Over the past few years we've had opportunities to work with many amazing startups, from one coast to the other and everywhere in between, but some of the most exciting (ambitious!) new companies we've encountered are all coming from the SURGE Accelerator in Houston, Texas.

Our friends at SURGE work with ambitious startups who share their mission to solve the world's many complex energy problems through software and innovative new services. They do this by connecting entrepreneurs with world-class mentorship and access to the capital needed to disrupt every corner of the energy industry.

Last year, I dropped in near the end of the program to help each of their ten companies lock down pitch presentations and slide decks, in preparation for their final "demo day" debut.

Yesterday morning, I hopped back on a bus bound for Houston to meet a new class of companies and share some storyboarding techniques for developing a clear, compelling pitch. Specifically, my goal was to get these teams thinking about how to humanize their value proposition through story. Why is that important? Read on.

Round 1

For the first round, I presented a single photo of a simple driveway mishap: a blue pickup truck sitting atop a red sports car, inside of a decimated garage. Nobody was injured, just plenty of potential for drama.

The full group split off into five randomized teams, each representing a different persona:

1. The owner of the red car
2. The owner of the blue pickup
3. The insurance adjustor
4. The repair shop
5. The employer of the owner of the red car

Each team was given two 6-panel storyboard worksheets, and instructions to pick up where the photo left off, and continue sketching out the story.

Click to download [PDF]

The purpose of this round was simply to have fun and wake up everyone's storytelling muscles. Mission accomplished.

The resulting tale was incredible: there were saucy affairs, a child was bit by a snake in the forest, premiums lapsed, scooters were fought over, and a mechanic fell in love with his Italian translator (while searching for parts abroad, of course). It was a five-part epic, spun from a single photo and some simple prompts.

Round 2

The teams regrouped with their co-founders and returned to their own teams, this time with a second pair of 6-panel storyboard worksheets and two stories to tell:

1. A day in the life of your customer, experiencing the pain you're solving, without you
2. A day in the life of your customer, after you have saved the day

Every team nailed it. Limiting the story to six frames required a lot of refinement. Some groups even created outlines and debated scenes on other sheets of paper before committing their panels. No doubt, the participants already understood their customers and users, but this distillation process seemed to open up new conversations about who these people really are, what they really care about, and what it means to step into their story. This helped the teams refine their own narrative, not just about what they do, but who they do it for, and why that matters.

It was a simple exercise, but hopefully helpful.

So, why does all of this matter?

We are all wired for story; it activates our brains in wonderfully profound ways. Story is how we package and share meaning, allowing listeners to momentarily experience the sensations and emotions of what is being shared. Story inspires action.

But it's asking quite a lot to try inspiring others about the big, abstract systems we build, because people do not experience systems.

Get personal

Drill down to the person who experiences the pain you're relieving, and make me –in the audience– feel that pain. Frame it all with simple, heartfelt language. Make it agonizing. Experiment visual metaphors for heavy lifting, if particular concepts are too verbose or overly technical. Let everyone else in the crowd feel it too. Then zoom out and extrapolate that experience across the full market opportunity you can address.

But but… but!

It sounds easy enough, but it means dropping much of the cherished vocabularies and esoteric debates that hold highly technical communities together. Believe it or not, your vocabulary is a massive part of your personal identity. For some folks that I've worked with it's like abandoning a child. It can get ugly.

One common excuse is "sure, there are a lot of people in the audience, but I'm only speaking to a few investors in the room, and they know exactly what I'm saying." Once a few audience members glance down to check their email, others around them will feel that old familiar itch to check theirs as well. Slowly, one by one, you will lose the entire room.

What those investors really want to know is that you can carry the ball. They want to know that you can share your vision to inspire all types of audiences: your customers, your employees, and new investors in later rounds.

This applies across the board. Whether you're trying to recuit potential co-founders, early hires, or even customers, they need to feel it to believe it. The best –perhaps the only– way to do that is through story.

What's the best startup pitch you've ever seen?

Please share in the comments!

The purpose of science is not to analyze or describe but to make useful models of the world. A model is useful if it allows us to get use out of it.
Edward de Bono

Design researchers and strategists spend a lot of time with models. A lot of time. What kind of models? Mental models, cultural models, concept maps, affinity diagrams, customer journey maps, Blue Ocean canvases and grids, business model canvases, system maps, flow diagrams, 2x2 matrices. Wherever there is a known pattern to exploit, there is probably a visual model of some kind to capture and articulate it.

But there is an implicit risk of constraining our imaginations to the known models of the moment when we should be looking for entirely new relationships and patterns. I think there's a subtle difference between using models to express and share what we know, and using models to unveil and understand what we don't. Not a big difference, but one worth exploring and discussing.

Here's a fun exercise: take two random visualization models that have nothing to do with each other and force them together. Break them apart and see if you can put them back together.

Stretch Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs across a second dimension, like RKS did with their Psycho-Aesthetics® Map. That x-axis could be anything: time, money, frequency of any particular behavior or social interactions. Make something up. It's that easy.

Or maybe bend a cultural map around a 2x2 matrix. Cultural maps tend to float around, spatially unhinged like flip flop guy at Coachella on a existential walkabout. Let's give it some polarity and see what shakes out. Here's a visualization I created that illustrates interviews with local farmers as a cultural map framed against the 4 Ps of Marketing: Product, Promotion, Place, and Price. The connections between entities are also color-coded by sentiment; green means positive, red means negative. Color-coding for sentiment is a powerful concept that can be applied almost anywhere.

Cultural maps are a massive distraction in a slide deck, so I stripped it down to focus solely on sentiment. There's much to be said about friction and the future. This visualization hints at the possible evolution of local food networks toward collaborative production, in the form of joint-offering CSAs.

This visualization started on paper and took a few iterations before arriving at what you see here. The magic is in the process of reconciling these two unrelated models, revealing a treasure trove of deeper nuance and interconnectedness.

Your turn!

What crazy one-off visuals have you created?

What other models could we mash together to visualize sentiment?

So, I decided to make a one-page worksheet out a full calendar year, and invited my interviewees to join me in decorating the page with notes, timelines.

Here are a few interviewees' worksheets:

Looking back, I'm still delighted by the conversations that took place on these worksheets. By visualizing their thoughts, my interviewees each told a great story. Sometimes they would get lost in a long pause, thinking back to last year, that long deathly grind of a summer, or that early spring cold snap that hurt market turnouts for an entire month. These conversations brought a richness to the research that I might have missed, had I not created a place for them to take shape.

Composite illustration of multiple worksheets:

Is it money that motivates us?? Not really.
A showcase of studies of how monetary rewards motivate (and don’t).

3 Factors leading to better performance & personal satisfaction…

1. Autonomy-desire to be self directed (find PLAY & FUN in work)
2. Mastery-urge to get better at stuff (find challenge, a way to find mastery & contribution—because it’s FUN & ENGAGING)
3. Purpose-brings talent & makes coming to work better “when the profit motive gets unmoored from the purpose motive, bad things happen”

(These three factors following paying one enough to take the issue of money off the table so they can think about work)

It's really extraordinary how polished and sophisticated some product ideas become before anyone asks if a particular concept is even the right one to pursue. Is the pain point something clearly and explicitly known, to the customer? Do they intuitively 'get it'? Is it compatible with other artifacts or concepts they already understand? Do they adopt technology as adamantly as you do? Is it possible that your own blindspots have you out of phase with your customers' needs? Solutions that are painfully obvious to us may actually be at odds with the nuance and subtleties of their day-to-day lives.

These issues need to be quashed as early as possible, long before your first code commit, way before you get hung up on typefaces, domain names and versions of a logo. Before it's even a "project." In most cases you can begin to iterate on your ideas and check your assumptions with office supplies, in less time than it takes to brew a pot of coffee.

Here's a quick example of a time when we did just that, while exploring opportunities within local food networks.

Pain point: Prior research revealed that farmers feel a ton of pressure balancing work and personal relationships on market days. Friends and loyal customers want to stop by and chat but, as one farmer put it, "I work nonstop for six days, and then this is my one day to make any money for the week. I hate feeling rude, but I've gotta be selling!"

Hypothesis: An eWallet app for farmer's markets. A streamlined checkout process could be introduced to take cash handling and card swiping out of the equation. Additionally, this service could provide customer account management so farmers could download records from every market day. There was a whole laundry list of opportunities and value propositions on the customers-side of the equation, but we will save that for another post.

Prototype: We literally sketched the idea across a stack of Post-it notes, trimmed to fit the screen dimensions of an iPhone 3Gs. Each note represented a screen. It was a horribly hacked-together job, the only thing we were missing was duct tape.

This prototype took less than 5 minutes to prepare, and our mission was completed by lunchtime. You may be thinking this is horribly sloppy, that we should have tried a little harder before heading out into the field. Our goal was to start a conversation, not convert new customers. We needed a representation of our concept that was approachable and renegotiable by non-designers. We wanted them to wrestle with the concept, not interface elements. In a situation like this, nothing stunts a creative conversation more than a fancy hi-fi rendering. If it's fully baked, it's too late to discuss the recipe. You won't get engaged feedback, you'll get a "Nah, I don't like it," or worse: polite indifference.

We hit the marketplace, prototypes in hand, just as the day was winding down. We presented the idea for what it was: a quick sketch. "Just an idea, here's what we're thinking." Our goal was to challenge that thinking and make the learning loop as short as possible.

The result: Our instincts were in the right place (farmers definitely liked the idea of streamlining the checkout experience) but we soon learned that our approach was a bit off target. We discovered brand new variables that had not previously been taken into account. We had some incredibly insightful conversations, and ended up forming better questions than the ones whose answers had led us this far.

Rapid prototyping isn't about validating a concept, it's about deepening the learning process. It's about getting past the obvious ideas and on to the good stuff, faster. Make your thoughts tangible and take them for a test-drive.

Source: http://2012.devcup.evernote.com/submissions/8695-mohionote

I think this type of visualization for emergent taxonomies has a lot of potential, particularly for finding patterns and relationships in a pile of digital assets like text snippets, photos and websites.  That should get your attention if you're a design researcher or ethnographer.

Pulling the lens back a bit, however, graph UIs like this have typically failed to grab mainstream users as hard as they grab their inventors. But that got me thinking... People regularly use whiteboards to map out big hairy ideas, so why haven't these apps made it into the mainstream collaborative toolbox?  What's different?

Then it hit me: it's a difference of intent.  These types of interfaces are just a new flavor of documentation, visualizing the complexity of things already known. Most importantly, they are fully decoupled from whatever conversation shaped their content, and will need to be lovingly maintained for all time to keep pace with reality. The SaaS biz app marketplace is peppered with services that decouple communication from their artifacts.  They masquerade as "team collaboration" apps, but in reality they offer little more than static documentation, and punt the messy communication stuff (read: the magic stuff) back to your inbox.

On the other hand, the collaborative whiteboard experience usually goes something like this:

1. Start with a single point
2. Conversation ensues about the relationship(s) between the first point and the next point(s)
3. Conversation goes on and on an on, recursively chewing through points and ideas, explanations, demonstrations and scenarios, occasionally detouring, diverging and converging again
4. The board is full and/or the participants have reached their final destination (or are just plain exhausted!)

Outsiders see a messy board, but for participants the outcome is (hopefully) reaching a higher level of clarity and opportunity around whatever they just hashed out.  The whiteboard allowed them to visualize their points and add greater bandwidth to their conversation.  If a simple chat in the elevator were a dial-up connection, this is 4G LTE.  The destination is what matters, not the means of getting there.

The difference?  Whiteboards become complex, and are then erased; their content is as fleeting as the conversation that shaped it.  It's a combination of communication and impermanence.  Can that metaphor transfer fully into a virtual world, so thoroughly shot through with "document everything, measure everything" dogma of big data?

Mural.ly says surewhynot:

<trolling> No mention of actual communication.. but it looks like the real thing!  </trolling>

Ok, to be fair, I took the photo of the whiteboard above just in case I ever needed to pull it back up; a practice I've perpetrated or witnessed thousands of times. I have hundreds more in a folder. I rarely return to them.

I'm dreaming of a tool that seamlessly blends real-time communication with automagically emerging visuals and ideas; a conduit for rich, vivid ideation among teammates who cannot stand together against a whiteboard. Patterns and relationships among the things discussed are easily articulated, bound together with story or illustration, and feed back into a more creative, insightful conversation.  I don't know what this tool is called, what it looks like or how it will work, but I know why.

Theory on a dramatic scale happens when it is both possible and necessary for it to do so— when the traditional rationales which have silently underpinned our daily practices stand in danger of being discredited, and need either to be revised or discarded. This may come about for reasons internal to those practices, or because of certain external pressures, or more typically because of a combination of both. Theory is just a practice forced into a new form of self‐ reflectiveness on account of certain grievous problems it has encountered. Like small lumps on the neck, it is a symptom that all is not well.

Andrew Blauvelt, "Remaking Theory, Rethinking Practice"
The Education of a Graphic Designer, by Steven Heller

In The Man Who Lied to His Laptop, Stanford professor, sociologist and HCI researcher Clifford Nass shares dozens of eye-opening discoveries about human nature and sociality.  This book is chock-full of intellectual goodies and surprises surrounding relationships, team building and collaboration.  What's truly fascinating about his insights is how they were teased out: through studying interactions with computers!

Nass learned early on that we actually extend our social niceties and norms to computers as if they were living, sentient beings.  This insight allowed Nass to perform a wide-range of social experiments where interpersonal behaviors could be studied through controlled, perfectly repeatable interactions. For example, Nass demonstrates that it's possible to invoke a sense of team cooperation between humans and computers by creating the proper conditions for team identification and interdependency.  These human-computer teams consistently out-performed those who were not identified and engaged as teammates.

This book is highly recommended for managers and team leads of all stripes, as well as those who are heading in that direction.  If you design and/or build digital applications or interfaces this may change the way you perceive and approach the medium itself.  It certainly had that effect on me.

Grab a copy, you will not be disappointed.

Looking down the road

Disruption guru Christensen: Why Apple, Tesla, VCs, academia may die

Marc Andreessen On The Future Of Enterprise

Redesigning Google: how Larry Page engineered a beautiful revolution

Mexico: The New China

Christensen: We are living the capitalist's dilemma

Perspectives on Working Remotely

Why We (Still) Believe in Working Remotely

A (Short) Rant About Working Remotely

Don’t call it a comeback (working remotely)

Just Plain Good

Simon Sinek: How great leaders inspire action

A Short Lesson in Perspective

Want to hack your creativity? Here’s a powerful way.

"A chair is not a thing. It is a place of activity."

Interaction Design is the design of the way humans relate to one another, through the mediating influence of products.

What is a product?

1. Useful (logos): technological reasoning, intellectual content, does work, the right materials (what you think is interacting).

2. Usable (ethos): speaks in a language that my mind can comprehend.

3. Desirable (pathos): a quality of ethos that you want to be part of and bring into your life.

"The material of interaction design are the purposes and desires of the people we serve. That comes to us as clay, and we form that clay.  We shape and express, give deep endurance, to the purposes and values of other people."

Richard Buchanan: Keynote (by Interaction Design Association)

It is a realization of design’s presence in our world and an awareness of design’s past shortcomings that is requiring a modification to existing structures and methodologies. Design’s impact is great. As John Thackara quotes in his book, In the Bubble, from the 2002 Design Council Annual Review, “Eighty percent of the environmental impact of the products, services, and infrastructures around us is determined at the design stage (1)”.

A large part of this journey is redefining design in a very broad sense. Design is now starting to encompass fields like business, education, health, energy, transportation, and others that have not been typically associated to the discipline. It is looking at old problems, reframing them and creating new approaches to answer our human needs more appropriately. Because of the inclusion of such fields in this evolution of design, new methods, theories and techniques are being demanded to better address these new, more complex problems. So far, this redefinition of design is asking designers to think more systemically and approach problem solving using more collaborative processes. It is designing to integrate the user as co‐creator, taking a more human‐centered approach, rather than designing to meet market demands. It is requiring designers to see things differently, and to no longer view design in the material sense, but to see how design can be applied and how it can affect the immaterial and metaphysical realm. As Bruce Mau describes, “No longer associated simply with objects and appearances, design is increasingly understood in a much wider sense as the human capacity to plan and produce desired outcomes (Mau 2010) ”.

A good way to understand the conceptual framework behind this shift in thinking was showcased at the International Conference on Innovation and Entrepreneurship held in Moscow late April 2009 by Dr. Ekaterina Khramkova from the Russian Design Research Consultancy, Lumiknows. Here, Khramkova presented two different models of problem solving as they relate to their boundaries. The model does well to illustrate some of the ideas behind design addressing complex issues through new research and thinking methods.

Like Capra presented, her two models for problem solving are divided into juxtaposing infrastructures. Referencing what she called the “Western” way of seeing boundaries delineates the first model, further defined by Aristotle’s writing of the Pythagoreans, “for them emptiness serves to divide things and define their boundaries”, which then leads to the model’s association to Sir Isaac Newton’s concept of “emptiness” (=Nothing) that later turned into the Newtonian Space as a container for things (Lumiknows: Design Research 2009). The second model was based around what Khramkova described as the “Eastern” way of seeing without boundaries. To elucidate the concept of no boundary, she quotes Lao‐Tzu, Tao The Ching, 6th century B.C.:

Thirty spokes coverage upon a single hub;
It is on the hole in the centre that the use of the cart hinges.
We make a vessel from a lump of clay;
It is the empty space with in the vessel that makes it bloat.
Thus, while the visible has advantages,
It is the invisible that makes it useful (Lumiknows: Design Resesarch 2009).

She then relates this concept of the “Invisible” (=Something) to Einstein’s Relative Reality (Lumiknows: Design Resesarch 2009) (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Khramkova’s points about the “Western” way of seeing boundaries

• Focus on what is already known • “Nothing” behind what is seen
• Limited possibilities

(Khramkova, International Conference on Innovation and Entrepreneurship, 2009 )

Figure 2: Khramkova’s points about “Eastern” way of seeing boundaries

• Shift of focus to the “Big Picture”
• There is “Something” behind it, even if we don’t see this right now
• Abundance of possibilities

(Khramkova, International Conference on Innovation and Entrepreneurship, 2009 )

The dichotomous model that Khramkova uses to explain the boundaries of thinking related to problem solving was similarity noted in 1988 by physicist, Frijof Capra, in his book The Tao of Physics. Here, Capra distinguishes human knowledge into two different kinds of thoughts linked to the rational and intuitive. He relates the intuitive to Eastern religions and juxtaposes them with the rational thinking of science, it is a comparison where the metaphysical is contrasted with the material. This concept is further expressed in Plato’s The Republic where the world is broken up into two realms, the visible that we experience through our senses and the intelligible that we understand with our mind. The visible is basically defined by what we can see and the intelligible is made up of the abstract and the absolutes like goodness and beauty, which, consequently make the other world (the visible) possible. Capra places higher value in Plato’s “intelligible” world, and says that “what the Eastern mystics are concerned with is a direct experience of reality which transcends not only intellectual thinking but also sensory perception” (Tao 9). To better explain this abstract way of thinking he quotes Taoist sage Chuang Tzu9, “Fishing baskets are employed to catch fish; but when the fish are got, the men forget the baskets; snares are employed to catch hares; but when the hares are got, men forget the snares. Words are employed to convey ideas; but when the ideas are grasped, men forget the words” (Tao 9). He goes on to further explain the significance of assimilating this polarity by quoting Western semanticist Alfred Korzybski, “The map is not the territory” (Tao 9).

These figures and what Capra states, represent what many scholars suggest is behind the shift in thinking and seeing associated to this movement in the design field. The first figure (Fig. 1) represents the way designers’ approached problem solving before shifting to a more holistic/ collaborative design. This would be associated to Plato’s “visible” realm of thinking. The latter (Fig. 2), is showcasing the possibilities of utilizing this way of thinking in design practice. This abstract way of thinking about boundaries is, of course, related to the Plato’s “intelligible” realm. As Albert Einstein stated, "The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them"(Vajda 2010).

Now, the different fields of design have not always been so myopic in their approach, placing a narrow emphasis on the object rather than the complex processes that enable examination of the larger view, value, or life of what they are creating. There was a time when design took at more holistic approach to problem solving rather than simply focusing on artifact making. This is not to say, that form has no valuable place in design. Richard Farson, elaborated on the value of form as he discussed the power of design with the International Leadership Forum in September 2007. Because in today’s society “design” calls up so many different meanings, he led the discussion by defining it. In the close of his definition, he made sure to state that design is also the creation of form and that this is important because, “In human affairs, form rules”(The Power of Design, ILF Conference). He further expands this thought by exemplifying form’s power over content:

A clear example of the victory of form over content is seen in education. As effective as our schooling may have been, we all tend to forget what was in the curriculum. Seniors at Ivy League colleges, given a multiple‐choice test comparable to a seventh grade history exam, achieved an average score of 53. Tried solving a problem in square root recently? We all once could. We just forget. But, as the late social critic Ivan Illich pointed out long ago, we never forget the lessons we learned from the form of education. We learned to raise our hands, obey adult authority, stand in line, take turns, not talk about certain subjects, and many other lessons now indelibly ingrained. Those lessons are not in the curriculum. The form, the ritual, the social design of the classroom, teaches them (The Power of Design, ILF Conference).

And this is not to say, there is no value in the design of an object, as Victor Margolin and Richard Buchanan point out in The Idea of Design:

Properly conceived, the object was an instrument for improving social life and bringing order, reason, and expressive vitality to everyday experience. It carried enormous symbolic weight, and battles were fought over the proper form of the object as an expression of personal vision, aesthetic sensibility, and culture values (Margolin and Buchanan xi).

However, with the growth of consumerism in the 20th century there began a more expansive understanding that design could considerably have an impact on the marketability of products and services. With this recognition came a shift in the fields of design in practice, debate and in education to focus on using design skills to increase profits. The shift is especially noted in education, as schools started to appease the needs of their “customers”, treating their own academic institutions more like corporations. In his commentary entitled, “Decisions, Dilemmas and Dangers”, originally published in The School Administrator , Richard Farson warns that though no one can argue that caring for the needs of those education serves is necessary, the concept of education being driven by market demands is a dangerous one (Decisions 7). He points out:

Indeed, what makes education a profession instead of a business is precisely its rejection of that model. Professions must be goal driven. We can perhaps see the danger more clearly if we imagine medicine or law being market‐driven. Nothing corrupts a profession more rapidly than its decision to travel down that path (Decisions 7).

It is in those disciplines related to visual communication, like graphic design and advertising, where creating and being educated in the name of consumption is extraordinarily evident.

Creating and being educated in the name of consumption is extraordinarily evident in those disciplines related to visual communication, like graphic design and advertising.

As a result, much of contemporary visual communication has been associated to advertising and branding with the objective of persuading the public to buy things that are not living essentials; to fulfill desires rather than needs. This process developed out of the needs of a capitalist society. In his 1928 book, Propaganda, Edward Bernays practically states the opportunities for applied and commercial art (what we now know as graphic design) within a capitalist society:

In applied and commercial art, propaganda makes greater opportunities for the artist than ever before. This arises from the fact that mass production reaches an impasse when it competes on a price basis only. It must, therefore, in a large number of fields create a field of competition bases on aesthetic values. Business of many types capitalizes the aesthetic sense to increase markets and profits (Bernays 153).

He goes on to explain, “In America, whole departments of production are being changed through propaganda to bill an economic as well as an aesthetic need. Manufacture is being modified to conform to the economic need to satisfy the public demand for more beauty”(Bernays 155‐156). Even in today’s market one can see the prevalent push for trends trying to conform to more consumer interests. Recently, in an attempt to valorize capital, there was a perceived focus on seducing the senses of the consumer (Howes 289‐290). In his book, Empire of the Senses, sociologist and anthropologist, David Howes quotes thoughts of experts of consumerism, “This sea‐change in the sensual logic of capitalism is what lies behind the transformation in ‘values’ whereby work discipline, thrift and moderation have been replaced by self‐fulfillment, impulse buying and conspicuous consumption” (Bauman 1983, Clarke 2003, Howes 289‐290). In the 1980s, many of the ideas that those like Bernays discussed, were further developed by management theorists who saw that corporations could be more profitable if they moved their energies from manufacturing to marketing, encouraging corporations to build the “images of their brands”(Klein 6). Creating the “imagery of their brands” means creating demand through advertising; advertising that often influences the general public to feel that what they have is inadequate, that to be happy something new and better is required, and to be the very best they must have the best brand. In 1998 the United Nations Human Development Report, the growth in global ad spending outpaced the growth of the world economy by one‐third (Klein 8‐9). “It requires an endless parade of brand extensions, continuously renewed imagery for marketing and, most of all, fresh new spaces to disseminate the brand’s idea of itself (Klein 5).” It is hard not to associate these capitalistic approaches to Plato’s “visual” realm of thinking, and it is in this approach to visual communication that designers’ perspectives and understanding of their role have been skewed. This process has created designers that have largely forgotten the responsibilities one has to society.

Another reason this disconnect between the designer and society exists in visual communication is because the professions associated with visual communication have been largely shaped by twentieth‐century modernism through the Bauhaus and Swiss lineages. This historical emergence is good in that it brought a focus on problem‐solving through functional design, but in its rational simplicity a neutrality developed that neglects some of the facets that make up the interconnected workings of a society. Like Katherine McCoy explains in her essay, Good Citizenship: Design as a So­cial and Political Force, “there are several dominant aspects of this modernist ethic that have done much to distance designers from their cultural milieu. The ideals, forms, methods, and mythology of modernism are a large part of this problem of detachment, including the paradigms of universal form, abstraction, self‐referentialism, value‐free design, rationality, and objectivity” (Heller 4). Furthermore, in The Idea of Design Victor Margolin and Richard Buchanan argue that this shift towards a more object‐oriented design was not based on the division between modernism and postmodernism but rather,

...Guided by the recognition that objects are situated in a variety of ways that were not clearly understood or adequately explored by the designers, historians, critics, and theorists who established the precedents for the field of design earlier in this century. As a consequence, contemporary design discourse does not represent a radical break with the past. Instead, it represents a broadening of the scope of design to include issues and problems that were often embedded in earlier practice and speculation but were seldom developed in depth (Buchanan and Margolin xi).

So what is the role of graphic design, anyway? What are graphic designers here to do? As Jorge Frascara suggests in his essay, Graphic Design: Fine Art or Social Science?: Graphic design is the activity that organizes visual communication in society. It is concerned with the efficiency of communication, the technology used for its implementation, and the social impact it effects, in other words, with social responsibility (Buchanan and Margolin 46).

He further elaborates by saying that this activity involves a perceptual and a behavioral concern. start to talk about technology (as defined in the traditional sense)

Two of the more prevalent schools of thought that are forcefully pushing this idea of looking beyond the smaller more restricted view of what design can be in society are systems thinking and design thinking. Each looks beyond analytical thinking to explore more sociologically driven strategies. The conceptual foundations of the two share many of the same ideals. Some professionals and educators even suggest that system’s thinking is a component of design thinking, while other vehemently claims that these are two different disciplines that should never be contained by the other. Systems thinking grew out insights from Gestalt psychology and biology might aid in clarifying and interacting with complex organizational and social problems (Collopy Lessons Learned). As described by Fast Company’s expert blogger and professor of systems thinking, Fred Collopy:

Systems thinking, as written about and practiced by Russell Ackoff, C. West Churchman, Peter Checkland and others, contained within it many of the impulses that motivate the application of design ideas to strategy, organization, society, and management. Ideas such as engaging a broad set of stakeholders, moving beyond simple metrics and calculations, considering idealized options and using scenarios to explore them, shifting boundaries to reframe problems, iteration, the liberal use of diagrams and rich pictures, and tirelessly searching for a better set of alternatives were all there (Collopy Lessons Learned).

However, Collopy argues with Ackoff’s stance that systems thinking and design is essentially the same thing and that a systems thinking approach, because of its complex, theatrical nature, may not always be an effective practice. Though, he does contend that there is much that design thinking can learn from the failings of systems thinking. In a summation of the emergent discourse following Collopy’s post, Peter H. Jones, founder of Redesign Research, suggests that what one could take from Collopy’s article is to “adopt methodological toolkits into practice and leave much of the theory for scholars” (Jones). However, he does challenges Collopy’s stance that systems thinking is a failure, because of his belief that is has yet to be wholly adopted. Though, both make good points, it is valuable to see how this approach can aid a designer’s ability to create more successfully.

Buchanan even suggests that systems thinking is evolving, which would also challenge Collopy’s stance. In fact, the shift he is suggesting is reminiscent of the values aligned with the shift in 21st century design practice. He states,

The focus is no longer on material systems—systems of “things”—but on human systems, the integration of information, physical artifacts, and interactions in environments of living, working, playing, and learning. I believe that one of the most significant developments in systems thinking is the recognition that human beings can never see or experience a system, yet we know that our lives are strongly influenced by system and environments of our own making and by those that nature provides (Buchanan Design Research and New Learning 12)”.

There is no panacea for all the ills associated with flawed design; however, to move forward, designers must shift their thinking to include a more holistic view of what is surrounding them. “Systems thinking gives us a holistic perspective for viewing the world around us, and seeing ourselves in the world. It is a way of organizing, or perhaps reorganizing, our knowledge in terms of systems, systemic properties, and inter‐system relationships (Laszlo 16).” This approach is so critical because we are all interrelated and interdependent, and we, ourselves, are living together in one large system. One of the most compelling examples of a successful system is that of ecology. Several valuable characteristics from our ecology that can be applied to design are elaborated on in Bonnie A. Nardi and Vicki L. O’Day’s research, which they call Information Ecologies. Here they enumerated various analogies that compare our ecology to information technologies. They state that ecologies are complex system of parts and relationships that exhibit diversity and experience continual evolution. “Change in an ecology is systemic. When one element is changed, effects can be felt throughout the whole system. An ecology responds to local environmental changes and local intervention. An ecology is a place that is scaled to an individuals” (Nardi and O’Day 50). Another profound example of systems thinking that will help to elaborate on the importance of focusing on humanity exists in Peter Senge’s comparison of mechanical systems (or “machines for making money”) and living systems (or “living beings”). This metaphor explains that the machine is created for a specific purpose and is owned by someone who can sell it. People outside the system manage the machine, and the structure and goals of the outsiders are imposed on the system’s organization. If the metaphor is changed to a living being instead of a machine the question of ownership gets complicated. “Most people in the world,” Senge notes, “would regard the idea that one person owns another as fundamentally immoral” (qtd. in Capra 104). Similarly, Capra states, “If the organization were truly living communities, buying and selling them would be the equivalent of slavery, and subjecting the lives of their member to predetermined goals would be seen as dehumanizing” (104). To properly run a machine it must be controlled so that it will function efficiently. Living beings on the other hand act with free will and taking this away by having an outsider’s control imposed removes life or “aliveness” from the living being. Senge further states that, “The machine metaphor is so powerful that it shapes the character of most organizations. They become more like machines than living beings because the members see themselves that way.” Design must no longer mimic the mechanistic approach, but rather embrace a more human‐centered one. It is time to take the metaphor of the living system that adapts, learns and evolves.

Inspired by the functionality of the systematic adaptation seen in an ecology, designers can see that creating in a way that denies the integration of knowledge from other disciplines is a flaw. An interdisciplinary approach to design creates a foundation for problem solving that is superior to an approach that is so focused on a discipline’s methods that it segregates itself from most effective solutions. Interdisciplinary design is innovative, and takes the best from each design disciplines, whether that be its research methodologies, its way of viewing the user, its strategy...the list is endless.

This interdisciplinary approach is necessary for comprehensive problem‐solving and is especially useful in addressing complex issues like the those that are preventing schools in the Mississippi Delta from performing at a higher level.

Following this transformation of sight, to see beyond design’s impact of simple artifacts or surface graphics, came an awareness of what is around us that had seemingly been ignored for some time. Designers’ started to see how and where their efforts and tools could be used to positively affect some of society’s greatest needs.

Sources

Buchanan, Richard. "Design Research and the New Learning." Design Issues. Vol. 17. Number 4. Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2001. Print.

Buchanan, V. M. a. R., Ed. (2000). The Idea of Design. Cambridge, The MIT Press.

Capra, Fritjof. The Hidden Connections. New York, NY: Random House, 2002. Print.

Capra, Fritjof. The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism. 1975. 4th ed. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2000. Print.

Collopy, Fred. “Lessons Learned ‐‐ Why the Failure of Systems Thinking Should Inform the Future of Design Thinking.” Fast Company Magazine. 7 June, 2009. Web. January 2010.

Farson, Richard. “The Power of Design.” Address to International Leadership Forum Digest Conference. Sept. 2007. Lecture.

Farson, Richard. The Power of Design: A Force for Transforming Everything. First ed. Norcross: Greenway Communications, 2008. Print.

Jones, Peter H. “Learning the Lessons of Systems Thinking: Exploring the Gap between Thinking and Leadership.” Integral Leadership Review. Vol. IX, No. 4. August 2009. Web. January 2010.

Khramkova, D. E. Creativity Development: Two Different Modes of Solving Problems. F. a. F. 2. Moscow, Russia: From a presentation at the International conference on innovation and entrepreneurship. 2009. Web. February 2010.

Lumiknows: Design Resesarch, S., Innovation. Creativity, Design Thinking and How These Have To Do With Innovation & Entrepreneurship. D. E. Khramkova, 2009. Lecture.

Mau, Bruce. Massive Change. What is Massive Change? B. M. D. a. t. Institute Without Boundaries, Word Press. It's not about the world of design. It's about the design of the world, 2009. Web. February 2010.

Nardi, Bonnie A. and Vicki L. O’Day. Information Ecologies: Using Technology with Heart. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1999. Print.

Thackara, John. In the Bubble: Designing in a Complex World. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006. Print. "This Year's Butterfly Ballot." The New York Times October 27, 2008 2008, sec. Opinion. Print.

While conducting research to build the initial phases of a communications plan transitioning Global Alliance for Arts & Health from their previously branded organization, Society for Arts in Healthcare, Lybba was able to spend time talking with one of Global Alliance’s inspiring board members, David Leventhal of Mark Morris Dance Group (MMDG). Leventhal is the founding teacher and Program Manager of Dance for Parkinson’s (Dance for PD®), a collaborative program between the MMDG and Brooklyn Parkinson Group offering dance classes for people with Parkinson’s disease at Mark Morris Dance Center and The Juilliard School.

Dance for PD has now been used as a model for classes in more than 75 communities around the world by offering master classes through MMDG’s touring outreach program, teacher training and nurturing relationships in outside organizations so that classes are available to local communities.

Read the full article at Lybba.org

Structuring Social Messes with Morphological Analysis

via Swedish Morphological Society

“If you work in an organisation that deals with long-term social, commercial or organisational policy planning, then you’ve got wicked problems. You may not call them by this name, but you know what they are. They are those complex, ever changing societal and organisational planning problems that you haven’t been able to treat with much success, because they won’t keep still. They’re messy, devious, and reactive, i.e. they fight back when you try to deal them.”

Introduction

In 1973, Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber, both urban planners at the University of Berkley in California, wrote an article forPolicy Sciences with the astounding title “Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning”. In this landmark article, the authors observed that there is a whole realm of social planning problems that cannot be successfully treated with traditional linear, analytical (systems-engineering-like) approaches. They called these wicked problems, in contrast to tame problems.

(A year later, in his book “Redesigning the Future”, Russell Ackoff (1974) essentially put forward the same concept — although in less detail — which he called a “social mess” or “unstructured reality”.)

More here

Image from What is “Design thinking for wicked problems?”

What I think is so special about this project is that it makes more aware of how we can learn from the spaces and objects around us.

When BLDG BLOG discussed Project H’s Learning Landscape they connected the project to an exhibit at the Institute for Figuring that I feel is worth mentioning here.

Here is a section of their write-up:

In an unbelievably interesting exhibition held two years ago in Pasadena, the Institute For Figuring explored the educational system of a now relatively under-known man named Friedrich Froebel and his influence on what we now call kindergarten. To quote from their online exhibition at length:

Most of us today experienced kindergarten as a loose assortment of playful activities – a kind of preparatory ground for school proper. But in its original incarnation kindergarten was a formalized system that drew its inspiration from the science of crystallography. During its early years in the nineteenth century, kindergarten was based around a system of abstract exercises that aimed to instill in young children an understanding of the mathematically generated logic underlying the ebb and flow of creation. This revolutionary system was developed by the German scientist Friedrich Froebel whose vision of childhood education changed the course of our culture laying the grounds for modernist art, architecture and design. Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright and Buckminster Fuller are all documented attendees of kindergarten. Other “form-givers” of the modern era – including Piet Mondrian, Wassily Kandinsky and Georges Braque – were educated in an environment permeated with Frobelian influence.

I don’t mean to imply here that Project H’s “math playground” in Uganda is an example of Froebelian education – because, as far as I’m aware, it is not – but I do mean to say that it would be amazingly cool if the spatial environments of modern life were organized more along educational lines.

*Here is a link to Project H Design’s Photostream on Flickr

This pursuit invites participants to explore Savannah by biking the city.  Using the World Café approach this activity will immerse EPIC participants in a rich, contextual exploration of downtown Savannah, inviting them to join with community members in discussions about Savannah's past, present and future. Using bicycle as a sustainable mode of transportation, participants will experience Savannah through multiple stops and engage in dialogue with people from different communities within the city.

We look forward to seeing you at this important event.

Thank you!

Voltacollaborative Team

Brief Document

Some of the most interesting revitalization work in Savannah is coming not from the traditional--and often unsuccessful--saviors of decayed neighborhoods. It’s coming from design students, who are earnestly trying to find ways to work with local residents without igniting suspicion of outsiders wielding big ideas.

Read the full article at FastCompany.com

Designers know how to throw a good conference, and the 2012 Design Ethos conference in Savannah, Georgia, was no exception. Conferences like this play an essential role in the continued evolution of the art and science of our work. More importantly, they offer a space for the community to look inward upon itself and to ask really important – and often times uncomfortable – questions about our own assumptions, biases and motivations. These brief family reunions of colleagues, contemporaries and conspirators drive renewal within the very fabric of our character: our ethos.

Design Ethos, founded by SCAD professor Scott Boylston, aims to "to redefine the role of visual communication as a tool to help empower, shape and amplify the voices of traditionally under-served communities, and their business assets." The energized, enthusiastic discipline of Social Design is skyrocketing into common consciousness as a designation for those who believe Design can and should be waged as a force for the common good.

Those who are familiar with one Mr. Scott Boylston know that he has an uncanny appreciation for dialing up the mayhem:

"Another main objective of the conference is to redefine the structure and role of the traditional conference model to provide more experiential interaction for attendees [...] in a way that allows for meaningful interactivity between visual communicators and those whose voices would be amplified by these design abilities."

If a conference is a place where so much talent and potential momentary convene to share the alchemy of their efficacy, what might happen if that potential for impact were fully unleashed on a common goal? What happens when people momentarily convene to do? Enter the Design Ethos Do-Ference: a forty-eight hour challenge to for conference-goers to join local community leaders in realizing and catalyzing new opportunities for meaningful, sustainable progress within the Waters Avenue Revitalization Project. Industry vets, professors and students were divided into six teams focusing on six essential initiatives.

Volta served an interesting role in the Do-Ference. R, Jill and I shuffled about as “synthesizers,” responsible for keying off of patterns and overlaps across multiple teams to bridge connections and providing clarity where possible. We were an active feedback loop, working closely with organizers, facilitators, and student aids, as well as participants who needed a little extra coaxing to engage with their teams.

From our vantage point we observed a rich medley of creative chaos and confusion as teams grappled with the gravity of the challenge. The potential for impact was huge, but so were the constraints. First: the project would last for a full 48 hours, and second: the project only lasted for 48 hours. How deep can you really dive in such a limited amount of time? And, should you engage, how much should you realistically (and responsibly) commit to?

Central themes of food shed development and educational reform resonated throughout the rooms, as teams recognized that the major challenges and points of tension within the space were about identify, continuity and autonomy. Each group tempered the impulse to assert top-down solutions with the candor to simply asking better questions.

The collaboration that emerged between the conference-goers and Waters Ave. community leadership was beautiful. Common design methodologies like affinity diagramming and concept mapping (things we often take for granted) deepened conversations and forged entirely new ideas that were more connected and comprehensive than anything the teams might have proposed otherwise. In fact, it was the teams who were able to connect directly with the immediate needs and aspirations of their community leader that delivered the most value. Not surprisingly, those teams also coalesced into productive powerhouses once they defined their point of attack.

The clock marched down to the wire with Scott's cautionary maxim from the kickoff session hovering above every team: "Promise only what you can deliver." The pressure rattled folks; some we least expected, and in ways we couldn't have imagined. But deliver they did:

Coverage by the Volta network
The Management Complexity of Managing Complexity: An accelerated case study of design team dynamics

Coverage by Core77
Design Ethos: Spotlight on Scott Boylston, Founder
Design Ethos: Day Three
Design Ethos: Day Two
Design Ethos: Day 1
Design Ethos: Liz Ogbu Interview

Inspired. That’s how I left Savannah this past weekend.

As an Educator for the Alliance for Climate Education (ACE), I get the opportunity to go to high schools and educate students with our award-winning presentation on the science behind climate change. But the best part of my job is inspiring these students to take action and find solutions, because we believe these students can have a meaningful impact now.

With that in mind, The Volta Collaborative invited me to come down to Savannah to present to some local high schools and attend the Design Ethos conference. So when the opportunity to present for a class at Savannah School of Art & Design (SCAD) came up, I pounced on it. These college students really amazed me with me their ability to take complex ideas and map them into a story. I left that classroom inspired by knowing that their innovation and creativity are our future.

Immediately after presenting at SCAD, I went over to Windsor Forest High School. Due to excitement in the air at the end of the presentation, I could tell we really inspired some of the students. But not only the students, the teachers as well. Several of them came up afterward to thank me for the work ACE is doing. They even gave me an Earth Day t-shirt. Score! The eagerness and excitement radiating from that school inspired me.

The Design Ethos conference blew me away. I never thought about how sustainability, social change, and design intersect in real life, but after attending this conference, I have a much better idea of how all those puzzle pieces fit together. Hearing some of the most prolific and world-renowned designers, authors, professors, and inventors, I have to ask; how could anyone leave that conference uninspired?

Being around all the creativity in Savannah left me truly inspired and ready to engage the ethos of the next generation.

Each team had roles assigned for design voices and community leaders. For my team, the Cultural Identity Team, John Bielenburg, Project M Founder, and Josh McManus, Curator and Lead Inventor at Little Things Labs, served as our design voices. Jerome Meadows of Meadowlark Studios was our partnered community leader. The outcome of our approximately two and a half days together was an “adoption service” targeting the 28 abandoned concrete planters that line both sides of the portion of Waters Avenue where the efforts of the Do-ference were focused. This framework for taking ownership of the “400lb Baby” planters served to begin the process of establishing value in already existing elements of the community as well as inspiring ownership through cultural artistic expression of maintaining the planters. Both our concept and presentation appeared to go over well with conference attendees and community members. I was proud of where we landed in such a compressed time frame.

Examples of how the "400lb Baby" adoption service can transform the abandoned planters

While our positive output as a team can take some credit from the talent and hard work of the group, it is safe to say that a major factor of this “success” was due in large part to the team dynamic and team management. Essentially, when working in a diverse team environment, the efficient management of both the team members’ talents and the decision making processes can be the make or break point in the development of a sound concept. It was in the management of our team that I would like to pause for some small reflection.

We began our work with Jerome Meadows on Wednesday, visiting his studio and walking a portion of Waters Avenue to get a grounding on the background of the community and the work done up until then. In this first day, as we introduced ourselves, Josh McManus made it a point to ask of us what sort of skill sets we had, both design-related and from out in left field. He made note of the fact that this was to establish an inventory of talent for later in the workshop process. Later that day, John Bielenburg made a call for us to work toward what he calls a “little bet,” a small, highly creative concept that can be rapidly developed and deployed. At the end of this first day, Josh gave us a homework assignment for each of us to ponder on our own that evening: to ideate on a potential overall direction (or "little bet") for our assigned problem. These ideas would be shared back the next morning to the full group.

Jerome Meadows of Meadowlark Studios worked with the Cultural Identity Team, providing representative leadership from the Waters Avenue Community

On the second day, we did share back our ideas to the full group and we did vote as a group on the direction we believed had the most potential for our assigned problem. However, post-voting our group became somewhat bogged down in what to do next and the direction we had all voted on sort of mutated in front of our eyes into a diluted version of where we were when we started the day before. At this point, both Josh and John had left the group to give their talks. What we were lacking was someone who could take point and shape what we had on the table into a solid direction and say “go.” When Josh arrived back from his talk, he did just that, sorting through where we had landed and finding a direction to push toward in unison.

The remaining night and day saw us focused on executing tasks based on our expressed “talents,” adhering to a timeline of deliverable “due dates” established first thing Saturday morning. We essentially switched into production mode, only making group decisions where absolutely necessary. Oftentimes, the groups making the decisions were comprised of just those team members for whom the specific question at hand had particular relevance instead of the full group (Jerome and Josh were the two who had the most obvious connection to every step of these processes). All told, we made our deadline and produced a concept and presentation we were all proud of.

John Bielenberg and Josh McManus served as the Design Voices for the Cultural Identity Team

Though I didn’t get to attend his talk, I know Josh spoke to the balancing act that must occur in a group setting between collaborative group decisions and the solo creative process. This is a topic that I had taken note of in a recent New York Times editorial. The final 24 or so hours of our time together as a team brought to life an accelerated example of how these two facets of collaborative work environments must be thoughtfully managed in order to navigate the dangers of getting hung up in process.

While it is ideal to work collaboratively in brainstorming processes, it is oftentimes beneficial to break apart and have time for creative ideation in solitude. In coming together for a share back, the opportunity lies for combining and mixing and matching these individual ideas, which returns them to the collective sphere of the group. Furthermore, being able to fluidly read when a group’s creative momentum is beginning to stagnate is a necessary skill for the management of design teams. It is at these points that breaking a group up to work separately presents an opportunity to prevent the process from getting bogged down in fruitless, circular thinking.

It is also worth mentioning here, that having one or more members of a team who are comfortable with pulling the trigger on conceptual directions are a crucial asset to team environments. This was the case for our Cultural Identity Team. While it remains an imperative to collaborate on a problem as much as possible, the need still remains for a person or persons who can say, “This is it, let’s go for it.”

While this case study of managing collaborative design workshops took place in less than three days, this same scenario has a tendency to repeat itself in larger and longer projects. It’s in the creative management of design teams that the deliverable for design problem can narrow in from a loosely defined collection of process to a solidified, actionable idea.

Fast-forward 70 years. John Deaderick and Greg Jacobs, along with Jerry Lominack and later Christian Sottile, recognized the significance of this neighborhood within Savannah, and set after a vision of resurrecting it from the ages. During this effort, the Starland Dairy became the first LEED certified building in Savannah. In September of 2011, Volta Collaborative engaged the Desotarow art gallery, Christian Sottile and Jerry Lominack, in collaboration with SCAD design students from the Architecture and Fibers departments, to further reassert the Starland Dairy as a beacon of community revitalization and local ingenuity.

Through several weeks of fiery collaboration, the project stakeholders were able to see their assets through an entirely new lens. The students, too, were exposed to a depth and intensity of interdepartmental collaboration that they had not yet experienced. It was a profound journey for everyone, culminating with a public exhibition of the students' concepts for the "historically reverent" revitalization of the Starland Dairy.