MarketingMuses

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.

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The One Constant Is Change

“By any objective measure, the amount of significant, often traumatic, change in organizations has grown tremendously over the past two decades. Although some people predict that most of the reengineering, restrategizing, mergers, downsizing, quality efforts, and cultural renewal projects will soon disappear, I think that is unlikely.”

 

John P. Kotter, Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership, Emeritus, at Harvard Business School, opens his book, “Leading Change,” with this statement.  In the book, he provides answers to two questions: Why do so many companies fail in their attempts to change, and is there a process to improve the probability of successful change?    

As to the first question, Professor Kotter states that, “The combination of cultures that resist change and managers who have not been taught how to create change is lethal.”  He supplies brief descriptions of eight common mistakes that can cause an organization to fail in its transformation efforts.

• Allowing too much complacency
• Failing to create a sufficiently powerful guiding coalition
• Underestimating the power of vision
• Undercommunicating the vision by a factor of 10 (or 100 or even 1,000)
• Permitting obstacles to block the new vision
• Failing to create short-term wins
• Declaring victory too soon
• Neglecting to anchor changes firmly in the corporate culture

But he spends most of the book describing an eight-step process that is the antithesis of the common mistakes. 

• Establishing a sense of urgency
• Creating the guiding coalition
• Developing a vision and strategy
• Communicating the change vision
• Empowering the employees for broad-based action
• Generating short-term wins
• Consolidating gains and producing more change
• Anchoring new approaches in the culture

He concludes the book by speculating on the characteristics of organizations prepared to successfully face the future, and the relationship of lifelong learning and leadership skills that define the individual’s capacity to succeed in the future.

The book evolved from an article entitled, “Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail,” that was published in the March-April 1995 issue of Harvard Business Review.  Unlike many books that are expanded from articles through redundancy or by adding content of questionable value, Leading Change succinctly delivers all of this information in 186 pages that should be required reading for anyone in a position of change leadership.   

 

Socially Responsible Architecture: The Rural Studio Program

“If architecture is going to nudge, cajole, and inspire a community to challenge the status quo into making responsible changes, it will take the subversive leadership of academics and practitioners who keep reminding students of the profession’s responsibilities.” – Samuel Mockbee

 

I recently saw the documentary film, Citizen Architect: Samuel Mockbee and the Spirit of the Rural Studio, on PBS.  Here’s a trailer for the film.

The film deals with two subjects: The Rural Studio, an undergraduate program of the School of Architecture at Auburn University, and Samuel Mockbee who co-established The Rural Studio with Dennis K. Ruth in 1993 and served as its director until his death in 2001.

The Rural Studio, conceived as a strategy to improve the living conditions in rural Alabama while imparting practical experience to architecture students, is a design and build architecture studio run by Auburn University, which aims to teach students about the social responsibilities of the profession.

Samuel “Sambo” Mockbee (below) was the driving force behind the Rural Studio program.  Under his direction, the program became widely acclaimed for introducing students to the social responsibilities of architectural practice and for providing safe, well-constructed, and inspirational buildings to the communities of West Alabama.

   

In many cases these buildings, designed and built by students, incorporate novel materials which otherwise would be considered waste.  The buildings often consist of vernacular architecture with modernist forms.  

 

Mockbee was posthumously awarded the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Gold Medal in 2004.  Andrea Oppenheimer Dean’s article Samuel Mockbee: A Life’s Work, published in Architectural Record to describe the AIA 2004 Gold Medal Winner, is an excellent summary of Mockbee’s legacy.

Consult your local PBS listing, and make a point of seeing this film.  It will be well worth your time.

What I Learned in School: Social Good Marketing Can Go Bad

Unless your business model is based on social good, can you develop and execute a successful external social good media program without first developing, nurturing and embedding it into your company’s internal culture?

I spent August 8 through 18 as a member of the 2010 Strategic Marketing Management executive education program at Stanford GSB.  It was an exceptional experience.  Fifty students from around the world covered a broad range of marketing and business topics with professors and business leaders.  I will be reviewing some of these in the coming weeks.

Jennifer Aaker led a session titled The Dragonfly Effect: Harnessing Social Media for Impact.  It included the very effective and moving example of Sameer Bhatia and Vinay Chakravarthy Using Social Media to Save Lives.  Jennifer also discussed brand authenticity.  She reviewed survey results showing that 59% of participants couldn’t or didn’t name an authentic for-profit brand, and 49% of participants couldn’t or didn’t name an authentic non-profit brand.

Discussions among members in class and at dinner that evening led to the following question: Unless your business model is based on social good, can you develop and execute a successful external social good media program without first developing, nurturing and embedding it into your company’s internal culture?

Organizations such as Kiva, and companies such as The Body Shop and World of Good were founded on social good principles.  Kiva’s mission is to, “connect people, through lending, for the sake of alleviating poverty.”  World of Good describes itself as, “the world’s first online marketplace to convene thousands of People Positive and Eco Positive sellers and products all in one place, empowering you to shop in ways that align with your personal values.”  The Body Shop states that it, “has constantly sought out natural ingredients…to enhance your natural beauty,” and, “strives to protect this beautiful planet and the people who depend on it—not because it’s fashionable, but based on the belief that it’s the only way to do business.”

In these examples, social good is embedded in the business models.  Unless the company acts in a way that is inconsistent with or contradictory to its business model, its brand should be associated with social good.

But what if you launch a social good marketing campaign that may not be consistent with your company’s business model?  What if the “espoused values” of one of your company brands is directly contradicted by the advertising campaign of another?  This is exactly what Unilever encountered when the message in its Dove Self-Esteem Fund advertising and social media campaign, targeting women of all ages, conflicted with the message in its Axe Effect advertising and social media campaign, targeting teenage and young-adult males.

Here’s a Dove Film titled Onslaught produced by the company.

Here’s the same video shell (intro and audio) edited with video images from the Axe Effect campaign.

It seems to me that incorporating social good messages into an external marketing campaign when that message is not part of your company’s business model or internal culture is inauthentic and, as a result, risky.  I tried to think of a company that has created an authentic external image of social good without first establishing it as part of their internal culture either through their business model or values (e.g., The HP Way before Carly, Pat and Mark).  I can’t!

Can you think of one?  If so, please comment with an example.

Back to School

I am learning all the time.  The tombstone will be my diploma. – Eartha Kitt

This week I’ve been reading through 300 to 400 pages of articles, book excepts, and case studies in preparation for 10 days at a Stanford GSB Executive Program in Strategic Marketing Management.  It’s been about 20 years since I last attended a course there (Marketing for Technology-Based Companies), and I’m looking forward to the experience. 

Two-thirds of the 49 participants work in marketing and sales, with a range of job titles (10% CEO/COO, 18% GM, 10% VP, 18% director, and 33% manager) from a mix of industries (25% oil and gas, with 8% each in food and beverage, retail and software) and global locations (69% from countries outside the U.S.).  Participants are housed on campus in the Schwab Residential Center to accommodate an intense schedule, with classroom participation from 8:00 am to 3:20 pm, followed by 2 hours of individual study, dinner, and 1.5 hours of group study.

Given the schedule, I doubt that I’ll post another blog entry within the next week.  But I’ll try to post an update on Saturday or Sunday (August 14 or 15), and I’ll recap the whole experience when the course ends the following week.