Thursday November 11th 2010, from 18.30h till 21.30h.
Language is Dutch.
At Studio de Paardenstal, Mauritskade 55D, Amsterdam NL .
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This workshop shows how you can exceed personal preferences and local habits by using a universal imaging language. We will search for the semantic meaning of the term happiness. What implies that concept? Good fortune, luck in money or love matters, purely hedonistic delights, paradisiacal well-being or supreme happiness? We put the different aspects in a historical philosophical framework and discover this way that feelings of happiness are cross-cultural and as old as humanity itself. We use the method of Genetic Semantics to arouse these deep emotions with visual means. Examples from international publicity, mythology and art will demonstrate how you can reach the desired results with appropriate colour tints, colour combinations and symbols.

Genetic semantics, analysis method

All products and visual communicators convey a statement through their shape, colour, texture, via part of language structures that deal with meaning (semantics). Semantics assume not only an outwardly, concrete meaning out of the sensory, but also an inwardly, abstract significance that is genetically determined. Genetic semantics follows the proposition of linguistics (Noam Chomsky), and evolutionary psychology (Steven Pinker) that languages, and in extension all human sign systems, have a universal genetic basis.

Genetic semantics explains the meaning of symbols from the genetic code. Perceptions are encoded and decoded unconsciously; they are classed according to structures proper to the nervous system and the brain. The brain experiences sensory as well as emotional or intellectual stimuli via this code. One finds codical forms and structures in all languages and sign systems.

As a model, we use semantic axes in three dimensions (depth, height, breadth). An imaginary state space in which the semantically important polar characteristics (markers) of a sign language can be compared with each other and with abstract concepts.

Read more via: http://geneticcoding.wordpress.com/genetic-semantics-analysis-method/

In this workshop, we will focus on four main concepts of happiness.

Destiny, fate, luck

The striving towards happiness has been tightly coupled to a need for security. One wants to eliminate the threat that goes out from the uncertainty about the day of tomorrow, about ones destiny or fate – which is for a great deal determined by chance – and sometimes can be favourable or unfavourable. We compare the colour combinations and symbols in publicity and mythology that are used concerning unstable situations and risk. There is luck in the sense of being lucky in games (gambling, games of chance, lottery, ball games, wheel of fortune, Fortuna, throwing dice). Luck in marriage, often represented by a boat, in itself an unstable object. Luck in money matters. We show how banks and financial institutions present the insecurity of investments on the stock market as a lucky game with the promise of high interests. Also, fortune-telling, symbols of luck and talisman are taken into consideration here.

Bliss, supreme happiness

Securing the day of tomorrow concerns especially the financial. When we can dispose of a certain financial freedom, we will feel freer and worry less. A feeling of freedom and a carefree existence are important elements that contribute to happiness. For this reason, the striving towards happiness is for many the striving towards wealth and success. In the metaphorical sense, there are considerable references to a vertical movement: e.g. the climbing of a social ladder, to sit in the elevator, the reach the top, to stand on top. Once on top, once rich and successful, men will detach from the heavy earth with its daily worries, with its urge for the care for tomorrow, and will start to float. When we compare this picture with images from religion and mythology, we come to surprising similarities. In a religious context the upwards movement, the detaching from the earth, is a metaphor for reaching the highest happiness. This mainly mental concept is retrieved in all mayor religions. The place where the blessed go to is called heaven where the angels live, situated somewhere high above the earth.

The dream world, the flee from reality

Heaven is a place where the pure, noble, sparkling happiness awaits us. But this is not particularly the dream world that e.g. travel agencies hold out to tempt customers. They will anticipate more on an earthly disposition. This ideal place to flee the hard reality (for a while), is situated generally somewhere on a pristine island in an immense sea where the dolphins frolic and jump before your eyes. The unspoiledness and vastitude are important picture elements for the dream island, which also can be retrieved in the imaging of nature reserves and products that gladly refer to this, such as mineral waters and travel destinations. In the financial world, the sea is as an immense barge wherein the water of the rivers flow together, a metaphor for a huge amount of money, for a fortune. You bank account, your investments, are as the sea where all the water – read money – flows into. A strong universal picture that returns often in e.g. movies is the full money trunk. A picture with such attraction that people want to risk their life for.

Paradise

In world religions, the concept of happiness takes an important place. It is often presented as a reward for good manners, for a god-fearing life. There are two important pictures: heaven, where the supreme bliss can be reached, and paradise, where a more sensual happiness will be found. Sometimes happiness can be obtained already during life, sometimes it is a promise for after death. But generally can be stated that, in contrast to heaven, paradise is located somewhere on earth. It is a mythically walled (sub)tropical garden – also called the garden of Eden, garden of earthly delights, land of milk and honey – where one does not have to work and can idle the whole day. The Asian Happy Buddha with his potbelly is a personification of this sensual happiness. In most tales, animals live in the garden, like a snake or a dragon, which guard the fruits. But there is no pain or danger, only lust and delight. It is the ideal of the Epicureans who consider happiness as an absence of all suffering. Sex and drugs are allowed without causing damage or pain (no hangovers) and everyone is equal, both men and women. There are similarities with utopian worldviews and social systems. We retrieve references to this paradisiacal picture in publicity for wild parks, zoos, travel agencies and travel destinations, garden architects and playgrounds for children.

All these different concepts are often combined with each other. We show some examples in which this has been successfully done. Within the context of money matters for instance, the possibility of the gathering of a fortune is often combined with the concept of financial freedom. The idea of destiny is combined with winning a fortune. In publicity for travels, we retrieve paradisiacal picture elements, placed on a dream island. Garden architects link an ordinary garden with paradise.

Each time it is mentioned which colour combinations, colour tints, symbols, and metaphors are responsible for calling the different emotional aspects of happiness.

This workshop shows how you can touch the observer/consumer by gripping on universal needs and emotions. Your message will attract more attention and will be remembered longer because of this. Moreover, you will communicate more rapidly by using a direct visual language, which addresses the subconscious directly. In short, you learn how you can get more control over the emotional message, which you transmit through your design.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Inez Michiels is researcher and consultant at Genetic Coding, with specialization in design semantics and universal visual communication. She is the author of the book Symbolen Constructies (Symbols Constructions, published by ACCO – Leuven, Belgium) and she gives lectures and workshops concerning design semantics internationally.

ABOUT GENETIC CODING
The non-profit association Genetic Coding, based in Antwerp – Belgium, does research into universal giving of meaning in human sign systems, i.e. the study of the process of meaning and its application in communication. She offers advice and organises lectures and workshops. Visit www.genecode.be.

While science is still struggling to unravel the neuro-dynamics of nostalgia, studies have identified some nostalgic cues that can be exploited and how images and sounds from the past can create favorable attitudes about products.

Despite being obvious, this strategy taps into something fundamental about the human mind and consciousness. Every time we remember a past event it not only evokes the earlier memory, but can re-cast the past into a more pleasing “remembered” version.  Memory, thinking and feeling are an active, shaping process.

Music, Cars, Movies Live On

The music, cars and movies you identified with when you were young stick with you throughout your life.  Take music, recordings that were released when we were teenagers or young adults, are locked into our memories forever, to release a flood of vivid memories and emotions when replayed, especially in ads.  For example, people who were 23 in 1964, when the Beatles appeared on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” will turn 70 this year, are a prime target for nostalgic marketing appeals.

For marketers, the key is finding the right music and images, which do not even need to directly relate to their products, as long as warm feelings are stirred up.  It is the emotion generated from that good feeling that influences people’s evaluation of the advertised offer.  Recollection provides context and context impacts on how we evaluate things.

Moreover, nostalgia can make us feel that not so much time has passed between then and now, making us feel young(er) again and that we still have a long ways to go and have the time to make it “there.”  Nostalgia telescopes time and brings it more under our emotional orchestration.

Notaligic Case in Point -Valentine’s Day

Nostalgia becomes especially potent during holidays, like Valentine’s Day, due to their powerful call to summon up and renew bonds.  Hope is the base coin of holidays, a time of ritual, which tends to reduce cognitive complexity through one’s participation in stylized and oft-repeated enactments.  Through ritual, we play a mental trick on ourselves; if the ritual comes off well then we feel life will be good.

The ritual function of Valentine’s Day is similar to all rituals – to make up for the past and to reaffirm the past.  To show that despite the press of daily routine and slights encountered, love endures, just as it was when two hearts first met.  Most of the time we can be couch potatoes in soiled sweat-suits, but today is different, today is “romance,” a time to symbolically communicate that what we felt and did “then” still lives and will endure.

There is talk of “remember when” (also a song when Boomers were teens).  There are flowers, signifying the bloom of Spring, renewal (and the olfactory sense is primitively / directly tied to memory).  If allowance allows, perhaps a small diamond might appear (itself a sign of indestructibility).

The sounds, smells, and other accoutrements of Valentine’s Day all function in the service of three sentiments that make up the holy trinity of ritual: There is a shared past.  There is continuity.  There is future.  For us!

Marketing Take-Away

In today’s environment of a perceived diminished future, playing up experiences that engender hope may be a good strategy that produces a mature outcome.  A nostalgic approach might just help people see a clearer vision of what is and what is not possible.  And, that’s not puppy love by any means.

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About Dr. Bob Deutsch

From contributing to Military Review magazine (“The Droning of Strategic Communication and Public Diplomacy” (Sept/Oct 2009) to portraying a college professor in a McDonald’s commercial, cognitive anthropologist Dr. Bob Deutsch (founder of the consulting firm, Brain Sells (www.Brain-Sells.com), Boston, MA), breaks the mold.

Bob has worked in the primeval forest, as well as on Pennsylvania and Madison Avenues.  His focus, since the mid-’70s, when he was living with pre-literate tribes and chimpanzees, has been to understand how leading ideas take hold in a culture. Since opening Brain Sells in 1990, he has been applying this understanding to how people attach to products, persons and performances.  He is fond of saying, “Reasoned judgment about attributes is not the issue.  The brain evolved to act, NOT to think.”

In his book, Emotionally Durable Design, Jonathan Chapman discusses the current state of consumer culture, and the impact this has had upon product design.  Chapman believes that through our modern fixations with: technology, the surface characteristics of products, and being able to quickly generate sales; we have inadvertently designed away the more poetic and enduring characteristics of our material culture.  As a result, Chapman argues that durable attachments with objects are seldom witnessed in our current consumer climate.  He hypothesized that the only way for products to healthily sustain their interactions with consumers is for them to “possess a diversity and pluralism of character”.  Looking at objects from this viewpoint, I find that many products within the current model of design are static and non-evolving.  In sharp contrast, their users are constantly changing.  It can be suggested then, that in order to form a stronger, more satisfying bond between a product and its user, designers must learn to embrace unpredictability and design objects that create situational variety.

In order to better understand human emotional attachment, I investigated the work of Harry Harlow, a prominent American psychologist in the 1950’s, who demonstrated the importance of tangible affection in social and cognitive development.  Harlow studied infant rhesus monkeys to analyze the development of emotional attachment in infants. At the time, the commonly held theoretical position was that affection is an innate drive developed through the repeated association of the mother with reduction of the primary biological drives, particularly hunger and thirst.  Harlow questioned this hypothesis, and focused instead upon the influence that bodily contact plays in attachment formation.  Through his experiments, Harlow discovered that contact comfort was the overwhelmingly important variable in forming a bond between the infant and its mother, rather than nourishment.

Harlow’s experiments highlight the important role that our sense of touch plays in forming emotional attachments.  According to Japanese designer and author of the book Haptics, Kenya Hara, “everything occurs on the skin”.  By heightening the senses and blending them through design, we can begin to restore users to a more direct experience of the world, which, according to Hara, modern technology has diminished.  I see the field of haptic design as a way to bridge technology and feelings, allowing us to create deeper connections and more complex sensory interactions between objects and their users.

This understanding of the relationship between emotional attachment and the senses, has led me to investigate the roles that touch plays in our everyday interactions with objects.  For example, human comfort is very closely tied to temperature, with its extremes, both high and low, capable of causing discomfort and even harm through touch.  We instinctively know that a metal chair should feel cooler to the touch than a wooden one.  We wrap both hands around our coffee mug and hold it close to our chest to warm us on a chilly day.  From these observations I developed my thesis work, Emotional Objects, in which I modified three everyday objects in order to actively call attention to their dynamic relationship with heat, and to provide the user with a deeper understanding of their interactions with these changing environmental conditions.

A teacup that shivers in response its tea going cold. A metal chair that heats up when you sit in it, revealing its aspirations to be warm and comfortable. A pan whose handle becomes impossible to grasp when it is too hot to touch with bare hands.  The animate characteristics of these everyday objects allow them to facilitate meaningful interactions with their users by actively responding to their environment and evolving through their conditions of use.  They inform the user about what they are, where they live, and how they should be used.  By incorporating dynamic behaviors into an object’s design, I believe it is possible to create emotionally satisfying bonds between products and their users. Perhaps in this manner, we will begin to create new forms of sustainable and emotionally satisfying human-object relationships, and positively impact our current culture of consumption.

Read more about Tara’s project Emotional Objects in a previous post on this website.

About the author:

Tara Mullaney is a Master of Design in Designed Objects graduate student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.   She comes from a background in anthropology and biology, and considers herself both a scientist and a designer.  Her previous work has involved studying the social, cultural, and biological aspects of human behavior, and she is now applying her insights from these other fields into her designs.  She will finish her degree in December of 2009, and looks forward to continuing to investigate ways to facilitate deep emotional connections between objects and their users. Find out more at: www.taramullaney.org

Just looking at the simple prototype, the emotional effect of the later product was clear to see. Well, of course, the round shape is not new, but we seem to have forgotten that many emotionally significant objects have this shape. Whether it’s a full moon, wedding ring, the pupil of the eye, clocks, CDs and LPs or simply a ball, we human beings react in a positive way to the circle and the globe. They draw us to them and let us connect experiences. Round mirrors on the wall, round lamps and round windows are all familiar, but a cabinet is unusual. A picture that quickly came to mind was the sunset with its round disc over the horizon. You can re-enact this picture everywhere with a round wall cabinet.

Added to the shape, you now had the lighting radiating out in all directions and surrounding the cabinet like a corona. Changing colours add a dimension of time as the ensemble is continuously changing. So what was it now, a piece of furniture or a lighting object?

In order to make it a piece of furniture, it was important to give the design a purpose. And in spite of the shape, it was possible to create a container that could hold objects within the chosen proportions. And even perhaps give these a better framework than other shapes.

It was interesting to note that it was mostly women who responded to the cabinet spontaneously at the Cologne Furniture Fair that has just come to an end.

About the author:

Michael Rottmar is an electrical engineering technician and designer. He has worked for international companies in marketing and sales among other areas for many years. Here, his enthusiasm for the emotional components of a product also grew. In 2008, Michael realised his ambition to put his ideas into practice and founded his own company, miroco. The interplay of shape, colour and light became a passion, and the first product to come out of this is the round wall cabinet called rotondo. www.miroco.com

When I was studying industrial design at the Kunstakademie in Stuttgart our professor, Richard Sapper, urged us to take the time to discuss and develop an idea about the future world we would like to live in. In his opinion this was very important for us as designers, because only if we had formed a strong personal vision and were motivated by an idealistic drive, would we be able to shape products that would have lasting meaning.

As much as this resonated with me back then, it still does today. My interest in the thinking processes associated with design has continued to manifest itself throughout my professional journey as well as in terms of my current role in design research & strategy at Teague.

Within design and other creative professions, I think there is a substantial difference between a reactive approach and a critical approach. With a reactive approach we run the risk of coming up with ideas that merely emulate “the mood of the time” without ever asking the bigger question if we even needed this product or feature in the first place. Through a critical approach we can try to challenge current paradigms, to bring in differentiated awareness and understanding, as well as aesthetic and cultural sensibility, thought leadership and a future perspective. Ultimately the energy and care we invest into this process is expressed in the emotional quality and innovation of our products.

It’s not always easy to incorporate such an approach within our projects since we are all driven by the concrete needs of our clients, ever tighter deadlines and fast product cycles. In my experience, however, taking time for critical exploration will pay off later; the depth of the thinking process works itself into the feel of the product and its associations. We are creating greater “emotional product inertia”, we make our products more sustainable by ensuring that they will stay relevant over time.

I think some of this work has to happen outside of the actual project realm. At the highest level the goal is to extend our thinking, by relating our design problems to the bigger context of our time, it’s philosophy, it’s socio-cultural fabric, it’s challenges and show how they relate to the past as well as to possible futures. I think we benefit highly from establishing a cross disciplinary discourse to other creative disciplines who are struggling with some of the same questions, interpreting them in their way and shaping the future in their fields, such as architecture, art, fashion, music and writing to name a few. Through a stronger vision of the whole we are enabled to give our projects more relevance and impact.

We industrial designers have to work within the practical, emotional and philosophical tensions of our time. It seems that the 21st century is providing ample opportunity and challenge for us to shape the future in meaningful ways.

The question that Richard Sapper asked us 1 ½ decades ago of course has not lost its relevance: “What is our vision for the future and how can we try to bring a little bit of that vision to life in the next product we design?”

With so many project objectives being driven by our clients’ technology advancements rather than a physical need or human benefit, are we being afforded the same opportunity to find that balance of beautiful form with beautiful function to attain this un-compromised ‘total beautiful’?

Every year there seems to be one key product or category that shapes the majority of our work. This year is no different, with the iPhone as an obvious and major driving force in requests from clients. Yet as we’re charged with designing equal or better products to the iPhone, are we being handed the poisoned chalice, or can we really bring an alternative and improved take on the design challenge?

The challenge of balance in design

The answer to this depends on the roots of the brief; are we adding a touch screen because ‘they’ve got one’, or are we utilizing the technology because it can solve unmet user needs for mobile devices?

To design for unmet needs within consumer electronics, our role as pure industrial designers will need to shift. The time of simply providing formal designs or intuitive button layouts has past. Each new super-thin technology device leaves us with little more than a blank surface to have fun with. The physical forms are now merely a frame for what’s unfolding on the canvas of the screen. This lack of any traditional physical user benefit, doesn’t equate to a lack of design opportunity, rather it allows us to resolve less physical solutions and connect more with unmet emotional user benefits.

For now at least it seems the screen is the new icon and, like the user, we have to place a greater understanding and importance on what is happening on the screens of these vessels for digital content. Now more than ever we need to have a greater marriage of interaction and industrial design. The successful designs will be more holistic, that have a solid understanding of the benefits of a user interface and the role that a harmonious industrial design can play.

The Eames side chair, like any truly successful product, had a balance of form and function, but it also captured the more emotional aspects of comfort and desire, making it ‘total beautiful’. These days, to succeed, our designs must truly connect with the people we’re designing for – the increasingly conscious consumer. This connection must go deeper than just a subjective visceral ‘like or dislike’ of a design. It needs to link the user emotionally to the benefits of the device so they first, buy into the vision and second, desire to keep being a part of it.

This ‘total beautiful’ balance of form, function and emotion can be achieved in consumer electronics, but only if we provide user benefits that connect and satisfy by using the appropriate methods and tools to solve design problems and provide valuable user benefits. For example, the iPhone isn’t a touchscreen device because Steve Jobs wanted a touchscreen phone, it was the case that the touchscreen provided the best mode of interaction to allow for a pleasing and engaging convergent device experience.

Moving forward, the benefits must be the driving force behind every design. We need to allow our creative instincts to actually be creative and ultimately, embrace opportunity and challenge the preconceptions of technology in products.

For a different perspective on this article visit
http://new.idsa.org/webmodules/articles/articlefiles/1926-C.jpg

The stories of the past are rooted firmly in our minds. Design has the power to bring the stories of the future to life and to change the path of innovation in the process.

Moving beyond features and functionality

The search for innovation and a detailed product definition often does little to inspire a compelling design. Consumers are interviewed and observed to understand latent needs. The features and functionality of competitor devices and experiences are analyzed in excruciating detail. Forecasts are given of future technologies and limitations in costs and timing are made clear. All of this is summarized in a functional product definition, and then design comes in and must find a way to engage people. It’s the aesthetic add-on to make the product appealing, usable and a good experience.

How do we move beyond features and functionality in a technical world? Many companies face competitors that are their equals in technical expertise. High tech companies known for innovation are forced to move beyond competing solely based on technology. Innovation is now about looking beyond functional comparisons.

Let’s take the very familiar story of the iPhone and Apple as an obvious example of a company that knows how to weave a good story. Frequent introductions and function-heavy products mark the cell phone industry. We all know the problems with these devices and have marveled at the way the iPhone resolves many of these issues.

The iPhone will inevitably come up in a conversation with a technology company. They will analyze the functionality, discuss what they might be able to copy and what Apple didn’t get quite right, but will ultimately fail to realize that the success of this product is due to the overall story that is told through the brand and the user experience. To copy this kind of strategy by simply adding a few features without considering the overall story does not lead to innovation and market success.

Creating a compelling story

The urge to compete at a functional level often displaces the importance of creating a compelling story that connects with consumers higher level needs and desires. Many companies find themselves looking to the next product introduction without articulating a larger strategy. These short-term goals serve to excuse managers from creating a vision for the story they want to tell with their own products — a story that articulates the emotions that will drive consumer decisions.

Designers naturally empathize with users; understanding their needs and desires. Before we become immersed in the product definition, let’s take some time to understand what stories might have personal meaning for consumers. From this base understanding and framing of the opportunity, we can develop designs and strategies that bring stories to life. We must, of course, satisfy consumers’ basic functional needs; but to truly win them over we must move beyond and connect with them at an emotional level.

It would be a shame to keep a beautiful object, a work of artistry, constantly under wraps for the fear of ruining it. When it comes to my phone, I don’t want to muddle the design by covering it up. I like the way the controls and finishes feel in my hands. To me, covering it implies that I am embarrassed about my phone, or that my usage is so callous I could ruin it. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t expect my phone to last forever, just to weather well before the end of my annual contract. Perhaps there are avenues worth exploring that could allow consumer electronics to age gracefully.

Things like quality furniture or jeans can actually look and feel better with age, introducing a dignified look that comes naturally with wear. I wonder if it’s possible for consumer devices to move past plastics and embrace materials such as leather or denim. This is already happening to create visual or tactile appeal. Concepts have been proposed for laptops with leather detailing and wood grain finishes. However, I think it would be interesting to consider using these types of materials specifically with regard to wearing. While some surfaces or details need to be scratch resistant, other areas do not, creating an opportunity for wear to become part of the appeal.

A big part of the success of a product comes from creating an emotional connection with it. While part of this connection comes from personalizing design, much of it comes from usage. Users today can customize portions of the design according to their taste. Why not consider personalization before the time of purchase? If finishes were meant to leverage patterns of usage and wear, it could be possible to create unique ‘fingerprints’ that tell an indelible story of the life of the product. Take industrial metals as an example. A phone devised of copper, zinc or steel would wear naturally just as those made of soft materials. Because of these wear-friendly materials, each and every phone would be one of a kind based solely on usage. Having something that is uniquely yours solidifies an emotional bond, creating a deeper relationship with the product.

Like works of art, well-designed products have a beauty that should not be hidden. There have always been skins for products – there always will be. If consumers do choose to dress up their device with things like charms, socks or tattoos, it should result from a bond with the product or a desire to make a personal statement. Accessories should exist to enhance design, not to cover up its shortcomings. I can’t imagine Leonardo da Vinci being happy should someone decide to laminate the Mona Lisa just to protect it.

This is the moment for applause and a milestone for our industry, but it is not an end. In fact, for the first time, our industry is having a hard time seeing the future. The basic process of design (define, design and deliver) works well when we explore new products and new categories that are ripe for innovation. However, when the product cycle continues at its relentless pace, we are often left to design something new without actually having much old to study and improve.

It is during these times that we seem to get stuck on an industry style. Whether it’s streamlining or more recent variations on the black and silver waterfall, these blanket styles can have a positive effect (consumer acceptance), but can also be very risky. If we’re all pursuing the same thing, and often relying on the same tools and trends, what value are we adding to the product?

The point is this: by relinquishing a design to the same vernacular that currently exists in the market, we are negating the positive effects that design can create by building an emotional connection with the consumer. We are, in essence, eliminating much of the risk a product faces (by bringing it up to par), but we’re also leaving the success of the product up to all of the things we don’t control such as manufacturing, pricing, marketing and the retail environment itself.

In a sea of sameness, even well executed products can be ignored because the differentiation of the details is challenging for consumers. So why not stand out? Why not depart from what’s expected in the market place? Why not fill the shelves with variety (if we must fill them at all)?

What do I want to do?

Saturate the Niches

Let’s recognize the power of smaller markets. We all want a single solution that is guaranteed to work, but this rarely inspires consumers to emotionally connect with products, and ignores the atomization that has vastly changed the consumer population. The mass market is hemorrhaging, and the many niche markets in its wake add up to a lot of customers when their populations are combined. Furthermore, these markets have something even better – passionate consumers. If you can only build it once, make a framework not a product, and leave hooks for people to add and adapt the product to suit them. Let’s create separate products for the young and old, energetic and conservative, allowing each of them to have what it is they most desire. Let’s prevent one group’s limitations or bias from affecting another’s.

Venture capitalists know this already. They invest modestly in a variety of companies and industries, then let the return from the successful ones make up for small losses due to the failures. By opening up their focus to variety instead of a single approach, they have a much safer investment, but they also get to learn a great deal and cross pollinate their other endeavors (which may be even more valuable than the initial return). This is the basic seed that helps consultancies stay fresh and agile, and we should apply it to how we develop products and ideas as well.

The story of Carpe Diem is a great example of this process at work. When Dietrich Mateschitz started Red Bull, he foresaw the workaholic culture of the 1980’s and thought about how it would mutate into the extreme culture of the 1990’s. He found a drink while traveling that was a perfect compliment to this lifestyle and set up Red Bull in 1984. The exceptional part of this story is that he didn’t become obsessed with creating Red Bull 2.0, but instead looked past the success, and theorized the eventual backlash to the extreme (ie, slow food, organics, etc.). So while Red Bull was reaching its strongest sales, he was pushing out into new ventures with an herbal drink steeped with ancient ingredients. The man that was first sponsoring bungee jumping and the Flugtag, now finds his new brand hosting rooftop evening yoga sessions and low key art events in small European towns.

Have Fun with Style

As designers, we need to be honest with ourselves and recognize that some projects will use styling to connect emotionally with consumers. If we are forced to update products based on cycles and shopping seasons, then let’s have some fun and really push for new styles instead of relying on the tried and true of the moment (think black, silver, and material thickness, waterfalls, etc). Let’s bring some differentiation and adventure back into products. Let’s make five colors instead of one. Let’s try three form factors instead of one or two, and let the market weigh in on our best guesses.

Be Green(er)

Let’s try to find greener ways to allow for variety and adaptability without increasing waste and creating landfill. Consumers will form deeper connections with products that appeal to their value systems. Let’s allow products to age and grow, learn and adapt. Could we update products less frequently and augment them with a variety of services instead?

We are living in a world saturated by ‘design’, and we need to make sure we’re being effective champions for consumers, their desires, and that we’re connecting them emotionally to the products they use. If we simply apply the style of the day to each and every product, we are eliminating any emotional connection that people might create with a product. By taking advantage of niche markets, narrowly targeted products, fun and interesting styles and materials, and always pursuing greener answers to problems, we are driving toward a new and exciting direction in design; a direction full of variety.