Passion

It's a pretty old talk by now, but it's fascinating how spot on it was. His presentation was exciting, too.

A few of my favorite things

Every once in a while I get blown away by things that work really well. I don't know why I get surprised by good design, or good customer service, or good results, but I do. By now you know I love Kaiser Permanente (which, by the way, just keeps getting more efficient every time I go to the doctor), CityCarshare, and Getting Things Done. Here are a few of my new favorite things, and why:

Amazon's Kindle 2
Have you seen one of these things? Held one in your hands? The thing is super sleek, super light, and it displays text without straining your eyes like nobody's business. I use it to read the newspaper on the bus, and more and more I'm downloading books and reading those on the bus too. It is a conversation starter. People always want to hold it and play with it. Drawbacks: The interaction design is a bit clunky, it's not in color, and the screen seems a bit dark. But other than that, I'm loving it.

Nextmuni.com
Speaking of the bus, lately I've been taking it to get around San Francisco. I am one of the few people I know who thinks the bus is a miracle. Nextmuni.com, available by phone, makes the bus experience even more miraculous, but telling you when the bus you're waiting for will be arriving at the stop at which you're waiting. It makes the whole experience much more pleasant by taking away the fear that you will be standing at that stop forever.

Virgin America
Oh how I love to fly Virgin America. Upon boarding, I think I'm entering a hip L.A. club. Pink lighting, cool music, and fun flight crews make this airline different from any I've ever flown. Plus they have cool touchscreen monitors on the seatbacks so you can order stuff, watch movies, play games, and watch videos. From start to finish, their emphasis is on creating a good experience. Plus they're as cheap as anybody else. Drawbacks: They only fly to a few cities so far, and their touchscreen technology is ahead of their offerings (in other words, lots of "This service is not yet available" messaging). But they're on Facebook! They post pictures of the celebrities who fly with them! Their status updates are actually useful! Thumbs up. I'll never fly any other airline if Virgin America is one of my choices.

The Magic Castle Hotel
I know this is not a national anything, but oh my God, if you ever have a chance to stay in Hollywood, stay at this hotel. It is a cheap version of the Chateau Marmont, which is my favorite hotel in the world. But if you don't want to spend $500 a night, stay at the Magic. You can stay in a suite for $179 a night, and get the same one-bedroom glory, two big-screen TVs, a full kitchen, free snacks, fresh flowers in your room, and a balcony overlooking the pool. Plus the staff bend over backwards to make your stay a pleasant one. It is my home away from home. They overlook nothing.

I love it when things work. All of these things work, and work really well. Bravo good service!

Ideo + Kaiser = OF COURSE!

I recently read a great article in Fast Company about Ideo's David Kelley. I've seen him on TED, and my own company has used Ideo to do some cool things, so I have nothing but respect for this guy. When I read the article, I found out that Ideo influenced Kaiser Permanente, one of my favorite organizations, in the way they design their own internal processes. I have been a Kaiser member for years, and for the past several years, have been blown away by their technological sophistication and their overall ease of use. I couldn't have been more thrilled to have read this article, because to me, it ties design directly to something that at best is mundane and at worst is traumatizing: the world of health care.

Here are the paragraphs that caught my eye and created happiness in my heart:

"The Ideo School for Anglers taught similar tricks to the giant West Coast health-care provider Kaiser Permanente. After a hugely successful 2004 project that Ideo conceived to improve information transfer during nurse-shift changes, the firm's philosophy inspired Kaiser's own innovation center. Recently, that facility tackled the problem of medication error, and using Ideo's techniques, deployed a team to shadow nurses, doctors, and pharmacists as they prescribed, filled, and administered medications to patients. In the U.S. alone, more than 1.5 million people are harmed by medication errors annually; Kaiser's information -- videos and journals -- from the observation phase revealed that interruptions were the main driver behind errors. The team took that insight and brainstormed solutions ranging from streamlining the process for medicine delivery to protecting the process from other employees. They then prototyped tools -- including aprons that said LEAVE ME ALONE! and red DO NOT CROSS! lines in front of pill-dispensing machines -- that could solve the problem.

The program has been so successful -- reducing interruptions by 50% and increasing on-time delivery by 18% -- that Kaiser is now rolling it out to its 36 facilities and responding to inquiries from around the world about its effectiveness. 'Kaiser Permanente has always been innovation driven,' says Christi Zuber, director of Kaiser's innovation consultancy, 'but Ideo gave us a teachable approach.'"

The fact that Kaiser actually contracted with Ideo to do things right warms my heart. ESPECIALLY because I noticed how good Kaiser was before Ideo came in and worked their magic. I wish all customer facing organizations could be so forward thinking as to actually plan ahead so that their poor customers won't have to suffer any more than they are already.

No attitude

So great.

Fabulous

I work in a bank. Granted, I work in the online user experience division of a bank, but I work in a bank nonetheless. Which I believe shields me from a lot of the affectation I see agency designers wearing like huge purple boas, but it doesn't shield me completely. Because of the nature of the bank's regular work hours, good benefits, and relative safety in an unstable economy, I am forced to work with very talented fellow designers, but designers with attitude. Designers with affectation. Designery designers.

I recently tried to get through a book called Shaping Things by Bruce Sterling, but couldn't because of the affected quality of the writing. One thing I did get out of it before I threw it across the room in a fit of frustrated fury with the "designed" text and the "fabulous" tone was seeing in print a word I've regularly used for a while now: designery. In this book, Sterling talks about the concept that designers must have personal flourishing style to get cred (and work, for the agency designer). I think that's probably true, but it scares me. I've seen a lot of pains in the asses get jobs with our bank because of their style, and their work ethics suck. Or their work ethics are good, but just being around them becomes an exercise in tolerance. Because they're going to do everything in their insecure power to make you feel like you're not cool enough to hang around with them, while in the meantime they're sucking you dry for attention.

I read this article in Fast Company last month that profiles the talented designery designer Marcel Wanders, who designed a new Mondrian in Miami Beach. I have no doubt this guy is brilliant. But man, he sounds like a pain in the ass. The questions on my mind these days are the following: Do you need to be FABULOUS with a capital F to be a good designer? Or can you be a more down-to-earth problem solver? I guess there's room for both, but I'm really not sure.

Soliloquy

Oh how I love those people at Cooper. Several weeks ago, Dave Cronin wrote a post called Rhetorically Speaking, which leads with the oh-so-true statement, "One of the hardest things about being a designer is that we have to spend a lot of time and energy convincing people to believe in our ideas." I mean, REALLY. I must design for ten percent of my day, and I spend the rest of my time explaining the design to people in ways that they will understand it.

It's not that people are so dumb, or that my designs are so opaque. It's just that there are so many people on our teams with all different kinds of backgrounds, doing all kinds of different jobs, with all different kinds of skill sets, brought in to the project at all different times. Sometimes brought in to MEETINGS at all different times.

I've learned that the best way to cut to the chase quickly--for EVERYBODY--is to assume that at least one person on the call is brand new to the project, and that s/he will need a high-level overview of the project, preferably delivered in one sentence, but more often delivered in a short paragraph. So for those people who already know the project, it's only a short soliloquy, and for the rest of the people it's provides a quick context so that they can get up to speed FAST.

I see a lot of people skipping this step and I think it's a mistake. They end up having to go back again and again on the call, explaining basic things to the newbie because the newbie feels too embarrassed to reveal that s/he doesn't know what the heck is going on. If you take a few minutes up front providing context, you end up

1) orienting the newbie
2) reminding the oldies why they're there
3) signposting where you are on the project

so that everybody from soup to nuts can get into the real reason for the meeting as quickly as possible.

The other mistake I see people making is taking too much time with the intro. It can let the air out of the tires if you go too slowly. If you drag this step out too long, you can

1) bore the newbie to death and thus lose him/her
2) bore the oldie to death and thus lose him/her
3) bore yourself to death

Keep it short and keep it moving. A soliloquy is always interesting to listen to if it doesn't go on too long and if it grounds the audience in the upcoming action of the play.

My friend, the Subway

Okay, not to be OCD about losing weight or anything (who ME? OCD???) but a week or so ago I went to Subway to have a sandwich, because I needed food fast and I knew that I could get something reasonably low-cal there, which would help me stick to my new low-cal diet. Which is actually working, by the way; today my hairdresser said I was tiny, which I am most definitely NOT, but it's always nice to hear an unsolicited comment like that.

But I digress.

I was so impressed and excited when I saw this Subway napkin that lists calories of their most popular sandwiches, fat grams, saturated fat grams, and the same for some of their condiments. A really nice touch is their nutritional comparison to a Big Mac Value Meal or a Whopper Value Meal. Obviously, Subway is the better nutritional choice, at least from a caloric standpoint, but I wouldn't have known to what extent until I picked up one of their napkins to wipe my greasy mouth on. Not only did I leave the store that day feeling good about my food choices, but I learned something in the meantime.

This is a really great example of successful contextual placement. The fact that they could deliver such useful and inspiring information, no doubt placed for just such a customer as myself, right when I needed it, gave me hope that somebody out there is thinking about their customers.

Thank you, Subway. I've got some new brand loyalty now!