This week I had the pleasure to host Jan Chipchase, FuturePerfect, renowned Nokia research guru, at a frog and IxDA sponsored event in NY. I first met Jan at DUX in 2005 where he did a brilliant presentation on a research study around what people carry in their purse. His premise being that this is the ultimate value threshold that we should use to measure the success of a personal device like a mobile phone. What emerged were insights around how the phone could better integrate with the other things we carry (keys, wallet...). His talk was fun and fascinating. His style was very casual. what I didn't realize, and found out on Wednesday, was that this project launched his research practice over at Nokia, establishing the value of his methods as an efficient way to inform product design decisions.
I had a chance to grab dinner with Jan after the talk and we reflected a bit on the trajectory of that practice. It was very clear to me from that early experience that his goal back then was to effect product design decisions at the feature level – to help Nokia understand how to create products that were stickier, better suited to our personal needs and emerging social behaviors. I am sure that is still an essential part of his work but he has come along way (in no small part due to his personal influence). He is now finding that his most meaningful collaborations are with strategy groups within Nokia. He has been invited into much larger conversations about new markets and product strategies. Pretty cool, and no small feat in a company as large as Nokia. Particularly for an outsider like Jan (he is the only research / design employee based in Japan).
It is a perfect illustration of the rapid emergence of Design Research as a powerful business tool. And it was very interesting to chat with someone who seems to enjoy equally shooting pictures with his fish eye lens in a 6 foot square shack in Ghana or debating the value of market-changing strategies in a corporate setting. Why would conversations in a slum over two weeks with a few dozen impoverished people be welcome in a discussion of corporate strategy? We certainly have come a long way. The passion that comes from direct contact, true connection to specific social needs, has become an essential force in managing strategic decisions. With so many business options to evaluate - the power of a compelling story is only increasing. It is the paradox of choice on a global scale. Jan is doing a superb job of being the agent change for all of us.
The conversation also reminded me of stories I have heard from Hartmut Esslinger, our founder, about his early days with Sony, and his tremendous respect for Akio Morita. Morita really understood how products were made. And stayed very close to these processes even as he was running one of the largest CE manufacturers in the world. He maintained a personal sense of pride in the details of construction. He wasn't just looking at spreadsheets all day.
As we switch to the 21st century economy I believe that CEO's need to have that same sense of pride and appreciation of the specific behaviors they are trying to shape and influence - this is their brand and their product rolled into one. You can only see what you make through these direct encounters - not sales spreadsheets. Seems like a necessary point of view to stay relevant and maintain focus. Are there any CEO's that actually do this? Would Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, the CEO of Nokia (whose tagline is "Connecting People"), be willing to ride shotgun with Jan once a year through the urban slums of the world?
I don't know.
(Credit: Somebody Else's Phone)
If you found somebody else's phone, would you look through it? That's a rhetorical question. Of course! Your phone is your life, at least if you're under 25, and there's nothing more interesting than the "lives of others."
The advertising firm Wieden + Kennedy London translated the idea of "cellular oversharing" into a much gushed-about ad campaign for Nokia. "Somebody Else's Phone" depicts the lives of three twentysomethings through their text messages, multimedia messaging service, and pictures, and it essentially creates a new story format: the phone novel.
Fusing scripted content with real-life audience interaction, the campaign runs in 10 different languages, following the characters' evolving storylines through a 24-7 feed of content, across three time zones, over 6 weeks.
Nice idea, though the blog of marketing firm Luon comments, "Sometimes it feels a bit like trying too hard. The advertising-tries-to-be-socially-smart thing, where it's not clear what is real and what is fake."
But that's exactly the point. Fake authenticity--I've already written about "Mad Men" on Twitter in this context--is a burgeoning trend. Fake is fine, as long as it feels real. We'll see more of it in 2009.
(Credit:
Pop!Tech)
I will be attending the Pop!Tech conference in Camden, Maine this week. For the twelfth year, Pop!Tech will convene a network of 600 remarkable thinkers, doers, leaders, and global change agents in science, technology, social innovation, business, environmentalism, globalization, media, education, and many other fields for a four-day exploration of ideas shaping the future.
This year, the organizers will pay particular attention to the 21st century dynamics between systems based on scarcity and those based on abundance, in areas ranging from digital social networks to biology to peacemaking. Among the speakers are Chris Anderson (Wired, "The Long Tail"), Malcom Gladwell ("The Tipping Point"), Paul Polak (IDE), Clay Shirky ("Here Comes Everybody"), and Frank Warren ("Post Secret"). I especially look forward to meeting in person linguist George Lakoff (communication graduates like me may recall him as the godfather of "framing") and "songstress" Imogen Heap (I'm a big fan).
My employer, frog design, supports Pop!Tech's Accelerator program, which has the mission to incubate social innovation ventures. Together with a coalition of partners including iTeach, the Praekelt Foundation, Nokia Siemens Networks, Aricent, and the National Geographic Society, we have been working on Project Masiluleke over the past year, a path-breaking effort that harnesses the power of mobile technology to address one of the world's gravest public health crises. This ambitious initiative will leverage the ubiquity of mobile devices in South Africa to help fight the country's crippling HIV/AIDS and TB epidemics. Robert Fabricant, executive creative director at frog, and our partners will present Project Masiluleke to the public at the conference on Friday.
I will be blogging from Pop!Tech so stay tuned for more.
New Scientist magazine has a good interview with roving Nokia researcher Jan Chipchase. He travels around the world observing and photographing how people live their lives, and how mobile phones fit into that. It's kind of amazing that Nokia allows him to blog about it as much as he does, normally a large corporation would keep a much tighter lid on this kind of research. But he's a good ambassador for the brand, and I'm sure there's plenty he doesn't make public (including the all-important conclusions!).
I appreciate Chipchase's modesty: he avoids the term anthropologist as he's not trained as one (a refreshing change from some other people who have adopted that bandwagon label), and he also doesn't get too caught up in only seeing the world from the point of view of a mobile phone. As he says on his blog "life is way more interesting than little lumps of plastic and metal".
His blog is well worth checking out if you haven't seen it already, with lots of fascinating photos of details of life from around the world.
"I've been thinking recently about my connectivity and mobility and one of the reasons I keep coming back to it is the dissonance I have when looking at the two mobiles I use most often. There's now been many comparisons made between the Nokia N95 and the iPhone. Both best in class so to speak. However, I've struggled to completely understand why the iPhone beats the N95 (for me and I'm also really betting for many others). The N95 ostensible has it all. Better camera, streaming bluetooth, video, decent headphone jack, better speakers and general sound etc. It has messaging and mail etc. I could go on and the comparisons which have been made before.
However, the real reason in my mind that the iPhone wins is its ability to 'stay in social touch.' The email, the SMS, the browsing experience has enabled much of the behavior that social networkers have mastered already on the laptop or desktop. It's not about the technology, it is about how the device helps you socialize.
(...) Devices that keep us more connected and 'loosely connected' without pressuring us to wear a heads up display are going to win over those that just add a better camera. In the end it is about the conversations, the chatter, and the ability to engage wherever you are. I even find the iPhone works well as sort of a second screen...for glances at email updates, entering Twitter updates etc. In that way it is supplementing my desktop."
(Credit:
Jan Chipchase)
Jan Chipchase, a researcher for Nokia, observes how small things are likely to spread more rapidly than big ones, resembling ideas rather than things:
"Today we're comfortable with the rapid dissemination of information and ideas from one side of the globe to the other. What's in Tokyo today can be in Tehran tomorrow and vice versa. When physical things reach a certain size -- being pocketable seems about right, their ability to be picked up and moved around increases considerably. All things being equal small objects much like ideas, travel further, travel faster. They are put into bags, pockets and inevitably are introduced to people in far off lands. And if those people in far off lands like and value them enough, the container ships follow."
LAS VEGAS--Lots of companies here are touting green design and environmental thinking, though in some cases it seemed more sloganeering than anything very deep. Here are just a few samples from the floor at the Consumer Electronics Show:
Among other things, Nokia was showing off their reduced packaging (50 percent smaller; most of their phones now shipping in it; have saved them $150 million to boot)
HP had a large area of their booth dedicated to their environmental efforts, and like Nokia had several people on hand who could talk knowledgeably about it.
There's still a long way to go on this issue, though, as can plainly be seen by looking at the sheer quantity of stuff at the show. And those massive plasma TVs look fantastic, but they sure gobble energy like there's no tomorrow. Not to mention the fact that most of what's being shown here will be obsolete (and non-upgradable) this time next year, if not sooner.
Here are just a fraction of the shipping crates stacked outside one of the convention halls that were used to bring everything to the middle of the desert. Remember that closing scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark? It's like that.
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