Where Do You Look For Your Easter Eggs?

There's a story my mother tells about my sister as a toddler, hunting for Easter eggs. Our older brother knew the game - he would quickly loop around the house looking in all of the prime spots to gather the stashed eggs and assorted goodies. My sister Helen was new to this, so she opted to follow his example. She dutifully followed him to check every spot he was successful finding an egg in. No surprise to us in hindsight, she didn't find any Easter eggs of her own that year.

In order to discover the "next big thing" or understand your user in ways your competition doesn't, you need to look in places less obvious - those not explored time and time again by others who came before you. When they zig, you zag. When they think linearly, you think laterally.

One fun tool for encouraging lateral thinking is the Oblique Strategies card set created by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt. These cards have been used by many musical artists over the last few decades, ranging from Robert Fripp and David Bowie to REM and Coldplay(!?). Abstract directives and queries on the cards encourage the user to confront the dilemma in front of them in a new manner - hopefully to surprising result.

Or maybe it is simpler than that. Perhaps the question "where would Mom hide an easter egg" simply changes to "where on Mom's precious carpet and furniture would she worry least about a stain from dye"?

P.S.
Don't worry about my sister - she grew up to be talented and smart. The best of us kids, actually...

Bimmer's Brand Ballad

BMW Introduces New ‘Sound Logo’

So, BMW has a new sound logo...

I'm intrigued by how effectively sound logos can reinforce a brand through our memory's affinity for audible stimuli.  We are inundated by them daily, and you would recognize them if you focused upon them - yet most of us seem oblivious of their presence in our lives.

The old one seems somehow more "Bavarian" to me.  The new one more... backwards psychedelic synth-saxophone?!?  What's your take?

Am I Constructivist Or Am I Memorex?

As discussed previously, in order for a Visual Brand Language (VBL) strategy to be applied successfully across a diverse line of products, we understand that there needs to be some level of mutability to it.  The "amount of stretch" required may vary depending upon the nature of your product line, but it is always there at some level.

But if a strong VBL relies on recognition and mutability simultaneously, do we have a conflict?  Well, it turns out those two factors are not as mutually exclusive as it would first appear.  In his book "This Is Your Brain On Music" Dr. Daniel Levitin explores how our brains interpret and process musical stimuli.  Throughout the book he uses musical examples to illustrate aspects of how our brains access memory and recognition, and relates these examples to the competing Constructivist and Record-Keeping theories.  While this is all well above my pay-grade, in a nutshell it can be stated that Constructivists argue that we store relational information to inform a reconstruction of events when needed, while the Record-Keepers argue that memories are recorded verbatim as in a video file.  Both schools of thought have evidence to support their views, and in the end it appears that each contain a part of the truth.

If you were able to successfully identify a popular traditional melody whistled to you out of pitch, out of time, and with inconsistencies in interpretation, your brain would be illustrating behavior consistent with the Constructivist theory.  You took an imperfect input and broke it down into sets of relationships which you could interpret and derive meaning from.  Each individual pitch may be off, but if the relationships between them is somewhat consistent with the intended melody (not even in amount, just direction up or down) you will most likely be able to identify the song.

Interestingly, if we turned the tables around and asked you to whistle a recent hit song to me (one with a singular, definitive performance), you would perform it closer to the original performance’s key and tempo than chance could account for.  This is true whether you had musical training in your background or not.  Relationships are not the lone factor of recognition, your Record-Keeping brain maintained a persistent reference for you to recall in this scenario.

The Constructivist theory demonstrates to us that in the absence of specific sensory information, even in spite of it at times, our memory is capable of dynamically reconstructing a story.  This is at the core of why a VBL framework can be manipulated so dramatically yet still remain recognizable to the consumer.  Your VBL is a melody, which is reinterpreted time and time again through the multitude of product offerings you bring to the market.  The individual product may be a cappella, mellow acoustic, death-metal dirge, or a dance remix, but The Song Remains The Same…

Don't Fear the Researcher

This past week I gave a presentation on ethnographic research at GE Healthcare Research Park.  The Diagnostic Cardiology Systems Team invited me as part of their Global Engineer’s Week - a series of events centered around delivering innovative customer value.  There was a personal message I decided to fit in as part of that presentation...

When I came on board with Brooks Stevens Inc. many years ago, we were still very much the small ID-centric firm we were during our founder’s time.  Since then, we’ve expanded to include mechanical engineering, FEA, prototyping, and ethnographic research.  I can say that each of these additions – which made ID a smaller portion of our culture and business – have contributed significantly to my growth towards being a better designer today.  These additions didn’t diminish design’s role, they enhanced design's capability to succeed.

Incorporation of design research in earnest changes things, and it makes some designers uncomfortable.  They fear that the creative aspect of their job is somehow being fenced-in; the fun being squeezed out of it.  But the reality is that design research doesn’t tie your hands or restrict your creativity – it enables you to be better at what you love to do, with insights and opportunities for you to capitalize upon.

My background is firmly within ID, and I still am a designer at heart to this day.  If I was solely an ethnographer by training and career path, you’d have reason to look at my praises of design research with a jaundiced eye.  But I’m not that guy.  I’ve done a lot of ethnography, and collaborated with some great researchers over the years.

 

Come on baby...don't fear the researcher.