What can we learn from the “Dumbest” Generation?

Last month, I spoke at the World Future Society’s (WFS) annual conference in Chicago. One of the most thought provoking talks I heard was the Opening Keynote about the Net Generation–the young people who are changing and will change our world in profound ways. This generation is comprised of the children of the baby boomers, aged 13-30, and are considered to be the first ever generation to come of age in the digital era.

The speaker, Don Tapscott, believes that this generation that has grown up with information technology may be seen as the “Dumbest Generation” by their elders, when in fact, he believes them to be the smartest generation and representative of a powerful force for change; a change that will contribute to innovation. Tapscott conducted a $4 million, 2-year research project, surveying 10,000 young people in 10 countries, and came to the conclusion that technology has changed their brain development. He learned that young people have different brains than their predecessors; brains that allow them to not just multitask but to switch between topics with more fluidity than older people, who didn’t have exposure to technology in their youth. Tapscott’s discussion goes deeper in his new book called Grown Up. His intro to this discussion is on YouTube and is a great teaser for what the book has to offer.

Because we work with innovation at SYLVER, this topic is highly relevant. We are interested in knowing how disruptive this new generation is. We want to learn how companies are leveraging the Net Generation to innovate and become more competitive. We are also interested in working with the Net Generation and learning with them. There are already some interesting examples of organizations that are embracing this new mode of work. Please take a moment to see how Best Buy and the Institute of Design are evolving with the help of the Net Generation:

–Best Buy’s Collaborative ‘Blue Shirt Nation’, is an online community of Best Buy employees that allows them to share knowledge, best practices, frustrations, aspirations and even jokes. While other companies are banning social networking, Best Buy is promoting a bottom-up approach to tap into customer insight. Their source for the insight: the Best Buy employee.

–Institute of Design’s Thinkering Space, is an Experiment in Exploratory Learning, addressing the challenge of making education more accessible outside the K-12 classroom. The ThinkeringSpaces project, was funded by the MacArthur Foundation and is comprised of  a system of interactive environments that seek to bring children together to tinker with things, both physical and virtual, reflect upon what they discover, and share their creations with others.

Tapscott’s research findings are also eye opening for countries that are lagging behind on education. While at the WFS conference, I presented the paper “Defining Long-Term Strategy Plans for Industry Sectors in Brazil” with the support of Dr. Claudio Chauke and Dr. Marcio Miranda from the Center for Strategic Studies and Management (CGEE), in Brasilia, Brazil. The paper presents a foresight methodology to define long-term strategy plans for six industry sectors in Brazil. Among all sectors we studied, there was a recurring goal: to significantly improve the performance of the Brazilian educational system. This is certainly the best bet Brazil can make today to be more innovative in the future and to unlock the vicious cycle of being a supplier of raw materials and agricultural goods. If you are interested in knowing more about the paper, please send me an e-mail (adriano at sylverconsulting dot com). I will send you a digital copy of it.

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Who said good for you has to mean “tastes like cardboard?”

Just came across Fast Company’s list of 10 most creative people in food today. It was a great pleasure to see Becky Frankiewicz, VP of Portfolio Marketing for Frito-Lay North America featured.

Straight from the pages of Fast Company:

Who says good for you has to mean “tastes like cardboard”? Frankiewicz is leading the shift for Frito-Lay’s Smartfood and Baked Lays brands to appeal to women, using design and taste to communicate that healthy snacking isn’t an oxymoron. New packaging is more elegant, appealing, and signals health benefits, and new technology lets flavor be baked into each crisp.

We just started working with Frito-Lay on their Smartfood brand. It’s exciting to be part of this new movement at Frito-Lay. And studying the needs and interests of women has been fascinating.

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Putting knowledge before intellectual property

We’ve tossed around the idea many times of creating a consortium of non-competing companies that could share research and ideas to help further along a cause. In particular, consortiums around health care, education, and Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP) innovation are generally where our ideas coalesce. Yet, we’ve never gotten to the point of realizing these dreams getting caught up on the legalities of how it would all work, particularly when it comes to intellectual property.

Two companies, Nike and Best Buy, are challenging conventional thoughts around intellectual property (at least by US standards). They’ve started the GreenXchange, with the focus of sharing intellectual property for green product design.

As stated in this week’s Springwise newsletter:

With GreenXchange, companies can not only share research, innovation and design amongst themselves, but can also make patents available to the public. Each contributor to the exchange commits to a non-assertion pledge, which allows the patent to be used in other research for green product design. GreenXchange recognises that green innovations can be shared across a variety of industries, often with a different purpose, and will not necessarily pose a threat in terms of competition. If a company is concerned about sharing product design with competitors, they can opt to designate selected patents to be made available for sustainability uses. GreenXchange also aspires to use technologies that support networking and knowledge sharing to promote open innovation in the ‘digital commons’

I’m curious to see how this consortium fairs. I hope it does well, as I think it could really create a strong working model for other causes of similar magnitude and complexity.

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“Design Relationships” reviewed by Mechanical Engineering magazine

Adriano Galvão’s book, “Design Relationships: Integrating User Information into Product Development” was reviewed in the May issue of Mechanical Engineering (ME). The review is now online through the ME Bookshelf .

For those who aren’t familiar with the book, Adriano starts with the premise that it’s more important than ever to ensure that data collected about users and their interactions with a device need to be integrated in the architecture and engineering phases of a product’s development. His book examines how to design user-product relationships into the core of a product’s architecture, based on information from product functions and user studies. He presents a methodology, the Function-Task Interaction Method, which is based on the concept of “affordances” and identifies, represents and quantifies the relationships that one has with a given a product.

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5 business insights for companies wanting to truly understand their market

1. Perception is reality. If your customers think your competitor has a better product  or service than you, they do. It doesn’t matter if your product is technologically superior, is made of more durable materials, etc.

2. Don’t work within a vacuum. Always be scanning trends in technology and consumer behavior, both within your industry and outside it. Keeping an eye on what’s happening and what’s coming will help you to lead innovation within your industry, and at the very least ensure your not blind-sided by your competition.

3. You need to walk in the shoes of your customer. You need to spend time with your customer, truly understanding who they are, what they do, what motivates them, and what inspires them. This will help you to better target your development and positioning efforts. It will also mitigate some of the risk taken on by your organization in the development and implementation processes of new products and services.

4. You need to accept the fact that you are not your customer and that most likely assumptions you make about who your customer is will be flawed in some manner.

5. Don’t forget about your potential customers. New revenue sources for your company can be found by investing in people that you don’t currently serve.

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Is “design research” a subset of “market research”?

There’s a heated debate happening over at Core 77 in response to my recent article “Spend it Wisely: A Market Research Primer for Designers.” Not surprisingly, the design community doesn’t agree with my claim that “design research” is really a subset of “market research.” I’ve just posted the following comment to share a bit more of my viewpoint on the matter.

I knew that my statement that “design research” was a term invented by the design community (and one not easily recognized by others outside this community) would provoke debate, especially on the Core 77 site. But, honestly, some of the comments went in a direction I never expected.

First things first, in my understanding, two types of “design research” currently exist. The first is academic-based “design research,” which is about developing new methodologies or answering a research question. The second is applied “design research,” which has been adopted by the design community and refers to activities such as user research, user experience design, observational research, and ethnography as it’s used in the product development process.

I can share from previous conversations that I’ve had with academics on this topic that they’re a bit irked that the design community has picked up the name “design research” and ran with it. From these conversations I’ve understood that academic “design research” is about planning and executing a course of study that results in something that advances the knowledge of that profession, like a new method. The academics I’ve spoken with don’t believe that going into peoples’ homes to understand their food storage habits, for instance, reflects the rigor that they generally attach to the academic definition of “design research.”

So, when I wrote the “Spend it Wisely” article and spoke of “design research” I wasn’t referring to academic “design research,” but to the form of “design research” that has been adopted by professionals, such as designers, human factor specialists, etc. to design new products and services. Should this have been stated in the article more clearly? Probably, but it would have taken more space and further delayed getting to the point of that article, which is about how to choose the right method for the right level of customer insight required at the current stage of a product’s development.

Now, onto my point that “design research” (as practiced by designers developing new products) is really a subset of “market research.” At a high level, I think the intent of “design research” and “market research” is the same; to help a product be successful in the marketplace. By nature of this alone, I think “design research” and “market research” are more related than the design community would like to believe.

I also believe that designers have a history of separating themselves from the group, which more times than not works against them. I believe this adamant stance that “design research” is not a type of “market research” is just another example of how designers have left opportunity on the table.

There is an arm of “market research” out there that addresses more of the business questions associated with how to bring a product to market. In this research the focus is on scoping the opportunity, segmenting the target market and determining in which markets and at what price point to introduce a new product or service into the marketplace. But there is another, equally as prominent, arm of “market research” that’s more customer focused and is about helping companies to determine the features and functions that should be embedded in their new product or to identify the needs of their customer base. And it’s common that it’s the “market research” companies, not the “design research” companies, which are called upon to do that work, leveraging focus groups to obtain that customer understanding.

Is a focus group the best method to use to define the new functions and features of a product? In most cases, the answer would be ‘no’ (as my article clearly states). But market research companies are leveraging focus groups every day to answer that exact question because the designers who are using the methodologies, such as “ethnography” or “listening labs,” that really can answer those questions are making themselves so hard to be found because they insist on calling their work “design research.”

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Mobile Literacy: Redesigning the mobile phone for low-income, emerging markets

If you’re interested in designing new services and products (particularly those tech-based) for individuals living in low-income, Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP) communities, then you need to check out the recent work of Adaptive Path. Last Fall they kicked off their Mobile Literacy project, sending two researchers into rural India to get a better grasp of how individuals within these communities use mobile devices. They’re now sharing their findings, both the design principles that emerged from the research and some of the raw data. Both are great to see. And if you really want to get your wheels turning, check out two of their new concepts for how to make the mobile phone more culturally and contextually relevant to this often overlooked population of individuals.

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Spend it wisely: A market research primer for designers

I’m excited to announce a new article that I wrote for Core 77 called “Spend It Wisely: A Market Research Primer for Designers.” Here’s a bit of teaser text.

Market research is expensive—not only for the time and money required to execute it, but also for the opportunity cost it represents to the organization sponsoring it. Each dollar or hour given to a project draws on a company’s budget, chipping away at the financial and human resources available to direct to other initiatives. For this reason, organizations must be deliberate in choosing both the projects they pursue and the methods they leverage to solicit customer insight. Data gained is valuable only if it’s used to inform an organization’s development and marketing initiatives.

[...]

Ultimately, I’d like this article to act as a resource to help product managers determine how best to stretch dollars available for market research in these tough economic times. And while I can’t possibly profile all research methodologies available for soliciting customer insight, I will take on the four—ethnographic research, listening labs, focus groups, and surveys. In each, I will discuss the method’s strength and value to the product development process, cost, and timeframes

>>>>>Read full article here

As with anything of value, this article wasn’t created alone. I’d like to acknowledge all those who offered feedback and direction on my multiple drafts along the way. To Sarah Billings, Steve Portigal, Adriano Galvão, Cori Schauer, Brian Kaufmann, Niti Bhan, and Judy Maritato, thanks for your constructive criticism! To Alex Caffarini, Walter Blotkamp, Jay Hirschberg, and Josh Chernin, our email exchanges regarding your past experiences in purchasing market research were invaluable. Thank you! And finally, to my editor at Core 77, Allan Chochinov, your continued support and guidance was critical to making this article as robust as it is. Thank you for pushing me. I’m now very proud to share this article with the design and business communities.

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Two groups taking a user-centered approach to getting the word out

I came across two interesting articles in the NY Times this morning. The first is called “Seeking to Save the Planet, With a Thesaurus.” The second article is “When the Cellphone Teaches Sex Education.” Both are about reframing problems and their resulting solution delivery in a way that better resonates with the audience intended to receive the message.

The “Seeking to Save the Planet, With a Thesaurus”article talks of how ecoAmerica, a nonprofit environmental marketing and messaging firm in Washington, is taking steps to redefine “global warming”, believing that the scientific nature of the term itself is promoting inaction amongst the American public. Focus group results advocate that ecoAmerica, and other groups of the like, adjust their language, suggesting they use more aspirational terminology and plain English when speaking to the American public. So, for instance, instead of advocating for “energy efficiency” in their literature, it’s suggested these groups speak about how turning off the lights or taking shorter showers might help a family to “[save] money for a more prosperous future.” By reframing the problem (i.e. “global warming”) into goal statements, action steps can be visualized. The problems become less abstract and more tangible for the American public.

Similarly, the the Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Campaign of North Carolina, has reframed their outreach program, delivering sex education through text messaging versus a telephone hot line or in a classroom setting. The sense of anonymity offered by text frees teenagers to ask the real questions that they have about sex, as there is not chance that they’ll be ridiculed, hackled, etc. And the one-on-one attention and personalized responses ensure that the teenagers feel heard.

There is apparently a bit of controversy around whether or not the Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Campaign should be funded or not. It goes against the abstinence curriculum taught in the schools. And it’s not the most scalable system as it requires one-on-one counsel. I personally believe, however, that this approach has much merit.

You can promote abstinence, but regardless there will be teenagers having sex. The Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Campaign is giving teenagers a place to go where they can feel safe, after they’ve made the choice to have sex (or while they’re trying to decide if this is something they want to do). Delivering responses via text, is no different than the “hot line” of years ago in it’s scalability. But there is another layer of anonymity offered to the exchange, which is proving to be an advantage in getting teenagers to open up and share what’s really on their mind.

In each of these cases, I applaud these groups. They’ve recognized that maybe the “status quo” way of doing things hasn’t been sufficient and are taking a step back to ask, “How do we reach our audience in a way that works for them?” Congrats to you both!

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The Helsinki School of Economics explores ways to use Design Ethnography in Finnish Bottom of the Pyramid research

I met with a research team at the Helsinki School of Economics this past Friday to share fundamentals of Design Ethnography, as the team is exploring how they might use parts of this method in their upcoming Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP) research.

I kicked off the half-day workshop by giving an overview of what Design Ethnography is and how it can be leveraged to support innovation and business development objectives. (You can download presentation given here.) Following my presentation, Dave Tait gave more details regarding the special considerations that must be taken into account when conducting research in BoP communities. He eloquently explored how research activities such as recruiting become much more difficult and gave practical tips and techniques regarding how to manage your time in the field, from how many of interviews to schedule per day to how to break through cultural and language barriers that you’re bound to face.

To the HSE research team, I wish you all the best of luck on this exciting project!

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