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How do designers and artists overcome creative block? In the second episode of office hours, Dan discusses tips for finding inspiration when you’re in a creative rut, embracing failure as part of the process, and thinking abstractly to find unique solutions.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Humanoid robots, transparent TVs, and the latest in VR technologies. Fresh from their return from CES, Anne Van Itallie and Dan Harden take listeners on a deep dive of the latest trends in tech.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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What is the future of residential and smart home technology, and what's emerging today? In this episode, Whipsaw's Director of Experience Design, Walker Harden, and Director of Industrial Design, Cole Derby, discuss the latest trends in smart home technology and related project experiences.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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A big question in the realm of design today is whether artificial intelligence is a friend or foe. Dan Harden and design visionary guest, Branko Lukic, explore the profound implications of AI for designers and the remarkable power of meditation in fostering a creative mindset.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Office Hours is a new segment on PRISM where Whipsaw CEO and Principal Designer, Dan Harden, answers questions submitted by our listeners about industrial design, business, technology, or current topics of discussion in the greater design community.
Partake in a future Office Hours episode by submitting a question at whipsaw.com/prismofficehours.Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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How does design relate to the current state of climate change? Dan Harden, Jonsara Ruth, and Rico Ruffino evaluate the environmental impacts of design and how designers can play a role in creating a more sustainable world.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Designers are often trapped in their own design thinking principles but Cross-Cultural Design provides a guideline that all designers can embody in their work. Dan Harden and guest Lorraine Justice, Design Researcher, Speaker, Author, and Educator, touch on the importance of considering diverse cultures in their work.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Generative Design has been a hot topic of conversation for several years now, but its full range of capabilities, and how designers will use it in their everyday lives, isn’t widely understood. In this episode of PRISM, Dan Harden sits down with the Head of HumanFX Research & Design for Alexa Devices at Amazon, Joanna Peña-Bickley, to get an inside look at this field of limitless possibilities.
Also known as “the mother of generative design,” Joanna foresees the role of the designer shifting from a creator of individual experiences to a conductor of systems of experiences. She also reveals how AI will generate truly novel ideas in a matter of minutes, solve global problems at a higher level, and change the way we consider the world around us. Designers interested in preparing for this remarkable future today should take note.
This episode also touches on:
Designing for a “one size fits many” modelDesigning with more resiliency for future generationsThe new organic aesthetics, form factors, and ergonomics on the horizonThe parameters we must establish today around this evolving technologyHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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The pandemic caused us all to readjust our values and focus on what truly matters. It also forced us to alter how we communicate and innovate.
In this special episode of Prism, Dan Harden moderates a discussion with founders Fred Bould and Caroline Flagiello on how we can use the lessons from this experience to create an exciting new era of Design. The panel reveals:
How to make the most of our newly realigned values, the work-life blur, and virtual creative collaborationsWays to implement the new design thinking that's emerged which values experiences, quality of life, and purposeThe ideal vision of Design and the roadmap needed to get thereListen in on their perspectives on how we can all find design nirvana.
Guests
Caroline Flagiello, founder of Akin, is an innovation expert with two decades of experience leading teams and designing for every kind of organization, from nascent startups to high profile Fortune 500 companies, in industries ranging from consumer electronics to fashion to food and beverage.
Fred Bould, founder of Bould Design, has collaborated with leading innovators such as Nest Labs, GoPro and Roku. Their work has met with both commercial and critical success. Recognition includes numerous IDEA, Core77, D&AD, and Red Dot Awards, as well as the Cooper Hewitt and SF MOMA Permanent Collection. Bould’s design solutions are noted for usability, simplicity, and elegance.
This episode of Prism was originally recorded as a live Whipsaw virtual event on July 28, 2021.
Episode Transcript
Dan Harden 0:07
Hello and welcome to Prism. Prism is a design oriented podcast hosted by me Dan harden, like a glass prism that reveals the color hidden inside white light. This podcast will reveal the inside story behind innovation, especially the people that make it happen. My aim is to uncover each guest unique point of view, their insights, their methods, or their own secret motivator, perhaps that fuels their creative genius.
Okay, hello, and welcome to finding design Nirvana. I'm Dan Harden. Whipsaw's Founder, CEO and Principal Designer and with me are Caroline Flagiello and Fred Bould. We're here to discuss how we can evolve from this somewhat dark time that we find ourselves in. We've experienced something truly extraordinary in the last Well, now what year and a half, and it's still going on. But how can we evolve from that time that we have all experienced into a better we'll call it designed to future. That's why we call this finding design Nirvana. We think we should be learning from these tough times in order to advance design to a higher Well, maybe even more ideal state, if that's possible. That's what we wanted to investigate with this discussion. Tonight, we'll talk about the lessons we have learned from the pandemic that can help us re examine how we think about design, especially in terms of what design should be focused on where the opportunities lie to innovate, and how design should or can be practiced. So without further ado, let's meet our panelists, Caroline, Fred. Fred is the Founder and Design Director of Bould design, Bould, has collaborated with great companies such as nest labs, GoPro, Roku, and many, many others. They've won lots of Design Awards. They've got worked at the Cooper Hewitt and SF MoMA. They're designed many of you know it. They're designed as noted for simplicity, elegance, and a focus on usability. They always do great work can always count on Fred and his company. I met Fred in the 80s when we both worked at Henry Dreyfus associates. And we've been great friends ever since. Good to see you, Fred.
Fred Bould 2:21
Great to see you. Carolyn. Good to see you. Yeah. My first got to know Dan, when I was an intern at Henry Dreyfus associates. And Dan was one of the young hotshot designers there that everybody looked up to. So it's, it's really, it's really gratifying to find myself here, you know, 100 years later. We're working in close proximity to Dan and, and his elk. So this is great.
Dan Harden 2:52
Thanks for joining Fred. My other guest is Carolyn Flagella. Carolyn is Founder and CEO of Akon a firm she founded in 2015. Caroline is an innovation expert with two decades of experience leading teams and designing for every kind of organization from Little startups to high profile Fortune 500 companies. She also worked at Pentagram and IDEO, and I've known Caroline for over 25 years. She helped me chair the National idsa conference in 2002. I still can't thank you enough for that, Carolyn. And you may have also seen Caroline on the CBS series, California by design. Welcome, Caroline. Thank you for joining.
Caroline Flagiello 3:33
Oh, thank you for having me. Yes. And good to see Fred. Um, yeah, Dan, when I first met you, it was at the MoMA. And it was during an idsa Awards event. And you were President of Frog at the time. And I was like, Oh, that's Dan. And so, you were you know, you were the god. Oh, well, I was still, you know, starting off in my career. So anyway, it was a long time ago, but you were still the god.
Dan Harden 4:05
Oh, my God. Okay, we did not practice Believe me this.Okay, so let's, let's get into our discussion, but thank you. So, let's start out kind of broad. Alright, so this crazy pandemic that we've been through, I mean, it has rocked us all to the core in so many ways. But let's talk briefly about its impact on work, especially, like, How were your practices impacted? And how did you adjust? Did you survive obviously, or how did you thrive?
Fred Bould 4:41
Carolyn, you want to take?
Caroline Flagiello 4:44
Sure, so, um, when I started Akon seven years ago, it was relational based consultancy. So basically, our goal is to have long term key clients and reduce that churn and spend And I also thought that there was a different way to be able to create a consultancy that didn't look like the consultancies that we've all you know, and love and work for, and thought that we could leverage global talent in different ways. So I leveraged a distributed teams, as well as our core team. And so like, our practices really haven't changed. But what we did is we really honed the ability to connect in hybrid ways and connect through video, you know, seven years ago, and that, you know, being able to access global talent is just really important. And I think, really, we've seen the the fruits of that, through hybrid work, quite honestly. And I think organizations are really realizing the power of accessing global talent and that way. But in terms of our practice, we're continuing to thrive in this hybridized environment. Now, others who see the power of that are really appreciating and understanding that, and our clients are getting even more comfortable with that now that it's become more of the norm. So we haven't changed so much in the way that we have practiced, but I everyone around us has. So that's been really nice, because now it's elevating all of us.
Fred Bould 6:30
Yeah. I guess I, my experience, I'll be really honest, I was, even though at the beginning of my, when I first started Bould design. I worked actually worked from my house for several years. And, and even despite that, I was kind of To be honest, I was a work from home skeptic, I really was I felt like, you know, it's, how are we going to review mockups, and, you know, share sketches and things like that. And, but then when I kind of saw it coming, but I have a brother who lives in Shenzhen, so I've been talking to him about, you know, he was on lockdown, months, months before we were and it was still in question whether it was going to sort of make its way here and you know, what the, what the depth would be and so on. But at some point, I turned to my partners, and I said, Hey, we need to get set up for this. And, you know, we got our we got our system set up so that people could take computers, we'd all be connected and be able to connect to the server and whatnot. And, and sure enough, about two weeks after we did that we you know, the word came down that everybody had to be work from home. And I wasn't, I didn't have a lot of anxiety, even though I was kind of a work from home skeptic, I kind of said, Well, you know, we don't really have a choice. So let's, let's, let's do this. And, you know, 24 hours later, we were set up, you know, 16 people working from 16 different places around the Bay Area. And it worked fine. It was I, you know, I can't say I was surprised because we're, we're very good communicators, and we're well organized. So I think that that that helped us. But it it went pretty well. I think some of our some of our clients saw things go quiet on on their side, you know, in terms of sales, because I think people were, you know, hesitant to go out and buy things when they didn't really know whether they would have jobs or not. I'm talking about the the general population, whether they would have jobs and whether they would be getting paychecks and things like that. But you know, I think when the government stepped in and said, Okay, we're going to, we're going to give people money and people felt reassured and they said, okay, you know, there, somebody, somebody has our backs. And so a lot of our clients have done extraordinarily well. You know, we have clients that are involved with, you know, streaming entertainment, well, guess what, when people can go out, guess what they do? networking equipment, sick, things like that all became very important. So it's actually it's been a pretty good year. And I think we've we've learned an awful lot about the boundaries of what works, you know, for work.
Dan Harden 9:29
Yeah, it sounds like you've adjusted. I know. Personally speaking, I would agree with you. I've always been a wfh work from home skeptic right when when I would get an email as an employer, you don't want to see wfh, I'm down I'm going to be working for like, Yeah, right. But you know what? My team blew me away. They're so effective. I mean, I never would have guessed that this was possible. But but it does take adjustment and adjust. We did and not only survived, but I think we're thriving more than ever because of it, we learned a lot about one another. Partly because we're all on this equalizing grid like we are right now. And people that didn't work together before, you know, especially the certain engineers and designers or the UX team working with engineers, they get to hear one another's problems and issues. And it's, it's really created a lot of empathy and understanding among individuals in the company. But I can't tell you like, you know, like that first week, when it all came down, this pandemic is going to be such a big problem. I can tell you in one week, we lost three clients. It was like 10% of our business in one week. But you know, this is like, Royal Caribbean, like everyone's like, No, no, I'm not getting on a cruise ship. So you know, they call they're like, stop all work. Some of the gaming industry stop all work. There were a few clients like that it was kind of alarming, I must say.
Caroline Flagiello 10:58
Yeah, I think a lot of clients gave pause. Right. And they did it, whether it was a couple weeks, or a couple months, you know, we all paused quite frankly, we didn't know we were stuck at home, literally couldn't move. Right. And we didn't know what the virus was doing. A very scary information was coming every day. We were it was social unrest. I mean, we had some major things all happen at once. So I think it was a lot as humans to take in. But Dan, I love what you mentioned about humans, because we saw each other's humanity. I think as as work has changed, our work has completely changed forever, right? We have seen each other's humanity in ways that we've never thought were professional, or we've redefined professionalism for ourselves now.
Dan Harden 11:49
wOkay, but what does that mean, when it comes to real effective virtual collaboration, because collaboration, you know, it's just it was a buzzword 10 years ago, you have to collaborate, build your team. And we're, we're all used to doing that, you know, in jam rooms, or war rooms, whatever you want to call them. But what about virtual collaboration? And the creative fields? Where are the challenges that you guys have found? And how have you overcome that? Do you think it works?
Fred Bould 12:17
Yeah, I mean, it's funny, because we looked at things like, you know, like getting tablets and stuff that we could sketch on, and things like that. But then after not too long, we ended up just basically saying, you know, here like this, and, you know, flashing sketches up on, on on the camera, and then on the other side, people go click, and they capture it. And then we'd have these, like, documents, these, like, you know, shared documents running all the time in the background. And it I guess, it was a little bit ad hoc, but it was effective, you know, like, we'd have like a Google present, you know, document going that we would just throw stuff into, we'd like take pictures of sketches and throw them in there or cap, you know, do you know, screen captures and stuff like that. And we kind of got pretty fluid, it was a little bit, you know, a little bit Herky jerky at first. And I have to say, at the end of the day, I would be I would be exhausted. Because you, you know, when you're having a conversation with somebody face to face, you're taking in all this information cues, you know, all sorts of things that are absent when, you know, you're talking to people on little boxes. And so your brains kind of working in overdrive to fill in, you know, to, you know, pull out all the information to camp. And so I would, you know, I enjoyed work, but I have to admit, at the end of the day, I'd be like, wow, I need to go stick my head in a bucket of cold water.
Dan Harden 13:58
That was such a surprise that that that condition ones mindset after day, it feels like more work even though it sounds like it should be less right working from videowall to design is so social, you know, that's why I was worried about it working in this manner. Because you learn so much through nuance, you know, the subtle look on somebody's face when you see our concept that may not quite resonate with someone, it's enough of a signal to tell you Oh, maybe I should work harder on that detail.
Fred Bould 14:28
So we're even like the curve of a line on a whiteboard sketch. You don't need it. It can you people will look at it. You can say yeah, it's sort of it accelerates here. And it's harder to do that like this.
Caroline Flagiello 14:45
It definitely is. But I do think with tools like Miro and like you said screen capture and being able to you know, draw either virtually or you know, I am being able to post you get really fluid. And I think what's really interesting is that we haven't ever leverage the power of video in the way that we have recently, right? Like, we have all these tools. And we've talked about the future of work and what it looks like. But the pandemic accelerated all of these tools in our toolbox. And honestly, like our mirror has been a lifesaver. We like Nero vs mirror roll. But you know, obviously, there's, they're both there. Because our clients are now being able to jump in the boards with us see, the process, it doesn't have to be the tidhar that we've, you know, used throughout our careers, and they get to see the workings we collaborate a lot easier. And then from a design perspective, we get to populate what we want to and then what's great is you can turn those into pages, so you can make those into a presentation. But, but like the design piece of it, like when you're designing physical products, yes, I mean, that's probably the more challenging component of design. But when you're designing systems, culture, change, you know, all of those things, that's a lot easier within the virtual environment. But I do think that we're honing our skills and being able to read each other.
Dan Harden 16:18
True, there's a really great question that just came in, where do you go for your creative inspiration when you're stuck in your house?
Caroline Flagiello 16:24
That is a good one.
Fred Bould 16:25
For me, it's about it's about asking questions. I obviously I want to know, the environment that I'm that I'm operating in. But I think for us, you know, we just looked really closely at who you're designing for, you know, what the what the newest nuances are the function of the the device that you're developing? And, and and prototype.
Dan Harden 16:49
So, yeah, I would even I would add that design for me is, yes, there's a physicality to it. But even more so I think design is more of a mental construct, requires seeing, observing, feeling sensing, while simultaneously thinking and solving pragmatic problems. And sometimes there's a benefit to having environmental context. In other words, getting out and seeing the world. Yes, sometimes those acts are benefited by having people around you being in a studio. Of course, I missed that. But I can always jump on video as a medium, it kind of replaces that in person. In order to get those juices flowing. And get creative with whatever is around, you might have one one of our designers, he didn't have any polyurethane foam, and he couldn't get in his car to go find polyurethane foam because the stores were closed. So he used aluminum foil to create this, the Hand tool thing I was like what in the world is this pile of aluminum foil, but I'll be darned the shape was there. The idea was there, the ergonomics were there. It was it was really cool to see that. So get creative with whatever is around you. The most important thing is to just stay creative, no matter where you are. I mean, if you're stuck in a little village and in Vietnam, and you get a design idea, figure out with what's around you to whatever you need to do, do it.
Caroline Flagiello 18:23
I think that that we our creativity has been pushed to new limits, right? How you get access to content, where you search for content, and spread, you aren't stuck in your home, maybe you can go out with a mask. We definitely have done that we literally do are designing this cooler for camping. And I had the design team Meet me at the campsite. So we ended up camping over the weekend. And we were designing in context. Which, you know, normally you visit and then you leave, but we were literally designing and context as a team. So I think you just get creative about how you do things. But I feel like in that creativity, it's opened up new processes for us and new ways of gleaning inspiration and and inspiration from a material standpoint. Like if you think about sustainability, I think we're thinking about what are those materials out there that we can have access to you start making phone calls, you get stuff shipped to you I have boxes coming multiple times a day, write to our studios so we can see the latest, the greatest get get your hands on stuff. So hybrid work does not replace physical touch physical experience is just how you do it. And this process does take longer. That's the other thing. I will say that does design in general has taken longer during COVID
Dan Harden 19:52
It has that something's longer something faster because you have the tools to make certain decisions like right now. With your client, you know, we're drawing online in video and showing concept literally real time. So there is there is some odd benefit. So considering that the process has certainly changed, did the type of work that were coming into your companies change it certainly did it whipsaw I mean, we got way more health care, work, protection work. Certainly a lot of home goods, because people aren't spending money, you know, their budget allocations going more toward material things that will help them in their home versus getting on an airplane and flying somewhere. And also service design. But where have you guys seen the the uptick and different kinds of work?
Fred Bould 20:46
I just want to go back to the collaboration thing, because just for one second, because I would actually venture a guess. And like, if I go into the room next door and say, Tell me the truth. Did you guys like the fact that you were kind of, you know, for long periods of time, you were kind of on your own, you had more independence, you had time to think you could try things that maybe wouldn't try when you were in the studio, you know, that there was just a little bit more, I'm guessing that a lot of designers probably felt more independence. And that was probably, you know, liberating and refreshing. I mean, we tried, you know, trying to give designers space, but you know, their schedules and meetings and stuff like that, but I'm venture I'd venture to guess I'd say a lot of designers felt like it was.
Dan Harden 21:37
I would agree with you, Fred, I might even venture to say that the creative people. Well, you're either more creative when you are very relaxed and your zone, not pressured. Or, or under extreme anxiety. Like I've got a deadline tomorrow morning, Daniel, I got to figure this out. Now, you know, I find that I'm either in one of those two extremes, or I'm very, very heady and kind of like trying to reach my subconscious for solutions on the one hand, and the pandemic has been good for that actually come up with some wild ideas, just like sitting around in my sweatpants. I don't wear a sweat pants, but we don't need to discuss what I wear. So yeah, that's it's really interesting. I think there is an upside to it.
Fred Bould 22:27
To answer your question, we saw a continuation of what we were what we were saying before, but we did, we did pick up some medical and we actually, one client was COVID, a COVID related project, it was this disinfecting device for commercial spaces. And you know, that had to happen really fast. So we started, you know, we started the project in June last summer, and they were like, yep, we want to be shipping in October. So that's June, July, August, September. That's four months, including design for manufacturing and everything.
Unknown Speaker 23:09
Well, yeah.
Caroline Flagiello 23:11
I mean, our work stays pretty consistent. I mean, we're purpose driven and the work that we take on. But what was interesting was the focus is shifted to even more culture, more, the future of so I'm a big futurist, we love the future of tight projects. And the future of work was one that we've worked on in many different sectors, within industry, within governments, and thinking about what it means to reinvent work for ourselves, and or embrace this new way of working because we're in a working Cultural Revolution right now. Where big companies are, like, you know, come back to work, or else and workers are saying or else, right? And so, we need to be flexible. And because we started realizing what's really important to us as humans, we started reevaluating our own values around life work, and it's not work life balance, it's actually work life fluidity. And those boundaries between work and home, they were already starting to shift with, you know, Fridays off or, you know, flex Fridays, etc. But no, it's actually very different now. And so being able to, as designers think about how we're able to incorporate that fluidity in a way that really services people, their heart, their their soul, and feeds us in a different way. We were missing our family, we're missing the life with our heads down work ethic that we have all experienced. And so that's the kind of work that we started seeing more of as well as transitions. What does it mean to transition Thinking about as a culture and as a human, as you go through these transitions? How, what support do you have? What models do you have out there? And, you know, what is your ecosystem? What's your network? And who are the people that thrive in transitions and don't? And so that that's the kind of deeper human work that we started getting into over the course of the pandemic.
Dan Harden 25:23
Very cool. You know, one, one thing in addition to that, I've also seen that the pandemic has acted like an accelerant for certain businesses and technologies, for example, we're starting to see way more interest in different kinds of precision medicine, or very specific solutions around healthcare. Partly because the technologies are realizing that that's where the answers are, if you look at, you know, what Pfizer and moderna had to go through to create that, that vaccine. And of course, all of this relates to design because we have to ultimately package these solutions and present them in a way they're palpable and understandable intuitive to those end users that that we want to have consumed these products. So we're starting to see way more AI driven diagnostics, lots of biology plus electronics, netting products that are very weird and wild, something like we did recently for this company called Conoco just really unusual things. And the pandemic is, it's been like this, this catalyst in some way good. Some people are like, well, the heck with it, let's do this.
Fred Bould 26:34
Yeah. There was a doctor at the National Health Service in England, who said that they've seen 20 years of innovation in two weeks. And I, I experienced it myself, I had a pinched nerve in my neck from doing stupid things. And so my doctor said, Well, do you want to do PT on zoom? And again, I was skeptical, but I said, Yeah, sure, that sounds great. Let's do that. And it worked. It was a little bit, you know, was a little bit odd. But it, it worked. You know, here I am three months later, and no more pinched nerve than I, you know, other than seeing the physical therapist online, I'm sure it made their job much harder. Because they couldn't, you know, like bend my neck and say, Hey, Did that hurt, or things like that. But I think we've seen a tremendous amount of innovation in a very short time. And I think that it's opened people's eyes to opportunities for new types of products and services.
Dan Harden 27:41
Yeah, it is a plus. I think that, you know, when things get tough, people have a tendency to really reassess what they want out of life, and start to think about things like quality of life being more important than quantity of life. And this is, this is really where I want to move the conversation is, it sounds to me, you know, all three of us are experiencing the same kinds of changes in our companies. There is more of an emphasis on quality of life and health care and home centric design. But will it stick? I want it to stick, because it seems like people are being a little bit more sensible. I think quality of life and quality of design go together like peanut butter and jelly. I mean, they work well together. So but but we all live in a wild world, and everybody's trying to make more money, and they're, you know, the traffic's coming back. And are we gonna fall back into these patterns? How can we make it stick in the foreseeable future?
Caroline Flagiello 28:38
Well, I think one of the things that we are missing, and we're seeing this in our, we've been auditing Silicon Valley companies and honestly, nationally as well. And what's missing is that friction, that friction and that need that, that innovate helps innovators and creatives Spark, and if we don't get back to that level of Spark, which comes from interacting with each other, and or, you know, seeing things and being inspired, you know, like going to see us For example, when person brought up how CES was important to kind of Spark. She used the word envy, but I don't I don't know if it's envy, but like just Spark, you know, that that creative, Uh, huh. Like I want to get in the mix, we will start seeing a push for the lack of comfort, you know, in the home so that we can get to that creative spark. So that's one of the things that we need to think about how do we create that spark or keep that spark going, and we're also posting on a lot of our relationships that we had pre pandemic. So starting a project with a client that you've never met in person and or teammates that maybe you have new hires that just started really hard to do. If you haven't met in person, a lot of projects are failing, all around and every company with teams that haven't met in person. So how do we keep it going in terms of that balance and and honoring what people are feeling like they're missing? But then how do you just keep that that creativity, that hunger alive? haven't figured that out yet?
Dan Harden 30:32
What do you think, Fred, about that?
Fred Bould 30:36
I think that there was a lot of friction to enough friction to start a lot of a lot of different fires. So I, you know, I think like
Caroline Flagiello 30:48
creative friction, versus like, destructive fire affection.
Fred Bould 30:53
Yeah, no, I, I think that the, I think that the pandemic, just really, I mean, for me, personally, it, it definitely helped me kind of realign, I feel like there's, you know, within the studio, there's just, I think there's a lot more empathy for everybody. And I think that when people are more empathic than they, they, they're more attentive to each other's needs, and they're kinder to each other. And I think that plays into design, I really, I think that helps you know, us, you know, when we're because we're always sometimes we're the uses of things that we're designing, but a lot of the times where we have to imagine and so I think that when you're more empathic, it's easier to imagine, you know, and you go that extra mile to make create a better experience.
Dan Harden 31:42
But Fred, how do we make this the tangible benefits that we just heard? And I think there are more unforeseen dividends, right, that have happened from this pandemic? I mean, it's, it's been held for a lot of people, let's face it, not to mention that the disgraceful loss of life, but how do we make some of these, these these good things stick?
Fred Bould 32:04
I think they'll stick because it's a value shift, the underlying, you know, like, he talked about, you know, mass flow, I think the shape of the pyramid of the base has changed, and what what people are, are going to support and tolerate, it has changed. And so, you know, they're some of the biggest companies in the world, you know, come back and said, Okay, here's what we're gonna do. And people have said, No, I don't think so. I'm not doing that. What else do you have? And so I do think that there, there's a shift and that that employees feel and understand that they have more power. And so and I think that, you know, whoa, whoa, to the, the organization that doesn't take that on board, you can, you can go and pick up the Economist magazine and read, you know, dozens of articles about this kind of thing. Things have things have changed, and things have shifted, and I don't I don't, you know, I feel like it's a, you know, the toothpaste has come out of the tube. We're not you can't put it back in.
Dan Harden 33:24
Yeah, like, I really, I agree, I hope that some of these, these benefits that we're talking about, really, really do stick, I think it's incumbent upon us designers to make sure that we we do we do carry a new kind of torch, and that we are strong and persuasive, and making sure that we're offering good sound meaningful, truthful solutions to the clients and be brave stand up and just, you know, proclaim what innovation means to you. That's okay. I think there's, I think the big message here is, it's okay. Make your Proclamation. Everybody is we're in this time now.
Fred Bould 34:03
Yeah. I also kind of wonder, like, so, you know, as a work from home skeptic, you know, I was proven wrong. And I think that, that kind of has emboldened people to say, Okay, well, what other things that I held to be true, are also incorrect. And so I see, I see my designer is asking questions like, well, do we really have to do it that way? Or, you know, is, you know, why is that a sacred cow? Why can't we change that? So? I don't know. I think that I think there's I think there's a shift going on.
Caroline Flagiello 34:44
Right. Well, I do think as I mentioned before, the idea of work fluidity, that you we as designers need to design tools and experiences that allow work fluidity, so that we are It's not flexibility. And this is the difference. So and I stumbled across this Aha, you know, thinking about the future of work, that it isn't about either or, it's about that we are working in our cars, at the cafe, at home with our teams that are home office back, you know, hopping on a plane working on a plane, like work happens everywhere. And while we may have thought about that, we still think about it as binary work from home, right? Well, actually, it's not just from home. So work fluidity needs to happen as our devices pick up from one area to another, you know, content, our access to content, our access to people, we need to think about that even more, because honestly, our tools are still very limited in what they can do and how they support idea generation collaboration. Well, it's great that we have what we have now, they're really still very, very limited. So I think, to keep it going and moving forward, we need to reinvent our tools for creation, collaboration, communication, and start thinking about other dimensions. So we're even playing around with VR, right, and collaborating conducting meetings, we have, we are just on the precipice of an amazing time, if we choose to take it, our muscle memory is so strong to the way it used to be or normal, I think that we may be missing a big opportunity in advancing how we create, how we work, how we think, how we transmit ideas. And so VR is the real untapped dimension, quite frankly, on how we can collaborate together and start bridging some of those arenas. But I don't want to diminish, you know, the, the in person power because we as human animals can communicate and transmit energy that you just don't get anywhere else. So we need to not forget that, obviously, in person is hugely valuable. But I don't want to miss out on all of the other dimensions that we haven't really tapped fully.
I think designers intrinsically, are so good at that. Because many of us are crafts persons, artists, musicians. And it allows you to have this, this touch point with your own humanity. And it's often that that element of that designers bring is sometimes sidelined by big business and managers and CEOs that maybe value the bottom line more than an individual's big idea. So if it's allowed us to bring out more of our humanity, that's, that's awesome. I love that perspective. Carolyn, do you think it's do you think,
Fred Bould 38:02
you know, like, great tools, right, we have zoom and Google Hangouts, we have all these other things. And when we first you know, I think that the people who develop them were sort of like, Oh, crap, we have like, you know, 500 times, number of people using this now. And I think that they really, they probably, you know, people generally, like, I'm very thankful to be able to talk to people like this. But in fact, the software could be better. You know, it could be easier to use, it could be more flexible, it could allow us to share more easily. And so I'm, I'm guessing that there's this sort of unseen groundswell of people out there going, Wow, there's a lot of opportunity for making this a lot better. And so I think that when you say, how are we going to do it? I think it's probably happening, you know, you know, out there in Silicon Valley and across across the world, people are probably imagining great new ways for collaborating.
Dan Harden 39:18
To do you think this pandemic in both of your opinions has made us especially designers, has it made us more accountable? Is it going to make us more responsible? Will it prompt us to really think about the essence of a problem and how to how to really go about solving it that might additionally be very sustainable in every way, not just environmentally sustainable?
Caroline Flagiello 39:44
For sure. I mean, honestly, at the beginning of the epidemic last year, I was on a panel where scientists were talking about from the UK we're talking about you think this viruses bad wait till the Climate change hits you, and you're worried about being in the home now. Just wait. And it's in years, not in 10 years, it's in a couple years. And I honestly, you know, we've heard climate change. And it honestly, it doesn't stick with you, as much as when this scientist was talking, it scared the bejesus out of me. And ironically, from that, that conference to when clicked, you know, client work started picking up again, it was all about sustainability more than ever before. And, and it really gives you pause about, and especially as design leaders, being able to say, Hey, wait a minute, I don't know if that deserves to exist, this product that you want to create, like, let's prove, why does that deserve to exist. And I don't know if I want to partake in creating that thing. And I think also when we think about sustainability, for the product, its lifecycle. And the onus that we have as designers, not just in sustainability, but in the creation of things, or services or experiences, just because I think we really have a lot more power and being able to redirect a refocus. And also be able to shift and build a business case for maybe something that's an alternative that actually has much more positive outcomes. And that process of development as well as much more positive. So in that, though, I will say as designers, it is crucial for us to get up on many different manufacturing techniques out there for let's say sustainability, because I don't think that we have in our toolbox, enough sustainable knowledge to really design effectively, cradle to grave. and beyond. I just thought why don't just think I know. And I think it behooves all of us to really get deep into what this looks like. And sustainability, not just in physical product, but and the whole cycle of our experience, from product services, culture, everything needs to be sustainable. We worked on a program years ago around human resilience, human resilience as part of sustainability, right? And thinking about how we're able to tap into ourselves to be sustainable, which also mirrors back into a earlier point that you made down around. How is this changed us? Like how were we more sustainable as humans in the condition that we're in right now, but also sustainability and the products, as I mentioned, and the services that we design? Yes, we do have greater responsibility than ever before, because we've seen the effects.
Dan Harden 42:55
Yeah, I also see this, there's has been for the last 50 years, this relentless Corporate Drive to make more money through design. And honestly, I know I do design for a living, but that kind of motivation simply does not inspire me. I mean, my my definition, and the pandemic has really driven this home is of my definition of prosperity is totally the opposite. And like a lot of designers, I mean, I think we have to value meaning over money and outcome for users of our income for corporations. I think growth of cultural value is more important than growth of shareholder value. I think we have to somehow through the means that you just mentioned Caroline, keep pushing for these, these values that are more sustainable, and more holistic definition of what sustainability even is. And I think that's our big challenge. I mean, Fred, I know you because I've known you for a long time. I know so wholeheartedly, you would you would believe in that or tell me maybe that you don't? What do you think
Fred Bould 44:10
I i've always I've always been frustrated by the, in order to see real change in sustainability. You have to have a change in you know, it's like steering a supertanker. They are like we've we've gone out many, many times and looked at you know, different types of material that are more ecola more environmentally sound. And they're always these these nice things, but I think it's things are slowly changing, because people are starting to understand, well, you know, I can still do well, by doing good and, you know, at some point, something's going to happen. It's like I've always said with With consumer electronics, if you go and look at the reviews, or you'll get what's selling the best, it's not like something selling 40. And this one's 40%, this one's 30%. And this one's 20%. This one's 10. It's like this one's 90%, because it's the best. And then this one is 6%, because it's cheaper, and then this one selling 3%, because it's really, really cheap. I think we have to get to that situation with, with sustainability, where we can go out and there there are options for you know, for materials and systems that are better. And that we can and that there we can be they can be deployed on a massive scale, not Nish. I'm not talking about, you know, making lamps out of orange peels. I'm talking. Go Go look on the scene, it's there. But no, I'm talking about like, really, really meaningful ways of doing things like, you know, at the at the Tokyo Olympics, they made the they made the beds out of cardboard. Okay, that's awesome. Why, you know, I would it be okay, sleeping on a cardboard bed? You know, I don't I don't, it doesn't, it doesn't need to weigh 600 pounds. You know, I? So I think that there's, there's two things, there's the systems, the infrastructure, and then there's our limited ways of thinking about them.
Caroline Flagiello 46:33
Right? Well, I wanted to ask, so we're working on sustainable running shoes right now. And it's interesting when you start investigating, like in the running shoe category, you know, all these proclamations, right, from big companies that we all know and love and have worked for around their sustainable shoe. But you know, there's a lot of carbon credits that they're buying, right? And as does he mean, you know, it's kind of cheating, right? It's not, it's not really being sustainable, or using an ecologically sourced material, but it's still last forever. As designers, you know, how now I'm taking your role dance, as designers. How do you feel about pushing back in that arena? Like, what would you work on a project where you knew the client was buying carbon credits, and, you know, basically buying their way into sustainability? Or, you know, how does that fit with you guys?
Dan Harden 47:36
I think as long as you are able to make the positive change that you should be as a designer, then the means in which that occurs, providing the ends is a good result, some benevolence, some benefit to the end user that I'm okay.
Caroline Flagiello 47:52
Yeah, it's kind of interesting, because, you know, our client isn't necessarily advocating for that. But it was just the investigation out there seeing the greenwashing if you will, and it doesn't sit well with us, we're like, Huh, if you're really willing to make a change, we're there for you. Right, we're gonna take it, we're gonna see this through. But if you're, it's a marketing ploy. We're not really that interested in engaging?
Dan Harden 48:20
Oh, I misunderstood your question. And then I hate anything disingenuous. So you know, we and we are often every design firm will you'll pick these moments when you have to ask yourself, should we be doing this? You know, we'd turn one down this morning, a client that wanted to work with us, and we're just like, no. And, yeah, you're those are hard decisions sometimes, because they're, they're often not black and white. Right?
Fred Bould 48:47
You know, I think you have to ask yourself, okay, is this is this supertanker? Do they want to make a turn? Or do they just want you to, you know, get on the deck and cheer them on? And I think that if you can, if you can make even even an incremental positive impact than it, then it then it's worth doing, because there's definitely somebody else out there who won't care and will just say, yeah, sure, we'll do that. So, you know, if you can, if you can get in there and and even make, you know, like, if we could, if we could get a client to just make a change in their packaging, to go from say, you know, a plastic insert to a compostable insert, you know, from go from like a styrene, or something like that, which is horrible to, to, you know, an egg crate or something like that. Then it's, you know, these these things are, they're all incremental, but they're, I think they're meaningful.
Caroline Flagiello 49:53
Yeah, and that's a really good point, right, like, increments do add up, they do stack up It is important. And I think to answer the circle back down with your question around responsibility. I do always we're all saying that yes, we do have responsibility to bring up these really hard questions. And then also to guide the process to guide the process towards a better answer are utilizing things that they've already used but a new way. And that's where doesn't always have to be reinvention. Right. It could be rejiggering of an existing system, but just optimized in a way that actually improves exponentially over time. So I just want to circle back.
Dan Harden 50:38
Yeah, good. Very, very good point. If there's ever a time that we have the IRS, you know, in the C suite, or clients, it's probably now because with all of this change, we're seeing, I mean, whether it's social change, climate change, changes in the Delta variant. I mean, there's just so much that we're dealing with right, it's hard to cope. designers are good at coalescing solutions, at culling from what we see in the world into some form of betterment. I think that spells when there's so much change going on, that spells opportunity to me, change occurs, and very difficult times and very positive times. So I think that's what we're seeing here. And it is our moment to do exactly what you're just saying. So this is this is awesome. we've, we've covered so many interesting things. There have been so many incredible questions coming in. So there are so many here on our list. I'm going to just hand select one or two or three, maybe let's see if we can get through them. These are real time. Let's see. Work From Home is made everyone worked more than ever. And where to guess that end is blurred the line between work and home life? What's your plan for returning to a healthy balance of work and rest for your employees?
Fred Bould 52:21
Well, we're actually we track that pretty closely, we actually we actually go to people and say, we think you're working too much can what can we do to help you balance your workload? Because I mean, we know that when, when people are working too much, the actual productivity goes down, their happiness goes down. And, you know, the work just isn't as good. There's, there's definitely, you know, there's a limit to how much you should work. And we, we we actually be reviewed that every Monday, we look at how much people the leadership team here looks at it and says, Okay, well, everybody's good, you know, sort of like everyone's somewhere around 40 hours. If somebody is above, then we'll go and talk to them and say, Okay, well, how can we help balance your load? It's, it's super, it's super important that people have known this for for ages to there's, you know, somebody works 70 hours, 70 hours a week is not doing a good job for a number of those hours.
Caroline Flagiello 53:35
Right. Right. I think also, you know, not capping vacation time, I think, what's been really interesting is, you know, people don't tend to abuse that. I mean, some people can, but if you take the time that you need, and expect everyone to be responsible adults, obviously tracking what's going on, you're able to flex and people are happier, as you had mentioned, Fred. You know, I think also, at least for us, like Gone are the days of, I need to see you working in, you know, your desk, 40 hours plus a week, if I don't see you working, then you're really not productive, right? I think, being able to understand that work in life, if they're going to be more fluid, they're going to happen. And you know, what's interesting is that you need to also take care of your wellness. And we are big advocates of that meaning like, Hey, I just need to take a little bit of time to go for a walk or, you know, I you know, at certain time I'm taking this Pilates class or you know, you know, what have you or I want to take a painting class, and it's, you know, started it this time in the evening. That that says it being able to be fluid, but also you can't abuse it, right. So trying to find that that fluid line, and we've been pretty successful in doing because everyone has that drive to do well, I mean, that's we're hungry, if you're a hungry designer who needs to create and innovate, that's great, but then you have rest time, otherwise, you will never replenish. And when you go, go, go, which is what I think as a society we've been doing, but as designers, if you do not give yourself that downtime, you are an empty husk, empty husk and you will not be able to give your best give your all it's why great ideas come in the shower, right? You need that experience during the day, to be able to and it's daily, to be able to do that. And I think with the way that we've been working, and how easy it is to get on video. I mean, I have to admit, I have not myself been very good. At the end of the day, like I just told my husband, also a designer, I'm like, you know, at the end of today, we're running out of here screaming and going to go get dinner, we call it purple dinner, because we eat in our car, but um, you know, mobile dinner and myrin. So, you know, whatever that is, you need to find that joy,
Dan Harden 56:23
I would agree that also design it's it's one of these professions where you're so informed by the things that you're not necessarily at the moment thinking about or trying to solve, you know, it's, it's, it's the subtle observation you made about an individual in a conversation that somehow informed the way you're thinking about a design problem a year from now. It all goes in, it all goes in, and then it's your job as a designer to sort of readily access it when you need it the most. And, and apply it and sometimes walking around in your sweatpants. A that's all of a sudden you use career something you see something. Yeah, that's all. So here's my final question for you too. What does design Nirvana mean to you, you know, society as gone through something. And as designers, if we're to learn anything from this, we should be able to carry our profession forward in some way to elevate what we do to advance it to bring it to a higher state of existence. I mean, that's kind of what Nirvana is. But is there such a thing as designer about a will the world really benefit from design? And if so, how? How can we move our, our society you know, we went from an industrial society to a creative one, where are we going now? And what is design Nirvana?
Caroline Flagiello 57:55
So I will say, for me, I have, personally this mix of futurist with light. And I. So think that we are in this age of technology, and design, much like fashion, where it's hope future, it's in your face, we are we're tethered to our products were tethered to our phones, were tethered to our technology. I think for me, design Nirvana would be that technology recedes into our environment more than it ever has. And we call upon it when we need it. But we need to be able to get back to our humanity in a way that I don't think that we have, and it's why home family, and you know, family values, all these things have resurfaced, when you have a very serious question of life or death, right? And for me, I would love to see technology recede into our walls more recede into our environments more, like I said, and populate, you know, when when we need it, and then it recedes back again. And so for me, if we can as designers almost get over ourselves, and the flashiness of look at the cool thing I just made or the cool system I just designed, and be like, wow, and then it just goes away. That to me would be Nirvana.
Fred Bould 59:27
I would say for, for me does design Nirvana is and we were talking about this recently, is just meaningful, meaningful, hard to solve problems. Because I think that that's, you know, that's, that's what makes work interesting is to have have a hard problem that that needs to be solved, to work for clients that recognize and value our Our efforts and are supportive of the process that we go through. And I, I would say we have that in our clients are generally very, very supportive of what we do and how we do things. And then, you know, to be to be working with a team of a team of experts, people who are super engaged, and, and really engrossed in love what they're doing. I think that's what that's what makes the the studio special is that there's this, this just sort of, kind of, sort of unspoken understanding amongst everybody that, you know, that we're, you know, what we're doing is, is, is, is challenging, but but fun. And, you know, and we all grow, sort of engaged as a group and supportive of each other as individuals.
Dan Harden 1:01:01
Awesome. You know, I think we're out of time. And it's a shame because we have received so many questions. There's got to be a way well, you can find all three of us online. Sorry to have just volunteered your more time Carolinian friend. But if you wanted to ask any of us individually, any questions I know, I'd be open answer a few questions. And I'm [email protected]. And you can certainly follow us at whipsaw design. I just want to thank everybody for tuning in. It's always a pleasure to do this kind of thing. We do have to just stay connected. What we're trying to do is really just keep our community together and have stimulating conversations like this with really cool people like Caroline and Fred. So thanks, everybody. Huge. Thanks, Caroline. Fred, wonderful. As always seeing you guys and good night.
Caroline Flagiello 1:02:00
For you, Dan. So good to see you, Fred, too. Thank you for having
Fred Bould 1:02:04
likewise and thank you to which song for organizing this. I know a lot of work went into it. I appreciate everybody on the team for making it happen.
Caroline Flagiello 1:02:14
Yes, great job team. Right,
Dan Harden 1:02:15
that good set. Yeah. Great. Thanks to my team. Alright. Goodbye, everybody. Thanks a lot. Thank you for listening to prism, follow us on whipsaw.com or your favorite streaming platform. And we'll be back with more thought provoking episodes soon. prism is hosted by Dan Harden, Principal designer and CEO of Whipsaw, produced by Gabrielle Whelan and Isabella Glenn, mix in sound design by Eric New
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California’s Bay Area is one of the world’s epicenters of design, but this is a fairly recent phenomenon. Prior to the 1980s, you had to travel to Paris, London, Milan, and New York to find good design. Suddenly, this region entered a golden design era marked by innovative collaborations, technology booms, and the emergence of a vernacular around design thinking. Now, nearly 40 years later, we have more design professionals in the Bay Area than anywhere else in the world.
In this episode, Dan Harden examines the rise of design in the Bay Area with Author and Design Professor Barry Katz, including how design thinking changed the landscape of the Bay. Looking ahead, Dan and Barry speculate on how Bay Area design can continue to set the tone for the rest of the world.
Guest
Barry Katz, professor of Industrial and Interaction Design, California College of the Arts, and adjunct professor, Design Group, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University
Episode Transcript
Dan Harden 0:07
Hello, and welcome to Prism. Prism is a design-oriented podcast hosted by me Dan Harden. Like a glass, Prism that reveals the color hidden inside white light, t his podcast will reveal the inside story behind innovation, especially the people that make it happen. My aim is to uncover each guest’s unique point of view, their insights, their methods, or their own secret motivator, perhaps that fuels their creative genius. Today, I have the pleasure of being with a good friend of mine, Barry Katz . Barry is the professor of Industrial Design and Interaction Design at the California College of the Arts, an adjunct professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering Design Group at Stanford University, Barry was also well, Barry has been working with the idea for the last 20 years as a fellow and general advisor, we’re going to hear a little bit about his experience there. He’s also the author of seven books, including most recently “Make It New, the History of Silicon Valley design” published in 2017, by MIT Press, and Barry’s also working on a great new book called “Structure and Symbol for the Age of Data” which is about architecture and the Silicon Valley. Barry, thanks so much for coming on Prism. Glad to be here. I always love talking to you. You are a gem of a human. Or the the you know, you pretty much blew me away when you were one of the keynote speakers at a conference that I chaired back in 2002, as you remember, well. So this is a really great experience. So you know, you wrote this book that I read, because, well, I’m living in Silicon Valley, I’ve been a designer in Silicon Valley since 1989, and had experience working here even prior to that. So I was really fascinated by your perspectives on the history of design in the Bay Area. Maybe we could start by you giving us a general context, because my first exposure to the Bay Area was when I was seeing this extraordinary work being done, I would say in the early 80s. And I actually interned at HP, which is my first exposure around that time. But what was happening before that, how did we get to that point of inflection where design started to become relevant to technology. If we can start unpacking a little bit of that, that kind of historical perspective, because it sets the framework so well for what actually happened and how design flourished.
Barry Katz 2:52
So let’s begin a little bit with what got me interested in taking a long historical look at how people like you ended up doing what people like you are now doing. In 2021, I was struck by a small gift sent to me by a mutual friend of ours I’m sure you know, Gerard Furbershaw are one of the cofounders of Lunar, one of the distinguished consultancies of the area. Gerard sent me a clipping from a 1979 Palo Alto telephone book, the Yellow Pages. And I apologize to readers, or viewers or listeners who have no idea what the yellow pages are business directory for these things that we used to call telephones. And this was a page from the business directory that listed every design consultancy in Northern California 1979. There were, if I remember correctly, nine of them and they were squeezed between detective agencies and diaper services. And of the nine, only one of them still exists, although not under the same name. In other words, design was absolutely not on the map as any significant part of what was important about this region. And the reason that that was interesting to me is today, I think I’d be prepared to argue that there are probably more design professionals working within 50 miles of where you and I are sitting right now than anywhere else in the world. So I got interested in the question, How did that happen? How did that happen in an extraordinarily, you know, basically in a generation. If you had asked almost anybody in that period, the late 70s, the early 80s. What are the important world centres of design? I think that there would have been a pretty easy consensus and you know, Dan, you could you could say a to Milan for furniture Paris for fashion. New York for graphics London probably for product design, you got to be Tokyo for electronics, LA for whatever they do down there, I have no idea. And if you would set the Bay Area, I think you would have been met with a blank stare, right? One of the older folks that I interviewed in my book who migrated out here for romantic reasons, I think he had to get away from a second wife or something like that, and tried to set up shop in San Francisco as an industrial designer in the late 60s, I think. And he said, anybody who would try to do that then should have his head examined. There was no client base, there were no colleagues, there was no system of suppliers and partners. It was an island, and now it’s it’s become the center. So I wanted to figure out how that happened. And I started scratching around the early 80s, when the big consultancies began to form, IDEO Lunar Frog where you, you and I first met, and I scratched a little bit further, and I found some activity in the decade prior to that, and I scratched a little bit further, and I found a few big companies that had an industrial designer on staff. And I kept scratching until I got back to I think it was August 7, 1951, when Hewlett Packard hired his first quote, unquote, industrial designer, and they gave him the assignment that I, I heard from any number of people that I spoke to, it was essentially “Can you stuff five pounds of shit into a 10 pound box,” that’s a phrase that kept coming up. Or maybe it was 10 pounds into forgotten. So there were, there was some early stirring of activity in the post World War Two period. This is the time when Silicon Valley was just beginning to emerge as an important Tech Center, in electronics, in aviation and in defense, and a few companies Hewlett Packard, Lockheed, interestingly enough. And a company that is now almost defunct Ampex, which was, at one time the pioneer in audio recording, they essentially invented magnetic tape recording. They had small design groups, and that was about it.
Their primary role of designers then was to package technology to put the work of engineers into a suitable enclosure that wouldn’t offend anybody. And that wouldn’t get into the in the way of having the things function. And then gradually, what I described is an expanding perimeter around the areas that designers could involve themselves in. And I think that I would say that the crucial moment in time, kind of metaphorically speaking, is when computing started to get small enough, cheap enough and fast enough, that it began to move from the back rooms of large organizations, onto the desktops of ordinary consumers. And that’s where design is really in a position to add major value.
Dan Harden 8:41
Because people were used to consuming well designed products and other parts of their life. And maybe they didn’t have an identity yet, right? I mean,
Barry Katz 8:52
No, I mean, the computer was this inscrutable refrigerator sized machine in the backroom of a bank or an airline or an insurance company or the Defense Department.
Dan Harden 9:04
There was one guy, you might remember Elliot Noise on the East Coast, as he designed those giant IBM computers. That was the first exposure that I saw to computers being designed. And then I was also seeing around that same timeframe, some amazing work done by Mario Bellini and Ettore Sottsass, as well as designing like, pre computers for all of it, you know, these were type machines and adding machines really cool stuff. I mean, they were giving true art and form to these devices that otherwise had no kind of functional bearing on anything we would understand unlike say, a mixer or a fan where there were required components, mechanical components, whereas these devices, even those early tech devices, they you know, they were early transistor based products, and you know, why should they look like what should they key look like? Given that you press a button on, you know, in a series of keys, should it look like a typewriter? Probably? Yeah, yeah. Those were an interesting transitional day.
Barry Katz 10:10
I’m really glad that you said that in that you put it in the way that you did, Dan, because everybody knows what a mixer does. Everybody knows what a hairdryer does. Everybody knows what a desk lamp does. Nobody in this period and again, you know, to the 1970s, nobody really knew what a computer was and what it was for. And as you look at the the proliferation of small companies that were exploring this terra incognita of personal computing, the big debate was, what is the machine? Is it a really, really fast typewriter? Is it a really, really powerful adding machine? Is it some kind of a communications device, and it was really uncertain. And, you know, now is familiar to practically everybody. And we use it for all of those things, and probably also has a hairdryer and a mixer and a desk lamp. But it was a technology in search of a definition of the category. So what I think is really crucial here is that when Elliott Noyes and some of the folks that you mentioned were designing, and I say designing sort of cautiously, they’re doing the industrial design of large scale Business Machines. I don’t want to put it too crudely. But engineers are not that concerned with the experience of the devices that you’re working on. Okay, I say this with no disrespect, you know, in a way they have higher aspirations. But when a technology moves from the business world into the consumer market, functionality tends to be displaced by experience. I know that’s a little bit of a cliche, but you’re less concerned with the inner workings and how the thing works. And more concerned, not simply with superficial aesthetics, but with the experience that you’re having in using the device, so the product or the software. And that is the points where design really comes into the picture is something more than what you’re so familiar with the Henry Dreyfus or the Elliot Noyes model, of form and function of using industrial design to make something more attractive and accessible.
Dan Harden 12:39
I think part of that is the consumers have an expectation that whatever purpose, this new product that has been proposed for them to purchase, whatever that purpose is, you want to deliver to you quickly, we have impatient minds, right? We want that designed to deliver and so it’s got to stimulate me in the way that it looks that has to communicate to me in an intuitive manner, and then it has to deliver on its functionality. Scientists or researchers that were using those giant computers back then they didn’t have that expectation. It was purely functional, although, remarkably, even companies like IBM realized, wait a minute, there’s, there’s a culture in this technology, we need to represent it not. I don’t think they were necessarily trying to sell more computers with design, you know, back then, I think they were proud of what they were doing. And they they were they wanted to kind of show off they’re like, “Hey, you know what, these are remarkable machines,” Let’s let’s do this, right? Let’s build some culture and maybe even a sense of art and what they were building.
Barry Katz 13:48
I’m also really glad that you, you mentioned some of the European companies that were kind of pioneering the sort of thinking you know, Olivetti created a machine called the Performa, which some people have argued, is really the first desktop computer and had a comprehensive corporate wide design strategy, as did Philips, a small number of other European companies. And if I am not mistaken, they had a tremendous influence on your generation of American designers. So at exactly the moment that we were trying to figure out what is this new thing that we’re dealing with, and we’re still trying to figure that out, you know, 40 years into the story of computing. People were, to a large extent taking their cues from some of the radical solutions being proposed in Europe and gradually incorporating them into their thinking. Apple’s the clear example, that’s how Apple really got started.
Dan Harden 15:00
Do you know but before we talk about Apple because um, you know, they’re the monolith here, right? So in, in the space of design and technology, when I was when I was in school, I remember it’s so well, like the very top,the paragon of like design for me was the work that was being done by Olivetti. There was something about those expressions. I felt that they were, they were beyond product to me, they weren’t they were something truly extraordinary. They touched the Abyss in some way that just made me think as a designer, “Wow, I can do anything as a designer” because there really, prior to the existence of this early technology. There was no reference, there was no vernacular for what technology should look like. Right. So unlike if you’re designing a chair, you know, how many 1000s of years that we need to go back to, to see the vernacular of a chair. So that compelled me to push myself and I was designing even in school, it’s hilarious. I was doing like Olivetti esque kind of things. I was just so influenced by that I really loved. Yeah, that technology. And that’s what led me to want to even work for HP back then. You’ll find this interesting because you teach at Stanford. I went to this Stanford design conference, and the speaker was this young man, that was the CEO and founder of this new computer company called Apple and they had just gone public. And there was Steve Jobs up on stage pontificating about technology, and he was using the word design. I was like, in the, you know, the back of the audience and designed did he just say design. You know, as I was super excited about that at lunchtime, I’ll never forget this. We all got our cafeteria trays. During this conference, Steve Jobs came out, we’re all sitting outside, he looked around the lawn, and I guess he selected the youngest group or something I was sitting among like, eight of my peers at HP. l came in he chose us to sit down next to he sat down, took his shoes off, of course, right. He was famous for being barefoot all the time in his younger days. And he just, I wish I could say we had a discussion, but no, he pretty much continue to talk at us about technology and design, the importance of design, I realized I had a sense, although I didn’t have the knowledge or the foresight necessarily to know where this was all gonna go. But I believed that he truly felt a sense about the importance of design especially and its incorporation into product. And yeah, it I think it catapulted me even further, in my own personal thinking about like, Man, I’ve got to, I have to do some killer work here at HP. And I’m really intrigued by this notion of technology and design. Years later, I worked with him. But that to me was kind of the turning point. You mentioned a turning point in the Bay Area. His emergence as Apple’s emergence as a force, especially when he hired Frog Design, during that time period in the early 80s, that, to me was the seminal moment. Let’s talk about that. Because everything you know, when you mentioned a few of the companies that were considering in hiring one or two designers in the Bay Area at that time. Here’s a company a new technology companies, young, exciting, brash company, Apple, that reaches out to design firms in the worlds he finds this company in Germany, and in the Black Forest. Althengstett right it was super cute little tiny village in the Black Forest. Now, how he actually found them. I’ve heard stories about it, you know, when I was there, but that is an extraordinary time period. I remember one other point and I wanted your perspective on this. Right after my internship, at HP, I ended up graduating and going to Europe with a portfolio on my back. And one of the companies that I went down to have an informational interview was Frog Design. And the founder of Frog Design, Hartmut Esslinger interviewed me and at the time, he said, this is like 1982 he said,
“Dan, we just met this crazy guy in the Silicon Valley named Steve Jobs. Do you heard about him? Do you know much about him?” Like oh, well, I just I just heard him at this this Standford design conference. So yeah, I know him you know, quote unquote, and I’ll never forget that moment because he said, we’re thinking about doing some work with him, and what what do you think? And you know, would you eventually like to come help on this we really like your portfolio. Could you come help us in California? I thought, wow, this is this firm in this in the Black Forest is willing to make this leap across continents to go design for this crazy guy named Steve Jobs.
Barry Katz 20:28
And I hope you told Hartmut to make sure that he got paid in advance.
Dan Harden 20:34
I don’t think you have a problem getting paid by Apple at that time, you know, that became legendary how much of a retainer they got, you know, to design these products at that time. But there were all kinds of things happening not only, you know, Apple with with frog, but another gentleman named Bill Moggridge comes over. Tell us about that, and your perspective on this the shift, the big shift was this, in my opinion, was kind of that this euro invasion into the Silicon Valley when a lot of industrial designers from Europe keyed on to the fact that there’s something interesting going on here in technology in the Silicon Valley. And they wanted to be a part of it.
Barry Katz 21:18
Yeah, I think it really has to be understood as a global phenomenon as part of a global wave, and we’re still in it. And the wave is now moving back and forth across the Pacific just as 40 years ago, it was moving back and forth across the Atlantic, mostly forth, I would say. Apple is a key player in the story. I don’t want to romanticize it. But I would never want to minimize it either. I mean, I will often say would you have bought a computer from a company founded on April Fool’s Day and named after a piece of fruit. And when I said, you know, make sure you should have told her to make sure we got paid in advance. I personally know and i think you know, a couple of these folks to Dan. But I personally know three people that were approached by Steve Jobs in the late 70s, and turned him down. Here’s another guy, another one of these guys, in jeans and barefoot or, you know, his Birkenstocks. With his vision of something, rather. And if I’ll just do the work on spec, the gold will come pouring into my checking account. And I’m not joking here or exaggerating, I literally know three people who throw them out. They are not happy
about that.
But Apple, I think has to be, I’ll get to Moggridge in a moment, but Apple has to be understood as being in the right place at the right time led by the right person, as difficult as that right person was. in other respects, I don’t think we can take anything away from him. To put that in a little bit of perspective, in that period, ’76 ’77 ’78, I can think of about a dozen companies that were competing to bring a personal computer to the market to the consumer market, you have never heard of 11 of those 12. And the 12th is now a trillion dollar company. And at any given week, the most valuable company in the world. So when a company has a profile of that stature, and defines itself as being designed driven, and every other company in the world is going to take notice at their or ignore it at their peril. So the importance of Apple, not just in creating, you know, new generations of innovative products and all of that, which is a cliche, the importance of Apple for giving priority to design at the executive level. That’s pretty new in American corporate history, not entirely unprecedented. But at that scale, it was just a new phenomenon. What I would say about Apple in terms of its importance for the story that you are trying to get down is once it became clear that a high quality experience was going to be essential to making this new generation of tech products successful. Steve began to explore design talent around the world. And there were plenty of American designers who are a bit miffed by this, but he conducted his search in the UK, in Germany as you said frog, the company that became frog, the star designers and Italy and in Paris. And he narrowed it down through a competition that became known as the Snow White competition to design a personal computer Snow White, and seven peripherals, the Seven Dwarfs. That competition was ultimately won by the small firm that you referred to. And that used to work for Esslinger design in the Federal Republic of Germany F-R-O-G. And the condition that jobs imposed upon it was that they moved to Silicon Valley, and at least establish an outpost here. So Hartmut Esslinger, moved Esslinger Design to Silicon Valley became frog Design. And the larger importance of that, I think, is that it was really Apple that began to engage this small community of tech oriented design professionals, who are starting to spill out of Stanford arriving from London and Germany and a few other places. And that would ultimately give rise, excuse me, to the major consultancies, which became the defining identity of Silicon Valley design. And they’re the ones that, you know, the company that became IDEO, the company that became frog, Lunar, and now less than a second and a third, and now a fourth generation of companies that are at this point, almost beyond counting.
Dan Harden 26:39
I, you know, I find this to be so fascinating, that whole the evolution of the whole design industry in the Bay Area, and in that regard, starting at that moment, that transcendent moment in the early 80s, where it just came alive Suddenly, I remember prior to joining frog, so you know, even though I talked to Hartmut about about him meeting jobs, and being a part of this Snow White program, I was aware of it. I had gone to Dreyfus in New York City in the meantime. And when I was there, I saw the first Snow White examples coming out, of course, and I saw on the back page of it magazine. Yeah, Apple to see it was that particular design that made me think something is going on here. I really should be a part of this. Yep. And that’s when I reached back out to Hartmut. And he basically said, “Hey, man, where have you been? Come on, let’s come out to California right away.”
Barry Katz 27:42
If I could, if I could jump in and just add one more gloss onto this whole thing. And that is there’s an old story of companies, hiring designers to improve their products. That’s sort of the the history of design and in this country, and it’s a great history. What happens very rarely is designers being the opportunity to keep being given the opportunity to design not just a new product, but a new product category, and to create a language for it, and to figure out what is this thing all about. So if you were asked to improve last year’s toaster, and you know, give us next year’s toaster, you look back at last year and the year before and the year before that there is a language of toasters, and you run with it. But if you are asked to design a mouse, the patent for the mouse was called the x y position indicator. So somebody walks in and asks you to design an X Y position indicator for him. Where do you start? You don’t look at last year’s model, because there was no last year’s model, or a modem or even like a digital answering machine or something like that. They are entirely new product categories. And the opportunity to do that does not come very often. And what really defined the design profession, I think, in Silicon Valley, argue with me, if you like, is this ongoing challenge to designers of giving form and language to entirely new product categories?
Dan Harden 29:22
Yes. In addition, giving an identity and a personality to something that otherwise is purely represented by the software that you might see on the screen.
Barry Katz 29:36
Yeah, yeah.
Dan Harden 29:37
So it’s really it’s true conception, if you will, you know, it’s like, Okay, well, it’s blue sky design, you have to you know, you’re you sit there sometime to scratch your head, like, well, how can I record and I do I do this now, you know, like, how can I represent this very unusual, abstract technology that you know, it takes even my design team, it might take months to figure out even how some of this stuff works. I mean, we’re doing like CRISPR technologies. And, yeah, human genome sequencing. And I think that that’s another thing about the Bay Area, you get exposed as a designer to some remarkable innovation. And you’re asked to give it a face, give it give it an identity and make that identity by the way, approachable, friendly, sometimes warm, almost always intuitive. And make it exciting enough that it makes an impact on demand for the product. at its best design does that. But yeah, you’re right. I mean, especially, you know, using Apple again, is that example, and even other companies picked up on that, you know, the car companies saw what Apple did with a line of products, whereby each individual product was making a suggestion about its values, and that other siblings in the product line also had those values, yes, which builds trust, because you will automatically assume if the quality is imbued in the product that I currently have in my hand, or sitting on the desk in front of me, I make the assumption that the company that is offering me that is also making other fine products. And that notion hadn’t really been expressed in a manner that was so clear, as far as like, especially sibling likenesses and languages, you know, car companies were making an individual, you’d see a Camaro. And then you’d see a Mustang, they were all very, very different. Even companies, you know, looking at, you know, Ford, all of their cars look very, very different. There was no such thing as a design language. So yeah, I would say that one of the roots of Bay Area design was just that giving a broader expression of what a complex system might look like and how it should work.
Barry Katz 32:11
Yep.
Dan Harden 32:12
What else was it about what designers were doing, in your opinion, around that time, and even up into the 90s. And even now, that makes Silicon Valley special?
Barry Katz 32:30
I think the key thing, Dan is, in the kind of popular imagination, Silicon Valley is a whole lot of tech companies. So as you read about, you know, the war between Washington and Silicon Valley now, where Europe and Silicon Valley over issues of privacy and data, sequestering and all of that, the kind of unspoken assumptions that Silicon Valley is a vast agglomeration of high tech companies. In fact, I think it is much more accurate and meaningful to understand it as an extremely complex ecosystem. In some I know, that’s a sort of a cliche term, but it’s something like the biological sense, in which an ecosystem operates as a series of inter interdependent components, each of which influences the other. And the interest that I have. And I think you have here is how design became an integral part of that ecosystem. So when I think ecosystem, I think, sure, the tech companies Apple, Facebook, Hewlett, Packard, Lockheed, and video, and all of the others that are household names. But we also need to think about the venture capital industry that feeds money into it’s about half of the VC investment in the United States in any given quarter is invested in this little piece of real estate where we have the either good luck or misfortune to live with depending on whether you own your house or not. A legal infrastructure, so firms began to develop an expertise in an aspect of corporate law that had to do with funding and setting up startup companies. On the basis of you might have heard the phrase opium addicts, an addiction to other people’s money. So IP law protection, early stage corporate law, the universities, so we have Stanford, Berkeley, and then approved as the major research institutions, but then places like San Jose State, which is not sufficiently recognized as a factor but the mission of the state universities in California is to serve the local population, local companies and to provide educational opportunities for Local people, which is not what Berkeley or Stanford are about, right, by definition. So San Jose State and a few others, began to contribute talent into the tech community design talent as well as engineering talent. And then you know, places like CCA where I teach in art school, and half a dozen other specialized artists institutions in the region. So you’ve got the tech companies, academia, legal infrastructure, the financial infrastructure, and then the piece that was missing in all of that is design. And when Apple in particular, and then a growing number of other companies began to make serious investments into building design into their operations, hiring. This gaggle of Stanford graduates that became IDEO hiring, this agglomeration of European designers showing up at frog hiring these peculiar mix of engineers and designers at lunar, we begin to see the formation of a professional design consultancy world that became an integral piece of the silicon; and I would say, a defining piece of the Silicon Valley ecosystem. And that is, I think of inestimable importance in understanding how Silicon Valley worked. Because it’s not, it’s not simply about laboratory science or bench engineering. It’s about making products that are accessible, interesting, affordable, and exciting. And that, again, is where design has specific value to add.
Dan Harden 36:54
Why is it that the public doesn’t seem to really understand that? When you think about Silicon Valley, you think about technology, think about software, you think about invention, and innovation by companies like Facebook, Google, of course, apple, and many, many others, all these different startups. But it’s often design that is, is the vehicle, it’s carrying these messages forward, the values, the experience that is making this a wonderful, whether you’re looking at the UX of a Google product, or even products, you know, like, Oh, my gosh, almost any medical device, scientific equipment, fitness equipment, computing, you know, the list goes on and on.
Barry Katz 37:41
Yeah, we are more commonly aware of design when it fails, when it’s bad, when something doesn’t work the way you want it to, whether it’s the chair that you’re sitting on, or the microphone that you’re speaking into. But yeah, I mean, most people, including the person you’re talking to right now, as very little idea of how computer works. You know, I’ve read books about and we sort of don’t care. And I mean that in actually pretty serious way. People love to compare their phones, but more often, you know, they’re actually people will spend more time choosing the case of their mobile phone and then deciding between, you know, models. And I don’t mean that in a trivial sense, what I’m trying to get at is the idea that we are coming to understand that the technology is now pretty dependable. It’s extraordinary. I mean, I have a little Miata, okay, the Mazda sports car. The idea that, and I drove it for 18 years, and in 18 years, I repaired the I replace the radiator, that was the only significant repair I ever did on that car. And the idea some generation before that, that your sports car would not spend half of its adult life from the shop. I’m thinking so the technology, the point I’m making the technologies are very dependable now. And they’re also inscrutable. And we kind of don’t want to know what’s under the hood or behind the screen or beneath the keyboard. We want to know what it’s doing that is relevant to the task that I am now trying to perform.
Dan Harden 39:36
That’s one reason why design has become a household name is because maybe in the past, we talked about design, so much history of technology, the introduction of the technology, the absorption and the issues that we all had with technology as that became a little bit more resolved and design became more well revolutionary and revolutionary at the same time. It’s now something that we we can relate to. And therefore we talk about, because everything else is the technology is working.
Barry Katz 40:10
And it should be emphasized, no disrespect is intended toward engineers, hardware or software engineers. Quite to the contrary, if they hadn’t done such a damn good job of building reliable, efficient and ever faster, cheaper and smaller products, then we wouldn’t be focusing on this experiential level on the human level. So it’s their credit, to their credit that designers have moved into a position of increasing prominence. And this is pretty new, and it’s still happening, it is a work in progress. But, you know, when I started teaching, I would hear from my students from alumni of my courses, who went to work in tech companies, again, and again, and again, the engineers won’t listen to us, they won’t take us seriously, they won’t give us the time of day, they’ll hand us something, once all of the key decisions have been made. And you know, that phrase that you probably heard way back when make it pretty, put it in the box, and all that, yeah. And that’s just no longer really the case. There’s still a lot of uncertainty about what designers do and how they do it, and why they make the decisions they make. But I remember a conversation with Doreen Lorenzo, who was the CEO of frog after Hartmut Esslinger stepped down, in which she said, “a design strategy is now as important as a business plan.” And most companies, whether it’s because Apple hit the trillion dollar mark, or for whatever reason, most companies now recognize that designers need a seat at the table earlier on in the process, then, you know, at the end of the day, if I can use an image that really appeals to me, I had a conversation with the chief designer at Tesla, Franz von Holzhausen. And I asked him what was different about being a designer at Tesla, the chief designer, Chief Product officer, in fact, and in his previous jobs, he worked at Chrysler before that, and but what he said to me is that the typical pattern in the auto industry had been that design was a link in a chain and important link. And you know, a chain doesn’t work if one link is broken. But it was a link in a chain that connected r&d to engineering, to design style, to marketing figure out how to sell it. And what he told me was at Tesla, we are not a link and a chain, it’s more like the hub of a wheel. We are present at the beginning of any discussion about at the highest level of the product definition. And it’s really our job like the hub of a wheel, think of the spokes connecting the aeronautical engineers who are concerned about the airflow over the hood, the mechanical engineers who are working on drive train the electrical engineers that are working on the Panasonic battery pack, marketing, and it’s actually designed that is connecting all of those parts from the beginning of the the development process to the end of it. And that is something that is pretty new in the auto industry and has had an impact because of the extraordinary success of Tesla, throughout the industry. And it’s also a pattern that I think you can see in other industries as well.
Dan Harden 44:01
You know, I from as a consultant, I’ve seen this pattern evolving and taking shape over the last, especially the last 10 years, you know, where designers have are sitting right up there with, you know, the CEO, the operations, marketing, engineering, of course, I think because they realize that, because design is kind of the the binding element between all of these departments, you know, because design just infiltrates your marketing, your messaging, certainly the engineering and the production and all the way right down to supply chain management. We’re, I think the enlightened companies had figured this out. And part of that is because they realize that, that the consumer is actually making decisions based on what’s right for them. What they can identify with. How is addressing my particular problem and design has has just become, it’s the communication tool for the company to bring forth those messages to beliefs that they actually build into their products, hopefully, it’s good to hear that the car companies are coming around, they’ve been a little bit slower at this, partly because the timeframe to develop a car so it, you know, would typically go from r&d and safety concerns to engineering and then ultimately, the styling department and then tooling, it just takes a long time to
Barry Katz 45:33
five years minimum.
Dan Harden 45:34
Yeah, yeah. But when you’re designing and developing these consumer electronics, or computing products, or even scientific goods, like we do, it’s the consumption pattern. It’s very fast.
Barry Katz 45:49
Yep.
Dan Harden 45:49
So design, really, I think it has to have a seat at the table early on for the whole process to work.
Barry Katz 45:59
Which raises an interesting question that will be very relevant to you, and your line of work. And that is the relation between the internal design groups within companies, which are having growing prominence, and external consultants, such as Whipsaw. And there has been some speculation in the pages of Fast Company and a few other magazines, that the consultancies may be a victim of their own success in making the case that design is important. So companies, healthcare, automotive, consumer, electronics, food and beverage, everything, have heard the message and are building their own internal design teams.
Dan Harden 46:45
You know, I keep hearing about this. And, you know, people have asked me, is this a threat? or something, you know, to the existence of, you know, it becomes like, an existential question. I think it’s all nonsense. You know, rising tide raises all the ships, and, you know, great corporations are hiring more designers, they’re also hiring more consultants. We are seeing a lot of consulting firms, especially in the Bay Area being bought out.
Barry Katz 47:11
Yeah.
Dan Harden 47:12
And yeah, and, you know, we’re one of the remaining private ones. Sometimes these firms lose their identity or their Verve, their passion. I’m not sure what it is. What happens when you get absorbed in a big corporation like that? No. But individuals that have a vision that that want to be independent, there’s still room for for those kinds of consultants to I mean, we were showing a increase in business, not a decrease.
Barry Katz 47:43
Yeah.
Dan Harden 47:44
I just love the fact that almost every company that even the startups, some of the first people that they hire are designers.
Barry Katz 47:52
Yeah.
Dan Harden 47:53
UX ID, graphic design, identity branding. It’s so essential. And it’s if you don’t, it’s just a huge missed opportunity. Like, why wouldn’t you if it if it will more likely make you successful? Why in the world, wouldn’t you?
Barry Katz 48:11
Yeah, when I started working on my book on “Silicon Valley Design, Make It New,” I began with an approach that any responsible author would take, okay, this is a book about Silicon Valley design, defined Silicon Valley and defined design. And I couldn’t do it. You know, Silicon Valley is a state of mind that extends from Lucas Ranch, north of the Golden Gate Bridge to the Santa Cruz Mountains, and design. I mean, there are designers that work on intricate internal mechanisms of surgical robots, and their designers that work on the aspirational lifestyle experience of preteens, yeah, and everything in between. So I made the decision in that work to stop trying to define it in advance and then fill in the pieces, but rather simply look at what people are doing. And allow a definition both of the region and of the professional practice to emerge out of that, that that is intended to endorse what you just said about the consultancies versus the internal corporate groups versus the one person studio when the boutique group. It’s an extraordinary range. And the other piece of that that I’m finding breathtakingly interesting is not just the proliferation of different ways of being a designer, you use the term existential there I like it, but also an expanding perimeter around the types of problems that designers are being called upon, or demanding or right to participate in the these the famous wicked problems Which are no longer?
Dan Harden 50:02
No, that brings me, sorry to interrupt, but it brings me to the whole trend of design thinking and the fact that so much of that started in the Silicon Valley, and that will most certainly be one of the legacies of our time. Right. And, you know, I think that I do really push that forward, even though I get I think most designers like myself would even say, Well, what do you mean design thinking that to me, when I started hearing about design thinking theory, I was like, Well, wait a minute. We’ve been doing this for a long time. Yeah. So what’s your perspective on that? And is that one of the legacies of the Silicon Valley design thinking?
Barry Katz 50:42
Yeah, I think it absolutely is. Another book that I worked on with Tim Brown, who is the former CEO of IDEO is called “Changed by Design.” And it, I have to say, it really introduced the idea of design thinking to the business community, in a big way about 10 or 12 years ago. We just did a 10th anniversary edition of it. Design Thinking is widely maligned, it is widely misunderstood. And it is the fault for that lies mostly with its own practitioners, I think more than with is slander from the outside, Do tell. So if you look up design thinking, I sometimes do this little exercise in workshops of asking people to do a google image search for design thinking. And what you’ll see is this blaze of little diagrams with hexagons, or circles or recursive loops or triangles, it’s much more complicated than any electrical engineering drawing of a circuit. And it’s very unfortunate, because they tend to try to reduce it to a methodology. As I say, it’s something like Alcoholics Anonymous, it’s an 11 step process. And at the end of it, you’re clean, you know, you turn the crank, you do some prototyping, some brainstorming, some user observations, and whatever, you turn the crank five times and-
Dan Harden 52:09
Our clients that asked for it, expect something to pop out on the other end, is somebody an extrusion process, and, and boom, there’s your solution. And it will be successful. Because we use this design thinking process.
Barry Katz 52:23
Somebody at IDEO told me that a client walked in and said, I want you to give me the iPod of meat. So the way I prefer to think about design thinking is not as a methodology, but as a philosophy as a way of thinking about problems. And I will often reduce it to two pretty simple formulations. The first is that there is no problem that cannot be thought about as a design problem. And I mean that quite seriously, you know, you’re having problems with your kids, how we could design or think about this problem, because at the end of it, or behind it. There are strategic decisions being made that you might not even be aware that you’re making. And perhaps you should revisit those in a way that a designer might revisit why your product is not successful in the market, or why it’s not functioning the way everybody expected to, or why people are using it in completely different ways than was intended. So my you know, when my 90 year old mother used to wrap a dish towel around the handle of her refrigerator, because it was a lot easier for her to pull the dish towel than to get her arthritic fingers behind this beautifully designed chromium plated to our handle that some jerk at, you know, wherever thought looked cool. That’s an unintended use. And it causes it will hopefully provoke a designer into rethinking why something is not used correctly. Whatever correct means. The other piece of it if piece number one is there’s no problem that cannot be approached as a design problem.
Dan Harden 54:11
By the way to interject, I think that design because it’s you know, at the fundamental level design is about solving a problem. Yeah, and one could even say that life is basically a string of problems that need to be solved. We go about this every single day, almost every move you make you’re trying to solve a little micro problem, you might not even consider it to be a problem. But if you step back and look at things quite openly the way you just described, yeah, almost anything can be can be solved. Well, you might not get to a solution, but you can use a process to help you get closer to a solution.
Barry Katz 54:46
And it’s a big mess because there is almost if it’s a serious problem, a problem really worth spending your time on. There is not going to be one right answer to it. There will be multiple possibilities and there will be unanticipated impacts. I often demand of my students that they learn to think in an anticipatory way to solve not just the problem that’s in front of you, but solve the problem that will be created by your solution. That’s so Henry Ford solve the problem of internal combustion. I think he also should have solved the problem of traffic jams and parking tickets. What would it have looked like if he had thought beyond the problem in front of him to the problems that would be created by his solution. And right now, the stakes of a mistake are so catastrophicly high, I mean, we are changing the climate of planet Earth, think about that. The stakes are simply too high not to be thinking that way.
Dan Harden 55:44
Yeah.
Barry Katz 55:45
And that leads me if I may, to the second piece of my reformulation of design thinking, if the first pieces of it is there’s no problem, we can’t be addressed as a design problem. The second is, you don’t have to be a designer to think like one. And that does not take one bit away from the mastery, that professional designers such as yourself, have acquired in the trenches. And with the battle scars to prove it. It’s simply means that well, not simply, but it means a number of things, one of which is you as a lawyer, as a physician, as a primary school teacher can learn to practice some of those skills and learn when to hire a professional, and to work with that professional in ways that might not previously have been possible or even imaginable. So that’s really what I think is at stake in design thinking,
Dan Harden 56:45
yeah, I liked it, it has really kind of opened up the minds of a lot of, especially like marketing teams, within corporations and clients of ours. Sometimes, that it’s almost like a little too much awareness that they have acquired, where they’re like, wait a minute, we can do what you do, too. Now, I’m hearing a lot of that, like, Oh, I took a design thinking course. So we want to come in and brainstorm with you and our ideas are as good as yours.
Barry Katz 57:11
Yeah.
Dan Harden 57:12
Rarely is that the case. But you know, we’re always open. It’s, it should be a process whereby there’s lots of collaboration and respect and all that. But there’s a massive lack of knowledge, you know, in most cases. So how can we reconcile that? How can we have these, these highly aware, thoughtful clients, but still giving them the type of advice and consulting and education that they so desperately need? Well, it’s
Barry Katz 57:43
a big question, obviously. I mean, look, I brush my teeth twice a day, and I still go to the dentist, when I need to go to the dentist. And I would not think of putting a crown on a wisdom tooth by myself, or a root canal, crazy. But that does not mean that I should not take some responsibility for my own dental hygiene. And if I were a corporate executive, take some responsibility for my design hygiene. That does not mean I have to be one, it means I have to know what they do. Designers how to work with them, how to smooth out tensions among various business units functional or geographical or whatever. So that designers are working effectively with marketing teams, with engineering teams, with product teams. And all of the rest of that is part of I never really thought of using the term design hygiene before but it popped into my mind.
Dan Harden 58:48
I think it works. The key is it puts the onus back on the designer to help guide that process.
Barry Katz 58:56
Yeah, I think that’s fair to say
Dan Harden 58:58
because with as this new awareness about design thinking, I can tell you once a week, I have to tell a client but the drill down, step away from the chair. We got this.
Barry Katz 59:13
Yeah.
Dan Harden 59:17
This is a new trend, or clients suddenly know how to design their own products. Of course, they usually don’t. And that’s okay. But I like the fact that they at least are trying these soon realize because they have an interest in it. And they’re they’re now attuned to it. That they can see that sometimes the pains that we have to go through to solve a problem. This is not easy. It’s designed as a difficult profession. What you have to go through to find your solution to test it to evaluate it to to be brave enough to say you know what all the assumptions that we made in the last two or three months are wrong You have to start over. It takes guts,
Barry Katz 1:00:03
yep. time, money and all of the rest. And the way to do it is, you know, it’s not, you know, take a three day design thinking workshop, learn the methodology, and then allocate a space full of whiteboards and Sharpies to your new crop of design educated employees. Because I have so often gone back to companies that have done this, and, you know, they’re sitting around in this allocated dedicated space and scratching their heads is like, Can somebody remind us what we’re supposed to be doing? We have,
Dan Harden 1:00:39
Right. I’m interested in in it is a slog. And, but I’m really interested in how we’re going to evolve this thing called design thinking. And I like the fact that we have opened it up, the whole process has become much more collaborative, your client feels like they are part of a process now. But I think we need to, we need to flesh it out more, we need to give it more body, we need to give it more means of expression. And to it needs to be jolted out of these stereotypes about what design thinking is. One technique that I’ve been using with clients is, I’ll say, let’s talk about design seeing, and that kind of stops them in their tracks right away. And I realized that seeing is so far beyond what looking at something, it’s about observation, it’s about perception, it’s about adopting a new way of thinking and feeling about something, I find that we’re able to get to the heart of the matter even a little faster when you again, introduce this a new concept about how to solve a problem. And whatever your method is, as a designer or a team. That’s really what the objective is, is to take some time to a new level, a new place, explore. And I mean, that to me was is a real definition of innovation, where you’re going somewhere new, it’s just, you know, a new frontier, it’s hard to get to it, there’s no secret methodology, we’re all a little bit different, I think, to be able to recognize it as a team, when you were on the cusp of something. That’s when the real joy of this whole design process to me becomes just yeah, so much more exposed.
Barry Katz 1:01:54
That’s really nice. George Nelson, who is one of as you know, one of the real pioneers of American design, and is at the helm of the Herman Miller company, one of the great design driven companies in the US.
Dan Harden 1:02:41
I know it well. I worked with George,
Barry Katz 1:02:43
yeah. He wrote a book, I forgotten the exact title, but design is seeing or design as a way of seeing or how to see like a designer or something like this. And he was very much interested as he was in that period decades ago. In the visual, you know, what a designer sees when he or she walks down the street or enters into a grocery store. And I think that what you’re getting at now is that it’s more than simply the optic nerve being stimulated. But seeing possibilities, and that’s just seeing forms, it’s seeing opportunities, seeing, really seeing beyond the present. And I would like to think that companies that hire designers are hiring. sure they’re hiring a set of skills, they’re hiring a body of experience, but they’re also hiring somebody who will think differently than than they do. I think beyond the the status quo in which they’re operating, and it involves a risk. I mean, it’s a money risk, it’s a time risk.
Dan Harden 1:03:52
It’s a personal risk that comes to the heart of what consulting is all about. To be able to go to an outside source to get a different perspective, a new way of seeing something. And that oftentimes just shakes one’s reality in a way that makes them think, okay, there is a different possibility. So, absolutely moving beyond design thinking and even introducing other forms of how you go through this very difficult process of taking something from nothing to something. Let’s talk about like, what, how have designers added value in this whole Silicon Valley story? I mean, in a way, I kind of feel like the Silicon Valley, we’re living in a Renaissance period, right technology, the birth of different technologies, and in giving technology, the expression, I think one could say that’s one of the legacies of designers, you know, in the Silicon Valley. But where do you see like, Where, where have we made these biggest contributions and Is it? Yeah? Is it humanizing the technology? Is it giving it the kind of warmth and the friendliness that everyone seems to crave.
Barry Katz 1:05:09
And I remember when our mutual friend the late Stephen Holt used to tell us it’s the Renaissance, and they’re handing up the marble. Get in line.
Dan Harden 1:05:22
Yeah.
Barry Katz 1:05:25
I think that what’s happening is, again, it’s part of the historical process. And I don’t want to get too deep into into history, which is more interesting to me that it is to most other humans. But what has been happening, of course, in the world of technology pioneered in Silicon Valley, let’s face it, it’s Moore’s law in action. Products have been getting smaller and smaller and smaller. Processing speeds have become faster and faster and faster. The idea that you could be sitting with a computer on your desktop was unimaginable in 1980, that you could be holding it in your hand or resting it on your lap, in 1990, that you could be wearing on your wrist in 2000, that you could be having computer processing power worn in the form factor of a wedding ring, or the next stage, I’m pretty sure it’s going to be implantable. As a consumer product. What does all this mean? You and I are both old enough to remember when email was introduced, right? So the first generation of email, it was horrible. And it was wonderful. It was wonderful because I could communicate with my friends in Israel or China or Brazil, at any hour of the day or night to leave them, you know, to respond whenever it was convenient to them, and so on and so forth. It was horrible. Because you dialed it up on a screeching modem. It crashed. And I mean, the experience was thoroughly unpleasant. But you know, we we didn’t care because it was so new and so exciting. But then as it became increasingly pervasive, oh, one other thing, how often do we check our email in that first generation, for me, it was twice a day, once in the morning, when I got up once in the evening, before I went to bed. And now you know, according to Google Analytics, I think it’s something like 50 times a day, unless you’re in China, in which case, it’s 24 hours seamless. And when an experience is, becomes closer and closer to your physical body, because it’s so small and light, and cheap, and it’s integrated into the rhythm of your day, not when you wake up and when you go to bed. But both of those and everything in between. and maybe as in the sense of my new Google Home monitor, even while I’m sleeping, that’s monitoring my sleep patterns to help me sleep better. When something is as close to the body and as, as deeply integrated into the rhythms of your everyday life, the designed experience becomes absolutely the key defining factor. And so with all the technology in the world, the Kindle, the home monitors that we’re seeing from Amazon and Apple will be autonomous vehicle, they would not have any future whatsoever. If we didn’t have the the experience of delight of confidence of security of all of those emotional states that design can bring to a product. And I think that that is the trajectory that we are seeing coming out of Silicon Valley. And I need to emphasize obviously, there are important design centers throughout the world. We are not alone. But I don’t think we’ve seen the cluster and the ecosystem that I described earlier, anywhere else.
Dan Harden 1:09:21
And I find on this particular matter that we are at being asked to design the end users emotional state, exactly what you were just talking about. And when you realize that you you have the capability of doing that if you’re able to manipulate software factors, manipulate form factors, presenting levels of functionality and performance at just the right time in the in the experience and the consumption of that experience. And that at the end of the day is what good design does. I think it makes you more empathic. more responsible, definitely more compassionate to the end users state of mind, you start to consider things like feelings. And it’s not it’s not the old definition of design anymore where was like, you know, form and function and give it making products beautiful. I mean, sure, beauty has a lot to do with invoking these, and provoking even emotions. But it’s so much more than that now. And I do think that that is probably the lasting legacy of this time period is Renaissance that we’re in in the Bay Area. And I think that’s what Silicon Valley designers not only here, you know, but you know, in a lot of parts of the world, especially in the areas where they’re, they’re incorporating software and hardware and and development smarts has lots of great work being done in Asia, in this in this area.
Barry Katz 1:10:56
The other thing that is a piece of what you’re saying, Dan, is that I think is is relatively new is you guys, by which I mean designers have begun to acquire a degree of humility, which is somewhat unfamiliar in what has been a very ego driven kind of a macho design world. And we we used to have the stars of design and you know, we can name them. And they are Henry Dreyfus and Raymond Loewy and Teague and Bell ganz. And those those heroes and then all the way forward. And I think we are increasingly recognizing that the designer is not the last word, the last stage in the story. It’s me as the user. So I think about, you know, the iconic example of your mobile phone is handed to me by Sir Johnny, I’ve, Barry, I’ve just designed this cool, cool thing. But I’m really the one that completes the design, because as soon as I get it, I begin to configure it. And within a day, within an hour, within a minute, my phone is unlike any other phone in the world. Because of the way I’ve organized, you know, apps on the screen and settings and you know, 1000 other a million other variables. So you are handing over to me not a finished product any longer, you are handing over to me, a world of possibilities that recombined to realize, and that’s can be a little bit of a shocker. I mean, I still often hear my design students responding in a crit by saying, No, that’s not what I intended. Well, I don’t want to say I don’t care what you intend. But that’s not the whole picture anymore. You have to learn to step back from your intention, and understand that it’s not for you,
Dan Harden 1:12:58
you know, stepping back from your intention, as a designer, I think, especially working with a lot of young designers that I hire, that’s something that they learned because I don’t know why they ended design school, I think, Well, you’d compose this thing. And then it’s going to be just manufactured like that, it’s going to turn out and be on the shelves just like that. But there are so many unforeseen things and other contributors and stakeholders that come in to, to add definition to it, and hopefully, goodness, throughout the building process. But that’s not always the case. And we have all learned humility as well. And if you are awake and listening and looking around in this world, you realize that, you know, designers are part of the problem, too.
Barry Katz 1:13:47
Oh, sure.
Dan Harden 1:13:49
You know, sustainability values have taken a long, long time in this profession to take hold. We often do not consider the long chain of events and ramifications of our decisions in regards to the consumption of energy that your product will require years from now even after it is consumed. And that humility hits you pretty hard when you like, see your products in the dump. Yeah, I have I have seen products that I have designed in a dump in a dumpster in a recycling center. I’ve seen this several times. Yeah. I saw an exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art down in San Jose. And they everyone brought in all of the products that they have discarded and found in their garage and made a giant pile. And I’m looking through this pile. And I was like, Oh my god, there’s a Sun Microsystems computer that I designed in 1994.
Barry Katz 1:14:50
You should march your employees through that. Exactly. Right behind you will be me and my students.
Dan Harden 1:14:57
Yeah, I found a Motorola phone. That I designed, I found a toaster that I designed for Sunbeam. And talk about humility. You know, it really does make you think. And I coming back to the Bay Area, I think that humility has exposed itself. And one very special way. And this is the this a newer understanding about what does it really take to offer you a product that is providing some kind of value to you? Doesn’t have to be some big clunky thing with all these different features. Sometimes No, oftentimes, Now give me one or two features. That’s all I need. So you’re starting to see well, you know, several years ago, minimalism is suddenly reemerging. You know, of course, this was done in the Bauhaus A long time ago. And young designers think, Oh, this is all new as minimalism, but this general belief that reductionism is good. Yeah, is is actually helping the sustainability cause, you know, less material, more performance from fewer functions. Yeah. And I think it’s kind of it seems to me, like a lot of those values have been born here in the Bay Area, not not exclusively, for sure. But it’s definitely a value.Do you see that?
Barry Katz 1:16:27
Yeah. And as I say, this new product categories emerge. Fitness monitors is a good example, which has a deeply rooted history in the Bay Area. I am, as you may know, a long distance runner, and I went crazy. Last time, I tried to buy a watch. Fitness watch, because I wanted to watch that would do four things. It would tell me what time it is of SM running, how far I’m running, and at what pace I’m running. And, but it gave you 40 4400. You know, it says, You know, I didn’t want a heart monitor. I didn’t need it. You know, if I have a heart attack, I will know I’m having a heart attack. Thank you. I didn’t want a garage door opener. I didn’t want something that would fend off my enemies with the shriek or amaze spray or something, I want for function, impossible to find something that you know, because of the magic of programmable chips that they wouldn’t do everything for me. And so most of us are now walking around with products. My watch is an example my camera’s an example, that do so much more than I will ever even know about, much less be able to deal with. Can I share a little story with you that your listeners may find them useless. years ago, close to the beginning of my teaching career, I was teaching a design seminar that was very much it was theory and history. So the students were from every design discipline in the college. And somehow it came up a student told the story in class, she was a graphic design student. And she said that she had the habit when she came home from the grocery store of taking everything out of the original packaging and putting it into its own canisters. Her own ceramic or her own, you know, decorated tin or whatever, because she hated opening her kitchen cabinet doors and seeing this blast of advertising coming at her. So she customized. And she really liked this until she started being a graphic design student and realized every time she did this, she was discarding the work of a fellow graphic designer. And it made her feel really sad. And she said, I’m starting to think maybe I should change my major to industrial design, because at least their products have a lasting power in which all of the industrial design students shrieked in or have you ever been to a landfill? Have you ever been to a recycling center? And one guy said and I’m sort of thinking I wish I had done the architecture program instead of ID because at least their products are permeable, and the students fell on the floor in agony. And you know, I talked about the beautiful office building that they had done that was repurposed as a spa and then regionally, and then the owners did this weird thing to it and one architecture student finally concluded, I’m sort of thinking about switching to graphic design because at least they have no retention at permanent in the circle was complete. Yeah, so I can’t solve this problem. Obviously, you’re closer to being able to I am and you can’t solve the problem.
Dan Harden 1:20:03
But I think we just have to keep being human. And that is to be human is to create.
Barry Katz 1:20:12
to take greater is to take a greater degree of responsibility for what we create.
Dan Harden 1:20:18
And that’s where I was going with that is just think about what you’re doing and realize you’re not going to solve everything right now, you’re not going to be able to put the whole picture together, it’s civilization is built, you know, one brick at a time and make a contribution, make it as you know, as thoughtful as you can be responsible, think about the impact it has, on so many of the other elements of the infrastructure, and just be smart about what you’re doing.
Barry Katz 1:20:46
And it’s really impossible to do that thoroughly. I mean, this whole concept of wicked problems that began to emerge in 1972, actually, when that famous essay was written, it’s all about how the easy problems have been pretty much taken care of, we can do a hinge on a laptop, and you know, somebody will do it better than somebody else. And it will be improved over time. That that’s a pretty simple problem to to solve. If you’ve got the mechanical chops, a piece of playground equipment is more complicated. The experience of flying cross country is way more complicated and how we’re addressing the problem of pediatric obesity in the United States or unwanted teen pregnancy in West Africa, those are not problems that have a correct answer and an incorrect answer, just choose one, they are open ended, multifaceted. And you know, in a certain sense, insoluble, you can do better, or you can do worse, but you’re never going to get it right. And you just have to be prepared to admit that and think as hard as you can about what could go wrong. You know, an example that I’m thinking a lot about now, partly because there’s a new book about it is juul, the the vaping phenomenon. So these two guys, graduate students at Stanford, I am willing to say that they started out with the best of intentions, they were smokers who were thinking about how to cut their smoking addiction, and delivering the addictive nicotine in a way that was not combustible, combustible tobacco. And this is very controversial, of course, and how what may or may not have been a well intentioned master’s thesis project turned into I think, a $21 billion empire for the tobacco industry, is a pretty sordid story of, at best how good intentions can go awry. And right, turn into this highly addictive product that is hooked to generation of middle schoolers, middle labor, vaping, and, and all of that. So could they have predicted it? Should they have predicted it? I actually don’t have an easy answer to that except to say that it’s the kind of an object lesson that I think we all need to be thinking about. What will the world look like in which cars don’t have drivers? What will the world look like? In which psychiatry is performed by an intelligent system by an AI? What will the world look like…? More and more what I would say down as designers have to be thinking not just of the consequences of failure. You know, what happens if you fail, that client doesn’t come back, maybe you’ll get sued. Okay, think about the consequences of success. That’s where the real problems come in.
Dan Harden 1:24:00
That is beautiful, beautiful advice. That’s why I invited you on this podcast, Barry. And I think if everyone took just that piece of advice from you, they would they would do well. Barry, I cannot thank you enough. I really enjoyed this discussion. And I can’t wait to see you and the pandemic is almost over. Although I keep hearing it’s not quite over. But I shall see you soon, my friend.
Well, Dan, thank you for adding that word, friend. And that’s, that’s at the heart of it all. I always enjoy talking to you. I am thoroughly vaccinated, decontaminated, purified, exercised and ready to sit down with you face to face anytime you want.
Barry Katz 1:24:44
Can’t wait. Thanks again, Barry. Thanks also to your whole staff for putting this together. You bet, see ya
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This week on the PRISM podcast, Dan Harden and Mike Chapman reveal the process of creating the By Design TV series for a mainstream audience. Chapman also discusses expanding the popular California show into America by Design where Harden will judge the nation’s best innovations.
Episode Transcript
Dan Harden 0:04
Hello, and welcome to PRISM. PRISM is a design oriented podcast hosted by me Dan Harden. Like a glass prism that reveals the color hidden inside white light, this podcast will reveal the inside story behind innovation, especially the people that make it happen. My aim is to uncover each guest’s unique point of view, their insights, their methods, or their own secret motivator, perhaps, that fuels their creative genius.
Dan Harden 0:32
I am speaking with my friend Mike Chapman. Mike is the executive producer of the multi TV series by design, and director of MWC. Mike has over 30 years of experience in the TV industry as a director and producer. He has a long history of creating programming for a variety of markets, especially around Australia, New Zealand, and more recently now in the United States. Some of Mike’s credits include being a series producer and executive producer on Big Brother, series one through 10, Getaway, Holiday, Australia’s Most Amazing Homes and Passionate Players. He manages a production team from his home in Melbourne, and now is his pad in New York City.
Dan Harden 1:14
Mike, thanks so much for coming on. And where are you actually now in the world?
Mike Chapman 1:20
Oh, boy, what a first question. I’ll try and give the simple answer. I was coming back from Copenhagen, where we were doing some filming we have in our show, we’ll get into that, I guess that international spotlights so we were doing some design stories in Copenhagen and I had a connection in Paris, and then they wouldn’t let me on the plane. I was flying back to New York. And that’s where I learned that on an Australian passport because you might have noticed, I talk funny. I’m an Australian. And they won’t they won’t let me back into the US unless I go via, there’s like a workaround where you can go to Mexico for two weeks.
Dan Harden 2:10
So you’re in Cancun, I’m guessing.
Mike Chapman 2:13
Yeah, on a little island off the off the coast of Cancun. The translation is Lady Island. Probably some of your listeners might know of it. It’s a It’s a lovely little place. A population of 12,000. And it’s just a lot of Americans here, actually. And it’s really, if I if I’ve got to be quarantined somewhere, you’re right. It’s, it’s not so bad.
Dan Harden 2:39
It’s not bad. It’s like 10 o’clock in the morning, and I now see that you have a margarita in front of you. So yeah, thank you so much for doing this because I guess you’re on vacation.
Mike Chapman 2:51
Well, kinda.
Dan Harden 2:53
So Mike, so one is it’s it’s awesome. You’re doing these projects in the United States of America by design. We did California by Design, New York by Design. I was I was a part of this. And it’s been a real fun experience for me to working with you, I must say. But I think for our listeners, you know, I want to really just kind of figure out especially like, as a lifestyle documentarian in the work that you’re doing in Australia. What led you into this world of design and telling stories about design? I know this started in Australia for you. Because Yeah, Australia by design, which ran for three years, right?
Mike Chapman 3:33
Yeah, it’s still going. Is it five years actually, we started five years ago, in 2016, was series one, on on channel 10 in Australia, which is kind of like the CBS, if you will of Australia, owned by CBS, in fact. And, yes. It’s just the, the format has really surprised us actually. The idea of the show is that we’re talking about design, but it’s an accessible format. Which, if you if you want to be on Channel 10, or if you want to be on CBS, like we are in America, and you want to talk design, it’s got to be an accessible format. It’s got to have interest levels other than what you and I would like, I mean, I’d be quite happy to just do pure stories on design, and I’m sure you would watch them as one story. But a CBS audience or a channel 10 audience ain’t gonna do that because both the Australian market and the American market we’re quite immature with our design tastes, I have to say. I don’t mind talking like that. You’re an American, and I’m an Australian. I think we could talk about our own places. Compared to say, Italy, or where I just was in Denmark, where the guy digging up the road, kind of has a has a much greater understanding of design and where it fits into our world.
Dan Harden 5:15
Yeah. Alright, so, but when you were doing this on Australia, you started out on this trip, what led you in that? Like, why? Because you had other lifestyle projects. You were, I mean, the list of your credits that you were across so many different fields. But what led you into design? Were you invited by a team to talk about design and to elevate this to to television and the public?
Mike Chapman 5:37
Yeah, I was actually making one of those. HGTV style, ‘reno’ shows at the time, it was it was a show called Love Shack. I didn’t call you for that one Dan. But it was basically renovating holiday homes, that very HGTV style, it wasn’t on HGTV, but it’s the best way of describing it. Full of Jeopardy, had a couple of people that were famous for being just famous, basically, who were the front people and we renovated this place. So the architect on that show, is a bit of a character. He actually sat me down when on set one day, we were just sharing a drink in a break. He said, you know, you could do a show that’s kind of not highbrow design, like you might find on on Netflix. And the kind of show that Dan Harlan might seek out with a, you know, glass of expensive wine in hand, instead, and yet not make a show, like we’re on the set of at the moment on Love Shack, you know, mate. I think there’s something in between. And that got me thinking, you know, because design doesn’t have to be, you know, dished up to an Australian or American audience in such a moronic way, you know. Like, oh, wow, let’s, let’s love the cushions, and let’s distract them and send them off and, over a weekend, we’ll change their place. And they’ll come back and oh, well, there’ll be the big reveal. I mean, for goodness sake, I mean, that has its place, but it’s just not a design show, they kind of call them design shows, which is ridiculous.
Mike Chapman 7:36
I guess I like to think we’re making something that’s a proper Design Show, you know, a show that actually talks about what design is what its impact is on on the world around us. And yet not, you know, we’re, we have a spoonful of sugar, with the medicine that we deliver. It’s still light, it’s still still got some Jeopardy involved in it, there’s a judging process, you know, all those things are kind of 101 audience retention devices. And so we still have that in the show. But we want to bring across, we want to bring along with us, the design community, you know, to make this something special, and make a difference in people’s understanding of design.
Dan Harden 8:27
I do like how you bring in professionals to either present stories, and certainly to judge them. And that’s how we met. Because I think in your third season, you invited me down to be like a guest judge. But I think for the listeners, let’s describe your format. So what you do, you will select different stories from around, like when you were starting out in Australia, different manufacturers of products, like RODE microphones, for example. And there would be one or two products that you would then have a presenter go and interview them, like how did this come to be? And what what was the source of your innovation? What were your insights that led to even thinking about a new product like this? And then what did you go through, the trials and travails about getting something to market and then you reveal what the what the innovation is all about. So you’re interviewing the individual creators, and the presenter is pulling out this information. And then there are maybe per season, maybe 30 or 40 of these stories that are then presented in front of a team of professional designers that then talk about evaluate, analyze, and then finally rank to select a, like a winning product out of those 30 or 40.
Mike Chapman 9:53
Yeah, that’s right.
Dan Harden 9:56
Did you find it that format was working really well in Australia? And I remember distinctly having a discussion with you where I was talking to you about like, why don’t you do this in the United States. The market is so big here, there’s so many stories. That has to be 10 times larger than Australia. I didn’t say 10 times better, I said 10 times larger than Australia. So because what I saw that one year that I did, that was like three years ago, was an extraordinary level of design happening in Australia, all over Australia, all the way over to Perth. And around the country. There were really interesting innovations that in areas that I hadn’t really given a ton of thought. Uou know, there was like a shark wall that was placed, you know, 100 yards out from a beach to prevent shark attacks, which apparently are common in parts of Australia. And we’ve just never seen something like that. In the design, we’re getting here in the United States. We always have this, this, put another shrimp on that barbie thing. But sure enough, there were like two barbecues that were being reviewed in Australia, there was that little firestarter thing. And I was like, well, you guys don’t see this in United States. So what made you think that this format would work in the United States? And and why did you come here to do this?
Mike Chapman 11:21
Yeah. I think as it’s turned out, I think it’s more of an American idea than an Australian one. It’s, you know, in the past couple of years of starting it in America, it’s it’s really taken off. So yes, you came as a guest judge, we flew you to Sydney. And that was great on one of our series there. And I do remember that conversation, yes, with you, where you’re saying why why the hell do you not doing this in America? And you were, you weren’t the first person to say that to me, but you were one of the stronger influences, no doubt about it. Because you were, you know, right from, you’re the real deal. You know, you’re a designer in Silicon Valley, saying that, we’ve just flown you out, bang, and that’s your reaction. It’s like, how much more evidence do I need? And with some of the other formats, I had done that such as Love Shack and so on, I didn’t feel that they were worthy of trying to launch in America. But this one I did. I just thought we were onto something.
Dan Harden 12:37
Yeah, you know, I don’t watch very much television in the United States. But when you do turn on television in the United States, you see, there’s just so much mediocrity. And when I see, you know, these so called judging formats, and they might be judging something, you know, it’s always around food, right. And there’s a ton of creativity and food and, you know, everybody likes food, it’s a kind of a common denominator for all of us, right? So it works. But, I mean, I find the creative process, just the most exciting thing ever, right? Like, to me, there’s really nothing that can be quite as exciting. Especially, you know, when you’re doing this every day, if you still feel that palpable sense of excitement, you know, there’s something very real there. And, and yet, the public doesn’t really have an eye into this world. Unless you’re in this world of design or or if you’re an, you know, an interior designer, a fashion designer, an experimental engineer, then you have this sense of what creativity is all about. But there aren’t enough of these shows that elevate or expose this creative process. And that’s why I was thought it was it had the potential of being popular subject matter on mainstream television, if told, right. And of course, it’s all about the story. And because people don’t want it, the general public doesn’t really want to hear about the little design details or problems that we go through or some of the deep analysis that’s required when you’re doing, you know, hardcore design and engineering. And I think you have a special way of getting at the essence of what an innovation is about, especially as it relates to an individual and their individual, very specific problem. And so the kind of the encapsulating the essence of what an innovation is offering to somebody really is, I noticed when I’m working with you, either as a presenter or a judge, you’ve really tried to get to that essence, like what is this innovation really trying to do? And sometimes it’s hard, I must say, as a designer to be able to step out of my way of thinking about a design problem. And to get it down to the basics, and you, you’re good at like, just this distilling process just like what really what is it really? Like don’t talk or think like a designer just, you know, give it to me the way that maybe a consumer sees it.
Mike Chapman 15:23
I know. I think any design problem is a great start to a story. It’s got a beginning, which is the problem. And then there’s the whole working through it. And then there’s the solution. So you know, it’s got a beginning, a middle and an end. It’s just perfect for storytelling.
Dan Harden 15:45
Speaking of which, with these, these are all like micro stories, right? You take a project that may have lasted one or two years, and you try to tell this story in like, three, four minutes, three to four minutes, per story. I thought that was an absurd idea when I first started talking to you about this, and even reviewing some of these in Australia, but somehow you do get it down to like, Okay, I get it. You don’t get you don’t get the depth the struggle of of what really had to happen, you’ll need it, you know, a season a complete season to go through a real product development, right?
Mike Chapman 16:24
But then who’s gonna watch that? A handful of people like Dan Harden will love it.
Dan Harden 16:29
I know, when you were directing some of these pieces before I’ve witnessed this, and how you work. You’re not shy about jumping in and saying, I don’t care about that detail, skip it all together. I just don’t care. And that rattles some designers because it because that may be the thing that they care the most about. And yet, yes, you know, it’s the behind the scenes of product design and development that that we all want to talk about. And yet, you have to make that ultimate decision about whether or not somebody is going to be interested in that sometimes you do. You let a really cool little detail through that just really became kind of the linchpin of what made it great. And that’s sometimes hard to find, it’s sometimes even hard to get out of somebody, it’s hard to get it out of the creator even because they’ve been living it. When you’re living with a design problem for a long period of time, sometimes one or two years, you forget what inspired you two years prior, you forget what really made you just jump out of your skin when you made a sketch. And it’s like, oh, my God, there it is.
Mike Chapman 17:39
Yeah, no. And we’re always trying to find that moment. That is one of our key questions, isn’t it? What was the a-ha moment? You know, and then they maybe dribble along. It’s like, hang on? Wait, that’s not a moment. You’ve just tried to describe a year. What was the a-ha moment? What was that moment, the difference? And often, that’s a really good question to ask them because it forces them to think back in, okay. This guy wants a Hollywood answer. And then it’s distilled.
Dan Harden 18:12
You had this idea to come to the United States to bring this format to the US. You chose California. And you call it California by Design instead of Australia by Design. Why California? And what was your experience? And how was that experience different than working with Australian designers?
Mike Chapman 18:36
Like any environment, it very much influences people and I think Californians just have a way about them that’s, that’s quite similar, the most similar of the Americans to Australians. So I think when we thought, okay, where are we gonna go first in America? I think it was all those things that and also the fact that I met you and was talking to you, and you’re from California as well. It seemed like a great place to start. Not to mention real Center for Design in America, as well.
Dan Harden 19:14
If not, maybe the world I don’t I don’t really know if too many places like the Silicon Valley, especially Northern California, where so much is being produced. There’s so much creativity. I mean, it’s certainly rivals New York or Milan or Tokyo and other centers of design for sure. After doing a season in California, what was your impression?
Mike Chapman 19:41
Yeah, just so exciting, so much activity. I loved how the design community just embraced us. We’d done our research and we felt that we were special. You know, that we were doing something a niche that others weren’t quite hitting. But it was confirmed well and truly by the design community, who I mean, you guys almost behave like a, like a cause, like a cause that needs to be better known in many ways. You know, in another life back in the 1800s, I was CEO of a charity for a while. And it reminded me a little bit out of that time, you know, of being a cause. Designers and the design community want to be more known, they feel they’ve got a good story to tell. And if only it could be told the world would be better, you might connect to some of that thinking. Yes. Yeah. And I identified that as well, I think so. So it wasn’t that surprising, but it was delightful that we were so embraced by big shots like you and other designers, you know, who really could see what we were trying to do and wanted to help us.
Dan Harden 21:09
I think we’ve all been speaking on behalf of the design industry, you know, we get we are perhaps like an egotistical bunch. But you know, we are very proud of what we do. And, and yet, I think like a lot of creators and artists, I think, industrial designers, and maybe even graphic designers to a certain extent, and certainly UX designers, we all feel like we do have a really exciting story to tell. And yet there are just so few avenues to tell it. I mean, yeah, you can write blogs, and you can try to tell your stories, there’s magazines and so forth. But for the most part, mainstream media has ignored design. To this day, if you tell someone Oh, I’m an industrial designers, some people’s they’ll say, Well, does it, What does that mean to design factories? Or what exactly do you do? Once you explain that almost every material good around them that is man made has some, obviously some design and engineering thought. And once people realize, Oh, my gosh, you mean people actually do that, that you guys invent these things and make them look good and work well and make them digestible by me, the consumer? They’re fascinated. And yet, there have just been so few opportunities for designers to tell their story. So it doesn’t surprise me that by the time you came here, that there was such open arms in our community for you, and to have this platform to tell these wonderful stories.
Mike Chapman 22:41
You have the skills, the intelligence, the process, the way of thinking to change the world. So I love my new friends. You know, because as a TV producer, I’ve actually realized that, you know, I’m a designer as well. I call it producing, but it’s very much the same. How you run the show, everything down to how you fund it, how you make it, everything impacts on everything, you know. You if you do something here, that means this is going to pop up there, so you got to consider that. So it’s the same.
Dan Harden 23:17
Yeah, it is the same. I mean, design, in the broadest sense of the word. It is. It’s imagining something different, a change, and then strategizing a plan on how to make that change happen. That’s all design really is. And then you want that change to be usually you want that change to be for a better result, a good, some, you know, smarts behind it, sustainability, some betterment of some kind that brings delight, joy, support, enablement to that end user. And, indeed, that’s what you’re doing when you are crafting a story, whether it’s TV episodes, or a new product solution, or a new digital interface. That’s that’s what you’re doing.
Mike Chapman 24:08
We want to tell these great stories that need to be told and deserve to be told. And but but but but BUT we have to do it in a format that allows us to be on CBS in front of a broad audience. My argument is, that’s where the most good can be done. It’s, of course, it’s totally valid to have conferences and designers talking to designers about how they can do things, of course, of course, but I think there’s a bigger job to be done in just rising the tide a little bit on the design conversation with the general population. And this is something that’s gone on for generations in Italy, and in Denmark.
Dan Harden 24:56
It’s part of their culture.
Mike Chapman 24:57
Yeah. Do you agree with me that Americans And you’re probably scared to say about Australians, but let’s stick with Americans that you know that we kind of have a or you guys, and Australians have an immature taste when it comes to design.
Dan Harden 25:15
You know, nowadays, I’m not sure if I would completely agree with that. I think were impatient, and we consume a lot. I would love to see this change. The understanding and the awareness of design has improved dramatically in the last 20 years, thanks to companies like Apple and Nike, just about every company now that takes design so seriously, that it’s part of their corporate strategy, almost every company now employs some level of design or design thinking at least. And it’s resulted in, generally speaking in this country, a much, much higher level of design than when I was starting out as a young designer. And it’s taken longer than I would have hoped.
Dan Harden 26:04
]But I’ll tell you today, now, especially, I mean, our moment has arrived, everything that we wanted all the dreams that we aspire to, as designers, it’s happening in this country, there are very few limitations for designers, now. We are at the table with the CEO, the CTO, the CEO, we’re there. And even as a design consultant, I mean, we are brought right into the C suite, to advise direct, strategize and come up with new ideas for where a company should go. So I think the awareness is there, I think, of course, we need generally more awareness in the public. And you know, why? I think when people have a higher awareness of just generally about what good design is, I think they’re smarter about their consumption patterns, they might realize, well, do I really need this? Am I buying this for the right reason? Is it
Mike Chapman 27:04
Like is it going to end up in landfill in a couple of years?
Dan Harden 27:08
Yeah. And also, just, I think it makes when you have a higher awareness about what design is, and what good and bad design are, it allows you to make just better choices that then ultimately do turn around when you’re when you’re consuming a product or an experience, whether it’s digital or more material based. For it to provide that advantage, those benefits, you first have to be aware that the benefits are being presented to you. And then as you consume them that the final promise, the delivery of something good is, is offered to you. But without the awareness that you don’t even know what’s happening, you then happening, then you end up with a garage full of crap after 20 years of products that you really use once or twice. And that’s why I think for me being involved in the show and bringing design to the masses like this, even if it’s not that deep, you know, we don’t end this show, we don’t go into the depths of what we face as designers and engineers and inventors.
Dan Harden 28:16
Just having a part of the American narrative is helping a broader cause. And that broader cause being smarter about the things that you surround yourself with, smarter about the things that you consume, being just generally, more consciously aware of why you’re making certain decisions. And this only helps you with every aspect of your life. Even non design related, when you realize that there are people behind what is being presented to you, whether it’s an advertisement or a product, if you know a little bit about what you’re looking at, you know a little bit about design it, it makes you more informed, more educated, and it makes you a better consumer, quite frankly. So I think that’s a real benefit of your show. And I think that’s why so many designers are coming forward and saying Hey, Mike, you know, I want to be a part of this. It’s not, it’s not to the old notion of like, Oh, I want to get on television. I don’t. For me, it was never that it’s more about telling this wonderful story of design to people that really don’t know much about it.
Dan Harden 29:38
In television. I’m really curious, because when I went to Australia, and I saw your show down there, I thought everything is so nice. Everybody’s being nice to one another. And in American television, there’s always tension, you know, even Shark Tank, they’re always looking for this moment where they discovered that these little companies aren’t worth worth shit and, you know, and yet they’re trying to get a couple $100,000 out of them. But American TV always wants the tension. They want something outrageous. They want the weirdo that’s being exposed, you know? So how does your kind of filming philosophy work in America? Because it is very nice. I mean, you have some sponsors and you, you have to you are you present stories in a manner where it’s kind of all tidy and buttoned up. But is it enough juice for Americans?What do you find?
Mike Chapman 30:33
It seems to be. Here we are. And I guess CBS would be a good authority on this topic. They love the show. And so after doing California and after producing the New York version of the show, our plans have leapt forward. What we were expecting to do was a was a series two of California by Design, a series two of New York by Design. Maybe add Chicago next. That was going to be our pathway. But having talked with CBS is like no, dammit. More is more, which is very American. Let’s just jump straight to America by design.
Mike Chapman 31:20
We have plans by the way to celebrate California again and New York and to add Chicago and Florida is an interesting area. So is Texas, goodness me, Austin. I’ve learned a lot about Austin and what’s going on there. So there’s other regional shows that we will get to but at the moment, what’s in our faces, eight markets around America, America by Design, straight away. And now we’re going into series two, straight away of America by Design as well.
Dan Harden 31:56
So I think this particular podcast will be running during this season. So let’s talk briefly about about what we just saw. Like I was a judge this year. And I saw Oh, no, we reviewed how many were there? 30, 38, 40? Something like that? It was pretty big selection.
Mike Chapman 32:14
Yeah. Just over 30 projects, I think 31
Dan Harden 32:19
Okay, so what were what were some of your interesting moments throughout those did you have favorite? Do you have either a favorite product a favorite story? Any funny little annectodotes?
Mike Chapman 32:32
I guess they’re all my children. So I’m not allowed to have favorites. But between you and I Dan, I really love that ziptop for example. I love the story behind it. The woman Rebecca. They’re in Austin.
Dan Harden 32:54
I love that one too. And yeah, you’re right. She is just such an innovator.
Mike Chapman 33:01
Exactly. Everything that I love about design and throwing yourself behind, you know, believing in what you’re doing. And she’s like a serial entrepreneur. She’s got a great husband, who’s really got behind her as well, because you know, and she’s the first to say he’s my, my partner in all this, I couldn’t have done it without him. Even though it’s totally her project, but but he’s an amazing support. I just love every little piece of that story. And then the product ziptop product, just so nicely designed the way that zip works at the top, and how it’s how it’s solving a problem. I haven’t quite got to it yet, but I must order some.
Dan Harden 33:45
I like those. I would agree that was probably my favorite in the bunch. I liked that you just answered with the person behind it first, is what interested you about that story.
Mike Chapman 33:58
Absolutely.
Dan Harden 33:59
And that’s one of the things about America by Design, California by Design other by designs, you get to meet the people behind the innovation.
Dan Harden 34:06
Yeah.
Dan Harden 34:06
That, just that just exposing that and celebrating those individuals that do this work, I think is one of the greatest contributions, your production team offers.
Mike Chapman 34:19
Thank you. Yes. That’s really good to hear you say because that’s what floats my boat the most is the people stories. Yes, a product drops out of it. And that’s interesting. But yeah, the people and the passion. And that is why by the way, we also utilize designers as our presenters, our facilitators to tell these stories. You know, we could have got some fancy TV people involved, you know, an ex weather guy who’s, you know, wants to, he’s gonna say it just perfectly but no, we’re more interested in the passion. And the end the knowledge that an actual designer like you, Dan, you know, you’ve presented some of our stories in the past that, you know, I’ll take a hit on the performance not with you, Dan, you’re brilliant.
Dan Harden 35:13
I don’t know that for sure.
Mike Chapman 35:17
I’ll take a hit on the performance, I’m more interested in the passion and the knowledge of design, because you bring a lot of insight into presenting those stories.
Dan Harden 35:27
I must say it’s not a natural thing for most of us, like me, you know that have to do this. Because when you’re staring into that huge glassy black lens, and you ask for, okay, generally speak about this. And that’s hard. I mean, for an actor, they do this all the time, bam, bam, bam, it’s out. But in my case, it was just like, Oh, my God, I gotta really concentrate on this story. And I’m used to sort of being in my head as a designer and drawing, and thinking, and creating and so forth. So it’s a different medium. For me, it was a really, it was a challenge.
Mike Chapman 36:05
In that pressure pressure cooker situation you came through. I remember saying at the end, I think there was some tension as they typically is, on our shoots, there was some tension about whether we were going to make a flight or not as well.
Dan Harden 36:20
Stresses were piled up, man.
Mike Chapman 36:24
And I remember you delivered it. And then what do I say? Tv gold? Perfect.
Dan Harden 36:32
So it was nerve wracking, but in the end, fun, I’m really glad that I’ve been a part of this show.
Mike Chapman 36:39
Oh, that’s good.
Dan Harden 36:40
Yeah. And I’m hoping that people are learning from it, increasing their awareness about design, ultimately, then talking about it. And I’m really curious to see how this is going to develop how you as a director will develop and how you will evolve this show, especially after you see the results from you know, season to season. Like, yeah, do you have any big visions about where you want to take this?
Mike Chapman 37:07
Now this happened. Not so much with California by design, but New York by design, I guess, is that New York magic? I don’t know. But suddenly, we were being approached by other countries. I guess New York’s kind of like Paris or kind of like London, I’m not sure. But suddenly, a whole bunch more people noticed the show and the format. And so we’ve actually had to put on somebody that whose job is just to start managing all these opportunities. And the UAE, Italy. Canada, you know, everybody’s talking to us now. So we’re in the process while trying to make a you know, our big break, which is trying to launch America by Design series. There’s all that going all that noise going on behind us as well. It’s welcomed, no doubt about it. And I just wonder how America by Design is going to go, how many more approaches? How many more levels of interest?
Dan Harden 38:17
So Mike, I can’t thank you enough for talking to me today. It’s time for you to finish that melted Margarita.
Mike Chapman 38:26
I know. Time for a second, I feel. Yeah. It’s a real pleasure, Dan, to talk with you. I mean, you were one of our early believers. In America, well, even before America, you know, you’re you’re a very big reason why we ended up taking the step, bringing this fall back to America. You helped me believe that it was worth doing. So and that’s certainly played out. It’s absolutely been worth doing. And it feels to me that we’re onwards and upwards. And hopefully you can keep, you know, playing with us. We love you as a judge. We love your comments. I’d like to get you back out on the field. If it doesn’t freak you out too much and do and present a few more stories? Because I do enjoy working with you.
Dan Harden 39:21
Yeah, the feeling’s mutual. So let’s go create more good TV.
Dan Harden 39:27
Absolutely.
Mike Chapman 39:28
Mike, thank you very, very much. And we’ll talk soon I look forward to seeing the new season. That’s that’s playing right now. Actually.
Mike Chapman 39:37
Yes, yeah. Go to Americabydesigntv.com. That’s where you can find out where it’s playing. And also actually a tip. You can you can watch the show on Americabydesigntv.com. So yes, it’s on CBS. But what we have on our website is an extended version. So we don’t have the the problems of, you know, the restraints of a CBS format. So we let the show breathe. The stories are longer, there’s more insights from the judges. So that’s actually quite a satisfying place to to watch the show.
Dan Harden 40:16
That’s excellent. That could be more interesting or get more insight as to what what went behind these creations. I hope you put a couple of my bloopers in there.
Mike Chapman 40:27
I’m very careful to protect your image.
Dan Harden 40:35
Alright, Mike good pleasure talking to you.
Mike Chapman 40:39
You bet. Thanks.
Dan Harden 40:40
Thank you for listening to prism, follow us on whipsaw.com or your favorite streaming platform. And we’ll be back with more thought provoking episodes soon.
Unknown Speaker 40:50
PRISM is hosted by Dan Harden, Principal designer and CEO of Whipsaw, produced by Gabrielle Whelan and Isabella Glenn, mix in sound design by Erik Buell.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Dan Harden deliberates with futurist and Stuffocation Author James Wallman on what matters most in design today. They dissect a range of issues, from how the pandemic pushed us into an experience economy to how we can design more meaningful experience-driven innovations that value time above materialism.
Episode TranscriptDan Harden 0:06
Hello, and welcome to PRISM. PRISM is a design-oriented podcast hosted by me Dan Harden, like a glass prism that reveals the color hidden inside white light, this podcast will reveal the inside story behind innovation, especially the people that make it happen. My aim is to uncover each guest’s unique point of view, their insights, their methods or their own secret motivator, perhaps, that fuels their creative genius.
Dan Harden 0:34
Today, I’m talking with James Wallman. It’s such a pleasure to have you, thank you so much. You are a best-selling author, entrepreneur, futurist, keynote speaker and government advisor. That’s interesting. I’d like to hear about that. I’m gonna say government, right?
James Wallman 0:49
Yeah, I’m also a dog walker.
Dan Harden 0:50
You’re a dog walker! Why is this not the first thing on your bio?
James Wallman 0:55
It didn’t used to be my thing. But you know, and also pick up dog poo therefore. But as you know, I gave a talk yesterday. And you know, when someone introduces you, and you always hear these kind of list of things that you’ve done, and you always think, oh, wow, listen to that. That sounds good. And then you kind of have, especially, you know, since we’ve entered the kind of zoom world of working from home, you know, during this COVID time, you think, Well, actually, I’m at home, and we’re all at home during our days, trying to get through this thing.
Dan Harden 1:23
It’s so good to bring it down to a human level. Isn’t that?
James Wallman 1:26
Yeah, yeah, that’s why. But I do do those other things as well. That’s true.
Dan Harden 1:30
Okay. You have done some significant things, that’s why we wanted you on this program. You’ve also written two best selling books about the experience economy,
James Wallman 1:39
Yes
Dan Harden 1:40
Stuffocation, which I read, when I met you; and Time And How To Spend It, which the Financial Times named one of the must read books of 2019. You also run this strategy, innovation and futures consultancy, The Future is Here. It’ll be interesting talk about that. And your opinions have appeared in so many different places, New York Times, Financial Times, The Economist, Wired etc. And let’s see what else here. You advise the British government and your role as sector specialists for the experience economy. There’s a lot of interesting stuff to unpack here with you.
Dan Harden 2:18
And the reason I invited you is the things that you think about are things that I think industrial designers like me and the people that will be listening to this should hear about, you know, it’s like, why are we designing? What is the context of our work? What is the definition of prosperity? You know, ever since the founding of industrial design, over 100 years ago, its primary business objective has been to sell more product, because the corporate rationale was that if you made your products better looking back, then they would be more marketable. And they were, you know, those early industrial designers, they proved that, and their design help to catapult these companies like General Electric, and John Deere, and IBM, and all these amazing companies that they, you know, became. But since then, design has certainly evolved into a much more sophisticated and multi dimensional professional that considers not only product appearance, but the entire user experience. Where we’re really just trying to optimize, you know, starting with the initial brand exposure all the way to product disposal. So nowadays, almost every aspect of the product is researched and tailor made for a desired market effect.
Dan Harden 3:39
But one key and I’m coming to your major question here, one key factor remains the same. The core purpose of especially industrial design is to sell more product and fuel prosperity. Specifically, its purpose is to fuel prosperity as defined by our capitalist model, which means making more money. And it’s all about profit, cost reduction, shareholder value, and going in number one, right? But what about what about people? You know, what if? What about experience design? And how can we evolve this model of prosperity to be more of a humanistic nature? What about wellbeing? What about happiness? What about the things that you write in your book? What are your opinions about this? And then even, maybe, maybe insert some of your more recent thoughts because I think in regards to what we now consider prosperity, I think after the pandemic, maybe we would all question, What does prosperity mean to me? What do you think about these things?
Dan Harden 4:48
I think a lot about these things. I think that is an incredible, an incredibly good, rich question. I feel like I feel like you set me up here to kind of, I could riff from what you’ve just said for probably three to four hours.
Dan Harden 5:03
I love it.
James Wallman 5:06
Nobody wants to listen for that long and that’s, that’s fair. But it’s such a it’s such a rich point that you’ve been I’ve been thinking about. In fact, I was really looking at. I don’t know here, you’re probably a fan of the Atlantic.
Dan Harden 5:17
Of course
James Wallman 5:18
In 1927, you may or may not know this, there was a wonderful essay published by a guy called Earnest Elmo Calkins called Beauty the New Business Tool. Have you come across that is that? Is that like a famous piece that people know about? Because it’s such an important, important turning point is exactly what you were talking about there, in terms of what first came out. So actually you can see it in cars as much as anything. So first of all, you have, you know, the Industrial Revolution produces these, Henry Ford produces these cars. And he makes that crazy statement about how once somebody has one of his cars, they should never need to buy another one, I can’t remember they’ve about verbatim quote or something like that. Okay. And that seems to him like a good idea because he keeps selling cars. And then along comes Alfred Sloan, and others like Alfred Sloan, in particular, General Motors, who does something incredibly simple, he sort of changes a few details and some colors. By season, he borrows an idea which originated back with Louis the 14th, actually, in the time of Louis the 14th, in the luxury industry, with the idea of the seasons, which is where we will borrow these ideas from. Right, so you can go way back to Louis the 14th for this, but the people that really got it right. They were of course, the Americans, and you can see this in the car thing.
James Wallman 6:35
And so in the 1920s, you had this wonderful situation where the problems of making stuff that was good, had sorted now. I mean, of course, we’ve evolved since then. But you know, there were good toasters, there were washing machines that were cars that worked. But in order to, what you needed to do is to get people to buy more and to keep buying. And there was a debate at the time about whether this was the problem of overproduction, or as it also was seen as under consumption. So this was the real moment.
James Wallman 7:05
The 1920s was the flex point, the shift from an industrial economy to a consumer economy. And for the first time ever, we saw of rising standards of living, that have been sustained over pretty much a century, which is incredible. And of course, the Americans did it first. And then the Brits, the other countries copied it, because what this led to was this consumer driven materialistic economy where people would buy more stuff than they need. And of course, consumer engineering was both in terms of not changing the the function of the product but is the aesthetic of the product, exactly as you’re talking about there in terms of industrial design, or one at one element of it, but also consumer engineering in terms of credit.
James Wallman 7:53
Well, the thing is, if people don’t have money to buy a car, they won’t buy a car. But if you loan them the money to buy a car, if you give them credit card, they will go and buy that car, and they will buy these houses, etc. And what that does is it fuels the economy. And what that’s led to is an incredible, unprecedented rise in standards of living that humans didn’t have till then. It’s really easy.
James Wallman 8:18
You know, lots of these millennials today. Now I’m sounding old, but will really kind of be cross about what’s happened, you know, obviously, what’s going on the environment is terrible. We have, we have real problems. But they forget that until, from the point of the 1920s, really, that the masses for the first time, got a chance to have really good standards of living.
James Wallman 8:39
I’ve given talks where I stood up at the beginning and said, who’s had a shower here today? Yeah, and of course, you know, yeah, you have a few people that go, you can see them that maybe this in the UK that go a bit red, but generally everyone laughs and then I say, okay. Imagine, think about Queen Victoria for a moment. Now, you know, geographically the British Empire was the most successful ever. I think you covered about 20 something percent of the world’s mass. You could you could go around the world pretty much without leaving. Was it Queen Victoria? Yeah, Queen Victoria. Yeah, without leaving Queen Victoria’s land. There’s a very wealthy woman and I say to people, what do you think her shower was like? Okay, do you think she had a good shower? Now think about the shower that you used this morning? Who’s shower do you think was better now? Now not in terms , of course, she probably had some pretty amazing mosaics, right? In her shower. But think about the ability to choose the water temperature and the water pressure that you had. Chances are, Dan, you had a better shower this morning than Queen Victoria had for the whole of her life.
Dan Harden 9:39
Is all, everything you just talked about, you know, the rise of consumerism and product and materiality and conveniences. Yes, they make our life. We feel better, perhaps in the moment. Do you think it makes us happier? All this consumption and stuff and materiality and even design? I mean, I think it does. It’s so hard for me to like, place myself back in like 1880. Would I be as happy as I am now in 1880? Or how much of what we have done with after the industrial revolution has contributed to my happiness?
James Wallman 10:15
Yeah. Hey, I’d say it’s a brilliant philosophical question. The thing is living that, you know, we go back to Aristotle, for the idea of living the unconsidered life is not worth living, and consideration is design. So whether you’re thinking about the design in the design is choices, right? So whether it’s the design of a car design of a home design of a life, design of how you spend your time, this is designed design is about choices, I think. So therefore, yeah, there’s loads of stuff that’s come with materialistic consumerism and the Industrial Revolution, which I think has been terrible for us. But one of the things that’s come with it is the ability to have health care, which means that we live longer lives. So we’ve got a lot of, we’ve got a lot more time to be miserable in, at which point, we can make some choices. And I think that too many people have got caught up in the bad sides.
James Wallman 11:05
There’s a wonderful book by a guy called, oh, forgive my memory for a moment. But the book is called The High Price of Materialism. And he’s at Knox University, it’s a brilliant book. And the problem with being materialistic is really bad for your well being. If you think you’re going to find happiness in stuff outside of you. And this is one of the problems that came with materialistic consumerism was that we ended up thinking that if you get the girl the guy, the car, we’ll say the job right? There was a there was an incredible shift in the 20th century from ideas that were internal, and thinking that happiness was about being honest. And, you know, having integrity to being much more the culture of personality rather than character. So everything is about outside and you’ll find happiness outside of you. And that is, has been really negative. So and that’s when my work comes in.
James Wallman 12:01
I refer to Earnest Elmo Calkins piece, partly because I think that in the same way that that essay of his, Beauty is the New Design Tool, I want to write a piece of the Atlantic called Experience, the New Design Tool, The New Business Tool, forgive me. Because I think that we’re at a point today where products are good, services are good. If you go with the concepts in the book, The Experience Economy, about the progression of economic value. Of how we’ve risen from agrarian to industrial to service, and now to experience economy. All those things that have come before have become commoditized. And the great example for this reason, and this is borrowing from Joe Pine, and Jim Gilmore, who wrote this book is coffee. If you think about the value of coffee beans. They’re not worth so much, right? If you think about the service, industrial goods, so you think about buying. You guys have Nescafe?
Dan Harden 12:58
Yes.
James Wallman 12:59
Right. Okay. So you know, if you buy Nescafe, you know, instant coffee from your local store, that’s I don’t know what that costs about $4 or something. But per cup, it’s probably like 25 cents a cup. And then you get a coffee, service good in a local cafe, maybe that’s where that’s going to be like 3, $4 per cup, right? And then you go to Starbucks, when you go to you go to Starbucks, it’s probably gonna be what, five $6 for a venti, latte, no real milk, you know, some sort of special thing, you can spend six $7 on a coffer. Or you go to a speciality place and pay even more as well, right. So you can see each level here, what’s happened is the previous incarnation of the economy, the the previous thing, in terms of the progression of economic value has less and less value, and it’s become commoditized.
Dan Harden 13:54
Sure
James Wallman 13:54
And so if, as a designer, if as a business, you want to stand out, if you want to connect with customers, and where customers are seeing value, and you want to move beyond being commoditized. So you can charge a premium to be successful, you need to think about the next level here. So you can’t make money from commodities. It’s hard to make money from products, it’s hard to make money from services, and really where you need to play where you’ll make creating the greatest amount of value and therefore putting yourself in a position to capture the most value is through the experience.
Dan Harden 14:29
Absolutely. I think even what we’re doing right now, you know, I have a lot of hardware around me, these commoditized products, they’re good ones. But what we’re doing now is something far more than that. It’s the services and the software. It’s enabling us to communicate that we are the way that we are. This is the experience economy happening right now. What we’re doing right now.
James Wallman 14:51
Yeah, I saw this in China actually statistic and it said that something like 93% of people there said that it was a choice between their iPhone or Wechat. They ditched the iPhone.
Dan Harden 15:02
Yeah. Ironically, there’s a parallel drive happening because there’s still this insatiable desire to consume amazing design, right? We’re seeing this everywhere. design has become commoditized. Yes. But more people appreciate it. More people see it, they want that identity, they want the brand association. But what I’m seeing is this insatiable drive is creating this disposable economy, of course. People are consuming product, the way that they watch TikTok, it’s so fast. You know, people will buy something and look at my cool new headphones. And, and yet, it becomes a fad. And they might put it down after a month. And it’s, it’s, it’s gone. They’re on to the next thing. So how do we reconcile this dichotomy of Yes, we understand the experience economy one up, but we also want more hardware, there’s a lot of want, isn’t there in society today?
James Wallman 16:05
Well that’s funny. I mean, again, this comes back to the structure of the design. And I think it was Victor Lablow, who wrote fantastically on this in the 1950s. And at the heart of the consumer project is consumer dissatisfaction. Somebody has to think what they have isn’t as good as the next thing that comes along. And I’m not anti that because that’s, that’s also called progress. And the fact that so many people not just have this insatiable desire to have better things, but that it is available to them that it’s possible to them. And this just wasn’t possible for our ancestors in the masses. But I’m not going to fully agree with you that this insatiable drive exists for more and more products. And it is about the brands because take these headphones that you can see I’m wearing here, these are their Sony’s ones, and I’ve got them in New York when I was there just before the pandemic, and they are awesome. I did some research. But my brother did some research, he got a pair by it wasn’t Sony, it was some other firm. But you know, they’re the great noise cancelling headphones, they work, they do a really good job. Of course, what happens here, you know, somebody figures out a way to do this, like Tesla, for example of how to do, you know, electric cars, and it’s amazing, and you get that innovator, and then someone else figures out how to do it too. And then it becomes not quite commoditize yet, but that will happen.
James Wallman 17:26
My work as a trend forecast I’ve been doing since 2004 is understanding how things change through our societies. And this is data that I may have told you this when we were drunk in Vegas that time. So stop me here if this is too much. But the way this works, and this is based on work originally by a sociologist at the University of Iowa in 1962. And it’s something called the Diffusion of Innovations. It was originally the back end of his PhD thesis, but it became this book. And this observes how ideas spread through any community and it works. It works everywhere. It’s also people call it the Technology Adoption Curve. Nowadays, I’ve seen it called that. But it’s all borrowed from Everett Rogers, the sociologist to figure this out, it basically works in a way that you’ve seen. It’s it’s this smooth S curve of adoption, you get the innovators who try something first, early adopters, early majority, late majority. And then the laggards the ones who you know, the people that still have landline phones.
Dan Harden 18:24
Right, right
James Wallman 18:25
Actually. Yeah, my mom still has on but not many people have them anymore.
Dan Harden 18:29
Yeah, you’re almost extinct. Yeah, yeah. Right. Or the classic adoption curve, that we’re all, especially as designers are all familiar with that. That we try to extend lengthen and elevate that curve. We try to control that curve, that adoption curve. But we’re not very good at it. I would argue.
James Wallman 18:53
When you say control it surely as a designer, the idea is to push it steep as possible to get as many people as buy your product. Yeah, okay, fine. We, you know, you’re you’re an expert.
Dan Harden 19:03
For a more timeless experience. And we really seek that. The opposing force, of course, is technology because even those headphones that you’re wearing now, as good as they are, and I think you were trying to convince me that that no, I’m that is a good product that is lasting, and I am satisfied, and I’m gonna stick with it. But I’m gonna guess it in a year or something better is gonna come along and you’re gonna want that. So the technology is working against that curve. So maybe it’s okay to have cyclical adoption curves where you have a wonderful experience with a product and then you have another one after that.
James Wallman 19:43
Just I know that this is for a podcast, but you can see me on this screen. Can you see how old this iPhone is?
Dan Harden 19:50
Oh my gosh, you actually have a real button on the bottom.
James Wallman 19:54
It does what I needed to do. And I also don’t have email on my phone. So I make it I don’t have email on my phone. I don’t have Twitter on my phone, because I’ve done the research on what you should do in order to be happy. And this is partly this thing about to about this, this move. I’m not talking about it yet. But this move I believe from materialism to experiential ism is to do with the fact that we’ve reached it. It’s not anti materialism, it’s more kind of Super. And I mean, super with the Latin term on top of materialism.
James Wallman 20:22
Now we have enough things. What we should look for. The smart person who’s just stopped for a moment. And let’s use, Ferris Bueller as the great philosopher. Life knows pretty fast, you should stop and look around him once a while otherwise, you’re gonna miss it. What you want out of life is not to die as the person with the most toys in the graveyard.
James Wallman 20:46
Winning nowadays, I think is changing. You want to get the most out of the existence you have you want to live a long and healthful life. Look at look at the push towards healthiness. I mean, in the old days, you live a certain time you do your job, you get your gold watch, and you’d have a short retirement and die. And that’s why all those systems made sense. But now people are living longer. And we’re much more conscious of of what life is going to be like when we’re in our 70s and 80s in our 90s. Because obviously, there’s just been a knock to our life expectancy expectancy because of this pandemic.
James Wallman 21:22
But I think it’s not just about gathering things, but thinking, Okay, I’ve got this four score years and 10, and hopefully, you know, more kind of thing. But I want to live a healthy, fulfilling life, and I want to have this sense of life satisfaction. And within a consensus, I think a consumer society gives us that opportunity. We’re lucky one of the magical things is spare money spent on healthcare.
Dan Harden 21:48
But how do you retool our description of what gain in one’s life means, you know. It just seems like society is on this, this drive to consume all the time. And I agree with you, we don’t need all that stuff, you really don’t when you think about it. I even have to force myself at the end of the day, you’re probably around eight o’clock at night, I just decided I’m not going to look at my phone anymore. I will listen to music, play the guitar, do some art. And I feel this pull. You know, I feel the pull that I really should be in contact or what if I miss this? And I have to just tell myself? No, you don’t need to do that. But what if you know, I think there are a lot of people that maybe don’t realize that they have these choices, and are we conditioned? Are we conditioned as as people to, to over consume? I think I think we are. And how do we deal with that?
James Wallman 22:48
That’s a superb question. I think we are conditioned to consume. The problem is no one tells us how to stop because that’s what the system is based around. And that’s the reason for the success of our system. And I think this is why this book Time and How to Spend it has had some resonance and caught on with some people. The FT liked it because one of the things that it looks at is that we’ve taught to consume, but we’re not taught how to spend our time. Everyone want everyone wants to learn the skills of production. But you know, we want to get an MBA, you want to learn how to do social media, you want to learn how to code, but no one wants to learn the skills of consumption of how to manage your time. It’s interesting that you have that pulled down as someone who’s really successful when you talk about listening to music. I’m guessing you’ve got a record player, you got record player or no?
James Wallman 23:34
I do yes. Ah, nice. And the joy, right?
Dan Harden 23:38
The crackle, the pops. Yeah. Listening to some old albums. You know from when I was 16.
James Wallman 23:47
My kids just got into the Fresh Prince of Bel Air or my daughter, she’s just about to turn 10. And I’m like, you know, I’ve got a record of that guy’s, before he was on the TV. She is like super impressed. Now what we need to do is not just think about the skills of production, but the skills of consumption, the skills of living. A friend of mine, a guy called Brian Hill is at Brigham Young University in I guess it’s in Salt Lake City, but it’s in Utah. And his is the most popular class. He has, like 700 people come to his class, and he’s an experienced design professor. And he takes the learnings from how to design experiences and translate that for people into so this is what you should do with how you spend your time. And I’m nudging him actually, I think he’s gonna write a book, which is great news. And that’s what I did with Time and How to Spend it.
James Wallman 24:40
I talked to people much smarter than me at places like BYU and Stanford and MIT and LSE in London and Oxford and Cambridge, in Tokyo. And I took their ideas and I sort of formed it into something simple that people can use to think about how they spend their time. And the same structure, Dan, I’m sure I’ve pitched this too many times. So forgive me, but can be used for any designer who’s designing somebody’s time when you think about designing experience. Your design is quite responsibility because you’re designing, when you design experience, you’re designing somebody’s time my first book Stuffocation, looked at how should you spend on how should we spend our money? And the answer was, spend less on stuff, spend more on experiences, it will make you happier. And the follow up was a was a response to the question that people would say to me, this is great James. Spend on experiences. Great. So what kind of experiences should I choose? I didn’t know the answer. And the answer, when you think about it is okay these are the experiences you should choose, which is really saying, this is how you should spend your time. And if you think of the currency of the first book, Stuffocation was money, how you spend your money, stuff, or experiences, the currency of experiences, yes, it’s money. Yes, if you fly to Vegas for the weekend, if you you know, go to Hawaii, if you I don’t know, you know, go to an amazing restaurant, or you go to a theme park or whatever you do with your time. But the most important thing you’re spending his time because you can go get more money, you can get a higher paid job and getting other clients. And you can stretch your time a little bit. If you restrict the calories, if you go jogging, if you do weight training, you know, these things will make you live a little bit longer. But you’re going to die. And you won’t you can’t buy another week very much. But you can get more money. So when you think about your experiences, you really ought to make the right decisions. Because I’m borrowing from the American writer Annie Dillard, how we spend our days is, she says, of course, how we spend our days is how we spend our lives. And so from a personal point of view, knowing how to spend your time, if you don’t know how to do that you’re a full. From a designer’s point of view, if you’re designing sometyhing to suck time. If you’re designing an experience, and that could be EX for employee experience, it could be a product because a product will come with the time you spend with it. It could be the experience at a theme park, it could be the experience in a restaurant, in a in an airport, it could be in a retail store, in a mall, wherever. That’s one a hell of a responsibility actually.
Dan Harden 24:40
You bet.
James Wallman 24:40
Especially the more successful you are, the more people you reach, the more that your product scales, you have a responsibility to those people, I think. But you have an opportunity, you can help them live a better life. Or you can waste their time and drain it away in a negative way. And then you can wake up the next day thinking I sell cigarettes, or I do something that’s good for people.
Dan Harden 27:33
Do you have advice for designers on on how they can absolutely make sure that they are imbuing these qualities of time in their solution? In other words, should designers build in affordances in a design that make people aware that they are consuming their time on something of value? Or should a product have more of an ambient presence so that you can think more about just the general experience and the product? The thing, the materiality, it’s just there. I wrote something called the Disappearing Act of Good Design. Because sometimes, you know, like, well, I’m sitting on an Aeron chair, when I look at the chair, it’s a very beautiful thing, right? Well, it’s not beautiful. I don’t think it’s beautiful. But it there’s a function.
James Wallman 28:27
Functionally it’s amazing.
Dan Harden 28:28
Yeah, it is. But when I’m using it, I’m not thinking about it, because it’s supporting me, and it’s doing its job. But when I step away from it, I look at it, then I start to appreciate it for what it is. But during the consumption, it’s ambient. So that’s related to my question. So how should designers design in this element of time, in your opinion. Because we all need to be a little bit more consciously aware, especially when I see kids like on video games, now there’s something that’s design presenting something to them. They’re enjoying it, they’re engrossed in it. But how does that apply to more everyday consumer products?
James Wallman 29:14
Such a deep and interesting question, I want to come back to what you’re saying about affordances. And whether a product is good or bad for you, I’m going to wander a little bit, if you don’t mind. First, though, is the difference between a service and there’s a distinction between a service and an experience as an economic offering, but also as a thing. And what I mean by that is in terms of, there are certain things that should be seamless and get out of your way. Like booking an airline ticket, like going through an airport, or you know, if you’re flying commercial rather than flying private, right? You want it to be as smooth and you don’t want to notice it. Or managing your taxes. Guy on the call yesterday from Sweden, but a British guy, actually. Brilliant UX designer. You come across some guy called Joe McLeod. He’s written this wonderful cool stuff on engineering about the design of the endings of things. Super interesting.
Dan Harden 30:05
Yes. I’ve heard of him.
James Wallman 30:07
Okay. He was saying that so taxes. I don’t know how painful taxes are for you in the in the US, but taxes in the UK are a real pain, right?
Dan Harden 30:17
I can guarantee you there. They’re more painful here.
James Wallman 30:20
Okay. So you know, there are companies that have come in to try and make it easier for us because we all have our, you know, yeah, we have accountants to help us, etc. But apparently, in Sweden, it’s a joyful experience. I don’t even understand what that means yet, okay, I’ll be absolutely honest. But we get to investigate it. And one of my writers is going to speak to him, we’re going to get a piece together on this, although he’s a great writer, too. That said, of course, in during the pandemic, because we had the NHS, I feel very happy to pay my taxes, because it kept us all alive, lovely people.
Dan Harden 30:54
Paying taxes can be joyful, that gives me hope that many things in this world can be solved.
James Wallman 31:01
And that’s where great design count. And it’s a really good example, you know, I think good design is really good design, you often don’t notice it, because it’s so damn good. Right? As you say, you mentioned your chair, you just don’t don’t, I mean, that’s the point of that chair.
James Wallman 31:14
But then an experience is different in that you should notice it because a service should be intangible, and seamless and simple. But experience. Now there’s a difference between every day. But you know, big experiences should be noticeable because they should be memorable, meaningful and possibly transformational. So there are different moments in the journey of a person might have with a product or with a service or with an experience that has different. And I’m borrowing it from a guy called Mike Lai, who is run something called Tango, Tango, UX or something. I should know that in Shanghai, but he’s like an American Chinese guy. And he was talking about the journey of any kind of experience through something and there are different moments where you want it to be perfectly smooth or really good service, and you want the product to work. And there are other moments where you need it to be a really amazing experience that is meaningful for you.
Dan Harden 32:15
That’s an interesting point. In some ways I want I want my service to be minimal. And my experience to be maximal.
James Wallman 32:23
Yeah, okay, thank you, I’ll borrow that.
Dan Harden 32:27
But I don’t even know if maximal was a word.
James Wallman 32:30
Oh, no it is. Yeah, yeah. We, you know, we talked about omega Mart. Omega Mart, the new thing from Weow Wolf that’s just opened in Vegas. And those guys come from Santa Fe. And they talk about maximalism and being maximalist because they want their stuff to be noticed in a world that has been homogenized. A world that’s been commoditized. And but everyone’s like, artists be minimal, which is all about exactly what you said. Maximum. Welcome back. Man. maximalism in the right place.
Dan Harden 32:59
Yeah, but the service what I mean by service thing minimal is, you know, something like Amazon, for example, comes to mind, you know, five years ago, when you bought something on Amazon’s Oh my God, I gotta get my credit card out. And though they didn’t remember me from the last time dot dot dot. Now I just load things in my cart, and I press buy now, and it’s all automated. Right? That’s a service that works well, for me. Then even receiving it lands on my porch. It’s minimal.
James Wallman 33:28
That’s a great example of a service. I would describe that as a service, not an experience. Would you mind if I come back to that affordances point you’re asking them? It’s very interesting, I think, from the point of view of the designer, is, you know, the starting point is the end of what’s the impact this is going to have on a person’s existence and their time. And I’m going to borrow here from a guy called Michael Brown, Gardner Brown, who’s the guy who came up with the concept of the circle to circle and the circular economy. Michael Brown Gaught the chemist. And I remember talking, we were both giving talks at some conference in Belgium or Luxembourg or something, he talks about how everyone talks about the idea of reducing their carbon footprint, reducing their footprint. And he said, let’s just flip that around, why not increase your footprint, but have a positive footprint instead? So instead of thinking about your products, let’s say I mean, you know, you can think about what Tristan Harris has done here in terms of technology. And, you know, the ethical point of view that lots of these things are designed to keep us on our phone and you know, they talk about TOD, time on device, which is obviously where they can make money and this is what’s happening in Vegas with the slot machines, etc. And that’s what these things have become their skinner boxes, of course for people, right, they’re designed to keep us there again and again and again. And of course, when you’re doing that, you know that you have a negative Human footprint, you’re having a negative footprint on that person’s existence. So if you look at the product you’re making and you recognize that it has that you have to maybe look at yourself in the mirror and think okay, am I basically a tobacco seller? Am I one of these people and can I go to bed and I feel okay, that’s what I’m doing to people in which case you go ahead. You know, mine the planet, destroy the place and see if you can look your children in the face and be happy with what you do. Or, maybe if you recognize that this is fun, but only so much fun. Let’s take alcohol is a great example. Right? There’s a difference use and abuse. It’s exactly the same technology, the addiction stuff, if you look at Adam Outers, you know, Adam Outers of NYU, with it, fantastic. He’s work he’s done most recent book Irresistible, and he compares addiction to devices exactly like addiction to drugs like alcohol. You know, having a drink is great. Using alcohol is fantastic. There’s data that shows that a bit of alcohol makes you happy. Who doesn’t love a beer on a Friday afternoon. Who doesn’t enjoy that first glass of champagne or, you know, or mojito on a beach or whatever. But there is a point of diminishing returns, you know, it’s go back to Jeremy Bentham, when he talks about his first cup of coffee in the morning gave him this much pleasure. And then the next less pleasure, etc. It’s the same with so many things, right? So if your product. If the diminishing returns kicks in soon, and it ends up being really negative for a person. Gambling, drinking, maybe you know certain games on your phone or whatever, maybe the responsible thing to do is go Okay, fine. Let’s try and figure out a way to make money. Because this is addictive and well done to us ensure these people have a good time, but do it in a way that supports them to like. You know, let’s drink some beer and some champagne. But let’s not do it for taste and taste fine, because that’s bad for us. And then if you flip that around, so instead of being concerned that your product or service or whatever thing you produce, has a has the potential to have a negative human footprint, if it has a positive human footprint. Let’s take running as a great example. Let’s take the, you know the Spartan Race or something like this, if you know it’s got a positive for people, go for it. Get them hooked. Think about sports, sports is fantastic. Whether people are playing sports or watching sports, the positives that are associated with sport. Why not turn those people into sports addicts? They’re called fans, which fans is another word for consumers. But it’s a word for consumers who love it so much. They keep coming back, you know?
Dan Harden 37:47
Yeah, I love the idea of building in these mechanisms within a product solution, a design solution where it can be responsive. So if there is a waning of the experience, if the experience is falling off, if that third cup of coffee isn’t doing it for you anymore, you know, as an analogy to a product to have something in that product, and some software does this, where the where the product begins to adjust itself for a changing condition. There’s something interesting there.
James Wallman 38:21
That’s so awesome. Are you designing something like that at the moment? Is that something you’re working on? Or is it just I love it?
Dan Harden 38:28
No, it’s just more of a thought picking up on what you just said. And certainly in software, you know, we tried to do that, you know, good, good UX design does that automatically. But in product, it’s harder to do, because so many things are, you know, these tangible, material requirements and functionalities, you know, it’s like you can’t expect your drill to change. And for the contractor that has carpal tunnel syndrome.
Dan Harden 38:59
I also want to come back to this thing you said, about the starting point is the end. And I think more industrial designers need to think about that. First of all, as an industrial designer, you are automatically a futurist, because you’re trying to do is think about, okay, I’m drawing something now I’m CADing something now. But what you need to do is project out into the future, and place your product in the hands and minds of that end user. And will it have the desired effect a year from now or two or five years from now when this finally hits the market? That I think it should have now when you’re designing it? And too many designers are designing for the now like they make themselves feel good. They sometimes even feed their ego by creating some something that is satisfying to them. Without thinking about that endpoint. That endpoint is so far in the future sometimes, and the future keeps changing. By the time your design hits the market, it might be irrelevant. It might be like, Oh my gosh. And some designers are often surprised, like, Well, I didn’t expect it to be received like that. And it could be either negative or positive. You know, sometimes you just get it right by luck. But the starting point, being the end, there’s something there’s something really fascinating there.
James Wallman 40:22
As a trend forecaster and futurist this is the moment I try and pitch my services. Well telling the future, to figure out what’s going to happen is, of course, it’s the great unknown. There are things you can do. You know, if you think about Schumpeter, the idea of destroying, you know, creative destruction, or you think about the magic of the marketplace means that all sorts of people create all sorts of things, and some of those things flop and fail terribly, and some of them fly and take off. And, and who knew and, you know, it’s not when something’s created, when someone’s created a business model around it that makes it work, you know, innovation is, you know, I guess it gets taught nowadays, and people get it, it’s not just having a great idea. It’s everything that comes with it. And you know, sometimes people just miss that point so badly. You think about flight is a wonderful example. It wasn’t until 1903 that flying literally took off. It was the 80s that has started to reach the masses. You know, it took a long time to affect war, you know. First of all, but wasn’t particularly impacted by flying. But of course, the Second World War was crucially around flying. So, I mean, when I try and advise people on doing this, so the way that the way that I work in terms of thinking about what the future is going to look like, it’s using this diffusion of innovations. So it’s looking at what the actually the structure that I use, it’s about the seed in the soil. And the seed is the innovations that I see happening around and the soil is the macro environmental factors that exist. And I mentioned diffusion of innovations, I base my work around Everett Rogers his work, but also using what the RAND Corporation came up with in the 60s and stuff that I’ve added to this over time. But one of the things that’s really interesting, I think is here is that if you look at Everett Rogers would look at five different things to figure out if a innovation was likely to take off.
James Wallman 42:22
And you can remember there’s because BECOS, and the B is for is it better? And better, just to be really clear, is a really moot point. Better could be functionally better, it could be economically better. You need to understand the target market very well.
James Wallman 42:41
The E though, is it easy to understand? Because things that are complex, just throw people overseas. Is it compatible with how we do things now? So you can think about the ideas that people have for new versions of transport back in the 80s, there was something in the UK called the Sinclair c five, which is this sort of like cross between us a go kart and a car, and it made all sorts of sense for the city. But it was so far removed from what people thought about, it just didn’t make any sense.
Dan Harden 43:11
The segway is a good example. But it was supposed to change our lives. It wasn’t compatible with sidewalks.
James Wallman 43:18
Okay. I mean, it also makes you look like an absolute idiot, which is the O. The O is it observable Now, the thing about the Segway, what’s kind of interesting actually is observable because we’ve all seen tourists looking like idiots on Segway. So segway found the nice, but observable a really good example. Is those city bikes or you have lime scooters where you are presumably
Dan Harden 43:41
Yes, yeah.
James Wallman 43:42
Okay. So we don’t, we don’t really have them so much around here, because they’re illegal in the UK. I used when I was in Bordeaux awhile back. The reason that scooters are taken off for adults. I mean, I’m old enough to think that it makes people look silly, but still, is they sold the last mile problem so well. I know last mile is in terms of delivery, but they sold that kind of, you know, if you live in a city, you want to get a short distance away. But you see other people on it, you see that it’s convenient way to get about it looks kind of handy and easy.
James Wallman 44:13
Okay, we’re coming to the S actually I got the E and the S are quite simple. The E is easy to try. And the S is simple to understand. So forgive me, the S is simple to understand the E is easy to try, is it right there. And then if you think about Lime, for example, is you put your credit card in and you can take it you can have a go. It’s a really easy way to try things. Where this is kind of interesting, I think so Everett Rogers identified these factors. Back in the 60s. And a guy called BJ Fogg at Stanford. He may come across, he’s the guy who’s known for his tiny habits. He set up the behavioral design practice at Stanford. He’s fairly famous for one of his classes that became known as I think the Facebook class because from about 2006 or 7 or something a bunch of people that were in his class used everything he was teaching they about behavioral psychology, and they went on to become, you know, like the growth marketing person at LinkedIn and, and the head of this at Facebook and the head of that, and one of the people in his class set up Instagram, you know. So basically, they took all his tools on how to design behavior, and they used it on humans. It turns out, you can create very addictive products and BJ likes to distance himself from that work as well. And if you’ve come across Neil’s work so Neil studied with him, you know, the guy who wrote Hooked. If you look at PJ focusing, which is B equals M A T, so behavior equals motivation, plus or times ability, and the tears triggers and the A about ability as he talks about the six simplicity factors. So, you know, motivation, we all know what that means. But simplicity factors are the stuff that makes it either easy or hard for you to do something and the six map almost precisely with the BECOS stuff that Everett Rogers figures for ideas that take off.
James Wallman 46:12
And the six simplicity factors, if I remember them are one is what’s the cost, and the cost can be the, the the actual price cost. But it could also be the physical effort involved, or the mental effort involved. He talks about I’ll be non deviant, which is like compatible. So for the sake of argument, there was a time when sending somebody a message on LinkedIn or set or looking somebody up on LinkedIn was considered a weird, but now it’s fine to do that. He talks about are they simple to understand? Are they easy to train and all these things that might get between you and actually trying this thing? A non routine is one thing that he talks about as well. So if we are not in the habit of doing something you may not do again? Is it better? So you know, is it easy to try? Is it simple to understand? Is it compatible? Is it observable? Do you see what I mean? You can, you can look at the thing that you are creating, and you can run it through this mill. And you can compare it to like I say, this is the seed. So we’re analyzing the innovation, the product, the thing that you’re making, and you compare that with the soil. I talk about the seed in the soil, because if you can imagine, I don’t know how much gardening you do Dan. But if you put a sunflower seed
Dan Harden 47:31
I’m a terrible gardener
James Wallman 47:32
Okay, most of us are nowadays right? We buy plants, we buy seeds. But imagine in those old days you’d buy a sunflower seed, you’d want to get a decent sunflower seed that wasn’t dried out and cracked and you know, a week saved from poor stock or whatever. And then you want to put it in to rich alluvial soil, you know, decent compost and then you’ve watered well etc. And it’s exactly the same with any innovation. So any innovation needs to be a decent seed in the first place, but the soil it lands and needs to be appropriate for it as well. So instead of it being dry desert like soil it needs to be rich alluvial soil. And so the way I remember this is BECOS. And the structure here is das steeple is I remember it because there’s a dust boat, the German movie, there’s a fantastic movie. But DAS is kind of my addition steepness standards. UYou may have come across Pest or Pestle or Steeple, classic at business schools. You probably come across you know, this is about socio cultural trends and economic trends and technology and environment, politics, legal. So you can think about the takeoff of marijuana here. Or you can think about actually what’s going to happen with the takeoff of psychedelics in the States. You can see that the innovators, you can see is it better? Maybe I’ll come back to this. And that is demographics, aesthetics, and science, which I think have been overlooked in the in the classic Pest Vessel Steeple way of thinking about things. Science is a great example. Until 1964, the consumption of cigarettes in the United States. You can see the graphs, it’s amazing. We went up and up and up and up and up and up and up. In 1964, the US Surgeon General made the very clear statement that smoking leads to cancer and then what’s happened is smoking is going down and down and down and down.
James Wallman 49:18
And you can see this in marijuana. It turns out that people that smoke marijuana Do not turn into murderous crazies they just sit around and end up eating a lot of food or whatever right. You can see this is psychedelic so I’m a real believer in that psychedelics will follow a similar path to marijuana. Even though it st seems really weird for people that have never, you know, taken LSD or DMT or whatever and you know, they are quite weird things to take. But if you look at the BECOS side of this. So are they better? Well, they’re really good for post traumatic stress disorder. Research in the UK and the States. In the UK, a guy called Robin Carhartt Harris has found that for people with really bad depression, it’s really hard to solve people with depression, particularly people with basically on their way to dying. It turns out that this has an impact. It’s like 85%, successful, insane numbers. If they could put this in the water. They would you know, it’s incredible. So is it better? Is it easy to try? I mean, he’s gonna take, yeah, it’s scary. It’s scary for people, which is holding people back. But yes, it’s easy. But it’s not that difficult. And it’s, you know, there are ways, you know, obviously, it’s illegal at the moment too. Is it compatible with how we do things now? Well, we take drugs. Drugs are a thing that people take to make them better, both legal ones and illegal ones. There’s the O, is it observable? What’s really interesting here, is once you know, somebody who has, I’ve got a very good friend of mine who used psychedelics to go from having major alcohol and cocaine issues and being a really depressive person. And he, through somebody else, I can’t remember who he, he ended up taking it, and he’s become happy. Wow, this stuff, you know, it’s amazing.
James Wallman 51:16
And you know, so you guys got the problems of fentanyl in the States. Yeah, that stuff is really bad. So this stuff is actually positive. And then is it simple to understand. Well here’s how it works, you take it, in a controlled environment. Michael Pollan’s written that fantastic book, how to change your mind about this as well. So you can see how the viewing on this is changing, and why it makes sense. And a few counties in the states are kind of legalizing to make it possible. There are countries that do it too, anyway. And then you can compare and think about, so I mentioned, it was a science that was talking about. So you can take this kind of BECOS structure and the star steeple competitor and think, is my product service experience likely to be relevant in the future? Yes, especially if you use the diffusion of innovations curve, to look at what the innovators are doing today. And maybe even the early adopters, and you can point the ways to the future.
Dan Harden 52:12
You know, you just said in the last 10 minutes, so many fascinating things that I didn’t want to interrupt you. But this BECOS, seed to soil, your notions of simplicity, dos. You know, so many designers, innovators, entrepreneurs, etc, we’re looking for, we’re looking for tools of understanding, I think, you know, and how do how can we ensure that we’re going to create something successful and meaningful and impactful to society and individuals and sustainable. All these values that we always try to instill in our creations?
Dan Harden 52:16
In foretelling the future, do use something like the BECOS better, easy, compatible, observable, simple as kind of a filter to know whether or not something is more likely to either take hold, like, like your analysis of psychedelic drugs, for example.
James Wallman 53:17
Yeah.
Dan Harden 53:22
I love that. And so many things like seed the soil, you know, to designer, the seed would be, you know, the innovation itself, and the soil would be the consumption model. And like, in our case, you know, the construct of capitalism and consumerism, that’s our soil, right? So we don’t necessarily think see the soil, but it’s happening. It’s a really great way to think about it.
Dan Harden 53:48
And simplicity, and your descriptions of simplicity, and breaking it down into cost and effort and being non deviant and non routine. Simplicity to designers is, it’s kind of like one of our, our doctrines. You know, we strive for it, it’s hard to achieve. Sometimes it’s it’s so elusive, because the harder you try as a creator, sometimes you’re adding complexity, not simplicity. It’s so hard to get back to the root of what’s really good and really meaningful. And sometimes it is something just utterly simple. And the simplicity. Why is simplicity so beautiful? I don’t know what is that? What is that? What’s going on psychologically about simplicity? Do humans crave simplicity? Why is something simple beautiful?
James Wallman 54:02
Wow, I wish I knew the answer to that. I’ll be honest, I don’t. My wife will quote to me, I’m trying to think of the British philosopher who’d said that beauty always has something strange within it, which I think has a truth in it, because then you remember thinking about that idea of experience versus service. But in terms of simplicity, I think about the Coco Chanel thing about when just before you go out, you take one thing off, you know. What can you remove? But there’s research conducted by is it Joseph Goodman, that’s shown that people want their stuff. And there’s actually a guy called David Robson. He’s a science writer and a friend of mine. And he’s written something for the BBC the other day about innovators and the great innovators. What you’re saying, though, is interesting is the ones that keep going. That we believe that after while going through brainstorming or coming up with ideas that after all, our ideas will tail off. And actually, the research shows the opposite is true. I think about a quote, I used to use talking about this kind of stuff from Johnny Ive about how hard it is to create simplicity. And I think that Dan, I can’t. I don’t know how many people have you interviewed for jobs with your firm through the years, which is, insane.
Dan Harden 55:11
Oh god, hundreds, probably thousands you know
James Wallman 56:04
And how many try to impress you with designs, and you just feel Oh, my God, it’s too much. And it’s only going to be those who can boil it. Think about Jacques Rometty, you know, the, you know, the artist. How he takes away everything that it isn’t. And I think maybe that’s one of the things we should do with life. And maybe that’s one of the problems with consumerism is because all these all this noise, you know, all this incoming noise. With ideas, and this stuff that people are trying to sell us and trying to be this, be that, be the other thing. Maybe that’s why Zen Buddhism, and that kind of approach to things and simplicity and minimalism appeals to people. But just to be really clear, I’m not a minimalist at all. Because if you’re a maximalist. And this is from a design point, I’m going to borrow what you said there about I want my services to be minimal. And I want my experiences to be maximal. I think we want our lives to be maximal, but in the right ways.
James Wallman 57:08
So I want complex, interesting conversations with sophisticated interesting people. Yeah, you know, I was looking at hiring someone the other day, and it ended up being really complicated. And it was that moment, I said, Oh, this is a red flag. I sent a really nice, as nice of an email as I could to say, Let’s leave this. But I want complex, challenging. You’ve made me think of so many things that I haven’t pulled out of the back of my mind for ages. So thank you for that.
James Wallman 57:35
But I think he may maximalism in our, you know, in our weekends, in our vacations, in our products. But only the stuff that’s really good. If you think about a meal, really simple food cooked really well, is good. I think about some of the best restaurants, the most successful restaurants don’t do the fancy food, they don’t do the El Bulli kind of you know, crazy stuff. There’s a restaurant in London called Jay Shiki. That just does simple food really well.
Dan Harden 58:14
I think there’s a lot to be said about essence. Essence of experience. Essence of expression. You know, it reminds me of Roi Ku, you know, just like so few words. So few intonations so much meaning. And in today’s society, it just seems like so many people are distracted with so much stuff. People sometimes lose sight of the fact that some of these simple essential things that life has to offer, they’re there for the taking. But it’s it’s almost like it’s so ever present these opportunities to experience the goodness of life. And yet you can’t see it. It’s almost like radio waves passing through us right now. I can’t see it. But there’s so much of it coming through us right now even as we speak. Why is that? Maybe there’s just so much offered. And it’s hard to get the attention of people to really understand Hey, you know what, it’s okay to experience the essence. It might be a simple meal. It might be taking 10 minutes to look at a single painting where you start to feel something after not not 10 seconds because everybody wants that that instant, like Hey, where is it? Where’s the punch line? You know, like a Rothko. It does not connect with you until you’re sitting in a dark room with a Rothko, in a dim light. And after about 10 minutes, all of a sudden you realize oh my god, I’m feeling something. This almost like a deep vibration and understanding of visual vibration. turns into an intellectual vibration. All of a sudden, so much more is offered to you. That’s what I find, to be the real meaning of essence. And it’s so hard for people to absorb, to first see the essence. And to truly feel it and benefit from it.
James Wallman 1:00:21
I like what you said. I agree with you. I think that we are essentially tick box travelers. And there are many people who are tick box travelers through life. Who just want to get that thing. And they’ve done it. You know, if you talk to those people that do a two week, I guess you probably get to do a two week vacation in Europe. And they kind of go to Spain, Italy, Greece. And they’re like, yeah, I think the other people that went into our country, they say I did that.
Dan Harden 1:00:47
Yeah, well, they step out of the tour bus. They take the pictures they get back on the tour bus. It’s not the picture, it’s experience.
James Wallman 1:00:57
Yeah, yeah. And maybe it’s not their fault. It’s definitely not their fault. But the problem is, if you watch too much TV, and you spend too much time online, and you’re one of those people who’s like, you think about a pinball machine. I think lots of people live their lives like they’re in a pinball machine. And they’re getting knocked here and pushed there. And, you know, maybe this is about like being on the ocean and pushed by the waves. Yeah, let’s go to surfing as a way of thinking. You know, those people just get pushed around, they’ll just go wherever. And then there are those people that would fighting against maybe the wave to get out. And then they’ll get in there, right? The thing and maybe that’s the… I’m warming to this idea of surfing as a metaphor for life. And I’m going to play here. You know, you know, the guys…
Dan Harden 1:01:07
Play with that for a minute.
James Wallman 1:01:43
Yeah, because maybe those people haven’t learned that if you stop. The way you describe that Rothko picture. And obviously, you have a few in your home, Dan, who doesn’t, right?
Dan Harden 1:01:59
Um, not real Rothko’s. Those are all like 40 million a piece
James Wallman 1:02:04
Yeah, but too many people just want to see something and have been there done that tick the box. They think that’s life. But the problem with that approach is because you’ve not paused long enough to appreciate something. And realize…
Dan Harden 1:02:22
I got to interrupt you because I love this idea of surfing because a surfer knows that that wave is here for about 20 seconds, you know. The good part of the wave. They appreciate that and they see it coming. They nail it. They ride it. The joy is, they know, it’s very temporary. And if more people would view life like that, that it is very temporary. There is impermanence everywhere. Certainly in a wave. And every condition around it. You don’t know if you’re going to hit a rock. You don’t know if you’re going to be bitten by a shark. Yeah, life is the same way.
James Wallman 1:03:05
Yeah, there’s a guy that taught me to surf. I was in Byron Bay, Australia, writing a piece for a magazine. I think it was not GQ, Esquire magazine. And he taught Elle Macpherson on the same board I was learning on for Elle, I have been in the same place not at the same time, regrettably, but laying down and then standing up. And I remember he said, When a wave would come in, and I am a pretty poor surfer. He was like, right, you know, I caught the first wave. He was like Oh, wow, okay, you’re, you’re British. And yet, you can actually do this a little. Big surprise. And I jumped off the wave, because I caught the good venues. Like, hold on, that wave has come all the way from the middle of the Pacific. Where was I? Oh, yeah. So that’s the Atlantic. Come from the middle of the ocean, you ride it till you can’t ride it anymore. And I thought that was a really interesting idea. But I’m totally with you.
James Wallman 1:04:02
When I give talks about this, this book time and how to spend it, I’ll often start by by pointing out. I used to say, I can’t think how many seconds it is now. I think it’s only 64,000. Whatever it is, there’s this idea of the time bank through a French guy. And if somebody gave you $64,000 every day, and at the end of the day, your bank account went to zero. What would you do is the question and the numbers not exactly that. And the answer, then I don’t want to jump in is you;d spend as much as you could. Because otherwise, the money’s gone. And that’s what life is like. You get these 24 hours every day and it’s gone. So how you spend it. It’s not just about… I guess it’s not just about the quantity of that time, but it’s the quality of that time. And I think what you’re talking about there is about focusing. And you know, Joseph Campbell, who wrote the book, The hero with 1000 faces about the hero’s journey, really. He moved From the hero’s journey, I think much more into this idea of being the vitality and a bit of feeling alive. And I think way too many people is that what is that wonderful zombie movie from like, late like late 70s, early 80s about that kind of that uses zombies as a kind of as a metaphor for consumerism. Dawn of the living dead, I think it is.
Dan Harden 1:05:24
Right, right.
James Wallman 1:05:26
And, you know, too many people are basically living their lives as they’ve been, you know, turn on the TV, go to work, drink coffee, come home…buy the things you’re supposed to buy, you get your better time off. And we, of course, we are alive in moments, but we’re too often asleep. And the key is to use our short window that we have to do something and to think about what we’re doing.
Dan Harden 1:05:51
Yeah.
James Wallman 1:05:52
And that involves stopping in enjoying those moments, rather than moving on to the next moment.
Dan Harden 1:05:57
James, we’ve just come out of probably, well, definitely in the last 100 years, one of the strangest periods of time. With this pandemic, and all the fear and uncertainty in our society. And all this discussion about the future and maybe rethinking the ways that we consume things. Deeper definitions about what true satisfaction means. How do we bring all this together? And how do you feel about the word hope moving forward in the future? Like, you know, especially with what we’ve all been through in the last year, I mean, are we going to come out of this better?
James Wallman 1:06:39
Isn’t hope, a small town in Kansas is one of your politicians used to say? A politician another time for.
Dan Harden 1:06:49
It’s remarkable how much trivia and names that you remember, I gotta say. You’re like a walking encyclopedia, man.
James Wallman 1:06:56
That was his life, right. Wasn’t it hope is a place in Kansas or Alabama or wherever.
James Wallman 1:07:04
I’m an optimist. I’m really optimistic. This has been a really surreal, deeply unpleasant time. But I didn’t have to go to war. My ancestors had to fight and they got blown up. One of my granddad’s was blown up on the beach of Dunkirk three times in spent nine months in an iron lung. And luckily, he died at nine. So, you know, it was okay for him, ultimately, but that probably wasn’t too much fun. And, you know, the awful time we’ve had through the pandemic, we were like, you got to stay at home and watch Netflix. Yeah, it’s boring. But it’s not that bad. You know, so I feel very optimistic about what humans achieve. I think we solve the problem of scarcity. Lucky us because of consumerism, because of, you know, the Industrial Revolution. We don’t live next to our animals unless they’re clean animals because they’re pets.
Dan Harden 1:07:58
And because of all this technology, we we’ve been able to do this, we’re still connected.
James Wallman 1:08:03
Oh, well, the pandemic would have been like, pre zoom, and pre, you know, video calling
Dan Harden 1:08:12
Yeah. Pre internet. I mean, even 20 years ago, we would all I mean, talk about depths of depression. I mean, we couldn’t do anything.
James Wallman 1:08:21
When I was a kid, if it snowed a lot, we couldn’t get to school. There’d be all these headlines in the papers that ah you know, it’s terrible. The schools are closed. We would go sledding, right? It was great. Nowadays, the poor kids have to work because they can connect with their teachers. I really feel sorry for them.
James Wallman 1:08:36
But I feel really positive about the 20s. What happens after a dip like this is often there’s a real bounce back. There’s some interesting data, the great guy called Randy Whites a company called Whites Hutchison. In somewhere in the Midwest, I think, who’s looked at some great data, particularly in the States on the bounce back that’s coming. But I’ve seen some other data. And it’s worth pointing out, you know, my stuff that my forecast, I would tout my ability. But I wrote that book certification about this move from materialism to experiences, and the reason I self published at first, Dan, was that nobody believed me that I was true. The publishers in New York and London said no, 75 of them said no, because there’s a nice idea James, but it isn’t true. But since that book came out, you know, lots of people have jumped on boards. Actually, this is happening. McKinsey and others.
Dan Harden 1:09:23
And I’m seeing the signs I feel I’ve seen signs in different industries. You know, the numbers of people booking for Meow Wolf in Vegas. There’s a company called the Institute of Competitive Socializing, who have this wonderful thing called swingers is swinging your thing Dan?
Dan Harden 1:09:43
Uh no, not yet, no. Tell me more.
James Wallman 1:09:46
This is indoor, crazy golf. what you guys think would call mini golf and they’ve been successful in London. They’re just opening I think this year in Chicago and New York. And you know, with it between the pandemics everyone’s coming back to real life experiences. I think people are going to be looking to spend money to kickstart the economy, we’re gonna have a really exciting time. I think we’re going to solve the problem with the climate, I feel really positive about that. I’m involved in accelerator started by a former professor of mine at the University of Cambridge called Carbon 13. And the big mission there is to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. And he’s got a bunch of whip smart people involved and people in this accelerator, and I’m sure that we will solve those problems.
Dan Harden 1:10:30
Do you think that the pandemic has hastened this this move because it’s like a wake up call? It’s like, hey, people, darn it.
James Wallman 1:10:42
Not for the climate. No, I think the pandemic has is accelerated many trends. Absolutely. Okay, maybe
Dan Harden 1:10:52
Could you even say that it’s been good for us? Because I think in a lot of ways it’s made us rethink a lot of things.
James Wallman 1:11:01
You know, the old line from Solon, the Athenian wise man from that book the Herodotus is history, so he says, never call a man happy till he’s dead. He was asked by the king of Libya, a guy called Cresis, who was the richest man in the known world at the time. Am I happy? He said, I can’t say. He said, so what do you mean? I’ve got a list. He ends up of course, he loses his kingdom, all his kids are killed, and he has a terrible end of his life, but he was very happy. So calling this good thing or a bad thing is really hard to know at this point, I feel the same way about Brexit for what it’s worth. And even Donald Trump, I feel that he was a blip. I think he was a an aberration for me, very, very funny. I really miss him, please, please bring him back. Because this guy, Joe Biden is sensible. He gets things done, he doesn’t make a fuss about it. And he’s not insane.
James Wallman 1:11:48
Humans solve problems. The hero’s journey as person problem solution. Kurt Vonnegut called it the man in whole story. And what we did was, when we had scarcities, we solved it. And now we have the problems of abundance. We’re solving those. And so yeah, I feel pretty optimistic about the future, we’re going to have better experiences that WXO that I founded with people like Joe Pyne, with brilliant people around the world, we’re about creating better experiences, which means that people will have better products, experiences, better brand experiences, better experiences of life. The shift from caring about GDP to caring about well being is important, we will live not only longer lives, but I think better, more meaningful, happier lives in the future as well. Thanks to great designers like you, Dan,
Dan Harden 1:12:37
Well, thank you. And your your statement just now just brought us back full circle to my first question about prosperity. And it rethinking about what it really means. And it is about creating wellborn meaningful lives and more fulfilled lives, happier individuals, and so forth. And certainly design is a part of that. And you can be sure that the audience that we just spoke to has that in mind about what can I do as a designer? What can I do as an architect or or UX designer to move that bar to raise it to move it forward?
Dan Harden 1:13:15
So James, I cannot thank you enough. I have so enjoyed this conversation. You and I could yammer on for another day I think. So keep up the amazing work that you’ve been doing. I so look forward to your third book, and more conversations, and I will see you at another bar in Las Vegas sometime soon, James.
James Wallman 1:13:40
Some time soon. Thanks Dan. Fantastic questions. Thanks.
Dan Harden 1:13:43
Thanks so much for everything. All right. Take care.
James Wallman 1:13:46
Cheers
Dan Harden 1:13:47
Thank you for listening to PRISM. Follow us on Whipsaw.com, or your favorite streaming platform. And we’ll be back with more thought provoking episodes soon.
Outro 1:13:57
PRISM is hosted by Dan harden, Principal designer and CEO of Whipsaw, produced by Gabrielle Whelan and Isabella Glenn, mix and sound designed by Erik Buell.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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In our first episode of PRISM, Whipsaw CEO Dan Harden interviews Author and Designer Paul Hatch about the adjustments designers have made to their process and thinking throughout the pandemic, and the unexpected ways users have interacted with design. Paul explores the psychology of these new users and forecasts what’s ahead for the design field.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Whipsaw Founder and Principal Designer Dan Harden has been a prominent figure in the field of design for over 25 years. He has brought more than 1000 products to market, won over 300 design awards and been granted over 500 patents.
Harden will now funnel his experience and knowledge into our new Whipsaw podcast, PRISM. Just like a glass prism that reveals the colors hidden inside white light, this podcast will uncover the true vision, purpose and people behind the innovations that impact our world.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
