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Color and creativity

Posted by Jeffrey on Feb 8, 2009

Interesting post on Discovery’s website about a study that shows color affects creativity. According to the authors, blue lends itself to more creativity while red tends to enable attention to detail. Something to think about when painting the home or office! (But what about purple? Detailed creativity?)

The color red boosts attention to detail in tasks such as memorization, while blue encourages creativity, according to a study published online in the journal Science.

The findings apply to advertising, warnings on medication, and especially environmental design for offices or classrooms, said Rui (Juliet) Zhu, who teaches marketing at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

Zhu, who wrote the study with Ph.D. student Ravi Mehta, recommends that marketers selling creative or innovative products use blue, and brainstorming sessions be held in blue rooms. Using red in advertising would prompt consumers to pay more attention to product details, she said.

Previously the effect of color on performance was a mystery because earlier studies, which did not match colors to different kinds of tasks, yielded conflicting results, said Zhu, who also studied psychology.

Zhu and Mehta ran six tests involving 600 university students working at computer monitors with a background set in blue, red or white for control groups.

Design and HP- Boosting sales in tough times

Posted by Jeffrey on Nov 6, 2008

I have been a big believer in design and the benefits not only to consumers, but to the bottom line. There are various studies out there which show that there are direct financial benefits to “good” design but its interesting to see which companies are heading down the design path and for what reasons.

In a recent Bloomberg article, HP is focusing on design to help it widen its lead over 2nd place Dell in terms of sales of computers. With an eye to Apple, it has started producing machines in a variety of colors and materials that challenge previous wisdom that computers are “boring beige boxes.”

Taking a page from one of its competitors is nothing new in the PC business but HP is aiming to deliver “lighter, more stylish laptops at prices that beat or match those of Dell. With little to separate the machines’ performance, design may be the tipping point.” As Roger Kay president of researcher Endpoint Technologies Associates Inc. in Wayland, Massachusetts explains, “They’re not charging a premium for design — they’re just doing great design.”

What is really interesting is the way HP is introducing design to its line-up. Since the company started to understand that design is a differentiator, they have made “cultural shifts” in order to foster this type of thinking within the ranks. In an early meeting with designers, PC chief Todd Bradley told employees that PCs should be an “object of desire and possession” and that designers had permission to explore form and function not just cut costs. “Not only did they have the permission to be creative and design beautiful products, it was a mandate,” said Bradley, 49. “We made design a very visible priority.”

The team even has a different physical environment in which to work reflecting the increased focus on design with frosted glass Hermann Miller partitions rather than the grey cubes housing workers in the rest of the company.

The team is challenged to think about all aspects of the value chain, not only the end product. For instance, the company is re-thinking its shipping process, slimming down the amount of packaging used not only to cut costs and get more units on a skid but using less polystyrene is better for the environment. In looking at the way colors and designs are laid down on the laptop cases the company switched to a process called imprinting which is used in car detailing and fuses the designs right onto the material. This has improved the yield of units coming off the assembly line to 90% from 60%. In fact HP is working with BestBuy to offer special edition notebooks to target groups such as students, gamers and women.

This focus on design is estimated in a recent Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. report to help boost sales 6% over its rivals in the coming year as customers in challenging times become more discerning in their PC purchases. Not one to be outdone, Dell has introduced new colors to its laptop line and is rumoured to be completely revamping its line-up within the year.

Kitchen plans and priorities

Posted by Jeffrey on Oct 27, 2008

Late last week we had our second real meeting with our designer Carol and we got to see the plans she drew up based on the output of our first meeting.

Design at the early stage is fun. The budget prioritization comes later.

One reason that a designer is a real solid addition to a renovation project is their perspective as an “impartial” outside observer (in addition to their skills in assembling trades, know how about the process, design sense… I could go on.) During that first meeting Carol was quite detailed in her approach to finding out how we use our current kitchen and what we’d like to see in an improved one especially what some of our priorities are. This really helped as I think when you live with a situation for a while you overlook some of the big moves you could undertake that would help out further down the line.

One thing I mentioned was currently the fridge sits almost right in front of the rear door, so even though we put in a full glass door (see this post for more on that!) the bulk of the appliance blocks out a fair amount of light from coming into the kitchen. Now normally this wouldn’t be too much of an issue, but given that our house is so narrow and close to our neighbours, we don’t have any side lighting. (We have a narrow window on the dining room, but after about 12:30pm the sun moves around the rear of the house and that area goes into shadow.) The predominant light source is the back of the house since it faces south.

But one of my top 3 frustrations with the current layout is that when all of us come in the back door it is a traffic nightmare with boots, coats, dogs, bags flying everywhere, especially if it is cold or raining out. But I understand that because of the size of the space adding more program to a “kitchen” would be even more of a challenge. But there are always tradeoffs in any type of design job; so rare are those optimum conditions where all the stars align and things work out perfectly. So how are we doing so far?

Carol brought over two sketches: one moved the sink to the extreme south end of the kitchen and moved the range to the opposite end of the counter run. The big move in this one was closing up the existing window (what?) and replacing it with two thinner ones on either side of the HVAC duct. Did I mention there is a duct which supplies the second floor right smack dab in the middle of the rear wall?
The second one moves the fridge pretty much diagonally opposite to where it is now and the sink moves to the west wall. Now it becomes interesting! We took this concept and tweaked it a bit on the weekend so that maybe if we can move that HVAC duct a foot or so to the right, we can have a larger window.

Very rough sketch but you can see that the west wall is alot cleaner as the fridge is now tucked away behind the stub wall.

We are now trying to figure out how to maximize the amount of counter run on the east wall by putting the microwave into the uppers and maybe putting the sink into the corner on a diagonal, but I am not convinced of the diagonal sink and if we did this we’d have to swap the range over to the other side and figure out how to duct the range hood.

Next stage when we see if all this fits is to get preliminary costing on a scheme. Never the fun part because it usually means really getting down to what is important and what is only a nice to have because like everything else, it will come down to priorities and tradeoffs.

Ever had a diagonal sink? Let me know your thoughts!

Starting at the beginning

Posted by Jeffrey on Oct 9, 2008

Those of you with a sharp memory will remember that when I did the basement reno, I neglected to document it until I was a few weeks in. Not to make that same mistake again, I decided to bring you all the details (at least as many as I care to put pixel to screen) in our upcoming kitchen renovation.

Yes that’s right; I said kitchen renovation. The two words that strike fear into any man. Because there are issues with the kitchen. That’s right issues. In our case its a distinct lack of storage and organization on the surface. But of course it goes deeper than that and maybe over the next 6 months or so, we can start to get into how we address those issues.

But for now we’ve brought in a specialist; an Interior Designer who has done many kitchens. So after our first meeting and a long questionaire that we went over, she is putting together a plan to address our ‘wish list.’  I think that our list is so long we’d have to have a kitchen 10 times the size to fit it all in but I am hopeful she can prioritize what we need versus what we want. Tall order yes, but its still the beginning of the project!

Bill Buxton – Design Culture and Apple’s success

Posted by Jeffrey on Apr 15, 2008

I’ve always thought that Bill Buxton had a good view on what was essential in design and technology. Even way back when I saw him in 1996 or 1997 when he was at Alias Wavefront he caused me to think about how Design impacts how we interact with products on a daily basis.

Now having done innovation from the inside of a large corporation, I can’t agree with his view more. It sounds like he could be talking about my (or I bet 90%) of the organizations out there when he recalls stories from his experience. His view is that many companies still need to be convinced of the value of design and how design affects (and requires) co-ordination with all parts of the organization.

But this is not design (or “Design”) that is the equivalent to window dressing or chrome or garish menus, but really a holistic approach to approaching problems. One of the questions he answered at the conclusion of his talk revolved around how he would characterize design. In addition the aforementioned “way of thinking” he very emphatically stated that it was not traditional problem solving, but a way to facilitate a conversation. In fact he mentioned that design is probably the “most negative” profession out there as it required a continual progression from a blank sheet of paper (millions of possibilities) to exactly one, with all the rest being thrown out!

But seems to be redeeming about this process is the conversation and improvement it causes as the ideas are thrown out; each idea informs the next to make it even better than it could have been on its own. This however, requires that design is supported at the proper level in the corporation, which he noted was part of the success of Apple and part of the continuing lack of progress in the 90% of other organizations currently producing products.

During the early days of Industrial Design, designers such as Walter Teague, Harley Earl and Henry Dreyfuss brought something unique to large organizations; how to differentiate their products based on context. They also had a distinct advantage in the early days as they reported in to very high levels in the company, usually the President or CEO (partially because they were “expensive”) but also because they could bring something distinctive to products which were becoming quite similar in customer’s eyes.

Today most design firms report into levels below senior management (in large organizations) and at this point are “positioned to fail.” He went on to ask the audience several hard questions:

• Is Design an Executive level position at your company?
• If not how can you claim it’s important?
• If it isn’t what message are you delivering to your employees?

The key message was that firms have to stop paying lip service to the value of design and actually incorporate it into the strategic decisions of the company.

This lead to a quote from one of Buxton’s mentors, Alan Kay:

“It takes almost as much creativity to understand a good ida as it is to have it in the first place.”

Upon which Buxton added his corollary:

“It takes even more creativity to make an idea real as it is to have on in the first place,”

which I can wholly agree with given my experience in product development!

So where it really gets interesting is his assertion that you need a design culture, not just products to be successful in a chosen industry and he (of course) gives Apple as an example.

In 1993 when Apple’s stock price was declining, future head designer Jonathan Ives started at the company. Through the next two CEOs the stock price declined further (likely through no fault of Ives) until the Apple board brought Steve Jobs back to the company and the rest, as they say is history, with the introduction of the iMac and later the iconic iPod.

So what did Jobs change? Buxton just mentions that Jobs became the Chief Design Officer and promoted the value of design throughout the company. And the remarkable thing to keep in mind is that he did it with largely the same staff that was around during the previous leaders’ tenure. He really just gave the existing staff the tools they needed and the right support to be able to execute on those good ideas.

You may ask what about the Apple G4 cube and hockey puck mouse? Well design is not always about a straight path to success and those “failures” positioned the company to really hit the ball out of the park on their next endeavors. Which meant that the conversation (and risk tolerance for failure) had to exist in the company or they wouldn’t be able to come back and build successful, game-changing products after previous ones failed to catch on in the market.  And it also suggests that corporate culture can change to support design if it is supported from the top and becomes a part of the organizations conversations to deliver contextual products customers crave.

Design Thinking – Process or Product?

Posted by Jeffrey on Feb 29, 2008

Last night I had the pleasure to attend a talk by David Smith, President of NSCAD (Nova Scotia College of Art and Design) at the Rotman School of Business at the University of Toronto. The topic was “Why business people needed to think more like designers” and drew a packed house which was quite an achievement on such a cold wintry night.

After a brief introduction by Heather Fraser, David quickly went into his prepared notes. He started off by saying that this session was going to be more about him asking questions to the audience rather than telling the audience what he thought was the right answer, which aligned with his premise that “critical inquiry” was part of the hallmark of successful designers. I’ll get into this a bit further later.

One of his first questions to the audience was “What are the benefits of an Arts Education?” He proposed that a key attribute was being curious about how things worked and to then remain curious throughout life and not be satisfied with the status quo. He delved into this a bit deeper when he later asked the central question, ” Why do business people needed to think more like designers?” His answer came back to the ability to ask the right questions, not necessarily come up with the “Be-all and end-all” product. His rationale was that designers (and business people) who ask the right questions can come up with the right solution for this moment, but guaranteed at some time in the future that solution will not be the right one for all time.

After concluding the formal part of the talk, he took some questions from the audience. One of the first questions was around asking the right questions and this lead to a discussion of whether process was indeed more important than product as he submitted. (One group which really values process is the Government and we know how fast they move on things….)

While he admitted that the government does surround itself with process, process in this context is not the end goal. The key thing to remember is that while products may be right for today’s constraints and opportunities, as these constraints change, designers and business people have to be willing to go back and question the initial assumptions (in the process) to come up with a new “right answer” for the new constraints.  He insisted that the Apple iPod of today may be the Microsoft Zune of tomorrow and given the fast rate of change (especially in technology) this may be something to consider.

But if indeed creativity and artistic intent are valuable skills in society why are they arguably not as highly valued as business and technical skills? It all comes down to (in his estimation) the education system and how imagination in children is eventually supplanted by the ability to determine “right and wrong” answers and to be authorative on subjects.

So how do we then encourage creativity in business people? It really can be learned (I am an example of this!) by never feeling so comforable that “you think you know what you know.” (Or the often heard refrain, “Been there, done that.”) One has to be willing to think be curious about how things work and question assumptions to come up with a “right” solution for the problem at that time.