You best know him as the man behind the red dot awards – concept design, Singapore, however I know Ken Koo as the visionary behind many design initiatives across this island country. We almost lost him to the world of finance, with his degree in accountancy; Ken began his career with numbers. But like they say … Accenture’s loss is now the design fraternity’s gain! I hope to turn my many conversations with Ken into a bustling series, and that you readers and I can pick his brains on topics related to the business of design.

I kickstart this episode with the ever imposing question about Design Thinking!

Me:

A lot of talk is there about design thinking and how it helps both designer and entrepreneurs. Ken, if you were to explain what Design Thinking is to a common person with zero design background, then how will you explain it?

Ken:

Design Thinking is a set of tools and methods to help one break free of preconceived ideas and notions. It provides ways to observe understand and derive innovative ideas on how to solve a problem or achieve an objective.

One key tool is ethnography, which we can use to observe the customers, space, interaction etc, in order to reveal latent needs and issues. As always, you never can really get the real picture just by listening to your clients. If they would have known the exact problem or opportunity, they would have embarked on it already.

As a designer, the tool helps us organize the mess of data into meaningful observation. Techniques to derive innovative solutions and approaches like “rule bending” challenges norms and open up minds to create new ideas…

Me:

After you have sorted out the design thinking process, and you present to your client the solutions, what is the best way to make a compelling presentation; any tips?

Ken:

What is the best way to make a compelling presentation? Ultimately, what will make the client make serious efforts to implement any solutions is how it impacts the business’s profitability. You cannot just present what it (your design solution) can do for the client design wise. Many clients cannot fully appreciate it in that way. But if you also present how it might impact the business, its profitability, client retention, cost reduction, market expansion etc. then you have nailed it right!

Photos: Fotolia & Will Hilton

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Ken Koo is Asia President for the red dot design award and is responsible for the third installation of the red dot design award focusing on design concepts titled the red dot award: design concept He is also the initiator of MAAD, the market of artists and designers at the red dot design museum in Singapore.

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(Candid With Ken Koo – What is Design Thinking? was originally posted on Yanko Design)

Related posts:

1. Candid Camera with a Sling
2. Can you see what I am thinking?
3. Is He/She Thinking About Me?!

Goodbye, Speak Up

I mentioned it earlier in the week but didn’t have time to post. I’m really bummed about the recent demise of the design blog Speak Up.

Founders and husband/wife team Armin Vit and Bryony Gomez-Palacio this week decided, after 7 years, to close down the popular design blog in part because they said they simply can no longer find the time to write the kind of insightful, provocative entries that made the blog influential when it first launched.

As the owner of both an oft-neglected blog and almost abandoned podcast, I can certainly understand. The big problem is the void that is now left by Speak Up’s departure. The truth is, there are few compelling design voices left in the blogosphere these days. Too much design conversation is tactical rather than strategic. Mostly about how to do things — write edgey CSS code or achieve sexy Photoshop techniques — rather than why we do things and how design helps solve problems on a strategic level.

Speak Up was great because it wasn’t afraid to spark sometimes epic debates within the design community that took a peek into a variety of controversial matters. So who is left to carry the mantle? I guess Design Observer is the most prominent design blog left. The scary thing is that I see a similar phenomenon at Design Observer that I saw a year or so ago at Speak Up. Gradually fewer of the posts were very topical, the entries are not updated quite as often and the conversation doesn’t seem to ever really have much “bite” any more. Design Observer used to be good for a good dust up once in a while and occasionally had the ability to really piss one off. Not so much lately. I wonder what happens if in 6 months to a year, the industry finds itself sans both Design Observer as well as Speak Up?

Hopefully this paves the way for a wave of new design voices in the blogosphere. Who knows? For now, all I know is that it’s very silent. I, for one, will miss them.

.chris{}

Steve Jobs holding a copy of newly-acquired New York Times

OK, not really. But imagine if you woke up this morning, glanced at the headlines and saw that this HAD happened? If Steve Jobs HAD purchased the New York Times. Now imagine what kind of changes we’d expect to see at the New York Times (or insert any large, ailing newspaper). One thing is for sure, we would cease to see business as usual.

The New York Times would change. And not only would the paper itself change, the industry in general would change with it.

I got to thinking about this after I published my entry The End of Print, As We Know It as well as after publishing Mobile Phones FINALLY Get Smart — Kinda. Think about the backwards, plodding, change-averse U.S. mobile industry before the iPhone was released 1 1/2 years ago. Mobile technology had made shockingly little progress when compared to the pace of technological innovation in most other industries and certainly when compared to the mobile industries in Europe and Asia. The iPod was a jolt to the system of the plodding mobile industry, much as the iPod had been to the portable digital music industry in 2001.

The newspaper industry is every bit as slow, plodding and change-averse as the U.S. mobile industry was. Maybe more so. Faced with substantial changes or death, it would seem that the industry has chosen the latter, as the steep dive in U.S. circulations may only be rivaled by the steep declines in newspaper profits.

What if Steve Jobs bought the New York Times?

I suppose one of the first things to change would be the web site. Don’t get me wrong, the New York Times web site is far from poorly-designed. I personally love the use of technology and white space. But as a fan of the printed version of the newspaper, I can’t help feel that one of the best aspects of the New York Times web site is the fact that it does a very good job of mimicing the look and feel of its printed counterpart. This may be its biggest downfall.

The New York Times newspaper works very well in the medium for which it was designed. Print. To handcuff the web site and tether it so closely to the printed newspaper is to ignore the realities of the medium for which IT is intended The dgital space.

For instance, why can’t I rearrange elements on the NYT home page like I can with my iGoogle? If I want MY version of the Times to lead with sports, politics and weather I should have that choice. That type of customization on web sites is very common now and users will not tolerate information being served to them in cookie-cutter fashion.

Today's NYTimes.com front page

Another thing would I guess be conversational features. Why is it that I cannot comment on Times articles? Some newspaper web sites are starting to allow this type of user feedback but that type of progress is generally slow going.

Mobile Integration

I would have to imagine another change would be to improve the mobile integration of the NYTimes.com site. I have the iPhone app and while I admire the Times’ ambition in being the first major newspaper to have one, the app has always suffered from being a bit slow and buggy. It crashes far more than its AP counterpart. Still, I think the iPhone app is a good start but I’d like to see more, far more. Mobile social features would be nice. For instance, it would be great to read an article on the iPhone app and Digg it right from my phone. How about ratings? How great would it be to be able to rate an article from my phone? Better yet, how about combine the two? Perhaps I could customize my home page to auto-populate a section of articles that are highly-rated by users who preferences match my own? Who have highly-rated similar articles that I have highly-rated?

NYTimes iPhone App

Other Features

In my “End of Print” entry, I asked why it was that newspapers like the New York Times hadn’t innovated technologies like Craig’s List and eBay?  For that matter, why not Rotten Tomatoes, the online movie ratings aggregator? Or perhaps a location-based mobile application that lets you know where the most highly-rated restaurants on the New York Times list are, while you’re out on the town?

And by the way, it’s not like I’m picking on the New York Times. It’s my favorite paper. One could substitute its name for any major newspaper and I’m pretty sure my observations would still apply.

Maybe to have one of them bought by Steve Jobs is what they ALL need? Might be the only thing that could save the ailing newspaper industry, or maybe it’s too much even for him?

.chris{}

In the year 2009, is this what newspapers SHOULD look like?

Newspapers are dying. Magazines are very, very sick and have a very bad prognosis. How bad is it? Mike Elgan of the site Datamation sums up the grim situation in his recent article Media Companies Have Only Themselves to Blame:

The Tribune Company filed for bankruptcy Monday. The company publishes the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune and other daily newspapers. The New York Times Co. intends to pawn its shiny new Manhattan building to borrow a quarter of a billion dollars just to stop the bleeding. Other major dailies are either for sale, or rumored to be so, including the Rocky Mountain News, the Miami Herald and others. The Cox newspaper group is closing its Washington bureau. Most newspapers have announced layoffs, or will do so soon.

Magazines are faring a little better than newspapers. But the industry is all doom-and-gloom, and everyone is predicting a bloodbath in 2009. Newsweek has reportedly lost between half a million to a million subscribers from its 2.6 million rate base and has announced layoffs. TIME layoffs may total 600. National Geographic, The Economist Group and Doubledown Media are all laying off staffers.

Even books are suffering. Simon & Schuster has laid off 35 people. Random House, Inc. killed its Bantam and Doubleday divisions. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt announced that it would not take on any new authors.

How bad is it? Bad. Newspapers and magazines are getting hit especially hard during the economic downturn. But why? How did we get here? I remember the parade of “The End of Print” articles that were written two booms and 10 years ago. Didn’t newspapers and magazines have ample time — and money — to get their collective acts together? Or did the digital revolution, which we ALL knew was coming, sneak up only on them?

After all, there is not declining interest in the NEWS. There is no declining interest in the content that newspapers and magazines specialize in. So as their titanic struggles mount, I find myself asking myself a myriad of questions like:

1. Why didn’t a People Magazine create a blog like the supremely popular and influential Perez Hilton’s blog? Instead of innovating for a new medium, they’ve essentially repurposed their print mag for the web.
2. Why didn’t any major newspaper buy — or start for that matter — eBay or Craig’s List? Instead of losing millions as classified ads flocked to the web, they would have created new revenue streams.
3. Why are there so many magazines that are not even online yet? Two of the biggest graphic design magazines, PRINT and HOW, have sites that only allow you to sign up for the printed versions!

In a recent article by Seth Godin, Watching the Times struggle (and what you can learn), Seth makes a lot of great points but none more relevant, especially following an election cycle that piqued worldwide interest, than the point he made about the huge missed opportunity newspapers made in not leveraging their existing Op-Ed voices:

2. Leverage the op-ed page and spread important ideas:
Sure, Tom Friedman and a handful of other columnists have a large reach and influence. But why doesn’t the Times have 50 columnists? 500? Tom Peters or Jim Leff or Joel Spolsky or Micah Sifry or Pam Slim or Patrick Semmens or Dan Pink would be great columnists. Why not view the endless print space online as an opportunity to leverage their core asset?

What would happen if the huge team of existing Times editors and writers each interviewed an interesting or important person every day? 5,000 or 10,000 really important interviews every year, each waiting for a sponsor, each finding a relevant audience…

Newpapers are in the shape they’re in today because they missed critical opportunities during the last 10-15 years to expand beyond their centuries old business models and stake a claim on the information superhighway. The only good news is, it’s not too late for them! If our nation’s leading newspapers get real about innovation and really look to push the boundaries about digital and how they (a) reach audiences and (b) derive revenues.

The only problem is, at most newspapers and magazines, that type of culture of innovation does not exist.

A few words about when we say “the death of” something

No one realistically thinks that when we say “the death of print”, newspapers will actually cease to exist. Newspapers will continue to exist, just not in the form or level of prominence that we’ve known them. Nothing TRULY disappears. Heck, you can still find someplace where you can send and receive a TELEGRAPH! Radio, once king, wasn’t completely wiped off the face of the Earth once television arrived. But the arrival of television had a profound effect on the future of radio. It marginalized it. To the extent that radio exists today, it exists because it is able to do the things that TV cannot do — be mobile, be very small and allow us to consume its content without needing to see it.

Newspapers won’t completely vanish into thin air. But we should take a nice, long look around. While they won’t vanish, they’ll be far fewer in number and much smaller in influence than they are now. And, unfortunately, they have only themselves to blame for it.

.chris{}

Hormel Brand Interactive Kitchen

Recently our team, in conjunction with our partners at Hormel Foods, launched the new Hormel Brand web site. We were challenged with the task of both creating an engaging and memorable interactive experience while also giving information about the wide variety of products housed within the Hormel Brand.

The resulting site features prominently on the home page, an interactive kitchen where users can zoom around and explore areas of the kitchen where they can learn more about Hormel products. We even included an MP3 player where users can preview and download musical mixes to play in the background while they entertain friends and loved ones and serve meals made with delicious Hormel products.

I’m grateful to be lucky enough to have a ton of great clients and client projects to work on every day but this was one of the most satisfying for me for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that we really tapped into the deep reservoir of creative resources at our disposal at Burson-Marsteller. From visual designers, to copywriters, to Flash animators/developers, to developers, to project managers, etc. This project represents a phenomenal effort by everyone involved and I was proud not only to be a part of it but also to have such wonderful clients who truly partnered with us to create something really special.

.chris{}