All projects: Gel, Good Todo, Games, Uncle Mark, Bit Literacy
Archives / January 2011
The myth of the lone genius innovator
A quick quiz in "masters of experience design." When you hear the name Steve Jobs, what products come to mind? iPad, iPhone, iPod, iMac, some others, perhaps.
OK, now the same question of product associations - with the name... ready?... Shigeru Miyamoto. Go for it.
Plenty of people will know the answer right off. But lots of people have no idea who Miyamoto is - even though they know his products quite well.
If you've heard of an Italian plumber named Mario, his twin brother Luigi, and their many adventures in videogame worlds, you know Miyamoto's work. Zelda and Link, Star Fox, and others were also his creations. Even the Nintendo Wii owes its design, in part, to Miyamoto. The man knows how to create successful games.
So - Jobs and Miyamoto, masters in the field of good experience. In the past month or so, two major publications have run profiles on them: the New York Times on Steve Jobs, and the New Yorker on Miyamoto. They're worth reading.
Apart from both being accomplished creators of great digital experiences, there's one striking commonality between the two profiles. I'll run the quotes, and you (as quiz question #3!) try to spot the similarity.
From the Times:
Mr. Jobs, colleagues say, is uncompromising. Prototypes and early working products ... are shown not to focus groups or other outsiders, but to Mr. Jobs and a few members of his team.
And from the New Yorker:
In fixing games, [Miyamoto] relies on his taste and intuition. And then he asks family and friends to play them. Nintendo doesn't use focus groups.
Did you spot it? No focus groups. Maybe a few close insiders get a peek at a new product, but otherwise it springs forth from Jobs or Miyamoto (and the employees who build it for them). Customers, with their lack of design skills and market savvy, are kept safely away from the design process and only begin their role when the product hits the virtual store shelves.
Or maybe not.
Lots of attention these days gets paid to the question of innovation. Where do ideas come from, how to find good ideas, how to build an organization or a culture that constantly innovates and disrupts. One tempting archetype, often advanced by the media, is the "lone genius" - a Jobs or Miyamoto, so far advanced in their visionary powers that they can sit inside the corporate tower and generate insanely great ideas, emerging only to show a few colleagues the prototype before sending it off to mass production.
Now, I'll be the first to acknowledge the genius of Steve Jobs and Shigeru Miyamoto. And I don't fault them for avoiding focus groups - I don't do focus groups, either (though I do advocate a different research method called listening labs).
However, I just can't buy into the myth that great ideas like Jobs's and Miyamoto's emerge from a single person's vision. There's always another party involved in the process, and that's the end user. (The customer, the player, the reader, etc.) Great ideas, great products, great experiences come from creating something that is especially useful, meaningful, or fun for another person. Masters of experience design always have an orientation toward benefiting "the other."
Interestingly enough, both profiles above manage to include some data on this point. For quiz question #4, spot the similarity. (Emphasis mine.)
employees at Apple stores provide the company with a powerful window into user habits and needs, even if it is not conventional market research. "Steve visits the Apple store in Palo Alto frequently," said a former consultant to Apple. The design decisions made by Mr. Jobs, Mr. McKenna said, are informed by his grasp of users' desires, technology trends and popular culture.
In the New Yorker piece, noted game designer Will Wright (of the Sim City series) says this about Miyamoto:
he approaches things from the players' point of view, which is part of his magic.
Miyamoto himself describes an unusual tactic for getting his designers to think about users other than themselves:
sometimes I ask the younger game creators to try playing the games they are making by switching their left and right hands. In that way, they can understand how inexperienced the first-timer is.
Understand the customer's desires. Think about the player's point of view. Jobs and Miyamoto, not surprisingly, both have the habit - the discipline, the worldview - of creating things with someone else in mind.
Do you see? The "lone genius" is an attractive myth but not much more. And whether Apple or Nintendo runs focus groups is really beside the point. I can bend your ear about research methods (contact my company if we can help), but the real point is how these disruptive ideas, these great products really get created: they're born through a desire to benefit someone else. If you want to become the next Steve Jobs, get to know your customers.
Fun Stuff 2010
Here's my annual roundup of all the Fun Stuff items I linked to in the email newsletter in the past year.
(Also see past annual roundups: 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004.)
Finally, remember that Good Experience Games has a lot more to explore, which I don't include on this list.
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2010 Fun Stuff Winner:
Auto Tune the News #9: Nobel. health care. United Nations.
Runners-up:
Graph of a day in the life of a programmer. You'll never guess what the villain is.
Two remakes of Beyonce's "Single Ladies".
My thought exactly about most infographics.
Auto Tune the News #10, another good entry in their series.
Here's the video of the Trolololololo guy, the Internet video star of 2010... and then after that, this remix video. I'll admit this isn't for everyone, but I was laughing so hard I was crying.
Don't miss the video - "BP spills coffee" - funny, or maybe just heartbreakingly accurate.
Star Trek really knows how to party. Funny video mashup.
Animation of how one guy gets his stuff done. (oldie but goodie)
Spectacular. Set aside a few minutes and watch this full-screen - a short history of the universe so far, in stop-motion: Watch video
Positive energy boost: Will.i.am sings with the Muppets.
Ready for an awesome cover? Here's Sunny D and Rum by a Wayne's World-ish trio in Canada. (Here's the original auto-tuned song by the Gregory Brothers... also featured in this Swedish powerpop medley.)
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All other Fun Stuff entries in 2010 (posted throughout the year in the email newsletter):
The Known Universe, nicely done tour of the galaxy and beyond.
Skynet Symphonic, really well done - all made from sounds of Terminator 2.
Surrealist fun on Amazon - read the title, then product description, then the customer reviews.
Brilliant 2009-in-review by Dave Barry.
Photo of my favorite Saints fan - the look says it all. (And by the way, Geaux Saints!)
Fun stop-motion video. Can you spot the rambutan?
Who cares about late night blah blah, but I have to admit this is funny - Conan's super-expensive gag.
Photos replacing landmarks with souvenirs.
As the name suggests, just a white noise generator.
Music video with lots of info visualization-style graphics (but not graphing anything in particular).
Fun mashup of recent pop hits.
100 games, represented with cupcakes.
Brilliant meta-look at news reporting: watch the video.
Proof that geeks own the Web... Google autocomplete on "airspeed".
Peter writes, never confuse "being a nice guy" with "weakness".
Worth reading - the story of Norway's insanely tough Jan Baalsrud, from WW2.
Commenting on Wired ads from the early 90s: Wired Reread, a fun way to revisit the pre-bubble years.
Video of toy car driving the path drawn on its roof (inverse of Line Rider)
26 gigapixels of Paris skyline (thanks, Chris L)
Who needs a beat box when you have incredibox?
20-foot-high gas bubbles rising in manure pond - described in a WSJ article, of all places
A horse-drawn Hummer in Central Park: Watch video
I guess it was inevitable... the Trololo cat
Some strange lyrics from Woodstock (thx, Robin Nagle)
MIT held a contest for the geekiest pickup lines - here are the two winners.
Awesome redone trailer for the original 1982 TRON.
Really well-made, if a bit twee in parts - Spike Jonze's 30-minute short film, IM HERE - a robot love story: watch online.
Cool-looking scooters from Japan.
Dogs as typefaces. What Stormtroopers do on their day off.
Pink Floyd's "Money," played in 8-bit glory.
Movie characters always say, "We've got company!"
Video of Glee flash mob in Seattle (thanks, Lisa S)
It's made the rounds, but if you missed it - the iPad isn't for three-year-olds, like I said previously - it's actually for Iggy the cat.
Will Shortz presented his Gel puzzle - custom-made for the Gel 2010 conference - on NPR's Sunday Puzzle this week. As the NPR website says, "there's always room for Gel."
Speaking of Will Shortz, how genius is this, a combination of crosswords and comics.
Also genius: Paul Rudd's computer.
Ze Frank crowdsources a song for a reader in need.
"I am not an artist," an animated gif about paranoia about nonstop design workers. (Thx, MUG)
"We've got company" is eclipsed by "Let's get out of here," the most-used line in movies. (thx, Bob L.)
Gelers Rod Kimball and Andy Sapora perform a classic with a nod toward "Glee".
The haunted household of creative genius Christoph Niemann.
The Seinfeld character George Costanza, hipster fashion icon way ahead of his time.
Exactly what's promised: Creepy Robots.
One designer vents frustration at Photoshop's constant crashes.
For the 30th anniversary (really??) of Pac-Man, play it inside the Google logo. Nice job, G!
Every painting in MoMA in two minutes (try not to blink).
Turning popular songs into swing-ified versions. Like magic.
Charting the trustworthiness of beards.
A new look at the Star Wars briefing scene.
The European debt crisis explained with great humor.
Jon Stewart gives an important history lesson - about the U.S.'s historic dependence on foreign oil.
Not fun at all, but following up the BP video above, here's are more oil-spill related pointers: striking photo of the oil spill ... collection of anti-BP art ... howmanygallonsspilled, like the Debt Clock but more depressing ... and, on the brighter side, an upcoming conference on the oil spill.
Catchy, funny, awesome: Auto Tune the News #12. Watch it here.
The 2-minute highlights video of Gel 2010 is a fun snack.
Today's gadgets, if they were designed & advertised in 1977. Funny and clever.
Taking your pet AT-AT for a walk - because everyone wants a pet AT-AT!
Super Mario Bros. projected onto a concrete wall - nicely done. Watch video
Fun musical toy - easily compose a musical refrain: try it.
Brilliant tshirt design from Threadless ... name that tune.
Neat stop-motion video of guy walking across different parts of the US.
Recursive geek humor at Google.
OK, who's better than the Gregory Brothers - the outstanding team that creates Auto Tune the News? (For a peek at how they do it, see their Gel 2010 video - click Like if you agree it's awesome.) For a recent example: on the heels of the viral YouTube video of the double Yosemite rainbow, the Gregory Brothers created an auto-tuned Double Rainbow song.
This week they released another song remixing a viral news video (here's the original) - which then yielded this hip-hop remix by a fellow user.
Ze Frank's newest gem, young me now me - has people posting pictures of themselves as kids, and as adults in the same pose. (And yes, Ze Frank is another Gel star... see his speaking bio)
Maslow's hierarchy of robot needs - see also video of Chip Conley talking about Maslow.
Perfect Onion sendup of mid-90s technology reporting: Man Lives In Futuristic Sci-Fi World Where All His Interactions Take Place In Cyberspace
Kitty is a very bad mystic (yes - a poorly performing feline mystic)
Woman quits job and delivers resignation via whiteboard (later confirmed as a hoax, as suspected - still, entertaining)
An engineer's guide to cats (tx, jen k)
My desk is 8-bit (cool animation)
More genius from The Onion: Person With Almost No Responsibility Always Stressed Out
Fold those Netflix tear-offs into origami. Fun stuff, nicely explained at netflixorigami.com. (Thx to Noah Scalin.)
All of Chewbacca's dialogue from Star Wars, in cartoon form.
Fun collection of dance clips from popular movies.
Love Seinfeld, love NYC, and love this video of Jerry Stiller visiting the real Costanza house in Queens.
Maggots, and other wonderful images.
Video of old-timey Star Wars, all silent-like.
Awesome travelogue & pics of a Soviet-era videogame arcade.
She can create a great moment with an audience: Oprah's ultimate surprise, starting off her final season. (via)
Great to see Seth Godin's talk at Gel 2006 featured on TED.com - it's gotten a bazillion hits so far, way more than in the several years since I posted it. (Also amusing to see the several comments saying "the This Is Broken website.. is broken!" Ahh, brings back old memories.)
Sure, California has its double rainbow, but now New York City gets its own anthem, the tornado song (auto-tuned by Gel 2010 presenters the Gregory Brothers - watch their video).
Pick a year and see videos from then, with YouTube Time Machine.
Fun explodingdog cartoon, looks like I finally zeroed my inbox. (By Sam Brown, who draws the Gel logo every year.)
Funny video about solving a math problem. (They should have watched Sal Khan's math videos first!)
At least three super-geek references layered into one visual joke.
Try this Asteroids bookmarklet to turn any Web page into a game of Asteroids.
Here's a fun pumpkin-carving toy from Gel friend Ze Frank.
Nicely designed chart showing many varieties of beer.
Unpopular science, another great comic by Christoph Niemann.
Funny web comic about university website usability. Much the same could be said about museum sites and many other online experiences.
It's made the rounds, but if you missed it, here's the merengue-dancing dog.
Oldie but goodie, illusion of 12 people turning into 13. Also explains how it's done.
This is the new gold standard for public service announcements: comedy and message blended together, in quick cuts, on YouTube. Courtesy Judd Apatow: a video for AJWS.
Life stories told through Facebook and Google. Worth watching - two relatively new tools used for traditional storytelling.
Cute-overload earworm: Pink fluffy unicorns dancing on rainbows, by past Gel speaker Andrew Huang. (Watch his Gel video for more musical goodness.)
Whoa - now this is bike riding. (Thanks, Dave B.) For another daredevil video, see this walk on a 900-foot tower in Russia.
Brilliant Rudolph/Police mashup video for the holidays.
Fans of the iPhone game Angry Birds, enjoy this video.
Unusually impressive marching band formation. Trust me on this one - watch it.
Real-life Roadrunner cartoon. A little strange, but fun.
Carpet made completely out of pasta. Just needs some red sauce.. mmmm, pasta carrrpet.
Movie-quote search: the phrase "you want a piece of me?" appears in 94 movies, according to this page.
How Virgin America improved the travel experience
This Newsweek post, from awhile back, describes the design decisions in improving the traveler experience on Virgin America airlines.
Designer Adam Wells describes just one improvement - lighting:
Typical airlines are so badly lit. There's a greenish hue that comes from fluorescent lighting. That gives a distressed, nauseous skin tone. It doesn't do anything to help your frame of mind to see everyone looking sickly around you. People have an emotional and physiological response to lighting. So we decided to shift the color of our cabin lights during the course of flight. They're associated with time of day outside, or ambient light outside. If you're flying by day and heading into dusk, it will reflect the light level outside. It's less jarring.
Virgin America has been my favorite domestic airline for a couple of years now.
Clean notepads: a Good Todo testimonial
A clean notepad, it turns out, is a very good sign. Good Todo user Renee M. writes in...
Good Todo is working!How do I know? I'm a teacher. Christmas and May are the 2 primary gift occasions. I love the Starbucks cards, I really do use (most) of the candles and hand lotion, and my family appreciates the homemade cookies and fudge. For some reason, however, the notepads have been piling up. They're cute, they're colorful, and they're still in their original wrapping. I have amassed quite a storehouse of paper. It hit me. I'm no longer writing things down on every scrap around. The jots and scribbles aren't piling up on my desk like they used to.
Thanks again for a wonderful book and organizing system.
Disney improves the experience of waiting in line
Wait in a line at Disney World? There's a back office dedicated to making the experience better, according to this NYT article:
If Pirates of the Caribbean, the ride that sends people on a spirited voyage through the Spanish Main, suddenly blinks from green to yellow, the center might respond by alerting managers to launch more boats.Another option involves dispatching Captain Jack Sparrow or Goofy or one of their pals to the queue to entertain people as they wait. "It's about being nimble and quickly noticing that, 'Hey, let's make sure there is some relief out there for those people,' " said Phil Holmes, vice president of the Magic Kingdom, the flagship Disney World park.
Lesson: Good logistics create good aesthetics. And details matter.
P.S. In New York City, it's waiting "on line." In the UK, you're "in a queue." Any other regional phrases?
New iPhone app for Good Todo, and new website features
A few Good Todo announcements to start off the year:
• New iPhone app: At last, the Good Todo iPhone app is available! It's free. Download the app here. You can now access your todos any time, online or off. Hope you enjoy it.
If you use the app, I hope you'll write a review - we could use your help. On your iPhone or iPad, go to the App Store, search for Good Todo, then scroll down and tap the "11 ratings" (or whatever the number is) button. Then tap "Write a Review".
P.S. Android users, we're working on a version for you now. (A custom iPad version is likely after that.) BlackBerry users, not quite yet, but we'll see :) Stay tuned.
• New colors for the website: The new Themes feature allows you to give the website different colors from that lovely lime-green-and-orange combo. Log in to the Good Todo website, then click Your Account, then scroll down to find the "Themes" link. (Currently 3 color schemes available - more coming soon.)
• New Global Address feature: You can now enable a special email address to allow other people - an assistant, spouse, etc. - to email items into your list. Go to Your Account, then "Global Address Options."
• Fast Company on Good Todo: Read Good Todo Solves Email Overload, by Fast Company blogger Seth Kahan. Aww, shucks!
• Bit Literacy now free: My 2007 book Bit Literacy is now a free download on the iBookstore. (Download the book here.) Amazon UK has a free Kindle version, and I'm working on making the US Amazon download a freebie. Stay tuned.
