8 Design Tips for Startups - Moving Beyond Aesthetics

by Thomas Petersen

Don't panic, this is not going to be a lecture on typography or what color palette you should use. It's not going to require you to have the latest Creative Suite from Adobe either. In fact you don't need to be a designer or UXD expert to use these principles. This is an attempt to cut through the noise from the art directors, usability experts, designers, developers, Venture Capitalist and family members to help you design better products.

So what does it take to design a successful digital product or service? Is it the brand, the choice of colors, the functionality, the chosen platform, or the social features?

Well all of the above certainly have some importance, but it's going to be very hard to prove that one particular element is why company X is a success. All too often we become attached to this idea that there is a recipe for success. That if you just get the right idea or if your design is cool or uses a certain technology you will be successful.

Nothing in my experience, supports that belief. In fact what means success for one company might spell failure for another.

For instance WordPress.com is based on PHP, a server side language that many "real" developers loathe. They claim it's not a real programming language and that it doesn't scale well. None-the-less, a whole plethora of successful companies uses PHP, including FaceBook.

Google isn't exactly winning design prizes for their look and feel, yet they are so successful that many companies are copying their style.

Hulu.com was a success long before they started to add more complex social features. Joost was designed primarily around social features and have joined the deathpool.

In other words, there are as many ways to design a successful product, as there are ways to design a failure.

Large companies almost never allow for failure, which partly explains why their solutions most of the time are as bland as they are.

They have the money to continue down a dead-end and will invest millions in doing all the right things from user research, to usability tests to 5 different design proposals to establishing brand guidelines, then launch something two years too late to great fanfare and unfortunately often to great obscurity.

If you are a startup, you are normally not allowed (and shouldn't be) to spend that much time and money building spaceships no one want to fly.

So what to do.

Take the design process seriously, but don't get too attached to one particular part of it and don't rely on any one particular discipline to give you the right answers. Get to the point where you have real users or customers as quickly as possible. It's these users that will provide you with the information that will get you you in a position to make better design decisions.

The following principles should help you get in a position:

1. Start simple, stay simple.

It cannot be said enough. Less is more - much more, and there is a very good reason that it pays to understand.

"If you do less you can measure more. If you can measure more you can better experiment with what works."

Most products are simple, based on simple insights.

Make sure that you stay true to those insights, until you know you tried out every different interpretation of them. Don't add new features just because you think that it will help, it won't, not yet. If your product becomes a success it's not because of how many features it has.


2. Don't confuse change with improvement.

One of the biggest challenges record artist face when producing a new album is fatigue. They get this from listening to the same riffs, passages, drum tracks, choruses etc. over and over and over. It's actually one of the reasons why many have a problem listening to their own album when it's finally out. Startups as intense and time consuming as they are, have similar problems. It's very tempting after a couple of months of looking at the same design to want to change it and think you are improving your product. You aren't, so don't succumb to the temptation. It's not worth it.

Furthermore, if it goes like it does in most cases, you will soon enough have to spend resources on changing things after you launch.


3. Build to integrate.

Think about whether your product could be a good extension to already existing products/services. That way you can tap into already existing digital ecosystems and leverage on their popularity and reach this will give you some standards to adhere to. Remember that the more you are able to interface with other services the more trust you will establish. Guilt by association works both ways.


4. Don't do everything that is possible only what is necessary.

Constrain yourself. A good product has limitations. It doesn't just succumb to every temptation that comes along. Focus on what makes your product the product and only add features if you get clear signs that it is needed. Most users will have to learn your product anyway so don't try to impress them with features before they understand what your product is all about. iTunes may have many flaws, Basecamp from 37Signals leaves a lot to be asked for, but when all is said and done, their products are rock solid and there is no feature like the rock solid feature.


5. Usability studies and focus groups are for refinement not for innovation.

Let me be perfectly clear. Running a successful and informative usability study or focus group wont help you understand whether the market wants your product or whether you have solved your interaction flow satisfactory. I know there is a lot of buzz around User Centered Design (UCD) and that a hoard of usability experts will claim that they can help you design more successful products if you just ask the user (Which I find ironic). Don't believe the hype, I say this as someone who also makes a living doing usability tests. There are a few situations where usability studies make sense for startups, but most likely it wont be in your situation.

I will write a separate post about UCD but leave you with a few observations.

There is no one-to-one relationship between what people say in a focus group and what they actually do. It's way to complex and there are way to many psychological elements and social dynamics involved to allow you to extrapolate important data out of it at an early stage.

In most cases you are testing in a pseudo environment with mock-ups, html prototypes or even paper prototypes. Just imagine how Twitter, SMS, Google or LastFM in its early days would have scored. So many products need to be experienced before users will provide you with any valuable insights to build on.

It would be like trying to determine the usage and usability of a hammer by looking at a piece of paper with a drawing of it. You get the picture.


6. A feature is not a product.

Speaking of hammers.

Don't just think about your product as a bunch of features. Instead focus on what it is your are selling at its core. What is needed for your product to function? How much can you take away from it without sacrificing the core product.

Think about features as something to add after you have launched.


A hammer has one purpose, which is to help you knock in nails. Everything on top of that are features. Therefore understand when you are working on your core product and when you are working on adding features.

The benefits of thinking like this, is that it will help you establish a very clear an precise picture of what makes your product your product. Which means you will much better be able to understand why you are adding features when you are and won't get caught in the "me to" behavior that can drive companies out of business very fast.


7. Think how, not what.

What matters is not what functionality your product has, but how it works. A sign-up process is not just a sign-up process, a checkout process is not just a checkout process, a button is not just a button, a rating system is not just a rating system.

Think about how you can stand out by introducing something that everyone else might have but in a unique way. That's what Steepster did when they re-designed their rating system (see how they did here). Skype was not the first VOIP provider, far from, but Skype managed to make it stand out and look like a product not just a technology. In other words they productified a technology

You will be surprised how much the "how" can help improving your product.


8. It's not innovation to use the latest technology.

It's tempting to try and set yourself apart by using the latest build of some framework or technology. But don't do it just because it's the latest. Make sure that you understand the implications of what you are introducing. Is it processor intensive, is it increasing load time, does it improve the experience, is it understood by enough developers so that you can optimize it.

If you can't answer the above, you probably shouldn't do it.

All too often companies get caught in thinking that new technology in itself is the differentiation factor. But as most successful businesses know. Innovations have an introduction curve and not everyone should take advantage of a given technology just because it's available.


Conclusion

Designing successful products has more to do with understanding what doesn't work than with what works. If you can get your company in a position where you can "feel" the state of your product, you are able to make smarter decisions and in effect will have a better chance of success.


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Thomas Petersen is the co-founder of hello, a digital creative agency that designs and develops products and services. He writes on Black&White^TM and on twitter @hello_world.

Is Crowdsourcing Disrupting the Design Industry?

"This is an issue that I simply cannot wrap my head around. Spec work appears in the design field infinitely more times than any other industry. It absolutely floors me that people think that it is even remotely ethical to build their businesses by tearing down ours."

- Mark Hemmis' comment on AIGA policy statement on spec work


by Hutch Carpenter

The past couple years have seen an increase in the use of crowdsourcing by companies to procure design assets. It works like this:

1. Requesting organization posts a request for submissions to a design crowdsourcing site (e.g. 99designs, crowdSPRING, MycroBurst, etc.)
   
2. Interested designers review the request, and create their entry
   
3. They submit their entry to the site
   
4. Requesting organization selects its favorite, pays the winning designer the announced fee

These design requests are often for logos, but for a number of other types of initiatives as well. For example, 99designs' list of requests (to the right) gives some sense of the types of projects.

So far, so good, right? Well, a lot of designers think not. As Mark Hemmis' comment above shows, these open spec work contests have been raising the ire of the designer community.

Is crowdsourcing ripping their industry asunder?


Designers' Beefs with Crowdsourcing

Three aspects of crowdsourcing design raise concern for many in the design industry:

1. Lack of compensation for designers whose entries are not selected
   
2. Diminishes the design profession
   
3. Not sustainable in the long term

Compensation: To be competitive, individuals will need to invest some time in designing a submission for a company. With a good number of entries, this equates to a decent number of hours invested. According to Pamela Pfiffner:


"The problem is, spec and crowdsourcing can lower your value and hourly rates so far that minimum wage looks like a fat paycheck."


Her statement takes things to a logical extreme - someone would have to do nothing but spend their time entering contests. But she does a good job framing the issue.

Diminishing the profession: The issue with crowdsourcing is that it says, "this stuff is easy!" A commenter on this post, How NOT to Design a Logo, baldly gives this concern legitimacy:


"Logo design contests are great, its the only way I go. I get my pick of 5-10 designs for less then $20. Designers these days are a dime a dozen, be happy you get the work."


The design industry has characteristics of being craftsman, as well as strategists. At least the higher end firms do. Sentiments like that are grating.

Not sustainable: The concern here is that over the long term, the economics of crowdsourcing will cause existing designers to exit the industry, and potential designers will opt for different careers. According to Jacob Cass:


"Design contest sites are not the future of graphic design... nor do I see a time when it ever will be, however, in the long term I believe spec work is going to be detrimental to the design industry... both devaluing design and designers as a whole."


The argument here is that rather than expand the pool of talent for design, crowdsourcing will ultimately reduce the industry.

So designers themselves are lining up against these types of crowdsourcing design contests. Which begs the question...


Why Are Crowdsourcing Design Contests Growing?

Jason Aiken has this to say:


"Truth is - 99designs is growing by leaps and bounds. We have record numbers of projects being launched and have needed to hire new staff to help us keep up with the growth.


The motivation of organizations seeking design work seem clear enough - tap a large network of creativity, manage expenses within budget. But what are those designers doing there?

It seems that not all designers are of the same mind about these crowdsourcing design contests. Some actually embrace them. Why?

Build your portfolio: Not all designers in the world have 10 years experience and a roster of paying clients. For those starting out in the business, the competitions provide great fuel for creating designs. If you want prospective clients to see what you're capable of, the design competitions seem to offer a chance to create that portfolio.

Benefits include:

• You need to think not abstractly about design principles, but concretely about how a design project relates to a business
  
• Competitions are great for elevating one's focus and creativity
  
• You can benchmark yourself against other submissions, including those selected if yours is not

Personal interest: Some projects just pique the interest of a person. Maybe there's a day job with a paying company, and then a chance at night to do things "your way" on a project of interest. The project taps some areas you want to pursue, or maybe allows you to try something out without concern as to whether the client will ultimately want the design.

Extra business: Everyone is hustling in a weak economy. If your design business has some slack in demand, why not apply the available creative resources toward an occasional crowdsourcing project? If you're a professional shop, presumably your odds are better than most.

Access to high-end ad agencies: This was the case when Porter Crispin + Bogusky solicited logo designs for their start-up client Brammo, maker of electric motorcycles. They ran the contest through crowdSPRING. The contest sparked plenty of debate, but also saw 700 entries. One reason was that young up-n-coming designers wanted the chance to impress a firm of the caliber of PC+B, who can send many paying clients their way.

That's the designer participation set of motivations. I guess the best way to think about companies' motivation is this - Do they get results?

Since the number of requests from companies is growing, design crowdsourcing sites are working at some level. If they weren't, word would spread pretty quickly and companies would stop using them. This comment from designer Morgan Stone on Alex Bogusky's blog post about PC+B's use of crowdSPRING is illuminating:


"As a designer... crowdsourcing scares me. I think it has to do with the harsh reality that sometimes it doesn't take experience or a big title to design something truly amazing."


What's the staying power of the crowdsourced design contest approach? And will it disrupt the industry, in the Clayton Christensen sense?


Sustainability and Reach of Crowdsourcing Design Contests

Altimeter Group's Jeremiah Owyang wrote last year, "Without a doubt, Specwork (like crowdspring or 99 designers) is here to stay - economics will drive this forward." For the buyers, yes. But the supply side of the equation - the designers - is that here to stay?

I believe it is. The numbers say it is. Here's what I mean:


In a 2009 article, Forbes noted that there are 80,000 free lance designers in the U.S. alone. Add in the talent from around the world, and you can see that there is a large of pool of creativity. Maybe 200,000 designers globally? 99designs claims to have roughly 54,000 designers on its site.

Designers have some motivation to participate in crowdsourcing design contests, as noted for the reasons above. It's not like every designer will submit regularly. But every project reaches some new set of designers, and occasionally gets a repeat one as well.

All it takes is for a business seeking design work is maybe 30, 40, 50 submissions? As a percent of the global number of designers, that's not much.

40 / 200,000 = 0.02%

Here's what designer David Airey said about getting clients from crowdsourcing sites:


"I've had direct clients and also have been one of those in the crowd. Surprisingly, some of my best clients are the ones that followed me from these crowd sourcing sites. That's probably because they've already been through a working process with me, and they like what they've experienced, so there's no mismatch of expectations like a new client."


I do see the sustainability of the business. It's complex, but there are enough people who do see advantages to participating. Even if only for certain periods of their lives or only on occasion. I don't see entering crowdsourcing design contests as a full-time pursuit for someone.

Next question: how much can crowdsourcing chip away at the traditional areas of the design industry? Is there a gap that crowdsourcing addresses? (Erica's post, Bokardo's post):


Many designers in the debate note the importance of establishing a rapport with clients, and understanding their clients more deeply than a set of colors and fonts. A firm such as Nocturnal Graphic Design Studio appears to deliver value through deeper relationships and more strategic approaches with its clients.

But Erica's point above is well-taken. Sometimes, you're not in the market for that level of involvement. Small and mid-sized businesses do not need the full horsepower of high-end design firms. As one designer (snootily) commented on the PC+B blog post about using crowdSPRING:

"99 designs and their nefarious brethren have a client roster whose market recognition for the most part is similar to that of Joe's Morgue & Jerky Outlet."

Of course, this may not be contained to SMBs.


The Disruptive Potential

Have you checked out what Mountain Dew is doing with crowdsourcing (aka "DEWmocracy")? As Wired notes in a January article:


"Mountain Dew is asking consumers to choose three new sodas, from selecting the flavors to naming them, designing the cans and choosing the ad agency to promoting the product."


Not all of this is crowdsourcing design, but it is an edgy experiment in leaving the professional firms behind.

Right now, as Steve Douglas of the Logo Factory notes, the biggest chunk of business is for logos. Which you can see at the start of this post in the 99designs project list.

The U.S. Census Bureau had the graphic design industry generating $2.8 billion in revenue in 2002. It is a large, diverse, complex industry. My expectation is that design contest crowdsourcing will encroach more into large enterprises for tactical projects, as the smaller businesses continue to use them and get good results. Large companies' efforts, such Mountain Dew's DEWmocracy, Unilever's crowdsourcing contest for a TV campaign for its Peperami snack food, and Doritos' crowdsourced Super Bowl ads, add fuel to this.

Two things are needed for the crowdsourcing model to encroach further into the design industry:

• Leaderboards/reputation
  
• Smartsourcing

Leaderboards let prospective buyers know who the best are. We see them on Topcoder for programming contests. It's a way to establish visibility and credibility far beyond the recommendations you maintain on your own site. It will take some changes by the crowdsourcing sites, enabling recognition for designers who do well in contests, even if they are not picked. It also would need to have different bases for identifying top designers.

The other wrinkle is to allow a form of smartsourcing. Once the top designers are identified, they are invited for larger companies' design projects. This is pretty similar to the current state of things, except the basis for access changes somewhat. It's not just business relationships a designer/firm has established with the big ad/marketing/brand agencies. It's based on performance.

With these two elements, I can see how crowdsourcing becomes more important, more disruptive, in the world of business design.


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Hutch Carpenter is the Vice President of Product at Spigit. Spigit integrates social collaboration tools into a SaaS enterprise idea management platform used by global Fortune 2000 firms to drive innovation.

Out with the New, In with the Old

by Paul Williams




Today in Amsterdam, in a park near my home, I saw city workers replacing the new, contemporary lights [pictured, left] with this old-school style [right].

While this small image is a big grainy, you can see that these 'new' lights are styled after old gas lamps. They have more charm than the contemporary lamps. Atop the fixture is a crown. Decorative crowns adorn fixtures and architecture throughout Amsterdam to celebrate Dutch royalty.

It is pretty neat that the city is embracing this old style look. Just goes to show ya, newer isn't always better.


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Paul Williams is a professional problem solver at Idea Sandbox. He can help you create remarkable ideas to grow your business. You may read more at his website and find him Twittering as @IdeaSandbox.

Innovation gone too far? - The Toyota Recall

by Robert F. Brands with Jeff Zbar

Once upon a time, to start your Toyota Camry, you placed a key in the ignition and turned until the electrical connection was made and engine started.

To accelerate, you pressed the gas pedal, which pulled a cable attached to a mechanical throttle. Assuming the shift had been manually placed into gear - the car moved.

Today, electronics and computers have replacement many of the mechanical parts that once made cars move. To start many cars or place them in gear, buttons are pushed. To accelerate, the gas pedal is connected not to a cable, but to a computer - via electronic circuitry.

In light of Toyota's massive recall of 10 million of Camry, Tercel, Prius hybrid and luxury Lexus models (and that's a shortened list), one has to wonder: At what point does innovation encourage failure?

In other words, has Toyota gone too far? In the interest of fairness, these issues potentially affect any modern automobile. Already, GM is facing recalls related to steering.

The costs - in terms of finances and consumer confidence - can be great. As Toyota mechanics are correcting millions of cars and consumer confidence lags, rival automakers have reported double-digit sales growth.

But the question of innovation for innovation's sake - or for the sake of "technological evolution" - begs to be asked. Sure, innovation of the vehicle and the way it's manufactured cuts costs, including labor and benefits. We continually innovate to cost reduce. But now, cars don't just turn on with the turn of a key. And when they don't roar to life as expected, the corner mechanic must be trained not only in auto repair, but in computers technology (assuming he or she owns the equipment).

This reminds me of a story. It was the 1970s. Two adventurers once were traveling by pick-up truck in northern Mexico when their vehicle broke down. The local mechanic took a look under the hood, grabbed a coffee can of old parts, and fashioned a fix.

How does this all relate to the innovation imperatives? In "Robert's Rules of Innovation", it mentions two key imperatives that seem to have gone awry here. First, Toyota sought the imperative of value creation in pursuit of innovation. Yet, any value created through their innovation-gone-awry is more than lost through the recall and labor costs and lost sales and good will.

Second, who has been held accountable? After first declining to do so, Toyota President Akio Toyoda made a very public appearance on Capitol Hill. He apologized and promised to "do everything in my power" to ensure the malfunctions and tragedies don't happen again. Do Americans buy it? Can Toyota afford to wait and wonder?

To that end, the complexity of the conundrum facing Toyota at one point was belied by the simplicity of their first apparent fix. After spending days in conference over how to remedy the stuck throttle, high-paid engineers came up with a simple solution: Shorten the gas pedal.

To be sure, in the end, the issues facing the automaker were far more complex than nipping an inch off a too-long pedal. But could the issues have been remedied in the designer's or accountant's office years ago - when the company believed innovation would save money?

We - and Toyota - may never know. But we've learned that innovation poorly planned can have the greatest expectations, but the worst outcomes.


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Robert Brands is the founder of InnovationCoach.com, and the author of "Robert's Rules of Innovation: A 10-Step Program for Corporate Survival", with Martin Kleinman - to be published in March by Wiley (www.robertsrulesofinnovation.com).

The Dangers of Design Research

by Idris Mootee

What is design research? It is generally referred to as the upfront contextual inquiry work that designers perform before they start ideation. Sometimes it involves some light ethnographic work and some interviews, but it is often not structured, comprehensive, or rigorous. Design research emerged only in the late 1960s with the goal of improving how we see consumers use the product and look for ways to improve the effectiveness of a product. It is pretty much a human factor investigation and is now widely practiced, but is now facing a few serious challenges.

Design research is more than just a design tool, and the truth is that 80% of the time, they are not designed and conducted properly.

The emergence of transdisciplinary design is changing what skills are needed by those who undertake research design. These required skills go beyond improving a physical product and now include knowing how to build the voice of customer into the design research process, either directly or indirectly. The ability to collect data is not the critical activity, but instead it is the ability to decode visual and non-visual data and translate emergent issues into concrete, actionable insights.

The effectiveness of design research is determined by the research team's ability to translate identified functional and emotional characteristics into unique innovation drivers. Ineffective design research activities are often characterized by the presence of assumptive decision-making, lack of immersion into the consumer's world and undifferentiated innovation drivers. Design research is lesser known than traditional market research among marketers, and they often misuse it as a market research tool instead of applying it as a product development or innovation tool.

Many organizations are only beginning to use an receive the full benefits of design research. Many see it as an unnecessary cost because the people who performed it in the past did not do it justice. Improperly done, many of the presented outputs are useless and unactionable. There are many reasons for this. First, most designers are trained to observe the insights for the purpose of applying them directly to their work, but are poorly trained to codify these insights, while also lacking the writing and analytical skills to make sense of what they see. Second, observation research and individual contact is very consuming, particularly when you need to see them performing non-daily routines. Feeding useful data input into the creative process is a critical skill, one that is an "intuitive learning process." During this process ideas 'evolve' or 'mature' and lead to the improvement of the previous idea.

Design research at Idea Couture is not just an observation exercise; it is often a participatory exercise. I can't talk more to our proprietary methodologies, but they are a lot more than just sending in two designers to learn about how a consumer uses a product. It is not productive to do that. Cross-disciplinary teams perform design research at Idea Couture and consider issues from multiple perspectives - from anthropological to human factors and brand influences. Design research for us is the starting point of reflective collaboration, getting D-School and B-School collaborating to solve wicked problems. It is fun. Designers often like the idea of involving users early and generally hate focus groups. Unfocus groups on the other hand are hard to manage and often discussions get side-tracked. Involving users is always a good idea, particularly when you need to gain a deeper understanding of cultural issues - such as lifestyles and wider issues beyond functional details. This is why you need anthropologists.

It is interesting to see that the contextual inquiry hype has been migrating toward the participatory/designer-led corner of the design research space the last few years as design-led methods such as visioning and storyboarding have been added to contextual inquiries. Finally, a lot of designers have difficulties moderating an unfocus group evaluation for a product idea that they designed, as the personal aspects involved often cause some uncomfortable situations. You can see why design research projects are so difficult to design and conduct properly.


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Idris Mootee is the CEO of idea couture, a strategic innovation and experience design firm. He is the author of four books, tens of published articles, and a frequent speaker at business conferences and executive retreats.

Radical Innovation is a Proposal, Not a Product

by Thomson Dawson

We've noticed a common thread among many companies these days. When thinking about innovation - most seem to be heavily focused on providing incremental features and benefits as a cornerstone for their competitive advantage. What seems to elude many executive leaders is a lack of understanding that people do not buy products, they buy into meanings.

Maybe the reason for this is simply the physics of most organizations inhibits radical innovation and the competitive advantage that results. What matters the most to people is not the function of a product, but their emotional, psychological and cultural connection to what a product means to them. The key to sustained competitive advantage for companies is to innovate around meanings rather than function and performance. Radical Innovation does not happen when you bring people an incremental improvement of what they already know. Rather, radical innovation (and market leadership for that matter) is the result of 'proposing' an unexpected meaning. This meaning, unsolicited by user needs, once discovered, turns out to be the very thing people were waiting for!

There are countless examples of companies who have mastered this. Of course, Apple is an easy one. And there are other compelling examples. Back in the early 80's, Seiko and Casio were driving technological innovation in quartz watches, believing people wanted technical precision. However, a Swiss watchmaker realized people cared more about self-expression than technical precision. Swatch was born and proved to be a radical innovation of meaning that created radical market success. While Seiko and Casio were closely observing user needs and existing meanings, Swatch created new ones.


Forget User-centered Innovation

With so many such examples in every industry to benchmark from, I am surprised most companies don't seem to "get it". Most are heavily invested in traditional market innovation - finding a consumer need and filling it. From our own experience working in early stage product and brand innovation, seemingly the conversation starts by the client explaining how their new product innovation has more buttons and is easier to use than the leading brand. A radical innovation of meaning rarely, if ever, comes from user-centered approaches.

In my view, this explains why so many high user involvement product categories are being commoditized. Most companies continue to improve incremental performance within existing market concepts leaving only a few visionary companies to gain competitive advantage (market leadership) by proposing new and different meanings. Did I mention Apple yet?


Good and Different

In his whiteboard book "Zag", noted consultant and author Marty Neumeier outlines the fundamentals of good and different. The premise is simple - you can't lead by following the leader. To remove uncertainty and hedge risk in innovation, many companies rely on focus group testing. While useful for certain kinds of learning, people in focus groups have a frame of reference that is based on what is currently known to them. Most people usually want more of what they currently know - only with more features and cheaper. This is not an effective venue for discovering new meanings or competitive advantage.

Today the marketplace is over-crowded with good. Good is expected. Good = the same! Different on the other hand, is more elusive. When a company proposes a radical innovation of meaning, it's no surprise it will be first judged as crazy or impractical idea. Radical innovations of meaning don't test well. A product that is radically different is always radically different than the current dominant meaning in the category. Think back to the Swatch example; personal expression trumps precision instrument. Indeed Swatch is still good and different.

What is your innovation strategy?

In his book, "Design-Driven Innovation", author Roberto Verganti outlines a framework for mapping strategy for innovation as a radical change in meanings. Check out his thinking in the diagram below:



Verganti describes the process of product innovation and competitive advantage as historically being the result of product performance enhanced by disruptive technology advances and intense analysis of users' needs. Radical innovation, on the other hand, is more about baking the more elusive unexpected meaning into the product. People discover something unexpected that, when delivered, is somehow what people have been waiting for, just not asking for. Radical innovation is a proposal to people. Radical innovation is not about function and form, but about function and meaning - never driven by users.

As your company maps its innovation strategy, this distinction of radical innovation of meanings rather than features may be noteworthy in your product development. If you're not thinking about radical innovation right now, you can be sure your competitor is. Lead, follow, or get out of the way has never rang so true.

Please share your thoughts with us.


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Thomson Dawson is the Managing Partner of PULL Brand Innovation. PULL helps leaders and teams gain more insight, clarity and confidence to pursue their most promising opportunities to create new value.

Creative Environmental Integration

by Paul Williams

Over the past several years, I've had the good fortune to be able travel around Europe. I've taken tens of thousands of pictures.

I love this shot below.

Terra cotta roof tiles, and lush, greens hills a patchwork alternating vineyards and olive groves. This is Vinci, Italy. Where Leonardo was born and grew up - you know - Leonardo da Vinci (of Vinci).

However, in the middle of this great shot - is a mark of the late 20th Century - the satellite dish. You can also see mid-century old-school antennas.


[Fig. 1 Vinci, Italy View]

You can click the image above for a larger view. Take out the tv equipment, convert to black and white, and you'd enjoy the same view from over 200 years ago.


Environmental Integration

While it's not perfect, I spotted this solution to disguise dishes in Amsterdam. They've covered the dishes with a 'picture of brick' to blend into the building. This is an apartment building above our grocery store. While not perfect - the dishes aren't as obvious.

[Fig. 2 Amsterdam Dish Disguise]

This reminds me of the 'environmental integration' being used to conceal cell and communication towers are being decorated to look like trees.

[Fig. 3 Faux Phone Pole Pines]

I've had that Amsterdam shot in my pictures folder for a while - waiting to share it with you. Thought you'd find it interesting. However, there are business lessons these disguises and concealments may teach us. I'll post another article tomorrow! Until then, take care.


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Paul Williams is a professional problem solver at Idea Sandbox. He can help you create remarkable ideas to grow your business. You may read more at his website and find him Twittering as @IdeaSandbox.

Power of Incomplete Microstories

by Matthew E May

If you follow this blog you know I'm a huge fan of "I Wrote this for You." (Iain Thomas contributed a piece for this blog here.) Here's Iain talking at a recent TEDx event is South Africa. It's a heartwarming story about the power of story. It's a must-see, if you want to change the world. And even if you don't.





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Matthew E. May is the author of "IN PURSUIT OF ELEGANCE: Why the Best Ideas Have Something Missing." He is constantly searching for creative ideas and innovative solutions that are 'elegant' - a unique and elusive combination of unusual simplicity and surprising power.

Disney's Berms and Contradictions

by Paul Williams

The Imagineers at The Disney Company, the folks who dream-up theme parks and make them a reality, have created their own terms that allow quick understanding.

The Imagineer Terms

Berm - A raised earthen barrier, typically heavily landscaped, which serves to prevent visual intrusions into the Park from the outside world and block the outside world from intruding inside.

When you're in the fantasy world of a Disney theme park - Disney didn't want the outside world to break that spell.

Contradictions - Elements that could break the spell and ruin the experience. Walt Disney taught his team to be attentive to details and to think things through to the very end. They don't leave the experience to chance, it is all calculated.

The Disney Imagineers go to great lengths to eliminate contradictions. They have taken care to ensure you can't see the future of Tomorrowland while standing in ye olde Frontierland. Cowboys and Astronauts don't mix. They built 'utilidors' - a basement beneath the Magic Kingdom in Florida - that allows cast members (employees) to travel directly to their attraction from beneath the scenes in their themed costume. The guy wearing his silver Space Mountain costume would look quite alien strolling to his shift along Victorian Main Street, USA.


Broader Marketing Interpretation

While we may not worry whether customers can see the outside world, we do have to be attentive to visual intrusions and contradictions within our locations.

Typical examples may include:

Smoking employees - especially if your business has anything to do with food. Yeah, maybe your wait staff or chef needs a break to chill with a smoke... But don't let your customers see it. And for Pete's sake as a courtesy - please make sure they wash their hands before returning to work.

Incentive posters - Customers don't care or want to see employee-targeted posters for your 'extended warranty incentive'. How genuine do you think it's going to sound to the customer - who spots the partly shaded "Warranty Sell to Sail" bar graph - that the warranty is really in their best interest?

Sales awards - Don't let the manager post their 90% secret shopper score award in customer view. Doing your job right is not something to boast to your customers. It's an expectation. That's meant for backstage. Note to self... do a post about 'backstage'.

Drive-Thru Dumpster/Grease Buckets - Garbage, trash and used frying oil are realities of most fast food restaurants. But, when is someone going to invent a drive-thru design that doesn't parade drive-thru customers past a kid dragging an oozing bag of restaurant waste to the dumpster? A dream I had, while working at Starbucks, was to be part of the Drive-Thru Development team and make the drive-thru experience like no other. A challenge I proposed was: How would Disney do a drive-thru? (My dream was to make it operate like a car wash where you put your car in neutral, and you were guided by the drive thru like a Disney attraction)

Decompression Zone - Paco Underhill the cultural anthropologist and author in his book "Why We Buy wrote" about 'decompression zones'.

This is offering an area at the entrance of a store/business where the shopper can make a transition from one environment to the next. For example, from the main mall to the entrance to your retail store. Think about the first time you entered a new store; the lighting is different, the decor, the music, the smells, and sometimes the temperature. You're not taking time to read a sale banner or want someone asking, "May I help you?" As a customer you're simply trying to get acclimated to the new space - get your bearings.

Back to Disney for a great example of a 'decompression zone'. And for this one, I've even provided an annotated illustration diagram below.

Disney knows the reality of the world doesn't wear off easily. So, when entering the Magic Kingdom theme park at Walt Disney World in Florida, after you pass the ticket entrance you have to enter the park through two short, slightly dark tunnels. These run underneath the railroad station. When you emerge you are on Main Street USA. However, you still don't see Cinderella's Castle yet - the icon of the park - until you've started to head down Main Street.

These tunnels serve as a final buffer between the outside (reality) and the fantasy of the park.

[Fig. 1 Magic Kingdom Entrance - Walt Disney World Resort, Florida]

Are you giving your customers the experience they deserve?


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Paul Williams is a professional problem solver at Idea Sandbox. He can help you create remarkable ideas to grow your business. You may read more at his website and find him Twittering as @IdeaSandbox.

Design Does Matter

by Mike Myatt

So, does design really matter? Let me make my position very clear... design absolutely matters. Whether it is aesthetic, functional, creative, process, innovative, intellectual, technical or applicational... design matters. While I have heard many a professional downplay the value of design, it has been my experience that most business people who espouse this opinion are commenting on something outside of their domain expertise in an attempt to justify a competing agenda or a position of ignorance. While this position may seem a bit harsh, it is nonetheless true. In today's blog post I'll examine why design matters.

What do you think when you experience poor design in your life? Are you likely to adopt a new software application that is poorly designed? When you are handed a business card that was printed at Kinko's are you impressed? Are you likely to read a piece of collateral material that is poorly designed? If a newly implemented business process has design flaws, will employees follow the process or circumvent it? Is poorly designed consumer packaging likely to attract your attention as you walk down the shopping isle? When it's time to purchase your next automobile would you give serious consideration to a poorly designed vehicle? I could go on ad nauseum with similar questions, but my guess is that you get my point...

Now let's examine the flip-side of the coin by looking at the positives associated with strong design. When you think of Apple you immediate think of a company that has built a strong brand around quality design. It started with the Mac, then came the iPod and now we're experiencing the impact of the iPhone. The iPod pioneered innovative design in the mp3 player vertical with great technical design, outstanding functional design, and is in a class by itself with regard to aesthetic design. Largely due to the iPod's strong integrated design qualities it is the dominant brand in its class, commands a pricing premium, and has developed an extremely loyal and satisfied customer base.

When you're evaluating vendors online, and you land on a poorly designed website, how long does it take you to click away from the poorly designed site in search of a better option? You can review virtually any industry, sector, vertical, or micro-vertical and when you examine the dominant brands you'll find quality design at their core. While there are exceptions to every rule, they are few and far between when it comes to design. If you try hard enough you can find an aberration in just about any rule, but it will simply be just that... an aberration.

Also worth noting is that there is certainly a difference between value engineering and arbitrary cost containment. The next time you hear someone question an investment into design solely for the purpose of reducing expenditures, I would suggest that you think long and hard before doing so, as few things in business produce the return on investment that a reputation for quality design can yield.

Think about the marketing and advertising campaigns that get your attention, the clothes you wear, the house you live in, the cars you drive, the cell phone you carry, or any number of other decisions you make and you'll find that design plays a key role in your decisioning... Design Matters!


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Mike Myatt, is a Top CEO Coach, author of "Leadership Matters...The CEO Survival Manual", and Managing Director of N2Growth.

Radical Innovation of Meaning - Apple iPad

by Hutch Carpenter


"Ultimately, the iPad is a large iPod touch: a great device to draw your inspiration from, but perhaps not the seismic shift in technology that we were expecting."

- Claudine Beaumont, Apple iPad review, The Telegraph


The much anticipated announcement of Apple's iPad tablet was met with a resounding... "ho hum" or worse from much of the technology crowd. The biggest criticisms were its lack of key features (no Adobe Flash, lack of USB ports, where's the camera?, etc.). The Apple iPad as a technology innovation is a disappointment.

But with Apple, and Steve Jobs, that's not really the point now, is it?

Sure, Apple has had plenty of technological innovations along the way. But then, so has its competitors. Yes, Steve Jobs is a showman, but that effect only lasts for MacWorld presentations.

No, what Apple does well is put forth "radical innovations of meaning". That term is from Roberto Verganti, who wrote about the concept in his excellent book "Design-Driven Innovation".

Apple's skills with design-driven innovation are what will make the iPad a success.


Design-Driven Innovation: Innovation of Meaning


"Market? What market! We do not look at market needs. We make proposals to people."

- Ernesto Gismondi, Chairman, Artemide, Design-Driven Innovation


Verganti's books builds the case for a different form of innovation. One in which companies tap the undercurrents of societal changes early, and create products addressing them. As Artemide chairman Gismondi puts it, these products are so different, they are akin to "making a proposal" to a market. They are not linear updates to existing products.

As Julian Bleeker notes in his review of the book, design-driven innovation is not a "follow the trends" approach. "Trends" are what any company can do. Rather, it's deciding that conditions are right to introduce a product that plumbs changes previously unexplored in your industry.

Verganti describes this work as the radical innovation of meaning. Many purchases are based as much on meaning as they are on features. Innovation of features is an ongoing process for companies. But innovation of meaning is a stunted process for many firms.

Take a product that has an accepted use, a common set of features, and provide something new that turns the traditional meaning of the product on its head. In the book, he describes multiple examples of this, drawn mostly from Italy, his home country. For example, Alessi, a manufacturer of household items, successfully innovated the meaning of many common items. It introduced a series of playful characters that represented everyday kitchen items:

• Mandarin: citrus squeezer stylized as a Chinese mandarin
  
• Nutty the Cracker: squirrel that cracks nuts

While it may sound trivial as you read this, this product line was an absolute gangbuster in sales. Alessi figured out that people still enjoyed playful experiences, even as adults. No one else was thinking this way in the industry at the time. But now the kitchenware actively pursues emotional design. It was no accident either. Alessi spent time researching changes in societal norms. That we still like to be kids was a change they saw (and one that many of us today take for granted).

Companies that do this well are both influencers and participants in what Verganti describes as the "design discourse". This is an ongoing conversation with thinkers, tinkerers, researchers and companies who target the same evolving changes in societal context. Often, these are people outside your industry who are studying the same changes you are interested in.

It is by accessing these networks where companies can "see" evolutions of societal norms that offer opportunity. These are opportunities not driven by expressed consumer desires, but by shifts in cultural norms. Done well, companies that successfully innovate the meaning of products enjoy significant growth and profits.

Oh, and early on, these innovations of meaning can be slow to gain acceptance by the market. Explains the early iPod and Nintendo Wii reactions.


Apple iPad: What Is Its Radical Innovation of Meaning?


OK, if iPad is innovating meaning even more than it is technology, what meaning might that be? Here's my best guess:

• iPad is tapping into an emerging dynamic of a more interactive, tactile experience with digital technology and information. These interactions make technology less of an interface, and more of an extension of ourselves and our environment.

The tweets above are a couple that show the natural way children engage with technology. Given the iPhone experience, they turn around and want to apply it to other devices. Buttons on devices, our traditional form of interaction, are divorced from the screen. They provide a measure of distance from the digital experience.

Touch, however, represents a new level of intimacy in the digital experience. In technology terms, it's just an alternative form of interface. Touch, mouse, tab, whatever. But touch is a vital human sense, and a core part of experience. It's how we interact with others, how we shop, experience textures and so much more.

In terms of the "design discourse", there are pointers of changes ahead in terms of integrating touch more deeply into our digital engagement.


Digital Wellbeing Labs: Responsive Feedback Behaviors

Designer Alexander Grunsteidl noted the impact of both the iPod and the Wii on our perception of how to interact with technology:

The Wii and iPhone, and before the iPod click wheel, have created a popular introduction to gesture based interfaces, demonstrating responsive feedback behaviours, applying "natural" physical effects like flipping and inertia, similar to the ones we are accustomed to in the real world, to improve usability expectations of an interface.

As new "cultures of use" emerge we are creating opportunities to form a language of gestures, similar to the conventions of "right-clicking" and standardised keyboard shortcuts.

Note the term "culture of use". Not industry trends. Because the dominant form of interaction for computers and video games is still mouse and buttons. And consumers aren't asking for touch.

But there is an underlying change in thinking about how people interact with technology and information.


Architectural Design: Digital Intimacy

University of Nottingham Nottingham UK student Stephen Townsend received a commendation in the recent President's Medal competition in the U.K. His entry, Digital Intimacy, depicts a concept where interaction is built into the architecture.

If you notice the graphic to the right, you will see people reaching out their hands and interacting through touch. Townsend calls it the "kinesthetic interaction space". Kinesthetic refers to a style of learning based on physical activities.

He designed this kinesthetic interaction space as a therapeutic solution for children with special needs. Here's how he describes it:


"The 'Kinesthetic Interaction Space' is conceived as an interactive architectonic intervention aimed at children with autism, providing sensory stimulation to assist with intervention methods and aid interaction with other children through shared kinesthetic experience. The focus of the thesis is on the development of dynamic material systems that could enable new forms of interactive environment. Architecture is conceptualised as an embodied interface and physical space has been fused with digital media in order to stimulate the imagination of inhabitants. K.I.S. is intended to facilitate playful explorations and fluid dialogues between people. The user learns to interact with their environment through an intuitive process, engaging the physical presence of inhabitants and forming spatial narratives."


While Townsend's concept addresses children with autism, the underlying design is consistent with greater digital intimacy overall.


TEDEx Talk: Phones That Touch Us

PhD student Fabian Hemmert presented at a recent TEDx talk. He is working on a concept where phones include physical movements that better connote actions to people using them. In the video below, you'll see him describe how the phone would shift weight in relation to changes in movement on a map.



As Hemmert notes, humans live in a physical world, one "which tastes good, feels good smells good". He wants to design products that better integrate that experience.


iPad: The Future of Computing

Those three examples I just gave are part of a larger design discourse about the nature of digital engagement in our future. Are we "locked in" to the mouse and keyboard? Or will we continue to evolve the interaction experience?

In Wired, Brian X. Chen sees things similarly:


"If you think about how a computer like this will impact people sociologically, suddenly the iPad is far more than a larger iPod Touch, as many have described it. It's the computer for everyone: an idea Apple has been working toward for years.

That doesn't mean the iPad will be the only computer for everyone and destroy every PC on the market, because that's not even remotely likely. But it will introduce a significant new category."


Bold pronouncement for sure. But entirely consistent with a radical innovation of meaning. Henry Blodget sees an outcome of this drive for digital intimacy: pervasiveness.


They won't live on desks, the way desktops do, and they won't be carried everywhere, the way mobile phones are. They'll just be there, around the house, on tables and counters, the way today's books, magazines, games, and newspapers are, booted up, ready to use.


Keep in mind student Stephen Townsend's kinesthetic interaction space, built into the house. How about an iPad in every room of the house, ready to go? You can see thinking evolving on similar lines here.

I can see people becoming quite attached to their iPads. Their little units of digital intimacy.

Once you see where this is going, it should come as no surprise that Apple may be working on a larger version of its iPad, as a full computer. Steve Jobs is placing his chips on this radical innovation of meaning.

Related Posts:

• Apple's Hidden Disruptive Innovation


• Insights to Drive Apple iPad Success


• Will Apple Introduce the Innovation Expected from Google?

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Hutch Carpenter is the Vice President of Product at Spigit. Spigit integrates social collaboration tools into a SaaS enterprise idea management platform used by global Fortune 2000 firms to drive innovation.

Crowdsourcing Innovation vs. The Economics of Elitism

by Mark Prus

Which Is Better?

A recent article in The New York Times discussed the innovation process at Apple. Clearly the process begins and ends with Steve Jobs. And clearly Mr. Jobs is a creative genius. He also has a lot of help with top notch design engineers. As a result, Apple is perceived as one of the most innovative companies on the planet.

If you have visionary leadership at your company, this might be a good way to go. But companies like Procter & Gamble (P&G) also have strong leadership and they have taken a different route to innovation. P&G has been a leader in Open Innovation, and many of the new products they have launched in the past few years have come from outside the company.

Which approach is better? Some say that Crowdsourcing produces a lot of good ideas, while "home grown" innovation is capable of producing bigger breakthrough ideas.

I love Apple (full disclosure: I own Apple stock and am a big fan of their products). However, I am not sure that the "elitism model of innovation" is one that can be expanded to a lot of companies. I believe that Steve Jobs is a true visionary, and that people like him come along far too rarely for this to be a workable model of innovation. It does work for Apple... but how many other companies can implement it?

Your thoughts?


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Mark Prus is a marketing consultant who offers a name development service called NameFlash^SM.

Innovation a Prisoner of Inductive and Deductive Logic

by Braden Kelley

I had the opportunity to attend an event hosted by the Seattle office of design firm NBBJ yesterday. The event featured Roger Martin, Dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, and author of "The Design of Business" and "The Opposable Mind." I'd like to share a video interview I did with Roger before the event:

Interview - Roger Martin - Author "The Design of Business" from Braden Kelley on Vimeo.

I'd also like to share some of the key insights from Roger's talk at the event:

• People think in ways that form rules in their brains, and they are not always aware of the ways that those rules constrain them


• That which tends to get you more reliability often gets you less validity


• IQ tests have test/re-test reliability, but only 30% of life outcomes are related to IQ, 70% is attributable to other factors
  
• Emotional intelligence measures may be more valid, but not reliable


• If you insist on reliability, you can't prove in advance that your heuristic of a mystery is correct


• Innovation is a prisoner of deductive and inductive logic


• We learn to analyze quantities, but what matters more often are the qualities


• Abductive logicians welcome variance because they want to try and understand the outliers. Our modern education system beats abductive logic out of you. Are you focusing on quantities or qualities?


• We depend too much on quantities - Having more Science Technology & Math (STeM) graduates is not the way to invent the future


• Our businesses run on abstractions to help us understand the world, so new ones can be created and existing ones can be questioned


• Outliers in data can be significant sources for growth and innovation. Take the example of Intuit's QuickBooks - it was created because of the persistent existence of Quicken outliers trying to use the program to run their business instead of their personal finances.


• From the book - "It's not necessarily that some young whippersnapper's going to come up with some better idea than you. They're going to start from a different premise and they're going to come to a different conclusion that makes you irrelevant.""


• Sometimes you have to marinate on wicked problems. Instead of trying to simplify them, wade in a ways and then take a break and ruminate.


• If you live in a way that sets up your mind to determine whether things are true or false, then you can't invent the future.


• Innovation is more about combining and synthesizing existing conceptualizations and models. There are three main ways to do this:


1. Disaggregation - Target is a good example - In packaged goods, they focus on price, but in soft goods the focus on design.


2. Doubling-Down - To get the buzz of exclusivity that Cannes gets, the Toronto Film Festival pushed so hard on inclusivity that they created the buzz through the People's Choice Awards


3. Mixing - Hidden gems


• "It's not the job of the customer to invent the future."


• Quantitative and qualitative surveys force customers to make something up when they don't know how to answer


• Customers only know themselves and are happy to talk about themselves


• Interesting question - Should we be teaching intuitive thinking to science, technology and math majors? - Yes! - We should focus more energy in science on the intuitive leaps of the mind necessary to come up with interesting hypotheses.


• CEOs should see themselves as the Chief Validity Officer because of the overwhelming reliability-focus of our organizations


• Heuristics are a drug for strategy & design consultants - Often they are so busy with the heuristics that they don't take the time to push heuristics down into algorithms or to explore new mysteries

My book review of "The Design of Business" can be found here.

My previous interview with "The Design of Business" author Roger Martin can be found here.


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Braden Kelley is the editor of Blogging Innovation and founder of Business Strategy Innovation, a consultancy focusing on innovation and marketing strategy. Braden is also @innovate on Twitter.

Rethinking the Design of Kitchen Appliances

by Idris Mootee

My kitchen is overcrowded. There is no end in sight as we continue to invent new kitchen gadgets.

I have always wondered why many small kitchen appliances are so poorly designed both in form and function. Cooking is an art form and the appliances should reflect that. I've spent an hour at John Lewis' basement looking at their kitchen appliances. John Lewis' has better designs than what we see at Sears or Macy's. I guess B&O should start designing toasters.

Last year Electrolux Icon appliances and Interior Design Magazine held a competition with winner Marcello Zuffo's futuristic kitchen that featured movable components that can be reconfigured to adapt to the task at hand and incorporated a contemporary sculptural component contrary to a typically rectangular floor plan.

Designing a kitchen is an art, combining form and function while reflecting on the personality of the owner or designer. The kitchen has now become a place which is as much for cooking as it is a place to entertain guests while preparing a meal. Designer kitchens have been sprouting for decades now. More and more homeowners have been renovating and remodeling their homes to include designer kitchens. In kitchen designs and even appliances, Europe is at the forefront of kitchen design and designer kitchen innovation. In the US, unless you're prepared to throw a lot of money at the problem, you're pretty much stuck with some mass-market solution. And then the question is do you want stainless steel? It that going to go out of fashion soon or it is here to stay? Didn't everyone think black, and then white, were going to be classics?

Anyhow, most of the stuff we see out there in the US is pretty poorly designed. Europe is a little better. But they need to think "system" instead of individual products. James Dyson now wants to compactify our kitchens. And hopefully beautify them in the process. In a US patent application filing, Dyson and his colleagues Peter Gammack and David Campbell describe a smart way to save space on overcrowded kitchen worktops by radically changing the design of the gadgets that typically clutter them.

Yes, think "system." The team says the trouble with today's kettles, toasters, juicers, food mixers and coffee grinders is that each type of gadget tends to have a different space-hogging design. Kettles tend to be jug or dome-shaped, with a protruding handle and flex on one side, and a spout on the other. Toasters are generally box shaped, with the timing and toast ejection mechanisms protruding from one end. That means users must leave a large "footprint" around each appliance so that their handles and controls can be reached easily. That's a very smart way to start. Kudos to the Dyson team!

In their patent filing, the idea is simple: make all free-standing gadgets like kettles, toasters, juicers and food mixers in the shape of tall cuboids that can easily be pushed together on a worktop, with no wasted space between them. As the controls could be recessed in their flat lids or on the front panels, no space-wasting side access is required. The patent also suggests connecting the appliances together - presumably using a common power supply. Why haven't people thought of that before?


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Idris Mootee is the CEO of idea couture, a strategic innovation and experience design firm. He is the author of four books, tens of published articles, and a frequent speaker at business conferences and executive retreats.

Empathetic Biker-Centered Design in Denmark

by Damian Kernahan

I really thought this was perfect sense and showed a good understanding of human behaviour or in this case challenges. Simple, elegant and effective - all things that good Service Design should be.

Check the railings that the man is holding onto and resting his foot on. It's located on a little Copenhagen traffic island where cyclists often wait, reports Copenhagenize.com.

The City of Copenhagen has implemented this double railing simply as a convenience for the cyclists who stop here. A high railing to grasp with your hand and a foot railing for putting your foot up, if that's what you fancy doing. Either way you can also use the railing to push off when the light changes.

The foot rest reads: "Hi, cyclist! Rest your foot here... and thank you for cycling in the city."

It certainly is a fine example of the City understanding human behaviour and basic anthropology.



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Damian Kernahan is the managing partner of corporate growth consultants, Proto Partners, www.protopartners.com.au.