Toys toys toys

I'm developing a new project called Make Better Stuff, a series of toy-making workshops in which students design and build their own toys while learning social skills like teamwork, user interaction, and empathy. I've been thinking a lot about toys--about who designs them, who builds them (not elves), who plays with them, and how the design of a toy affects people in different ways.

Toys are designed by grown ups. Many of these designers work for firms who aim for high sales and low production costs. Then there are those who assemble toys, often foreign laborers who’ve moved away from their families to make money to send home, who might take a few night classes to try to move up in their careers. Then there are the recipients of these toys: kids who play with them. Different types of toys encourage different types of play.

A ball for example encourages a shared experience. It can be a competitive experience as in basketball, in which the goal of each player is to score for their own team and prevent the other team from scoring. Or it can be a collaborative experience, as in a game of catch, in which both parties want to toss the ball back and forth just because it feels good--that experience sounds and smells good too.

There are toys that encourage strict adhesion to the rules, such as a coloring book. And there are toys that encourage exploration and creativity, such as legos. (Even though they are marketed and sold in kits, they still end up in one big bin that kids make all kinds of fabulous creations with.)

But you know what there aren’t enough of? Toys designed by kids. So I look forward to exploring toy-design with kids. I’d like to know what they think about toys: the relationships that toys promote and how kids might create toys that make their own lives better. Sounds like fun, right?

Almost Perfect

As I embark on a new laser cutting project, I’m diving deep into patterns, tessellations, and polyhedrons. These are patterns of perfection, one unit exactly like the next. But the deeper I go into this research, the more I’m drawn to the theme of “almost perfect.” It’s popping up everywhere. In nature there is pattern and variation like in kernels on an ear of corn or in leaves on a branch. They’re all the same, but they are slightly different from one another. And in music there is the concept of “theme and variation.” The theme is the perfect and variation the imperfect. Alone they are flat little pieces but, paired, theme and variation create something rich, complex, and whole.

Christopher Alexander’s 1977 book, A Pattern Language, is filled with imperfect patterns that help us to design better buildings, towns, and cities. “Something Roughly in the Middle” is a pattern from that book. The pattern doesn’t discard symmetry but asks us to play with it a bit. When designing a courtyard, he says, place a sculpture or a fountain roughly in the middle. Resist the urge to place it dead center.

Like I said, this theme is everywhere. I even heard super-model Tyra Banks tell one of her contestants on America’s Next Top Model, ‘You want your photos to be perfect, but not quite perfect. Because that’s what makes a great photo, when something is slightly off.’

So thank you, universe, for pointing out the almost perfect. And let me ask you dear readers, what are your favorite examples of “almost perfect”?

Repost: Interview with Red Hat designer, Mo Duffy

Mo Duffy is a senior interaction designer at Red Hat, a billion dollar company that is the world's leading open source and Linux provider. I met Mo this past spring when we spoke on a panel at SxSW. I was struck by her insights into her profession and how those insights relate to all design professions. Not only does she get into the nitty gritty of the politics of the workplace and the realities of usability testing, but she is a passionate advocate for open source and the democratization of design.


To read the interview, follow this link to industrial design super site Core77.

Some Things Change

A lot of changes on the immediate horizon. A change in career, a change in location. I'm excited and I'm scared.

Luckily, however, my friends and family haven't changed. I can count on them for love and support and these past 24 hours I've felt extreme gratitude for their love.

I'll write with more detail after the first of the month when I'll be doing a bit of traveling, visiting my people, and some camping, crafting, and music making (my "new" accordion pictured above). To the future! May we all be happy and healthy. May we love and be loved.

Simple steps for encouraging participation

NOTE: If you are able to read and listen to music at the same time -- I cannot -- then I suggest playing this video while you read. The music is quite good.


We gave our SxSW panel on women in open source today. It was fun. I’ve really enjoyed talking with Red Hat designer, Mo Duffy,  these past few days and Andrea Hickerson is always a pleasure to work with.

Our panel was about encouraging women to participate in open source and open collaboration projects. By ‘open collaboration’ I mean any project that isn’t directly regulated by the market or government but instead relies on a group of self-organized volunteers. Yochai Benkler writes about this at a very high level, but I’m looking for something a little simpler. Also I’m not as interested in how the work is arranged, which is what Benkler articulates well, but how the entry experience for a newbie is designed.

During the discussion, I think we all agreed that when a host of an open source or open collaboration project extends an invitation for newbies to join, that invitation isn’t enough to encourage a diverse group of people to participate. We articulated that problem well, I think,  and the audience nodded their heads in agreement. But solutions are hard to come by. Several audience members scratched their heads and asked, “Why is this still an issue?” To which I humbly replied, “I don’t know. That’s what I’m here to find out.” (I know panelists aren’t supposed to say that, but I’m on a “show your vulnerability” kick these days. But that’s another story).

One answer I thought of during the panel comes from what I'm learning in my grad strategy course. In strategy, we learn that it’s common for an organization to articulate a grand vision yet not clarify an execution plan to achieve that vision. “Why is that so common?” you may ask. Again, I don’t know but I suspect it’s because executing a vision is freaking hard to do.

So in trying to figure out how to add some walk to our talk, how to offer some actionable steps toward getting closer to the vision of  more women participating in open collaboration, I called on my first love, music. In music, we engage in something called “Call and response.”  The caller can be thought of, in this instance, as the host of a collaborative project. And the responders are potential participants.

Here are the steps for engaging people in a “call and response” collaboration.
1. Offer them an invitation to collaborate (good start, but not enough)
2. Show them how to participate (sing a simple line of a song)
3. Practice the line with them (until they feel comfortable)
4. Take a leap of faith together and sing the song

Now, I know the skeptics out there have been burned by engaging in a process like this. More than once I’ve heard a host of a project say, “I spent 10 hours training that person and they just abandoned the project.” This is a valid concern. That’s why it’s so important to find an easy task for the newbie to learn that won’t take too much of your time. Now, the other skeptics are saying, “Well, if I spend that much time with a newbie, won’t I just be training them to depend on me to lead them? That’s not what open source is about.” This too is a valid concern.

To come back to music, a newbie starts off with an instructor, but eventually learns how to play on her own. She may even outgrow her instructor and will have to find a new one that is more challenging. Finally, she goes on to perform solo and in ensembles and may even become an instructor herself. This is how you scale participation in open collaborative projects. Extend an invitation to a newbie; model for them how to participate; practice with the newbie until she feels comfortable; then, most importantly, take a leap of faith together and sing that song. And when you get really good at this process, you may end up as good as Miles.

video via Chris Azzara

Synthesizing Design-thinking and Sustainability

I’ve long been interested in the similarities and differences of two venn diagrams used in analyzing products, services, and systems. One diagram is used to visualize innovation values and the other is used to visualize sustainability values.

The Innovation Diagram
The first--the innovation venn diagram--holds that when we develop new products, services, or systems, there is a sweet spot at the overlap of the three perspectives of Design, Business, and Technology (1). The Design perspective is defined as a customer perspective or a human-centered perspective; the Business perspective is defined by the ability of the market to support a new product, service or system; and the Technology perspective is defined by the feasibility of technical function, that is, can we build a new product, service, or system that won’t break when we use it?

The Sustainability Diagram
The other venn diagram, visualizing sustainability values--is comprised of what is referred to as the “triple bottom line.” This trio isn’t always expressed as a venn*, but humor me for a minute. The three circles in this diagram consist of the following criteria: People, Planet, and Profit.

Synthesizing “Design” (from the Innovation Diagram) and “People” (from Sustainability Diagram)
It’s easy to synthesize the Design circle from the Innovation diagram and the People circle from the Sustainability diagram: the Design circle is made of customers and the people circle includes customers but also includes anyone affected by a new product, service, or system.

Synthesizing “Business” (from the Innovation Diagram) and “Profit,” (from the Sustainability Diagram)
It’s easy to synthesize the Business circle from the Innovation diagram and the Profit circle from the Sustainability diagram: the Business circle is made of a particular type of profit, one that maximizes shareholder wealth, and in a for-profit firm wealth is most often defined as monetary wealth, so making a lot of money is the goal. However, in a non-profit organization, the definition of wealth is broader. Certainly a  non-profit needs to make more money than what it costs to operate the organization, but its shareholders are taxpayers who, in theory, define wealth-generation as delivering value to society.

Synthesizing “Technology” (from the Innovation Diagram) and “Planet” (from the Sustainability Diagram)
The Technology circle on the Innovation diagram and the Planet circle in the Sustainability diagram are trickier to resolve. They seem too different to synthesize. But William McDounnough (2) offers a useful scheme. When he talks about products, services, and systems, he distinguishes between industrial systems and biological ones. He claims that as long as we can keep those systems separate, then we should be okay. So in my synthesized diagram, I’m resolving the Technology circle and the Planet circle with the term “Systems,” both man-made (technological) and natural.

The “Enlightened Innovation” diagram: Culture, Value, & Systems
So this is my “Enlightened Innovation” diagram. I claim that the sweet spot is where Culture, Value, and Systems meet. Culture (3) is defined by all people affected by a new product, service, or system. Value is defined by economic viability, but also by other definitions of wealth, such as health or happiness. And Systems is defined by the functionality of technological and natural systems. Of course, all of this looks good on paper. If you’re in the trenches, you know how difficult it is to resolve these perspectives, to find the sweet spot. But no one said it would be easy.

-------------------


* In a triple bottom line diagram, some argue that the people and profit circle lie within the planet circle. 
(1) Tim Brown and Scott Berkun are great resources for this innovation diagram. 
(2) William McDounnough’s Cradle to Cradle is a great resource on navigating industrial and biological systems
(3) AIGA put forth a quadruple bottom line that includes “culture” in addition to society, planet, and profit

Thinking outside of the brain

Designers are kind of addicted to putting themselves into unfamiliar situations. Why? Well, as Allan Chochinov says in a recent interview with Rachel Singer, “It helps you to be fresh.” Staying true the behaviors of my clan, I'm immersed in several unfamiliar scenarios at present and, collectivity, they’re really keeping me on my toes. They are:

1. Designing local food products & systems for main-stream customers

2. Going for an Executive MBA

3. Preparing to speak at SxSW about Open Source Communities

LOCAL FOOD FOR THE MAIN STREAM.  I've been an early adopter of local food systems for years now, shopping at farmers markets and joining CSAs. And while these systems have been growing in popularity as I've been a part of them, there seems to be a steady divide between those who eat local and those who don't. So I'm stepping out of my brain, my perspective, and leaving it to my students, who don't shop or eat local, to figure out what will make local food interesting or delightful to them and thus, we hope, to mainstream customers? Why? Because adoption by main-stream customers will give the local food movement wings. Current food systems the students are borrowing from are CrackerBarrel, BirdsEye, and Top Chef. Love these ideas. Love them all. I especially enjoy how the students are deconstructing these known models to figure out what parts make sense for a local food application and what parts don’t.

EXECUTIVE MBA. I am blessed to be in the EMBA program at RIT's Saunders College. As I've mentioned before, the math part is a real challenge for me, so challenging that sometimes I wonder if I'll make it through. But I'm in love with the conceptual stuff. As a designer interested in sustainability, I love learning about how firms make their make/buy decisions, the decisions to either make their own products or buy ready-made from a supplier. Most of the time these are strictly financial decisions though we've already studied one case in which, even though it made financial sense to transition to making a product, the firm found later that it did not make sense from a personnel perspective. My larger point here is that it's so great to get out of my design brain and into a business brain to look at supply chain issues.
Another gem is this one from my accounting class: "The Role of the Firm is to Generate Owner Wealth." Fact. The flexible part of this definition, however, is in how the owners define wealth. A very useful piece of information for me. As much as I complain about the math, learning how key concepts are defined is just priceless.

And one more insight is from the many management cases we have to analyze. In case after case, the issue isn’t that management doesn’t understand the problem or doesn’t know the solution. The issue is that they don’t know how to implement an effective plan of action. Fascinating. This is a problem space that designers can offer a lot of value, I think, with their attention to human behavior and reactions to props and prompts. This is probably why behavioral economics is so appealing to designers. (I’ll write another post about his last point, me thinks).

SXSW INTERACTIVE. OMG, just a few months ago my friends and I were sitting around bitching about how "boys club" Open Source Communities are and now we're headed to SxSW to talk about it in front of a bunch of people. Like I said, I'm addicted to stepping out of my comfort zone. I believe that that's when we learn the most. So if by going there I learn how to be a better participant in Open Source Communities, and if I can model that vulnerability and learning process for other women in my situation, well then, I've done some good. If nothing else, I get to work with my super bright colleague in the RIT's Journalism Department, Andrea Hickerson. And Andrea just recruited Mo Duffy (!) as another panelist, in addition to Sara Brown. It should be super fun and if you're in Austin and if you're willing to think outside of your brain, then you should come. You are more than welcome to our club.

Up to Some Things

Every once in a while I like to write a little list of the stuff I'm involved with. Somehow it helps me to put it all down in one place so I can try to find a pattern or thread that runs through it all. Here we go: A STUDENT AGAIN. I'm enrolled in the Executive MBA program at RIT and I'm taking three courses at present: Leadership, Accounting, and Statistics. As you can imagine, I love my Leadership course. We have a lot of great readings and discussions about how to be more effective at work. I've been trying out the techniques as they are introduced in class and I find it really interesting. Accounting class has probably taken me the farthest from my comfort zone than I’ve ever been, but I'm okay with that. While the content is interesting on a conceptual level, like why certain firms make certain accounting decisions, I find it difficult to grasp the basics. So I've had to combine the text book with other sources and force myself to talk about accounting with experts. I think it's getting better. Statistics class is a challenge with all of those formulas, but with the help of my study group and minitab software, I'm doing all right. I look forward to integrating my design skills with our group project, in which we have to visualize some data.
STILL TEACHING. I'm in the third year of teaching Design-thinking and it continues to change and grow as we work with different clients. This quarter (which is over in four weeks!) we've got three clients: 1. Good Food Collective, 2. Mud Creek Farms/Small World Bakery and 3. FreshWise Farm-to-School Program. The students are doing relatively well. I've given them a lot of freedom to find design problems that interest them. They go out and tested their first prototypes this week and I'm sure they will learn a lot from that. Next quarter, however, I think we'll work with only one client so I can keep a closer eye on all the teams.
FOOD-SYSTEM INNOVATION. My interest in our local food system continues to grow. I've been focused on the producer side of things and will continue to follow that path as I think consumer demand for this stuff is reaching a tipping point, so much of a tipping point, in fact, that I worry about the farmers keeping up with the demand without running themselves ragged. From my field research so far, I'm finding that the farmers could use better farm tools, more opportunities for food processing, and more opportunities for sales. Additionally, I've met a few administrators at RIT who are very interested in this project, not only the business side of it, but in those aspects of it that promote food justice and that promote farming as an educational tool. So I plan to meet every few weeks with these administrators and I hope something comes from those meetings. If nothing else, we’ll exchange some knowledge.
TEDx ROCHESTER. I'll be a speaker at the third annual TEDx Rochester, which is an independently run TED event. The title of my talk is "Make Better Stuff: the rise of social business and distributed manufacturing." This title is also the title of a book I'm researching, so this event is a great opportunity for me to get some feedback on the topic. I'll post the transcript online once it's over, so you can chime in too. And I’ll post the video too, if it comes out okay (I'm a little nervous about it). SXSW. Andrea Hickerson and I submitted a proposal for SXSW Interactive (South by Southwest). I have NO idea if our proposal will be accepted, but if it is you'll be hearing more about that soon. If we do get in, I feel that my participation in SXSW combined with my TEDx talk and 2010 MakerFaire exhibit will comprise my geeked-out version of an EGOT.
EDITING AND PUBLISHING. I haven't been editing and publishing, well not much at least, but I did work with an editing and publishing course at Ithaca College last week, Professor Catherine Taylor’s course. In it, the students are writing book proposals and manifestos (so great) and, in teams, starting their own magazines. I worked with the teams on how to think of their magazines as tools for starting movements. Luckily I had a copy of MAKE with me, which is a fine example of a quarterly magazine that is just one piece of a very important maker movement. The workshop was a lot of fun and I look forward to tracking these new publications. What an empowering exercise, starting a magazine. Great.
LOCAL FOOD POTLUCKS. We had a local food potluck in the RIT Innovation Center this quarter and it went so well we've decided to host one every quarter. The next one will be on Jan. 17, 2012 from 12-2 p.m. Details are still being worked out, but we know that Nabil Nasr will be our guest speaker. Bringing a dish-to-pass will be more of an option this time and less of a requirement, and we're still thinking about how to add another "sharing-economy" activity such as a clothing swap or wisdom swap. Not sure yet.
FELTING. This one is purely for fun. I went to AmVets the other day and picked up as many wool sweaters as I could find. I've thrown them in the wash to shrink them and am now working on re-purposing them. So far I've made a hat that I really like and several neck wraps. In addition to these, I plan to make mittens, coffee cup cozies, and perhaps some toys. I don't know what it is about wool, but it's *my* material. It really speaks to me. Well that’s all for now. Still looking for that common thread. It’s probably made from wool. 
The photo above was taken on Comfort Road just outside of Ithaca, NY.

Summer ends, EMBA begins

Back in June I wrote that I'd try to post a few pictures over the summer. Well, that didn't really happen. Though the summer had many lovely moments, though we picked a lot of fruit and made over a dozen cases of jam, though we got to see and spend time with our dear friends and family, there were too many difficult moments this summer. I'm happy to see the season come to an end.

This week I begin the orientation process for the Executive MBA (EMBA) program at RIT -- as a student! I'll continue to teach the design thinking course (sign up #0102-421-01) in Saunders College of Business and work on my research about rapid prototyping and local food economy, but this time with super EMBA knowledge informing it all. I'm excited. I expect to have many insights as I learn this new language and look forward to sharing them with you here.

pictured above: Ludlowville Falls in Lansing, NY on the left and an urban gardening scene in Ithaca, NY on the right

He rode off in many different directions

The other night we went to hear poet John Ashbery speak at the Memorial Art Gallery (MAG) and were delighted by his easy sense of humor. Ashbery was born in Rochester and even took painting lessons in the basement at MAG when his high school in Sodus, NY cut their art program. He seemed very relaxed and at home in the gallery (though he's probably always like that).

The talk coincided with a beautiful piece of experimental book-making that's currently on view in the museum - a setting of Ashbery's poem Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. When asked about how he felt about the popularity of that poem he gave a great response that I'll try to capture here:

'It's funny how popular this poem is because it's not necessarily the direction I went in. In fact, I've tried to go in many directions, like, He saddled his horse and rode off in many directions.'

Two things I love about this statement: 1. The manner in which he delivered it, with the craft of a poet and the lightness of an improv comedian and 2. The confidence with which he is able to speak about such a non-traditional approach to life.

Everywhere we go we are told to choose one thing to do and to learn to do it well. We're discouraged from working on many things at once lest we confuse our audience with too much noise. Yet, if we are a curious about life's mysteries, then we are bound to pursue many different directions simultaneously. So thank you, John Ashbery, for spontaneously crafting this silly and meaningful line. I'm glad we were there to hear it.

Working on a book this summer

so my blog may be a little quiet. I'll try to share a picture every now and then because this is the season of beauty in upstate New York.

The book is about the value of constraints in the creative process. At least that's my jumping off point. If you would like to be interviewed on this topic, then give me a holler at xanthe [dot] matychak [at] gmail [dot] com. The more voices I can gather the better.

Enjoy yourself this summer. Be happy and healthy and let your people know how much you love them.

Xanthe

UPDATE: The subject of the book changed a lot as I began to write. I'll be giving a talk on it in November at TEDx Rochester. I hope you can come!

Build to Learn

There’s an important concept in design-thinking called “Build To Learn.” When we build to learn, we build stuff, quick and dirty prototypes, in order to figure out what the thing we are working on should be like. We build instead of just think about, or worry about, how the thing that we are working on might turn out. You hear writers talk about taking this leap of faith all of the time. When asked about their process, writers often reply  with something like, “I let the story take me where it wants to go.” They don’t have the story all figured out in their minds. They write, or build, to discover the story.

Of course to some extent we all do this occasionally. When we get lost in a car, for example, we’ll wander around aimlessly until we see something that we recognize. Or when we don’t have an ingredient for a recipe that we’re making we‘ll improvise and find something we think or hope will work as well as the ingredient in the script. We don’t know for sure that we’ll find our way in the car or that we’ll make a recipe that is tasty, but we have enough faith to keep working on it.

Yet, when it comes to work situations many of us fall into the trap of thinking that we need to figure out all of the details about how something will work without ever testing bits and pieces of it.

The picture above is of my students building an exhibit for Imagine RIT festival on May 7. As you can probably see in the photo, the students don’t know how every little detail will work out in the end. They are exploring the exhibit space by tinkering with it.  I’m happy to say that yesterday they made leaps and bounds  - more than they ever would have sitting at their desks just worrying about what might or might not be successful.

Building to learn is especially useful when we’re faced with several approaches to a problem and are having a difficult time figuring out which one is right. Instead of trying to guess which solution is the right one, we quickly build a few prototypes to help us decide. Some people resist this approach because they reason that building two or more prototypes is more work than building just one (I get this from my students a lot). But if we only build one solution to a problem and it fails, then we have to start all over again. Or even worse, we have to tolerate a poorly designed system just because we put “so much work into it” and can’t bear to throw it out and start again. Short-sightedness.

Building to learn is an aspect of a larger ethos at the core of design thinking: designers spend more time in the “fuzzy front end” of a project, building to learn, exploring many options so that we can test out a few things before we build and launch the “finished” version. It’s a difficult shift to make for some. But feel free to try it. Try it with something small like intentionally getting lost on a walk or improvising a recipe. Then see if you can apply that same way of working to a bigger project. And who knows, you may just discover something that you could have never found just sitting at your desk.  

Sign up for Design-thinking at RIT

Design-thinking is method for developing new products, services, and systems made popular by the Stanford d.school. The method takes cues from processes found in anthropology and fine art. We use anthropological processes to gain insights on stakeholders affected by our designs, for e.g., observing people in their natural environments.  And we use fine arts processes to develop creative prototypes, for e.g., navigating divergent and convergent thinking.

Make a bold move and join us. The course is open to all RIT students junior level and up. I haven't chosen the project for fall yet so if you have some ideas, leave a comment. (The project is different every quarter).

Course # 0102.421.01