MarketingMuses

Happy Birthday Golden Gate Bridge!

Today marks the 75^th anniversary of the opening of the Golden Gate Bridge. The San Francisco Bay Area is considered a hotbed of technological innovation and development. Its origin, in this regard, is usually traced to a profusion of post-WWII achievements led by companies such as Hewlett-Packard and Fairchild Semiconductor. However, a strong case can be made that the conception and creation of the Golden Gate Bridge is the true genesis of Bay Area hegemony, for the following five reasons:

It Solved a Real Problem – Before the bridge, ferries transported automobiles between San Francisco and what is now Marin County. A one-way trip took 20 to 30 minutes (depending on departure location), cost $1.00 (twice the initial 50¢ toll for the bridge), and at peak times the wait for a ferry could be several hours.

It is an Early Example of Crowd Sourcing – James Wilkins, a former engineering student, made the bridge proposal that took hold in a 1916 article in the San Francisco Bulletin. San Francisco’s City Engineer estimated the cost at $100 million, and posed an open question to bridge engineers of whether it could be built for less. Joseph Strauss, who had designed several hundred inland drawbridges, responded with initial drawings for two massive cantilevers, one on each side of the strait, connected by a central suspension segment, which he said could be built for $17 million.

It is Innovative Engineering – Joseph Strauss became chief engineer of overall design and construction, but his initial proposal was replaced by a more graceful suspension design from New York’s Manhattan Bridge designer Leon Moisseiff. The basic structural design introduced his “deflection theory,” by which a thin, flexible roadway would flex in the wind, greatly reducing stress by transmitting forces via suspension cables to the bridge towers. When completed, the suspension bridge had the longest main span in the world, at 4,200 feet, and the tallest suspension towers, at 692 feet (above water).

It is Insanely Great Aesthetic Design – Irving Morrow designed the overall shape of the bridge towers, the lighting scheme, and elements such as the streetlights, railing, and walkways. He also decided to keep the vibrant International Orange color, originally used as a sealant for the bridge, instead of the standard silver or gray used on most bridges, because, in addition to its durability, it complements the natural surroundings and enhances the bridge's visibility in fog. In 2007, the Golden Gate Bridge was ranked number five on the American Institute of Architects (AIA) sponsored list of America’s Favorite Architecture.

It is a Symbol of American Persistence – Although the project design, construction, and financing was authorized in 1928, the 1929 crash made it impossible to raise the construction funds as planned. Instead, a $30 million bond measure was passed in 1930. However, there was no buyer for the bonds until Amadeo Giannini, the founder of San Francisco–based Bank of America, agreed on behalf of his bank to buy the entire issue in 1932. Construction began in January 1933 and was completed in April 1937, at a total cost $1.3 million under budget.

A Handbook for Goal-Directed Design in the Digital Age

Alan Cooper created Goal-Directed^® design methodology, which he introduced in his influential 1998 book The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High-Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity. He also founded Cooper, a leading interaction design consultancy. In his foreword to Designing for the Digital Age: How to Create Human-Centered Products and Services, he says this about the author:

“Kim Goodwin has been a prime participant in the dialog at Cooper since 1997. She has been one of the major contributors to the development of our design methodology. She is an authority on design, problem scoping, engagement management, and design documentation. Kim has labored in the trenches in a broad variety of design segments, from clinical medicine to conceptual blockbusting. She has led groups of designers, coordinating their work, and synchronizing it with the needs of some very demanding clients. 

“And she has taught others to design. Many hundreds of people have gotten a taste of Kim’s clarity, patience, thoroughness, and rigor by attending her presentations and at conferences, her one-day field seminars, or her design courses. In fact, Kim has been the primary creator of training content for our very successful Cooper U classes. Over the years, her particular expertise at observation, synthesis, and communication while in charge of other design teams and honed in the classroom, led her to write this book. Much of the content and wisdom gleaned from those classes is evident here.”

It is quickly apparent that the book was produced from tried and true application, not just concepts and theory. It is filled with comprehensive examples of real product designs, that not only clearly illustrate the processes, but also gives them enormous credibility. At the same time, the foundation of the book is a deeply held conviction about design and best way to do it.

“Design is the craft of visualizing concrete solutions that serve human needs and goals within certain constraints. Design is a craft because it is neither science nor art, but somewhere in between. In order for design to be design and not art, it must serve human needs and goals. Finally, design always happens within certain constraints.”

“Goal-Directed Design encompasses the design of a product’s behavior, visual form, and physical form. Its fundamental premise is that the best way to design a successful product is to focus on achieving goals.”

“The Goal-Directed method is a set of tools and best practices developed entirely through practice in the real world. The method consists of four components: principles, patterns, process, and practices.”

After briefly discussing principles (guidelines for creating good solutions under specific circumstances) and patterns (types of solutions that tend to be useful for certain classes of problems), the book devotes almost 700 pages to a detailed description of process and practices. The process and practices are grouped into seven stages of a design project:

1. Getting Started
2. Research
3. Modeling
4. Requirements
5. Framework
6. Detailed Design
7. Ensuring Success

One of my initial concerns was that the process and practices described require a large team of diverse specialists, which few companies can afford, working over a relatively long total timeline. While the book states that the methodology can be scaled for smaller teams and a shorter timeline, I had my doubts. However, I recently had an opportunity to develop a project plan directly with Cooper for the design of role-based user interfaces for genomics research laboratory software, and I saw, firsthand, that the process can be effectively scaled to address limited resources and tight timelines.

Alan Cooper also writes, “This book is comprehensive in its scope, exhaustive in its depth, authoritative in its practice, and priceless in its wisdom. It will certainly become the anchor document for an entire practice. While I expect to see it on the bookshelves of every practicing designer, I further expect that it will spend the lion’s share of its time off the shelf and at the elbow of hard-working designers.”

I’ve read about 60% of the book over 24 months in a non-linear manner, and it is very possible that I will never read the complete book. However, it has taken its place with a select group of books that I refer to constantly for real-world problem solving. This is not a book to read, but rather a book to use, and I strongly recommend it for anyone involved in any function of interaction design.

 

Kim Goodwin discusses the seven stages of a unified experience design project in a seminar at Stanford University.

7W5BKRKYU484

Reading Steve Jobs

“I wanted my kids to know me.  I wasn’t always there for them, and I wanted them to know why and to understand what I did.  Also, when I got sick, I realized other people would write about me if I died, and they wouldn’t know anything.  They’d get it all wrong.  So I wanted to make sure someone heard what I had to say.” – Steve Jobs reason for having Walter Isaacson write his biography

 

I did not intend to read this book.  

I did not know Steve Jobs, but I know several people who did, including a few who worked with him.  Most described the experience of working with him as 1) priceless, and 2) one that no amount of money could get them to repeat.  I have heard many stories of his brilliance and brutality.  I have read several books about Apple (the early years and after Jobs returned), and watched an excellent documentary on Pixar.  And I don’t usually read biographies.

The fact that I did read the book is testimony to the genius of Steve Jobs (and Jeff Bezos) and the talent of Walter Isaacson.  I was in a hotel room one evening having trouble falling asleep, and downloaded the first few chapters of the Kindle edition (for free) to my iPad.  No one has approached Jobs’ genius for creating an immediate, exhilarating user experience in the digital age, and it’s hard to imagine he could have chosen a better biographer than Isaacson.  Within fifteen minutes, I was hooked.

Isaacson clearly did his research, and the fact that Jobs gave him complete access to his life, and encouraged friends and foes (in Jobs life, many people are both) to speak honestly about their relationships and experiences with Jobs gave him the detail he needed.  But his talent allows him to tell a richly textured, deeply affecting story from cover-to-cover (undoubtedly, an antiquated expression for a digital book). 

As a father of an adopted son, I was especially moved by the description of an incident when Jobs, at six or seven years old, told a neighborhood girl he was adopted, to which she responded, “So does that mean your real parents didn’t want you?”

“I remember running into the house, crying.  And my parents said, ‘No, you have to understand.’  They were very serious and looked me straight in the eye.  They said, ‘We specifically picked you out.’  Both of my parents said that and repeated it slowly for me.  And they put an emphasis on every word in that sentence.”

Throughout the book, Isaacson reports similar details that give the reader keen insights into the events that shaped Jobs, without injecting amateur psychological suppositions.  The result is great reporting delivered in a wonderful narrative.  As I read the book, I realized that my image of Jobs, while accurate, was a caricature.  By the end of the book, I had a fully formed picture of a brilliant, passionate, and deeply flawed human being.

Steve Jobs never read any part of the biography.  He gave Walter Isaacson complete control of the story, although, after seeing the initial design for the book cover, he threatened to kill the project, until he received complete creative control of the cover design.  Initially, I was amazed that someone who had guarded his privacy so closely would relinquish control of his life story.  But then I realized that he simply followed the process he had used in business. 

Jobs did not personally create technology, films, commercials, etc.  But he carefully selected incredibly talented people, provided them the resources to create “insanely great” products, and exerted absolute control over product packaging.  Steve Jobs, the book, is not insanely great, but is an informative, interesting, and worthy result of his and Walter Isaacson’s creative process.

If you prefer to watch, rather than read, I strongly recommend the 60 Minutes video story and interview with Isaacson.

 

Disneyland: The Power of Vision and of Story Telling

 

“To all you come to this happy place; welcome.  Disneyland is your land.  Here age relives fond memories of the past…and here youth may savor the challenge and promise of the future.  Disneyland is dedicated to the ideals, the dreams and the hard facts that have created America…with the hope that it will be a source of joy and inspiration to all the world.” – Walt Disney, July 17, 1955

 

 

This summer was our son’s ninth birthday, so mom and I joined him for five days at “The Happiest Place on Earth.”  Disneyland is a case study in user experience and brand management.  I believe its success is based, primarily, on two factors: The vision Walt Disney voiced 55 years ago, and the stories that differentiate the same or similar activities at Disneyland from those at a traditional “amusement park.”

Many of the “rides” at Disneyland are very similar.  You are conveyed from one point to another at varying speeds and with different degrees of undulation, geared to the age and size of the rider.  Our son is now tall enough to ride everything.  As a result, we stood in long lines to experience very similar forms of locomotion.  Space Mountain and Indiana Jones Adventure are, essentially, roller coasters.  However, each ride experience is unique because each occurs within the context of a different story. 

Disney has always been characterized by great stories.  The acquisition of Pixar, with the resulting appointment of John Lasseter as chief creative officer, has amplified that tradition.  (Improbably, Lasseter was fired from Disney Studios in the 1980s when he attempted to introduce computer animation.)  Pixar stories permeate Disneyland and California Adventure Park, and form the basis for rides such as Monsters Inc. and Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters.

 

 

Stories aren’t limited to the rides.  We started most days with breakfast at the Storytellers Café (Chip and Dale are my son’s favorites).  One evening, I noticed a group of kids and adults watching a classic Disney movie in the lobby of the hotel where we were staying.  Nearby, another group of kids surrounded an adult reading a story in front of the fireplace. 

I first visited Disneyland in 1966.  My most vivid memory is not the rides, but sitting in a darkened theatre watching “Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln.”  As I sat in the theatre 44 years later with my son, I can attest to the realization of Walt Disney’s vision that, “Here age relives fond memories of the past.”

 

 

Think Like a Publisher (to become a more effective marketer)

What works is a focus on your buyers and their problems. What fails is an egocentric display of your products and services.  When you understand your audience, you can construct an editorial and content strategy just for them.  In order to implement a successful strategy, think like a publisher. – The New Rules of Marketing & PR by David Meerman Scott

Scientists are a special class of B2B technology customer.  They are very skeptical of advertising and publicity, which they consider to be largely “hype and spin.”  On the other hand, scientists live to publish.  One way to take advantage of this inclination is to publish a high-quality periodical. 

Case studies are one of the most effective means of addressing a potential buyer’s question, “How does a product or technology meet my specific business need.”  Case studies are also very effective in helping an emerging technology “cross the chasm” by providing a, “well-established reference,” as to how, “other people have fared with the product.”

At Symyx Technologies, a scientific software company, we produce Molecular Connection, a semi-annual scientific R&D publication, as our primary thought leadership vehicle.  It includes state of industry commentaries, by industry analysts and experts, and technology reviews.  But the core of the publication is the customer case studies from scientists, laboratory managers, and information technology professionals at biopharmaceutical leaders AstraZeneca, Bristol Myers Squibb, Elan, Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer and Millennium.  The case studies have three common characteristics: 1) they name the company, 2) they describe the benefit the user derives from the product or service, and 3) they liberally quote specific users.

We print a small quantity of the publication (about 1,000) as a leave behind for sales personnel (they rate it as their most effective sales enablement tool) and we use it as our primary handout at major events.  In fact, it is the only collateral we still print (all other collateral is only available in electronic format).  The case studies also are used individually in electronic format for automated direct marketing campaigns, where they are our most effective incentive for demand generation, and on our website, microsites, and blog. 

While the case studies are powerful new media assets, I am certain that it would be difficult or impossible to obtain the cooperation of customers to produce them if they were not part of a print publication.  Think like a publisher, and become a more effective marketer.

The Sound of One Hand Presenting

Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity. – Charles Mingus

Garr Reynolds combines his communications expertise (narrative and design), his experience as a jazz musician, and the tenets of Zen simplicity to undertake a noble endeavor: improve the quality and effectiveness of slide ware presentations.

His book, Presentation Zen, summarizes key points at the end of each chapter, and uses visual examples throughout to illustrate these key points.  But his goal is much more than simply providing a handbook with tips for making better presentations.  The real ambition of the book is revealed in the text where he attempts to change the way you think about presentations.  

I suspect this will be the most difficult part for most readers, especially those who may be looking for a quick fix or checklist.  Putting yourself “in the audience” to develop your presentation and using slides to illustrate and punctuate your “spoken” narrative (the real presentation) will be a challenge to most business and technology presenters.  But the greatest challenge may be the time it takes to achieve a “less is more” presentation.  It is so much easier and quicker to stuff everything into a slide deck than to take the time required to achieve the simplicity, clarity and restraint the author advocates.  As he states, “Simplicity is not easy, in fact, it is hard.” 

Editing all of the information into its simplest form, illustrating it well, and practicing the presentation until you can deliver it as naturally as a coffee shop conversation takes time and commitment.  However, if you are willing to think differently and invest the time required to develop, design and deliver more effective presentations, this book can most certainly help you achieve that end. 

PS – The author also has a very popular blog on presentation design and delivery at presentationzen.com.

New Function, New Look, New Feel

DiscoveryGate was one of the first software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications for the scientific community.  Introduced about 7 years ago, it provided scientists access to compounds and related data from a Web browser on their desktop, something they previously could do only through proprietary software.

Earlier this year, the development team demonstrated new, advanced search functions for the product.  We decided that the new functions deserved a new look and feel.  Marketing led the efforts of an external design group, 1185 Design, to design a new logo and user interface, and to coordinate the activities with our development team.  We also recruited The Linus Group to develop an All New DiscoveryGate Quick Tour, which highlights the improvements in function and form.