Talking Japanese ­ (Or Is That Russian?)

Living In A Colloquial World

Strategy is such a misunderstood term. I think that it needs to be taken down, told off, picked apart, redefined, polished nicely and relaunched. This is true with many terms we all fling about in business. Words like this have lost their meaning. They get abused, hijacked and used as sticking plasters, tokens and thus lose their value. We need a new lexicon, real definitions for what these things actually mean – back to a 'Plain English' approach. Something simple right? 

Take the Large Hadron Collider for example. 

The Strategy - Convince everyone that a dinky little Hadron Collider will solve all the riddles of the universe – right back to what happened immediately after the big bang.

The Tactics - Actually get the money to build the Large Hadron Collider.

The Capability/Function - Built in collaboration with over 10,000 scientists and engineers from over 100 countries, as well as hundreds of universities and laboratories. It is a tunnel 27 kilometres (17 mi) in circumference and in some places 175 metres (574 ft) beneath the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva Switzerland. Its synchrotron is designed to collide opposing particle beams of either protons at up to 7 teraelectronvolts (7 TeV or 1.12 microjoules per nucleon, or lead nuclei at an energy of 574 TeV (92.0 µJ) per nucleus (2.76 TeV per nucleon. 

Leadership Role - Ensure that popular opinion and investors see the value of this and in turn make science popular and understandable. To most people.

The Mission - Build the thing, find the Higgs Boson and until then make it the reason why anyone working there bothers getting up in the morning. Answer some worrisome things like - "How did our universe come to be the way it is?". "What kind of Universe do we live in?",  "What happened in the Big Bang?",  "Where is the antimatter?",  "Why do particles have mass?" and "What is our Universe made of?" - you know, that sort of thing.

The Vision –  Know all there is to know about everything and make those crazy colliding hadrons mean something to the average dude. You know something far more resonant than an abstraction (best set of guesses) of what until now was an idealised past. Something that will inspire a more understandable future.

The Outcome - The World Wide Web. (Oh and the popularisation of Science, Image Search Technology, Detection Systems, Education, Health and Human Understanding.)

Sweet!

Big credit to Phil Dunsky for the amazing artwork ay the top and to the incredible WWW for wherever I found the one below.

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The Recipe For The Right Kind Of Change

Yes the business world is getting more complex!

And the recipe for surviving it is elusive. The following is the secret sauce and yet so rarely applied it makes me wonder why.

1. Gathering – Firstly get as much insight and information together as you can. This is often called context.
2. Recognising – Then come to terms with the fact that there are a lot of fluid moving parts. This requires the ability to think beyond your usual perspective.
3. Understanding – Now make sense of all these dynamics ahead of getting properly stuck into analysing the patterns and clues inside it. This takes skilled, impartial and analytical experience.
4. Developing – Next create a framework that everyone can own and that is designed to enable the business to thrive in this ongoing and dynamic reality. Impartial facilitation ensuring the right dialogue and exploring the right stuff as you go.
5. Choosing -  As all this evolves create a set of rules that help you sort a good from a bad choice. These criteria will be at the core of making high quality decisions.
6. Engaging - Make sure your work contains an inspiring vision, a relevant way of operating, based on shared meaning and executable clarity
7. Aligning – Now get everyone on–board and allocate the tasks by engaging them properly – and easier now now that there is focus. 
8. Persisting – Don't forget to keep it going, refreshing it regularly and maintaining the courage and discipline to implement it properly.
9. Evolving – And to finish it all off become more and more comfortable with emerging 'dynamics' and never stop considering the possibilities that they open up every day.

Simples.

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The UI - I'm Getting Tired of Neon Flickery Signs. (Part 3)

In tight corners everyone needs a plan right? – a blueprint that gives at least some direction? Even if sometimes the plan is to have no plan then that's OK too – that's progress. For creatives that is a brief. Creatives need good briefs.

Looking at all one's heroes in life they seem to have an effortless way about them. They must have something drawn out to guide them – even if it's only in their heads. A doodle even. They seem to have an in-built navigation system that allows them to access a kind of quality and that enables them to know where they are going at all times. 

These people glide 'all-knowingly' through each innovation that they introduce, every piece of work they perform or public statement they may make. They have a quality that suggests an inner belief. One that most of us find so difficult to pull off.

Getting to the perfect design brief?

Life's a tough journey alright and one that we know has no signposts whatsoever other than that big neon sign in your head that occasionally flickers like Bates Motel - 'Progress? No Progress!' 

Structure or open to interpretation?

The story goes that Herbert Hoover drew the doodle below while being interviewed. When he tossed it in a White House wastebasket, a guest retrieved it and asked him to sign it. The guest then sold it to a collector called Thomas Madigan – who resold it for a substantial sum. I doubt that anyone knows what Herbert was thinking. 

The doodle was soon published in newspapers across the country, often with expert interpretations. 

“Generally this man is highly efficient, a man who figures things out and who is at his best tackling difficult tasks,” opined one for the Chicago Tribune. Another objected: “It is the normal thing for a man to do – to occupy himself scribbling with a pencil when talking over the telephone or listening to someone. It would be significant if the president did not do this.” Whatever.

Before it was all over, the doodle had been converted into a fabric pattern for children’s rompers, which even Hoover’s granddaughter was said to have worn. If the president had an opinion about all this, he kept it to himself. It was by no means a brief but we could interpret it.

What was he thinking?

Was he thinking? Was he accessing deep parts of his brain? Was he contemplating a wholly different idea while doodling this? Was he sketching out some way to get access to parts of his mind that only sketching this way could unlock? Was he figuring out how to progress or process his ideas? Was he aimlessly distracted and simply calming his mind to allow better thoughts to come through?

Well we will never know but it's been interpreted anyway.

The Philosophy Behind The Perfect Design Brief! 

Take just a minute to understand what Charles Eames achieved in this sketch below. Very little interpretation required. Anyone would know what their task was. The notes below explain the handwriting included in it. Perfect!

The essence of design as interpreted by Charles Eames in 1969

The Key To The Diagram:

1. If this area represents the interest and concern of the design office.

2. And this the area of genuine interest to the client.

3. And this the concerns of society as a whole.

4. Then it is in this area of overlapping interest and concern that the designer can work with conviction and enthusiasm.

NOTE: These areas are not static – they grow and develop as each one influences the others.

NOTE: Putting more than one client in the model builds the relationship - in a positive and constructive way.

Navigate this.

Getting to the heart of the matter with a doodle coupled with precise and logical thinking can be extremely valuable. To me it is at the heart of all valuable thinking process. It is what unlocks the perfect brief. The Colombo Question. Colombo has to be the best at understand how to get to the facts. How to take a brief. Charles Eames was most definitely one of my hero's too. And he definitely doodled AND he had a vision and a purpose to it. There was humour too.

Everything he did was structured. Eames could use his skill at doodling to suggest a framework for thinking and a blueprint for a future that others would buy into. His doodling caused fresh questions. His mind effectively understood the user and the requirement and it became the framework and springboard to something. It set the course. It was the initial navigation device. It was the brief.

I would love to have seen what he would have done with the UI for the apps we all need these days.

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The UI - Neon Flickery Signs (Part 2)

Talking of Neon Flickery Signs

There's a lot of heat and noise right now about how different an experience an iPad is from a book. How social media and networking on-line is nothing like a dinner party and how social and political change is being completely affected by 140 character messages. (Doh!) 

There's a lot of excitement over the experience on the web and the new found connectivity we all have. But probably 80-90% of the entire 300,000 Applications in the marketplace (and we can happily download them right now) are designed by people who don't understand the first thing about them. Mostly they get downloaded and immediately consigned to the trash.

What does that say about your brand? Your Neon Is Flickering!

Well yes but it's worth remembering that we are right at the beginning of understanding how these interfaces work. The user interface (UI) is rapidly becoming the our experience of everything. And because this is the case we had better get far better at understanding how to design the things. For us to create powerful new ways to access something in a valuable and exciting way then we need proper design intelligence to get it done properly.

So what insights would drive the perfect UI?

1. Meaning & Purpose. It would have to leave me feeling lonely when I wasn't attached to it. 
2. Anticipatory. It would have to have third guessed each move I was about to make. 
3. Learning. It would have to know me intimately and more and more each time I used it …
4. …and it would have to be so useful and relevant to what I want to spend my life doing that I would want to find a way to smuggle it into every part of my waking life. 
5. Indispensable. When I died it came with me to Varsic 8.
6. Designed To Work. It would be so well designed that the shape and form of it was referred to as the gold standard for a UI. People would have its design printed as t-shirts and songs and poems would be written about its symmetry. 
7. Loved. It would be a brand. 
8. Loved Yet More. Brands would float naturally within it and be at peace in its existence.
9. Connectedness. As required it would know when and how to connect with everything it needed to connect to. 
10. Intuitive. Above all though it would be simple elegant and intuitive to use - needing zero instruction. 
11. Utility. It would be so amazingly useful my behaviour and life would change.

There are a few examples of this level of UI emerging now. I have a few that are beginning to fall into this category. iTunes, my Tumblr blog, my kitchen, my Starbucks app, Yammer, Podio and Pinterest. But they are all personally relevant and for different reasons. And still there are a massive number that fail to understand the idea of the UI at all. So 'No Progress. Just a Flickery Neon sign.

Well to be fair of course there is huge progress even though we can all see millions of fails along the road and yes they do spoil the view. Far too many companies have let so called designers loose to create dreadful expressions of half baked ideas in the name of not being left out of the race for a

 UI.

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The UI - Neon Signs (Part 1)

Navigating Towards the Great User Interface In The Sky

Really helpful people will tell you that If you want go 'there' then you shouldn't have started from 'here'. Yes thank you for that. In your mind the destination will be marked with a big welcoming neon sign – but flashy signs are rarely what they seem.

I am reaching saturation point with the quantity/quality ratio of Applications these days. All promising the Earth in lurid neon lights but delivering about as much quality as the average TV talent show on a bad night. You know what it says about the destination when the neon flickers.

It's The Journey AND the Destination

Regular readers will know how much really I like the way most travel systems work. Airports and public transport are amongst my favourite things to experience. I love them. At each step there is new data to consume and at every turn a new challenge. Plenty of neon signs all over the place but at least Bates Motel had a shower that worked. 

It's the same for Apps and UI's right?

Out of around 1000 Applications (bought or downloaded for free) I probably use 20 fairly often. I wouldn't say I am entirely happy even with them but I give them the benefit of the doubt given the adolescent era we are currently in. The occasional one takes my breath away and reminds me that there are seriously talented people out there who deserve all the credit they get.

What makes a great App? – A great user interface!

A great user experience is the aim but very few actually get there. The design approach needs critical  thinking. The main ingredients: An initial 'end-to-end' design, no matter how sketchy – experienced creativity - market awareness and a clear end point in mind. 'Design thinking' in this way means iterating, making lots of prototypes to test – allowing everyone to make good decisions along the way. 

A lot of this comes down to asking the right questions – 

• Why do we need an App?
• What will people actually do with it?
• Are other people doing something similar?
• Are we capable of knowing what a good app looks like?
• Is the UI going to deliver a good experience for my customers? (More than once? At all?' )
• Are we prepared to invest the right time and effort in designing it and keeping it fresh?

In addition do we have the real insight into what our customers really want?

I react very positively when I think I have found a true insight. These insights need to be the kinds of things that take your breath away with their profound nature. Without an insight to go on I am prone to send myself through an airport for no reason at all –  just to remind myself what lack of inspiration looks and feels like

With a true insight I can hop one-legged across a wobbly rope tied across the Grand Canyon. I can.

But seriously if you are alive and in business today then you will want the best for your own UI and fast. 

You will need the right approach – a plan that understands that the game has totally changed. You will need people who have been somewhere near this stuff before to help you with clues. You will want someone or something who can be a companion for the journey and you will want to know that you can stop with comfort at various places on the way to check progress. 

If you aren't alive today then none of this will be any help whatsoever. 

Unless of course this writing has lasted so long that you are now borne and reading it and I will probably (thankfully) have passed on to some other multiverse and be talking Varsic 8 code. With a big neon sign saying 'Slight Progress' (written in Varsic of course). 

Time to clean up the act. Time for the humble UI to put its name in lights.

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” - Mark Twain

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IMPORTANT - The Multiverse Theory Is Proven

"Thoughts meander like a restless wind inside a letter box. They tumble blindly as they make their way across the universe."

I often feel like I am in a parallel universe. You may also feel like this? I've reached an event horizon and it's a big one!

Science suggests that is unlikely that anyone living in these parallel worlds will have much in common with us. It is hugely exciting to me to find that parallel universes are plausible places in science. A bit like me though they have remained unproven. Until now. I have fresh evidence!

I have indisputable evidence that the multiverse theory is bang on – indeed a done deal innit.

I observe people in these other worlds doing incredible, awesome-striking things. These are real events. There is no horizon here though - just events. Event's suggesting things that I can't even imagine doing in a million light years. Strange creatures smoking outside their large concrete buildings in the snow, wheezing with an oddly translucent glow. Earnestly reading (in reverse page order) so called newspapers as if they are based on fact. Repeatedly eating tasteless processed food while also professing to want to live a long life. Watching what they brand as Reality TV in the place of living Reality – many bizarre events – strange things like that.

"Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup – they slither wildly as they slip away across the universe."

What are these incredible beings doing and what are they thinking? Are they thinking? What is life actually like for them in that universe. Are they breathing what we breathe? Will they be OK?

Actually I don't give a damn about them because it's not real in this universe. They are in a different place, time and space continuum and as a result they don't impact on my quality of life.

That's because I have chosen to live in this particular universe.

I have managed to create my own reality, however distorted it might be and however stupid and distant that makes me really. It's my decision and it's based on a constant recalculation of what I think about what I think about. My own events and my own horizons.

"Sounds of laughter, shades of life are ringing through my opened ears – inciting and inviting me."

I suppose thankfully people from the other universes don't actually manage to make their language heard in this universe. We only share the fleetingest portally thing at certain times. Their plasma is only visible by the use of specialist tools and equipment. One of those tools, the car, I stopped using years back because it brought me too close too often. Occasionally the rail system seems to make them manifest though and I avoid that whenever I can - as does computing technology – although here I find I can create/project any representation or overlay onto them that I like – imagining for a few seconds that they come from here. You know.

This phenomena doesn't last long though as the power of my own world's systems (and energy fields) soon exposes their actual make up – they rapidly dissolve into vapid mist as I ask them anything of any real meaning or earthly value.

Increasingly though I am wondering whether the fault lies at my end of things. I'm questioning my own frames of reference (my calculations) because I seem increasingly in the minority. I'm becoming confused. The multiverses and the multiversals that inhabit them just grow and grow. 

Maybe this is just a Black Hole?

The defining feature of a black hole is the appearance of an event horizon – you know a boundary in spacetime through which matter and light can only pass inward towards the mass of the black hole. Events and Horizons. Nothing, not even light, can escape from inside the event horizon. The event horizon is referred to as such because if an event occurs within the boundary, information from that event cannot reach an outside observer, making it impossible to determine if such an event occurred.

As predicted by general relativity, the presence of a mass deforms spacetime in such a way that the paths taken by particles bend towards the mass. At the event horizon of a black hole, this deformation becomes so strong that there are no paths that lead away from the black hole.

I'm sure that's what it is. Or am I?

"Images of broken light, which dance before me like a million eyes, they call me on and on across the universe."

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