Chapter 6
Elegant: In a World of Flashing 12s
An Amazon subsidiary called Lab126, which designed the Kindle ebook reader, says on its website: “We want the devices we design and engineer to disappear as you read … .”
Barnes & Noble's response with Nook: “Books don't have buttons … so we felt that was not only an authentic place to be but also great competitively against the Kindle”—which has a keyboard.1
Microsoft says in a product announcement: “With Kinect, technology evaporates, letting the natural magic in all of us shine.”
Bose says about its VideoWave Entertainment System: “No clutter, no confusion.”
Not just in reading and entertainment, we are seeing technology simplification even in more complex areas. Siemens Healthcare, in introducing its MAMMOMAT Inspiration Mammography System, emphasized its light panel, which provides a warmer environment for the patient by illuminating soft, pastel colors.
The De Dietrich DTiM1000C 90CM Induction Hob features multiple inductors beneath the ceramic glass surface. Should you move any of the pans, the hob's automatic pan detectors ensure that the temperature of the pan remains constant, wherever it is moved.2
Technology “disappearing” and “evaporating” … welcome to the new age of minimalism even as technology proliferates around us and our old VCRs continue to flash 12s.
To emphasize that minimalism, as we described in Chapter 1, we have folks like Kelly Sutton who are aggressively trading digital technology for physical assets: “I think cutting down on physical commodities in general might be a trend of my generation—cutting down on physical commodities that can be replaced by digital counterparts will be a fact.”3
Product and service design are a huge differentiator in this new world of minimalism even as technology proliferates around us.
Human-Centered Design
Mickey McManus says he has the best job in the world, and the more you listen to him, the more you have to agree. As CEO of Maya Design Inc., he has helped countless clients across industries think about product and process design. Maya has been named in the top “best small companies in America to work for” by Entrepreneur, Inc., and other magazines. Its staff includes “cognitive psychologists, ethnographers, computer scientists, mathematicians, visual and industrial designers, brick and mortar architects, game designers, and filmmakers.”4
The Maya site calls McManus “Chief Mad Scientist,” and you get a sense of that if you watch a presentation he did at TED where he talks about containerization, liquid currency, and the possibilities of a trillion-node world and what nature's design patterns can teach us about computing.5
Don't let that fool you—his firm is about simplification. “On one end is the customer who is cautious, almost scared to use a product. At the other end of the spectrum is smug. We help iterate products to a point where most users can feel smug.”
His basic philosophy—technology is evolving way faster than humans are:
The most complex technology in many towns a century ago was a printing press. Look at what each of us, not the whole town, has access to today. We make more transistors today than grains of rice and we make them cheaper. And they end up in all kinds of “smart” products you and I use. Our research projects a trillion devices in a few years.
But our brains have not evolved that dramatically in the last century. We like to say younger consumers are digital natives and will cope better. Studies have shown them to not be very good at multitasking either.
We struggle with numbers in billions. Now think about dealing with trillions. Nature has, on the other hand, plenty of trillion cellular examples. Humans have been dealing with information, for say 6,000 years. Nature has been dealing with information for 3 billion years.
Then he launches into the talk he gave at TED. Make him pause and he goes, “We have plenty of technologists. We need more ‘human scientists.’ ”
He describes Maya's work with SoloHealth, a company started by Bart Foster, with years of prior experience at CIBA Vision. Its introductory product was EyeSite, a self-service vision-testing kiosk—the kind you see at stores like Walmart. The initial tests with consumers showed they were taking as long as 15 minutes and many were giving up. Maya helped observe, interview, and videotape users at the pilot site. “We got it to the point where 90 percent of people sat through it and would recommend it to a friend. We got the test down to five minutes. There was a 17 percent increase in sales in eyewear at stores which had the kiosk.” Just six months after that project, EyeSite was the talk of the April 2008 KioskCom Self-Service Expo and the Digital Signage Show. It garnered three Awards of Excellence: “Best Healthcare Deployment,” “Best New Innovation in a Kiosk Deployment,” and “Best in Show.”
“To achieve ease of use, you need to forget technology for a while and get inside the heads of users.”
Google's Doodles
Google's simple search box interface and its discipline of no more than 28 words on its home page set the standard for minimalism in technology.6 Indeed, to add the word Privacy (which linked to a policy statement) at the bottom of its page, it replaced its own name to not violate that constraint.
Even within that constraint, Google has managed to blaze a trail with its doodles.
“When doodles were first created, nobody had anticipated how popular and integral they would become to the Google search experience. Nowadays, many users excitedly anticipate the release of each new doodle and some even collect them!” says its website.7
The doodle team has created over 300 doodles for Google.com in the United States and over 700 have been designed internationally.
In August 2011, a doodle celebrated Lucille Ball on what would have been her hundredth birthday. The doodle was a graphic of a vintage 1950s TV set, and you could change channels to seven favorite scenes from I Love Lucy, including the hilarious one where Lucy and Ethel try to stay ahead of the conveyor belt in the chocolate factory.
Some of the best and most challenging doodle ideas come from users.
We got an email from a French astronomer who said we would be able to see the planet Venus crossing the face of the sun. We asked him when it was happening, he said “tomorrow.” We told him we didn't know if we could do it on such short notice. He replied, “well, the next pair of transits is 122 years from now.” So in less than 24 hours we had a design up all around the world. People could see a black dot that would slowly move around the sun.8
On Valentine's Day in 2007, the doodle caused major consternation, says Dennis Hwang, then Google's chief doodler:
It was a design decision to have the strawberry represent the G and the stem represent the L. But I guess the stem was too short and people didn't make the connection. I was getting phone calls in the middle of the night after it went up saying we forgot the L. So I knew it was going to be a long day.
So many theories were going around that we had to put out an official company blog post to users telling them that the stem was the L.9
Who says minimalism has to be boring?
Social Design
History tells us that Alexandria, Egypt, once had the largest library in the world, which was tragically burned to the ground. In its place today stands the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, a majestic structure designed by the Norwegian architecture firm Snøhetta. The Oslo Opera House, which won the European Union award for contemporary architecture in 2009, was also designed by Snøhetta. Its sloping roof slides into the water's edge, and visitors can walk freely over the building and the roof.10 Snøhetta has also been selected as the chief designer to transform New York's Times Square to improve “the pedestrian experience in the plazas as well as the infrastructure for the various events held in Times Square throughout the year.”11
The firm's philosophy is “Architecture cannot be contained by rules of order. Instead it must accommodate the restless mind of human society. It must accept associations developed by larger number of characters beyond the discipline of the architect.”12
Fast Company named Snøhetta one of its 50 most innovative companies in 2011 and wrote that its designs “consider a structure's social experience—how the user enters, passes through, and lives in a building—to be as important as its form.”13
3D Printing and Crowdsourced Design
Says Fortune:
[3D printing] could have profound implications for manufacturing and design. Here's why: The blueprints or files for 3D printing are digital and, as a result, can potentially be edited by anyone—if the designer permits.14
Mike Prosceno, who works for the software company SAP and is an avid fisherman, marvels, “I was on a fishing forum where they were discussing how they could use 3D printing to produce lures in the exact color combination based on what the fish were biting.”
Prosceno and consumers in all walks of life may soon get a chance to help design their products. How about a plane with no middle seats? How about a car that stalls when the driver raises the stereo volumes to obnoxious levels?
New Interfaces for Cars and Cocktails
The QWERTY keyboard was originally designed in the 1860s for typewriters we don't use anymore. It was a clever design to prevent jamming from common combinations of alphabets. You would think that long ago someone would have solved the jamming problems rather than persist with the dysfunctional layout. Didn't happen, and so the majority of the world still interacts with computers with technology that annoys our eyes, tires our hands, and mostly ignores our other senses. Particularly gnawing is that software vendors go through waves of “next-generation” user interface projects but keep wasting billions because they don't seriously question the role of the keyboard.
One industry that has been exploring a wide range of visual, audio, haptic, and other user interfaces is the auto industry. In the BMW 7 Series, “The nerve center is the iDrive system, which has four direct-entry buttons that provide the tactile interface to the driver. The car's steering wheel has a vibration device to alert the driver. The 10.25-inch, high-resolution display provides the visual interface. Its rear screens provide passengers with a vibration-resistant visual interface. The sophisticated Logic7 speaker system and Bluetooth-enabled microphone provide the audio interface.”15
Mercedes is looking to evolve user interfaces even more with its Cam-Touch-Pad HMI (Human-Machine Interface). “The system utilizes a center console-mounted trackpad similar to the one on your laptop. The difference is that the pad is translucent, allowing a camera mounted behind the pad to track your finger movements. A transparent image of your fingers appears on the dash display, allowing you to see your fingertips glide across the screen while you manipulate the various controls. The image never covers up the virtual buttons and the pad allows you to swipe, push, pinch, turn, and rotate everything from maps to climate control settings. Mercedes also plans to introduce ‘Gloria,’ who is ‘a digital avatar’ that's displayed on its COMAND (its vehicle command center) screen to take voice commands ranging from navigation instructions to point-of-interest searches.”16
Of course, Gloria, though impressive, is no match for IBM's Watson. While Watson dazzled everyone by beating experts at the game of Jeopardy!, the real gem from that exercise was the computer's ability to process natural language. “I think Watson has the potential to transform the way people interact with computers,” said Jennifer Chu-Carroll, an IBM researcher working on the project. “Watson is a significant step, allowing people to interact with a computer as they would a human being. Watson doesn't give you a list of documents to go through but gives the user an answer.” Just a few months later, Apple introduced Siri, its “personal assistant” in its iPhone 4S, which understands many commands in conversational English, French, and German.
Why even bother to talk? There is the brain-machine interface like the NeuroSky technology in the Mattel Mindflex Duel game described in Chapter 1. If you wanted to see a really head-turning application, though you had to be at FutureEverything festival in Manchester, UK, in May 2011, Absolut Vodka used the NeuroSky technology to show cocktail drinkers a visual representation of how their brain is enjoying their drink.
Keyboards? Definitely a technology that needs to evaporate!
The Most Valuable Executive at Apple?
No question it was Steve Jobs, right? Well, maybe not.
The London Daily Mail asks, “Who is the most valuable Englishman on earth? Wayne Rooney? Colin Firth? Neither gets near Jonathan Ive, the boy from Chingford who is now senior vice president of industrial design at Apple. Ive has given style to a family of machines that has changed the way the world thinks. Transient, global, instantaneous, intelligent, wireless connectivity is a bigger idea than the French Revolution. More than any other individual, Ive has decided what this idea should look like. And it looks beautiful, desirable.”17
Ive has been quoted as saying, “One of the hallmarks of the (Apple design) team I think is this sense of looking to be wrong. It's the inquisitiveness, the sense of exploration. It's about being excited to be wrong because then you've discovered something new.”18
Wow, it must be so right to be so wrong so often and design all those Macs, iPods, iPhones, and iPads!
Of course, Jobs also had the chance before his return to Apple to work with John Lasseter, the creative genius at Pixar. Pixar is the company that has mined animation into 26 Oscars, seven Golden Globes, three Grammys, and over $6 billion in worldwide sales. The story of Pixar was long and tortured before its success. Says Lasseter of Jobs, “He waited over 10 years, and supported us all that time, before we had a hit with Toy Story. In today's business market, where everyone wants an immediate return on their investment, that's sort of amazing.”19
Pixar was all about cutting-edge technology (by the standards in the 1990s and since). Woody (the main character in Toy Story) “had over 723 motion controls to animate his actions. In his mouth alone, there were 58 such controls. That type of detail required an incredible amount of computing power. It took hours for 117 Sun and SGI servers to render each frame, and the film had hundreds of thousands of frames.”20
A Los Angeles Times story on Lasseter says, “He loves telling stories, that's when he's happiest”; “The corporate stuff (now at Disney, which acquired Pixar) he's incredibly good at, but it's not fun for him. He's a big kid, and his playbox is Pixar.”21
As Jobs told Charlie Rose in an interview in 1996, well-made movies, unlike most technology, last for decades.22 He invoked the enduring popularity of Snow White, made by Disney six decades earlier.
That is a good measure of elegance. Let the technology disappear into the background and allow the consumer to enjoy the experience even years later. Even better, allow the consumer to be smug about it.
Where Do You Find the Innovators?
Robert Brunner, like Ive, has an impressive design track record. He is credited with Apple's Powerbook and Newton and Amazon's first Kindle. He is now helping Barnes & Noble (redesigning the Nook) and Polaroid, among other clients at the firm Ammunition.
Where do you find the Brunners and the Ives?
“Not in business or engineering schools,” says Bruce Bendix, Director of Growth Strategies at Baker Tilly. He continues:
Business schools do a poor job of creating innovators. Emphasis on the analysis of what is rather than consideration of what could be keeps business schools firmly entrenched in the present instead of looking toward the future. The case method I was taught at Harvard Business School reinforces decision options already presented to you rather than creating new alternatives. Financial tools with their bias toward short term, low-risk, low cost options over longer-term, bolder strategies are notorious for stifling innovation. In part this is because the value of innovation is often difficult to quantify. As Albert Einstein famously said, “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”
For me, new-generation “d-schools” are producing business professionals well trained in the discipline of innovation. An example: Stanford's d-school founded by David Kelly brings an interdisciplinary approach to innovation by drawing upon students from all the professional schools to address challenging problems. (Kelly is also founder of the design firm Ideo, which takes credit for a wide range of innovative products like Steelcase's Node Chair, which allows classrooms to transform from static to mobile, and the self-warming FeedMe baby bottles for Yoomi).
My own experience has been with the IIT Institute of Design (ID) in Chicago. Considered the leading graduate design school in the country, it teaches design methods ranging from user observation to mine deep customer insights, contextual research to understand opportunity spaces, rigorous analysis of qualitative data, structured ideation, business concept generation, visualization and rapid prototyping, and leadership aimed at fostering cultures of innovation in organizations. The school sees itself as the most business-minded of the leading design schools, with its students going into roles in strategy and planning in a number of leading global corporations. I teach a class in Business Model Design at ID which was oversubscribed last quarter.
Conclusion
We are seeing a revolution in design in devices, in our software, in our architecture. If you aspire to be one of the technology elite, you have to put industrial design high on your agenda. In the next case study, we see how Virgin America, using good design and technology, is redefining the airline industry. This is an industry that in some studies scores lower in customer satisfaction than the IRS.
Case Study: Virgin America—Redefining Elegance in Flying
“With SaaS and cloud computing we are seeing IT move to an on-demand model. Virgin America has similarly brought on-demand to the airline industry.”
Brett Billick, Director of Customer Loyalty Programs at Virgin America, is explaining some of the philosophy of the airline—including the subtle one of calling customers “guests.”
“From our 2007 launch, our mission has been to harness new technology and design to reinvent the flying experience and give guests more comfort, choice, and control,” says David Cush, president and CEO.
Yes, 2007 launch—this is the San Francisco-based airline and a completely separate company from Virgin Atlantic, the international carrier that has been in business much longer. The Virgin Group is a minority investor in Virgin America. They are both part of Sir Richard Branson's Virgin family.
On-Demand in the Airline World
Billick expands on the On-demand theme:
On most airlines, the food and drink trolley comes along when it suits the flight crew. On Virgin America, you order your meal whenever you want during the flight and as often as you like.
Upgrades—most other airlines have cut-off times, even days before your flight. On Virgin America if you feel like upgrading while on the flight you can via the airline's state-of-the-art entertainment system, Red.
You want to work on the flight? The airline has wi-fi onboard every one of our planes. There's no guessing whether a particular flight has wi-fi or not and there's a standard power outlet near every seat.
You want to be entertained? We have the largest entertainment library in the U.S. skies—not just one movie shown when you may want to nap.
You want to nap? We have one-of-a-kind moodlighting, which transitions through 12 shades that adapt to outside light that is incredibly soothing and not only helps to relax guests, but gently wakes them on a red-eye flight.
You want to shop? Most airlines have a paper SkyMall catalog and you hopefully remember to call when you land. We offer on-demand digital shopping via the Red platform at every seat.
You're curious about where you are? No need to pass on a request to the captain or wait for him to announce the plane is passing over the Grand Canyon. We have interactive, terrain-view Google Maps on every seat.
You want to use your Elevate program frequent flyer points? We have no blackout dates. If there's a seat, you can book it any time.
Continues Billick:
We also have custom designed, deeper, and more comfortable leather seats throughout our cabin. The Virgin America experience was designed to be like no other, marrying stylish design and innovative technology. The airline provides an upscale flight for less and gives guests control over their in-flight experience.
That was a core design principle when we launched our airline. Virgin America is a California-based airline on a mission to make flying enjoyable again—with brand-new planes, attractive fares, topnotch service, and a host of innovative amenities like wi-fi and the Red platform.
Red, a Linux-based in-flight entertainment system, is accessible from a nine-inch touch screen on every seatback and a Qwerty-keyboard handset at every seat.
Flying Redefined
Wired magazine has called their planes “a multimillion-dollar iPod. That flies.” When you analyze the nuances, you marvel at the improvements it brings to flying:
The wi-fi is via Aircell's GoGo In-flight Internet described in Chapter 5. The service leverages Aircell's experience with airphone technology onboard flights in the 1990s. It uses air-to-ground frequencies—a big difference from the satellite services that other airlines are trying out. The plane transmits via underbelly blade antennae to over 90 cell towers that can be accessed around the United States and up to about 100 miles over international waters. Each plane has three wireless access points, and even if everyone on the flight uses the wi-fi service, the speeds are acceptable. On the day Virgin America became the first airline to have fleetwide wi-fi, the airline did a Skype chat call with Oprah Winfrey for her “Where in the Skype Are You” show. The Red system also allows a seat-to-seat digital chat capability so you can converse with a colleague a few rows away.
The shopping is via a special section of the SkyMall online store. You can buy a Tag Heuer Aquaracer Watch or you can drill into the Apple, Best Buy, Target, Barnes & Noble, and many other online stores. Each purchase rewards you with Elevate frequent-flyer points.
The enhanced Google Maps feature shows terrain views with eight levels of zoom functionality, so you can see the topography over which you are flying. Jesse Friedman, product marketing manager for Google Maps, has been quoted as saying, “With fresh data presented in our beautiful terrain view, this update improves travelers’ ability and desire to track their flight progression as it happens. Flying is simply more fun when you can explore what's below.”23
The dining and entertainment is supported with an “open tab” functionality. Guests can swipe their credit card just once per flight and order food, cocktails, movies, and more—and keep the tab going.
The entertainment includes live satellite television lineup via DISH Network, prerecorded television channels, and a 25+ film library at every seat. Alternatively, you can enjoy the 3,000+ MP3 music library and even create playlists in-flight. Need more choices? You can play a variety of videogames, including cult favorites like Doom.
Virgin America is known for its award-winning cuisine. The airline refreshes its offerings quarterly in order to provide travelers with seasonal and locally sourced food options. It offers food pairings like a Pacific brie and turkey sandwich bundled with PopChips and Peach White Honest Tea. Or you can order à la carte. The first-class menu is even more elaborate and has included entrees like a Beet Lavash Wrap with Gazpacho or Goat Cheese Tortelloni.
The drink choices are just as wide, with specialty cocktails named Funkin Margarita, Drunken Parrot, and Moonmosa. Virgin calls them “Cocktails with Altitude.” Flight crew, by the way, see your food and drink orders on a tablet in the pantry of the plane where they prepare your serving and bring it to you on a tray.
Slim-line Recaro Aircraft Seating with a full-size headrest provides unusually comfortable airline ergonomics. Some of the nice features: 32-inch general seat pitch, five-inch average seat recline, hidden under-floor electronics boxes providing all seats an unobstructed foot well; a seat structure with greater knee clearance than traditional seats at the same pitch; luxurious black leather, soft upholstery, and high-gloss white plastics; headrests with adjustable wings as well as height and tilt adjustment; enhanced lumbar support, and contoured seat-pan structures unlike the metal bars that can be felt through traditional airline seats.
And that is seating in coach class! First Class seating offers 13 inches of electronically controlled recline with extended leg and footrests and other nice touches you typically see only on international flights. In another nice touch, cabin lavatory locations (behind the aft doors) mean that no passenger is seated adjacent to a restroom.
The planes themselves are new—fuel-efficient Airbus 320s. Virgin has announced plans to move to newer LEAP engines. “Designed in collaboration between CFM International, Snecma, and GE, the new LEAP engines improve fuel efficiency by 15 percent. Aside from fuel efficiency, the LEAP engine also produces 15 percent less CO2 emissions than other planes and it reduces nitrogen oxide emissions by 50 percent. The LEAP engine also cuts engine noise by 15 decibels, which is like “reducing a jack hammer to an alarm clock.”24
The planes are already carbon-conscious. Virgin was named “Most Eco-Friendly Airline” in May 2010 by the SmarterTravel Editors Choice Awards. In addition, Virgin allows its guests the option to pay a voluntary fee when booking their ticket, which will go toward supporting carbon-offset projects.
Billick continues:
Technology has allowed us to leverage social tools effectively. In fact, we reward guests for virtual check-in via Foursquare and Facebook Places. We leverage our social media channels given that we have a number of very passionate and loyal advocates online. As the only airline based in Silicon Valley, our flyers tend to live online as well—and it's a great way for us to drive awareness. We were also the first airline to offer fleetwide wi-fi and plugs near every seat—so we have a real-time link to our guests via social media channels. We've also launched some interesting partnerships with some of our neighbors like Twitter, Google, and Loopt, and our partnership with Groupon—the first-ever Groupon for air fare—was very successful. Social media can be a real authentic link to our guests—it can help us drive awareness and trial as a young airline, identify positive and negative issues as they unfold, and increasingly we see that it can drive sales when done in a compelling way.
Loyalty Program 2.0
Billick again:
Technology has also allowed us to create a very innovative frequent flyer program.
To start with, it is simple—which in itself is innovative. You earn 5 points for every dollar spent, and free flights start at as little as 2,500 points. There are no blackouts, you can redeem for any unsold seat, and you can redeem for one way trips.
Billick continues:
Or you can take advantage of some unique rewards like a party with Sir Richard Branson, or even a trip on Virgin Galactic, the group's planned private space venture.
Tibco's Loyalty Lab technology powers the Elevate program. Guests see dynamic pricing for various trip combinations in Elevate points as they would if they were paying for the fare. Loyalty Lab has made adding affinity partners much easier. Virgin America has over 200 partners that allow guests to earn points. These include credit card, hotel, and rental car companies, and other airlines. (Loyalty Lab is attuned to creative loyalty promotions. In one it helped Zynga award Farmville currency for General Mills spinach purchases.)
Loyalty Lab also provides Virgin analytics such as guest flight and award patterns, demographic and psychographic data, and partner activity.
“We've been very pleased with our partnership with Tibco's Loyalty Lab and the flexibility it has provided our Elevate program. It's extremely important for our guests to utilize Elevate redemptions as seamlessly as booking a regular flight—and Tibco Loyalty Lab's powerful technology has made it simple,” says Billick.
It is pretty impressive what Virgin America has accomplished in four years. It now serves 15 airports in the United States and Mexico. But importantly, it has shown “the art of the possible” in an industry that USA Today said “scored lower than the Internal Revenue Service in customer satisfaction” around the time Virgin America was started.
Of course, it has earned plenty of kudos. Travel and Leisure magazine has named it “Best Domestic Airline” four years in a row—2008 to 2011. The real satisfaction comes from delighted customers like Karen Auby, senior manager of public relations at Plantronics, Inc. “I flew Virgin America for the first time in 2008 and have been a loyal customer since. I actually drive 20 minutes out of my way to SFO so I can take Virgin. There are so many surprisingly cool things: on-demand food and drinks, comfy leather seats, and good content on the personal screens.”
Auby continues: “What keeps me loyal is the staff. Virgin has the coolest flight staff. They never fail to make a 5+-hour flight entertaining. I can tell they love their job. Nothing is worse than grumpy flight attendants.”
Steve Naventi, at The Outcast Agency, which represents several high-tech firms like Salesforce.com and Facebook, says:
Virgin America makes flying feel enjoyable and special for me—like it once did—but with a modern approach. I actually look forward to going to the airport when I'm flying Virgin. The only complaint I've ever had is when I find that their flights won't match my schedule or they don't fly where I'm going!
Billick summarizes:
Our brand pillars are:
—Advocacy—think of the guest first when acting.
—Innovation—do it better than the other guys, in whatever we are executing.
—Vibe—do it with personality and wit.
He might as well add “continually improve.” Virgin has tested free use of the new Google Chromebooks on selected flights.25 And that also comes with free wi-fi!
Now that is technology-enabled elegance!