the author of such a post-rationalized-dot-connecting piece has oversimplified history and thinly tried to make it connect to an analogous scenario. This is what has happened here. Pixar’s five rules for success are what it does within its walls, with its people and in the world it exists in. Built up over their history. There’s definitely a lot to learn from them. And how they might inspire you in either they way you work, or design your organization is undoubtedly great. But if you’re going to pass it on, you have to be very careful to not boil down those legends into such a tiny element that they’re no longer strictly true, and then make rules depending on them as if they were. Simple rules often require quite a bit of explaining.
