Design Thinking Driven Building Design

Here is a fascinating TED talk by Ole Scheeren sharing how his firm design iconic building in Shanghai, Singapore, Berlin and London.

What surprised me was his empathic human-centered design approcah (also known as Design Thinking) to create memorable buildings.

Enjoy

Design Thinking Insights Applied to Remittances Company

Checkout www.transferwise.com. These folks have found the real need of immigrants who send money to their loved ones to home countries.

A while ago at PayPal, using design thinking uncovered that immigrants from Mexico only cared about the exchange rate minute-by-minute because the net amount transfer was the most important thing for them and their loved ones.

Banks and other online remitters make money by setting their self-determined excessive exchange rates and predatory fees & this is how they milk the immigrants.

Why get ripped off by banks when you need to send money overseas?

Here is a company that guarantees upfront the exchange rate at the time of you sending money.

Their user interface is awesome and makes it very easy to understand what is going on with the intended transfer.

Customer support is proactive, responsive, and timely.

Oh! One more thing, www.tranferwise.com founders also created Skype.

Creativity Inc. by Ed Catmull: A book review

Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration by Ed Catmull
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A tour de force work by creating, living, practicing and improvising a world class creative company culture at Pixar & Disney Animation group.

In particular, the practice has been honed for almost 25 years and additionally tested and successfully deployed inside iconic Disney Animation group. Not many people can claim this impressive repeat creative culture creation.

Any venture wishing to create a lasting creative culture must start with incredible constant self-awareness and absolute candor that begins with top leadership.

Creative culture practice is a marathon and not a sprint!

The most resonant theme expressed is candor at all time and all levels. One of the most misunderstood and ignored concept missing from many prior published works. Candor at all levels is the ability of all people at all levels of the organization having difficult and tough conversations to resolve hidden and unpredictable issues.

One memorable line is: if the hallway knows the truth and conference room does not then it reflects the lack of candor, where people are afraid to speak up without fear of retaliation.

In reading through Pixar quest to live a creative culture, it is very evident that Pixar practices the art of 'Design Thinking' in their particular way for every movie that Pixar has produced. For example, before any movie, the staff went to the actual location to do the 'research' which equates to Design Thinking's observe and empathize techniques.

One example given is, filmmakers of 'Nemo' went and visited dentists offices and then traversed the sewers to find out if fish can escape from dentists office sink to the ocean via sewers. Movies makers also became certified scuba divers to experience what it is like to navigate all the way from sewers to the ocean.

One of the surprises in the book is the last chapter about Steve Job's role at Pixar before its acquisition by Disney. It is the most touching and candid description of Steve Job's transformation to an excellent listener and his knack for giving constructive feedback during Pixar pre-release movie previews.

In fact, Steve's legendary product introductions were stories that people loved to buy iPod, iPhone, and iPad. I am sure he learned the art of storytelling from the master storytellers at Pixar.

This heart touching elucidation runs counter to all what his been written about Steve Jobs after his passing away. Ed Catmull's unique account comes from a close working relationship with Steve Jobs for over 20 years.

Finally, any company trying to navigate through the disruptive digital transformation should make this book a required reading for the entire organization, starting with top leadership.


View all my reviews

Building A Company Steve Job's style

This video documentary shows how Steve Job was building his NeXT computer (after leaving Apple). Notice how keeps saying 'let us build the company from our hearts'. There are other insights about how Steve Job's facilitated the company retreats and how he handled strong team members viewpoints.

7 Tips To Sharpen Your Creative Senses

Shattering the myth that creative people are born that way, you can learn to be creative in your own way. Creativity is all about breaking our daily patterns. All you have to do is to set your mind to it and practice some of the following tips:

1.       Learn to read, make a habit out of reading regularly. Start small: pick a book and aim to read one paragraph every night or early in the morning (before your start your work). If you have a really hard time picking up a book, then pick a book about a subject that you absolutely detest. Once you finish the book, you will learn one new thing that you did not know before!

2.      Read widely: Read outside of your area of expertise. In particular, read outside of your technology focus. Perhaps read about behavioral psychology (Book examples: Freakonomics or Black Swan). Why? Great ideas do not emerge from domain experts! Great creative ideas emerge when you connect different dots from wider fields!

3.      Break your daily patterns: If you wear a watch, switch wearing your watch on alternate wrists every day. If you carry a wallet, put the wallet in left or right pockets & switch every day. If you wear your employer badge on the left side, alternate to the right side every other day. This is not a recommended habit with your shoes (i.e. flipping your shoes: right shoe on the left foot & left shoe on the right foot), however. J

4.      Take a different route home at least once a week! Why? You will see different neighborhoods, hear different sounds, as well as different bill boards that will break your daily patterns and sharpen your creative senses.

5.      Learn to doodle & draw. Here is an excellent source www.napkinacademy.com (can’t beat the $39 / year to learn how to draw your creative thoughts). Or download Paper app on your iPad; you will be shocked to learn the ease of drawing & doodling!

6.      Actively volunteer to a non-profit cause. You will find many opportunities to learn and help the people who appreciate all what you will do for them. This is a fertile ground for lots of creativity in order to improve people’s lives.

7.      Take long walks amongst nature at least 2-3 times a month. Why? There are no two similar trees in nature; there are no two similar leaves in nature. Did you know that all great creative people take regular long walks amongst nature? (Read biographies of Newton, Graham Bell, Benjamin Franklin).

If you have your own habits, then please do share them by adding comments here. 

9 Tips To Enable Innovation.....Change the physical environment.

9 Things You Can Do To Create a Climate of Innovation At Companies

1.      Design spaces where people can get away from their desks. This may involve the creation of ‘focus areas” where employees can concentrate on their work

2.     Make sure the idea evaluation group panel is gender balanced: 50 women / 50 men

3.     Create opportunities for employees to run ideas past others with same interests (not sure about this one…..as you need opinion diversity)

4.     Create opportunities for idea people to actually get vicarious experience in their idea space (for better than research). Use Design Thinking techniques to see, hear, and observe their idea space. Utilize the experience of your team to create something new.

5.     Safe spaces should be considered whereby controversial or divergent ideas can be researched.

6.     Utilize outsiders who have no agenda to push to offer fresh perspective

7.     Avoid “group think” by working individually or in very diverse teams

8.    Innovation happens when there is least pressure on the group or individual. Avoid targets or goal setting in order that it may occur naturally

9.     Utilize skills and know-how of external stakeholders, customers and suppliers. They will want your business to thrive and may have insights not already seen

Have you considered the link between employee engagement and innovation?

Do you think if your teams were more closely aligned to your organizations vision and values that they could be more innovative?

Design Thinking Driven eBay Small Business Challenge Non profit edition Austin Tx

Small Business Challenge engaged 30 PayPal Austin Employees to help 6 non-profit/for-cause businesses improve their business. Shahid Khan constructed a design thinking driven PayPal employee orientation experience. Zak Aossey (summer intern) choreographed the internal marketing & exposure. The two-day design thinking centered orientation was called 'A Day In Utopia'.
Design Thinking driven employee training day was held in a beautiful art gallery in Down town Austin. Shahid led PayPal employees in the morning with 3-hour gift giving Design Thinking workshop preceded by 'Active/Empathy Listening' workshop.

The two workshops were rated 4.85 on a 1-5 scale (5 = awesome).

The following summary video captures the actual value delivered to partners by PayPal Austin employees & training day highlights.